Fanfiction: Assorted Commentfic (Assassin's Creed, Dangan Ronpa, Animorphs)
In the past month, I have written over twenty thousand words of Assassin's Creed fanfiction. This is my life now. This is what I do.
Which is to say that I've written another few thousand words of Visitors (Gratuitous Wish-Fulfilment Edition) and edited them into the original post! It's slightly veered away from the 'wish-fulfilment' theme and become a more general 'scenes that didn't fit into the original Visitors' collection, though. Most of these scenes involve Desmond's life being ruined for my amusement. Sorry, Desmond.
(Unlike the AO3 version, where I just post new scenes as they're written, I've tried to marshal the version here into... something approaching a chronological order, even though the time-travel concept makes a sensible chronology completely unachievable. I've mainly rearranged things so I can keep the platonic bedsharing scene at the end.
'Riona,' you may say, frowning, 'that makes no chronological sense, no matter how you interpret the passage of time.' This is an excellent point, to which my response is 'screw you'.)
Astonishingly, I've also written a couple of ficlets that aren't for Assassin's Creed recently, so I'm going to post them here!
Along with, er. Along with an Assassin's Creed ficlet. Sorry. (Actually the first thing I wrote for this fandom, before Visitors took over my life.)
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: Desmond and Ezio. Originally written for classics_lover at comment_fic, here.
“The passage of time is cruel,” Ezio remarks. He turns from the rubble to examine the setup around the Animus. “And strange. What are these objects?”
“Those? They’re computers,” Desmond says. “They’re...” God, he wouldn’t even know how to explain them to someone from his own time. “They’re kind of like libraries, I guess.”
Ezio looks hard at Shaun’s monitor, and then looks harder at Desmond.
“The stuff on here can change,” Desmond says, waving at the screen. “Uh, you remember when you saw Minerva?”
Ezio’s expression clears at once. “Of course. She mentioned you. So you can create the same effects?”
“Not exactly,” Desmond says. “I don’t think our technology’s there yet. But something like that.”
He leads their conversation a few steps sideways, trying to make it look casual, so they’re closer to the statue of Altaïr. Somehow, he feels like Altaïr has a right to be here for this.
“How long did you say it’s been? Five hundred years?” Ezio folds his arms, and when he speaks again it’s almost to himself. “What did history make of Cesare, I wonder.”
“Well, Shaun’d know better than me, but I’m pretty sure we don’t think he was a nice guy,” Desmond says. “You don’t want to know what history made of you?”
Ezio smiles. “If history made anything at all of me, I must have been a poor assassin. And that, I think, is knowledge I could do without.”
“So what if I’d said Cesare was a hero?” Desmond asks, hands in his pockets. “You wouldn’t go after him?”
He already knows the answer, of course. He’s been in Ezio’s head.
Ezio is silent for a moment.
“Cesare murdered my uncle,” he says. “But I feel it is right for me to understand the weight of the lives I take.”
“Desmond?”
Desmond looks over at the entrance. It’s Rebecca.
“Thought I heard talking,” she says, looking around with a slight frown. “You okay?”
He expects Ezio to be gone when he looks back. Ezio is still there, brushing his fingers over the worn feather chest.
“I’m fine,” Desmond says.
Super Dangan Ronpa 2: Hinata and Koizumi, pre-canon. Originally written for naekusaba101. Full-game spoilers. (Incidentally, last night I had a dream about Hinata and Koizumi sleeping curled up together and it was adorable.)
Hinata’s been ordered not to tell anyone about the Kamukura project, but the excitement and nerves have been building up inside him until he thinks he might burst into flames if he doesn’t say anything. And he’s sure Koizumi can keep a secret, for a friend.
He thinks they’re friends by this point. It can be hard to tell with Koizumi.
He’s not sure what reaction he’s expecting, but he’s definitely expecting a reaction. She just sits there for a while in thoughtful silence, which is actually a lot scarier than the shouting he was half-braced for.
“So?” he asks, when it’s gone on for longer than he can cope with. “I know you have an opinion on this. You have an opinion on everything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, flaring up at once.
He tries not to look too relieved. Yes, this is definitely still Koizumi. “Sorry. I just wanted to know what you thought.”
She sighs. “Look, I know you’re excited about this, but it sounds kind of... impossible. And if it’s real, I think it might be dangerous.”
They’re both thoughts that have occurred to Hinata. Maybe that’s why he told her about it; it’s easier to argue against himself when someone else is throwing his own thoughts at him.
“They’ll know what they’re doing,” he says. “This is Hope’s Peak. They’re the best. And they can’t put their students through anything too risky, right?”
She catches hold of his arm.
“I don’t think you should do it,” she says.
“Koizumi-”
“I’m serious,” she says. “This doesn’t sound right to me. They’re going to, what, give you all these talents? How? How can they suddenly change what you can do without changing who you are?”
But that’s the point, he thinks. Who he is is Hajime Hinata, a normal guy who’ll get a normal job and die without ever leaving a mark on the world. Who he could be...
“I’m doing it,” he says. “This could be the only chance I ever have to be someone who matters.”
“You matter,” she says, fiercely. “If you want to be good at something, you can practise like everyone else. I’ll teach you photography. But you can spend your whole life watching TV and you’ll still matter.”
She pauses.
“I’ll be disappointed in you, if you really do nothing but watch TV,” she says. “But you’ll still be a person, and you’ll still be important. And at least you’ll still be yourself.”
Hinata laughs. “I’ll be myself. Just... better.”
Koizumi rolls her eyes.
“It’s your terrible decision,” she says, after a long moment. “Just... don’t forget me, when you’re more talented than all of us.”
Forget Koizumi? He has to smile at that. She’s so fiery and outspoken and in-your-face that he feels she’s elbowed her way into his mind and stamped her name across it. He’ll forget his own mother before he forgets her. “I won’t.”
Animorphs: Marco and Rachel, Hunger Games AU. I can't believe I've never actually written anything involving the Animorphs characters before; I've loved these books for so long! Originally written for streussal at comment_fic, here.
They’ve started putting him together with the victor of the year before his for press appearances. He doesn’t know why; maybe they think it’s hilarious that she’s so much taller than him. Whatever the reason, it’s terrifying, because the victor of the year before his is even more of a psycho than you’d expect from someone who killed twenty-three people to be standing where she is.
Okay, some of those twenty-three people killed each other. But Rachel personally killed more of her fellow tributes than any other victor in history. There are Careers, and then there are Careers. If Rachel had been born into a world without the Hunger Games, Marco’s pretty sure she’d have invented them.
The Capitol is nuts about her. Maybe he’s meant to take it as some kind of compliment, the two of them being paired up. It feels more like a threat.
They’re sitting backstage in silence, waiting for Flickerman to call them on. Marco realises too late that he’s staring at her. She’s good-looking - seriously good-looking - but all he can see when he looks at her is that final shot of her in the arena, covered in blood and screaming triumphantly.
He looks up to meet her eyes.
“You want to be careful,” Rachel says.
Oh, okay. It’s not just Snow threatening him; he’s getting actual personal threats from the most murderous person in seventy years of murdering. Awesome.
“I’m always careful,” Marco says. “I mean, yeah, there was that one time I entered a murder competition, but other than that? Mr Cautious.”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “I’m talking about interviews.”
What? Yeah, interviews are dangerous, he knows that, but he really is careful there. They’re holding his mother hostage for his good behaviour.
That’s the possibility he’s clinging to, at least. That he just has to get through this to see her again. That she’ll be back after this round of tours.
“What am I doing wrong?” Marco asks. “I’m too charming and handsome, right? It’s not exactly something I can switch off.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to,” Rachel says.
Marco stares at her. “You think I’m too charming and handsome?” he asks, after a moment, just to be sure. Even though it seems like a question that’s going to get him stabbed in the neck.
“I don’t get the appeal,” Rachel says, “but the Capitol loves all your stupid jokes. Cut down on it.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to show anyone up here,” Marco says, holding up his hands.
“Wow,” Rachel says. “You’re an idiot. Do you actually not know what happens when you get too popular?”
Marco opens his mouth to retort, and then he closes it again. Does she mean...?
Yeah, he’s heard rumours. But he always kind of assumed it was only the girls who had to deal with that.
Rachel raises her eyebrows. “Oh, good, it looks like you actually are capable of shutting up.”
Marco looks curiously at her. He’s always assumed Rachel was eating this stuff up, the glamour, the TV appearances. He thought she was willingly in the Capitol’s pocket.
She’s... trying to protect him?
“I’ll be careful,” he says, after a moment.
“You’d better,” she mutters.
I keep thinking about this Animorphs 'victors of the Hunger Games' AU. I don't go into detail here about how Marco won his Games, but I imagine it was with some sort of trap.
Presumably Jake won as a Career, like Rachel; I imagine they'd live in the same district, and only volunteers get into the arena in the Career districts. The Career pack cleared most of the field under Jake's leadership before eventually turning on each other, and he was the one who emerged alive.
Cassie hid and hunted for food and just outsurvived her fellow tributes. The Capitol admires her for winning without a drop of blood on her hands, and she's often depicted with angel wings in merchandise, but she very much thinks of herself as a killer. Surviving is an act of violence when only one person can live.
Tobias is selected as a tribute the year after Marco. He dies in the initial scramble for the Cornucopia.
This is a horrible crossover.
Which is to say that I've written another few thousand words of Visitors (Gratuitous Wish-Fulfilment Edition) and edited them into the original post! It's slightly veered away from the 'wish-fulfilment' theme and become a more general 'scenes that didn't fit into the original Visitors' collection, though. Most of these scenes involve Desmond's life being ruined for my amusement. Sorry, Desmond.
(Unlike the AO3 version, where I just post new scenes as they're written, I've tried to marshal the version here into... something approaching a chronological order, even though the time-travel concept makes a sensible chronology completely unachievable. I've mainly rearranged things so I can keep the platonic bedsharing scene at the end.
'Riona,' you may say, frowning, 'that makes no chronological sense, no matter how you interpret the passage of time.' This is an excellent point, to which my response is 'screw you'.)
Astonishingly, I've also written a couple of ficlets that aren't for Assassin's Creed recently, so I'm going to post them here!
Along with, er. Along with an Assassin's Creed ficlet. Sorry. (Actually the first thing I wrote for this fandom, before Visitors took over my life.)
Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: Desmond and Ezio. Originally written for classics_lover at comment_fic, here.
“The passage of time is cruel,” Ezio remarks. He turns from the rubble to examine the setup around the Animus. “And strange. What are these objects?”
“Those? They’re computers,” Desmond says. “They’re...” God, he wouldn’t even know how to explain them to someone from his own time. “They’re kind of like libraries, I guess.”
Ezio looks hard at Shaun’s monitor, and then looks harder at Desmond.
“The stuff on here can change,” Desmond says, waving at the screen. “Uh, you remember when you saw Minerva?”
Ezio’s expression clears at once. “Of course. She mentioned you. So you can create the same effects?”
“Not exactly,” Desmond says. “I don’t think our technology’s there yet. But something like that.”
He leads their conversation a few steps sideways, trying to make it look casual, so they’re closer to the statue of Altaïr. Somehow, he feels like Altaïr has a right to be here for this.
“How long did you say it’s been? Five hundred years?” Ezio folds his arms, and when he speaks again it’s almost to himself. “What did history make of Cesare, I wonder.”
“Well, Shaun’d know better than me, but I’m pretty sure we don’t think he was a nice guy,” Desmond says. “You don’t want to know what history made of you?”
Ezio smiles. “If history made anything at all of me, I must have been a poor assassin. And that, I think, is knowledge I could do without.”
“So what if I’d said Cesare was a hero?” Desmond asks, hands in his pockets. “You wouldn’t go after him?”
He already knows the answer, of course. He’s been in Ezio’s head.
Ezio is silent for a moment.
“Cesare murdered my uncle,” he says. “But I feel it is right for me to understand the weight of the lives I take.”
“Desmond?”
Desmond looks over at the entrance. It’s Rebecca.
“Thought I heard talking,” she says, looking around with a slight frown. “You okay?”
He expects Ezio to be gone when he looks back. Ezio is still there, brushing his fingers over the worn feather chest.
“I’m fine,” Desmond says.
Super Dangan Ronpa 2: Hinata and Koizumi, pre-canon. Originally written for naekusaba101. Full-game spoilers. (Incidentally, last night I had a dream about Hinata and Koizumi sleeping curled up together and it was adorable.)
Hinata’s been ordered not to tell anyone about the Kamukura project, but the excitement and nerves have been building up inside him until he thinks he might burst into flames if he doesn’t say anything. And he’s sure Koizumi can keep a secret, for a friend.
He thinks they’re friends by this point. It can be hard to tell with Koizumi.
He’s not sure what reaction he’s expecting, but he’s definitely expecting a reaction. She just sits there for a while in thoughtful silence, which is actually a lot scarier than the shouting he was half-braced for.
“So?” he asks, when it’s gone on for longer than he can cope with. “I know you have an opinion on this. You have an opinion on everything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands, flaring up at once.
He tries not to look too relieved. Yes, this is definitely still Koizumi. “Sorry. I just wanted to know what you thought.”
She sighs. “Look, I know you’re excited about this, but it sounds kind of... impossible. And if it’s real, I think it might be dangerous.”
They’re both thoughts that have occurred to Hinata. Maybe that’s why he told her about it; it’s easier to argue against himself when someone else is throwing his own thoughts at him.
“They’ll know what they’re doing,” he says. “This is Hope’s Peak. They’re the best. And they can’t put their students through anything too risky, right?”
She catches hold of his arm.
“I don’t think you should do it,” she says.
“Koizumi-”
“I’m serious,” she says. “This doesn’t sound right to me. They’re going to, what, give you all these talents? How? How can they suddenly change what you can do without changing who you are?”
But that’s the point, he thinks. Who he is is Hajime Hinata, a normal guy who’ll get a normal job and die without ever leaving a mark on the world. Who he could be...
“I’m doing it,” he says. “This could be the only chance I ever have to be someone who matters.”
“You matter,” she says, fiercely. “If you want to be good at something, you can practise like everyone else. I’ll teach you photography. But you can spend your whole life watching TV and you’ll still matter.”
She pauses.
“I’ll be disappointed in you, if you really do nothing but watch TV,” she says. “But you’ll still be a person, and you’ll still be important. And at least you’ll still be yourself.”
Hinata laughs. “I’ll be myself. Just... better.”
Koizumi rolls her eyes.
“It’s your terrible decision,” she says, after a long moment. “Just... don’t forget me, when you’re more talented than all of us.”
Forget Koizumi? He has to smile at that. She’s so fiery and outspoken and in-your-face that he feels she’s elbowed her way into his mind and stamped her name across it. He’ll forget his own mother before he forgets her. “I won’t.”
Animorphs: Marco and Rachel, Hunger Games AU. I can't believe I've never actually written anything involving the Animorphs characters before; I've loved these books for so long! Originally written for streussal at comment_fic, here.
They’ve started putting him together with the victor of the year before his for press appearances. He doesn’t know why; maybe they think it’s hilarious that she’s so much taller than him. Whatever the reason, it’s terrifying, because the victor of the year before his is even more of a psycho than you’d expect from someone who killed twenty-three people to be standing where she is.
Okay, some of those twenty-three people killed each other. But Rachel personally killed more of her fellow tributes than any other victor in history. There are Careers, and then there are Careers. If Rachel had been born into a world without the Hunger Games, Marco’s pretty sure she’d have invented them.
The Capitol is nuts about her. Maybe he’s meant to take it as some kind of compliment, the two of them being paired up. It feels more like a threat.
They’re sitting backstage in silence, waiting for Flickerman to call them on. Marco realises too late that he’s staring at her. She’s good-looking - seriously good-looking - but all he can see when he looks at her is that final shot of her in the arena, covered in blood and screaming triumphantly.
He looks up to meet her eyes.
“You want to be careful,” Rachel says.
Oh, okay. It’s not just Snow threatening him; he’s getting actual personal threats from the most murderous person in seventy years of murdering. Awesome.
“I’m always careful,” Marco says. “I mean, yeah, there was that one time I entered a murder competition, but other than that? Mr Cautious.”
Rachel rolls her eyes. “I’m talking about interviews.”
What? Yeah, interviews are dangerous, he knows that, but he really is careful there. They’re holding his mother hostage for his good behaviour.
That’s the possibility he’s clinging to, at least. That he just has to get through this to see her again. That she’ll be back after this round of tours.
“What am I doing wrong?” Marco asks. “I’m too charming and handsome, right? It’s not exactly something I can switch off.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to,” Rachel says.
Marco stares at her. “You think I’m too charming and handsome?” he asks, after a moment, just to be sure. Even though it seems like a question that’s going to get him stabbed in the neck.
“I don’t get the appeal,” Rachel says, “but the Capitol loves all your stupid jokes. Cut down on it.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to show anyone up here,” Marco says, holding up his hands.
“Wow,” Rachel says. “You’re an idiot. Do you actually not know what happens when you get too popular?”
Marco opens his mouth to retort, and then he closes it again. Does she mean...?
Yeah, he’s heard rumours. But he always kind of assumed it was only the girls who had to deal with that.
Rachel raises her eyebrows. “Oh, good, it looks like you actually are capable of shutting up.”
Marco looks curiously at her. He’s always assumed Rachel was eating this stuff up, the glamour, the TV appearances. He thought she was willingly in the Capitol’s pocket.
She’s... trying to protect him?
“I’ll be careful,” he says, after a moment.
“You’d better,” she mutters.
I keep thinking about this Animorphs 'victors of the Hunger Games' AU. I don't go into detail here about how Marco won his Games, but I imagine it was with some sort of trap.
Presumably Jake won as a Career, like Rachel; I imagine they'd live in the same district, and only volunteers get into the arena in the Career districts. The Career pack cleared most of the field under Jake's leadership before eventually turning on each other, and he was the one who emerged alive.
Cassie hid and hunted for food and just outsurvived her fellow tributes. The Capitol admires her for winning without a drop of blood on her hands, and she's often depicted with angel wings in merchandise, but she very much thinks of herself as a killer. Surviving is an act of violence when only one person can live.
Tobias is selected as a tribute the year after Marco. He dies in the initial scramble for the Cornucopia.
This is a horrible crossover.