Fandoms 13, 14 and 15
Fandom: Assassin’s Creed/Malory Towers
Rating: PG-12
Word Count: 471
Violet couldn’t help but think that perhaps - no, rather more than perhaps - her father had been right when he had told her time and time again that in their lineage, it was far better to go unnoticed.
He had repeated that mantra whenever she had bemoaned her friendless status at school, going so unnoticed that even Mary Lou was a stronger and more memorable student than she. Little Mary Lou with her shy ways and soft words at least had quirks; Violet did her absolute best to be almost invisible.
It had worked quite well so far but she did have her slip-ups, her moments of panic and her moments of weakness. There were those rare occasions where either Alicia or Sally would glance her way and it would feel quite like they were trying to burrow into her thoughts or place some uncertainty they had about her. And it was so easy to get drawn into conversation, especially with the likes of Darrell and Mary Lou who seemed so genuinely friendly and interested in everyone else.
Except any one of them could be the child of a Templar - there was at least one Templar link at the school that her father knew of - and so Violet couldn’t risk getting close to any of them, could not let her guard down for a moment. So she practised scripts in her head and kept everyone at arm’s length until the whole form thought her quiet and dull and unassuming.
With the arrival of the men from the exam board - the ones seated across the hall at the teacher’s table, talking to Miss Grayling so animatedly - Violet wondered what her form would think of her if they knew the truth. That those men most certainly were not from any exam board, she had seen the Templar pendant beneath the jacket of the eldest man on the team, and that Violet was going to have to hunt them before they started hunting her.
She brushed her thumb over the blade hidden beneath her sleeve, the leather strap that held the mechanism in place was rubbing against her wrist. She should have carried on wearing it like her father had insisted, but there was no time for those thoughts now. The Templars would start looking for her soon, and if she were lucky then they would lead her to the Templar link within the school.
“Are you feeling okay? You haven’t eaten much”, Mary Lou interrupted her thoughts and Violet quickly composed herself, drawing her thumb back from the blade and forcing a small smile to her face.
“Just deep in thought is all”, Violet replied as she picked up her fork again.
She didn’t like to think about what she would do if one of her classmates turned out to be a Templar...
Fandom: Enslaved/Ripper Street
Rating: G
Word Count: 428
Edmund Reid grasped in a blind panic at the space in front of him, it was as though he had been torn away from everything he held dear and thrust into a darkness, an emptiness that he couldn’t understand. It seemed like both an eternity and no time at all as he was pulled into overwhelming uncertainty, and then…
And then light.
It was so bright, and he flinched against the harshness of it. There were voices above him - a man and a woman - but he could not hear what they were saying. Light and dark pulsed as he struggled to remain conscious, and then he gasped and sat upright.
Reid was surrounded by things he couldn’t name, by a room he couldn’t comprehend. He looked frantically back and forth for something - anything - that looked familiar. His eyes fell on the two people beside him. They were clothed strangely, and the man especially looked most bizarre. He stood and moved like an ape, and was naked from the waist up. It looked as though he wore a crown as well - it made Reid think of those ancient stories from China. The ones about the Monkey King.
“I guess that’s what happens when we wake them up”, the man spoke, his voice low and gravelly, “Should we wake the others?”
“Let’s deal with one existential crisis at a time”, the woman stepped closer to Reid and he flinched away from her attempt to touch his arm.
“Where am I?”, he demanded, “Where have you taken me? What have you given me?”
“See - I told you people would rather remain in their virtual worlds than wake up here”, the woman sighed.
“Give him a moment would you”, the man lumbered closer and peered at Reid. It felt like he was peering into his very soul.
“Where did you come from?”, the man asked.
“London”, Reid said, “I’m a detective, a detective in Whitechapel. People will be looking for me”.
The man laughed, but it was cold and barking without an ounce of humour, “Nobody’s looking for you”, he grabbed Reid by the arm and pulled him to his feet, “London wasn’t real - all the people you thought you knew weren’t real. Whoever you thought you were, wasn’t real”, the man grabbed his shoulder with one hand and gestured around the room with his other arm, “This...this is your reality”.
Reid was vaguely aware of the fact that the darkness was rushing back to him again and the panicked cry of the woman reached his ears just before he fainted.
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars/Borderlands (yes - really)
Rating: PG-12
Word Count: 512
Aria scowled as the sunrise peeked underneath the guard on the car window. Leaving Iceland to come back was bad enough, doing it at this ridiculous hour just rubbed salt in the wound.
“Your face’ll stick like that”, her brother, Mike, commented without looking away from the game he was playing on his DS.
“I’m getting some fresh air”, Aria grumbled as she opened the car door.
“Mom and dad’ll be back in a…”, but the car door slammed shut and muffled the end of his sentence and Aria walked a short distance away from the car. Where the hell were they anyway? Of course it was her dad’s genius idea to fly into an airport in a different state so they could enjoy some “cross-country America”. Aria sighed heavily, to nothing and at nothing in particular, and watched the sun creep higher in the sky.
She squinted into the dawn at a peculiar creature that was limping along, maybe a hundred metres out from her. It looked like a wolf at first glance, perhaps a stray dog, but there was something unusual about it.
Aria began to follow it, casting a backwards glance at the car to make sure her parents hadn’t returned. The creature limped further and further away from the roadside.
“That’s where the little shit got to”, a voice broke her concentration and made her jump. She started to say something - afterwards she wondered what she had planned to say to this stranger - but her words caught in her throat. With most of his face covered by goggles and what appeared to be some kind of face mask, the only part Aria could see was his mouth and beard - that latter was twisted and formed into a sharp spike. A peculiar noise, halfway between a growl and a squawk pulled her attention to the bird - was it even a bird? - sat on the man’s shoulder.
“You weren’t planning on following that there were you?”, the man’s voice came out in a slow drawl, as he gestured towards the creature. Aria shook her head.
“That’s good - damn Skags’ll eat you soon as look at you - only one good way to deal with them”, and with that the man reached over his own shoulder and took a rifle from the holster on his back. He raised the scope to his eye, took a second, and then pulled the trigger.
Aria leapt backwards, horrified by the crack of the gun and the strangled choke that she heard from the creature even from this distance. She began to back away, wondering when she had wandered out of sight of her family.
“You run along now”, the man turned to face her again, “the desert ain’t gonna get any friendlier just because the sun’s up”. Aria didn’t need to be told twice, she turned on her heels and ran back to the car. She yanked the car door open and slid back into her sheet, startling Mike as she did.
“Thought I heard a wolf”, she muttered by way of explanation.