On the tenth day of Christmas
my true love gave to me
ten soaring hopes
[Title] With My Body I Thee Worship
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] R for sex
[Word Count] 845
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Mikami. Mikami's God shows his appreciation.
You deserve my gratitude for making this new world a reality
[Title] Everything to Gain
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 527
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya doesn’t get why other people feel the need to fake it.
They’re walking home after basketball practice. Just Shuuya and Mimura - Yutaka busted his ankle and stayed behind to wait for a lift from his mum, and Yoshitoki’s on extra cleaning duty. Sun’s out and the birds are singing and Shuuya’s hardly a basketball prodigy but it was a good game and at moments like this it’s easy to forget that bad things exist at all.
Except that before practice Tadakatsu was sounding off about how his mum was saying he should really think about doing kendo or something, a traditional sport, something to make him look patriotic. And Shuuya had said, Don’t do it if you don’t want to, man, you already do baseball and b-ball, you’ll burn out, and Tadakatsu had looked at him like he was an idiot and said, Yeah, well, I didn’t expect you to understand.
“You got that introspective look on your face,” Mimura says. “Like you’re trying to remember the lyrics to every Dylan song, backwards.”
“Introspective’s a big word for you,” Shuuya says, which is a half-hearted comeback but Mimura’s not friends with him for his witty repartee, right? “I don’t know, I was just thinking about what Tadakatsu was saying earlier.”
“You worried about your patriotic image? Because, let me tell you, getting kicked off the baseball team and taking up rock music is not going to help -”
“Ha ha. No, just… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like an alien who crash-landed here. I don’t get why you’d care so much about what other people think that you’re like hey, son, do this completely pointless sporting activity just to boost your image.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Mimura says. “You’ve never seen people talking shit to impress a girl they like? Or pretending their watch is brand-name to make it look like they’re rolling in it? I mean, if you’re really struggling, come round to my house sometime, see my parents working overtime to save face -”
“You should talk, you don’t put on an act either. You just are that disgustingly awesome.”
“You know it,” Mimura says automatically, and then, “Thing is, Shu, I reckon you don’t get it ‘cause you never had it. You’ve always been weird and just said what you think. You figure you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. S’why you’re so optimistic and full of hope about the world all the time. You’re the walking embodiment of things can only get better.”
Shuuya would like to deny it in order to prove a point but he thinks that maybe it’s kind of true. Even before Mum died, he was still kind of loud and people laughed at him because his dad was dead and he just said what he thought.
He shrugs. “What are you, then? An optimist under all the cynicism?”
“Nope, I’m so awesome I don’t need to fake it. Everything about me’s the way I want it to be.”
Shuuya rolls his eyes, even though he’s not going to disagree. “Guess hanging out with you can only help me. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it.” And Mimura grins and says, “You know it,” and they keep walking.
[Title] Borrowing Trouble
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G. Brief mention of bullying
[Word Count] 513
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda’s always been afraid.
When Matsuda thinks about it, he’s always been kind of afraid.
Not like anxiety-afraid, not like can’t go outside or anything like that. Maybe afraid’s not even the right word. Try uneasy. Or nervous.
Just… he was mostly lucky in school. He was never super-popular, never popular at all, but he wasn’t one of those kids who get bullied every time they set foot in a classroom. He got hassled a few times, of course. Everyone does, unless they’re really lucky, and he’s kind of an idiot, so of course he was going to screw up and attract the interest of someone who didn’t like him so much. It was fine. He learnt to goof around and get the jokes about himself in before other people said them, and then laugh and not mind when they did, and not annoy people who shouldn’t be annoyed.
(His dad said people who won’t stand up for themselves are cowards, but he also said people who make trouble for themselves and argue about the status quo are stupid, so it cancels itself out, really.)
So really it’s not that he’s afraid someone might hurt him. More that… more that there are bad people out there, and terrible things, and he wants - he really wants to be someone who’s stopping that. He wants to be in a world where it’s all been stopped. He’s relied on luck so far, luck and being a police officer and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but those things won’t save you if you attract the attention of someone who wants to hurt you. You’re not supposed to admit that, you’re supposed to believe you’d be able to fight back, but Matsuda’s not that much of an idiot.
What he’s - what he’s nervous about, if he’s honest, is that sooner or later, something will come along that will test him, and he’ll be found lacking. That’s partly why he stays on the Kira case. The other reason is that the Chief does, and the Chief is someone who would never be found lacking, would always do the right thing, is never afraid, and never, never weak.
Sometimes, without meaning to, he thinks that Kira must be like that, too. He knows that’s wrong, that Kira’s doing the wrong thing by definition, but under that knowledge there’s something else. A lot of Kira’s victims are the kind of people who’d present someone like Matsuda with impossible choices. A lot of people, these days, are going along with a new status quo, one where people like Matsuda don’t have to keep deciding whether to not make trouble or to stand up for what’s right. Matsuda’s staying on the case, of course he is. But sometimes when he thinks about things staying like this and Kira just… making it clear what’s right, sometimes when he thinks about this, he feels… hopeful, like everything’s going to be okay. Not that he isn’t still nervous. Sooner or later there’s going to be a test. He thinks he knows what it might be.
[Title] Tested to Destruction
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 298
[Notes/Summary] Rattmann watches Chell as she works her way through the testing.
He watches her from behind the walls.
Of course she’s not the first he’s seen. He’s watched dozens by now, and knows there are dozens more who ran the mazes while he was asleep or in no state to watch anything. They make it through the first few chambers and then, as they get hungry and thirsty, as they get tired, as they get scared, they realise they’re going to die and he sees them realise it, the numb hopelessness in their eyes. Some of them give up right then, they curl up in the corner until they pass out. Some of them run at the High Energy Pellet or hurl themselves into the water. Some of them just fire portals blindly at the wall like one of them will open up to reveal an escape route.
She’s different.
She falls over and over again. She loses her footing, she nearly slips off platforms into the murky depths below. She misses shots. She gets winged by bullets. She rubs a hand across her forehead - once or twice across her eyes - swallows, licks dry lips, prods her teeth with her tongue and frowns at the noticeable taste of blood. Steps into rooms and spends a good while looking, and watching, and frowning. Works out potential solutions and narrows her eyes as she sees how precise the timing’s going to have to be. Stands on the edge of fifty-foot drops, opens a portal at the bottom. And dives.
The determination never leaves her eyes.
He tells himself he’s waiting for her to fail, that hope is dangerous, that it doesn’t matter how tenacious she is because these chambers were designed to test everything to destruction. But it doesn’t matter. Hope is dangerous but she’s given it back to him anyway.
[Title] Don’t Doubt Yourself
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 217
[Notes/Summary] Beat thinks about his arrival in Tokyo-to.
Two days after the whole saving-the-world thing, Beat finds himself back at Benten-cho subway station. Sun’s out, and light streams down the slope to the ticket barriers. He doesn’t go in, just rocks back on his heels and leans against the wall. It’s early afternoon, so not many people about; a few students and tourists is all. It’s still and quiet and he can kind of see himself, the guy he’d been weeks ago, rocking up in Tokyo-to like Hey, I’m gonna make my fortune here - except of course he hadn’t been, he’d been like, Shit, what am I doing, this is the big city, what if I get murdered? And wall-eyed from lack of sleep and kind of smelling of travel and train. He’d basically been figuring if he didn’t get murdered, and found a roof to sleep under, that’d be as good as he could hope for. Hadn’t been counting on friends. Definitely hadn’t been counting on saving the world. He grins at dorky past-him, who’d shown up in the small hours when it was still dark, and thinks, Hey, man - you got this. He’s full of dumb-ass hope for the future, even though there’s no guarantee he won’t be blown away by a police-manned tank tomorrow. He hopes past-him can catch some of it.
[Title] Start of Beautiful
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 353
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo/Kaori. It wasn’t very romantic when he asked her out.
It’s not really that romantic, when Tetsuo asks Kaori to go out with him. They’re sitting up on the roof like always, and he’s been quiet and kind of snappy and she’s wondering if something bad happened and then suddenly he just takes a deep breath, turns to her, and blurts out, “So I was thinking maybe you should be my girlfriend. Like. If. If you want to be.”
Kaori stares at him and she feels her face go bright red. Tetsuo stares back at her and he’s blushing as well, and scowling, and starting to say, “I mean, if you don’t then it’s fine, I just thought -” and she realises she hasn’t actually said yes. Her face is so hot and she’s smiling so much it’s hard to get the words out so she sort of stammers, “No, I mean - I mean, yes. Yes, I do want to,” too loudly, like she’s someone trying to show off in class.
Tetsuo stares at her bug-eyed like he honestly didn’t expect her to agree.
“Like, for real?” he says, and frowns now, looking at her like she might be trying to mess with him. He does that sometimes, even to her or to Kaneda, assumes that it might all be a trick. She doesn’t mind, she knows it’s not safe to assume anything with most people. So she gives him a smile - she means it to be reassuring, but it’s sort of giggly and shaky - and she nods again. “For real. I… I’d really… I’d really like to be your girlfriend,” and feels herself blushing even more, she’s not sure she knows how to be anyone’s girlfriend and Tetsuo is her best friend, what if she messes everything up? But he smiles back at her now, looking kind of stunned but happy, and says, “That’s… that’s awesome. That’s really, really great,” and then, nervously, reaches out and puts his hand over hers. She turns it palm up and squeezes his. She probably will mess everything up, but right now it doesn’t matter, right now she can believe that everything’s going to be perfect.
[Title] Role Model
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG, brief mentions of sex, infidelity and death
[Word Count] 402
[Notes/Summary] Shinji’s got reasons for enjoying his uncle’s company.
You ever asked, Shinji would tell you he hangs out with Uncle because the old guy’s pretty cool and gives him free soft drinks. Or because it gets him away from his parents. Or because no one else can challenge him at b-ball. Something like that.
The real reason’s sappy as hell and so it stays unspoken. But the thing is, being at home is kind of a drag. Yeah, yeah, food and clothes, think of the starving children in the decadent capitalist west, etcetera, but there’s his dad, coming back from a love hotel at three in the morning, and there’s his mum, telling a friend how much she cares about them and then calling someone else to talk shit about that best pal’s clothing choices. You kind of think Geez, is this all there is? A reasonable job and a reasonable house and a roll in the hay with a secretary while everyone gossips about each other and occasionally makes snide remarks about lack of patriotism just for the power play. Not to mention the way they close their eyes to every wrongful arrest or show trial or Program broadcast and just stick with things like that don’t happen to people like us. Either it makes you want to throw something through a window, or to crawl into bed and never wake up.
Uncle’s different. Uncle never talks shit about anyone, he just says what he notices, if it’s relevant, and sees both sides, when he can, and really doesn’t give a damn about how many rallies you go to or what brand names you’re wearing. He sees a bunch of ninth-graders having to massacre each other every year and he says what any normal person would think, which is, that’s horrific. If he’s got a girlfriend, or if he’s got several girlfriends, it stays on the down-low and, as far as Shinji can tell, no one gets hurt.
You watch him, you feel there’s hope for the future. You can think, hey, he’s a blood relative, maybe I can grow up to be a little more like this and a little less like the corporate stuffed shirt across the dinner table. You can think, there are options.
The real reason’s sappy as hell, but that’s not why he never tells it. More like he never put it into words until after Uncle died and he realised what he’d lost.
[Title] Lighthouse
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 232
[Notes/Summary] Yuka’s estimation of Yukie has just gone up several notches.
Yuka had always figured Yukie was a pretty cool friend, but this just takes the cake. Girl not only keeps her head when she wakes up in the Program, not only refuses to play, but comes to find all her friends and rounds them all up and takes them to a hideout? That is cool. The bedroom is small and dusty and smells of damp, but it smells of sea air too, and the walls curve round. There are two bunk beds, she and Satomi curled up on one of them (Satomi not asleep but pretending to be) and Haruka and Chisato on the other (Chisato snuffling slightly; Haruka had been crying earlier but now she’s gone quiet). Yukie outside, at the top of the lighthouse, keeping watch. Yuka thinks that it’s funny - in the Program, you’re not meant to trust anyone, and they all let Yukie take one of the guns and watch over them like it was no big deal. But it wasn’t a big deal. In here, in the darkness full of their breathing and the waves crashing outside, it doesn’t matter what’s happening to other people. They’re here and they’re safe and Yukie’s protecting them. In here, right now, Yuka can even believe her amazing pal might find a way out of this. After all, you’ve got to have hope, and people like Yukie make it way easier.
[Title] Frostbite
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 372
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya and Noriko, newly arrived in America, try and hitch a lift.
They’re standing by the side of a motorway. It’s freezing. It’s so cold Shuuya’s eyeballs might be solidifying, and he stopped feeling his fingers a while back. There’s piles of grimy snow around them, and hard, frozen mud under their numb feet.
Shuuya takes a deep breath and tries to pretend it’s made him feel better. It doesn’t, much. He’s hungry, and the petrol smell of the roadside is bringing back memories of the seasickness on the trawler. More than that, it’s bringing back memories of being on the fishing boat. When they left the island. Kawada’s shirt and hand glistening with blood -
Noriko, next to him, squeezes his arm.
“Sorry. I’m on it.” He needs to stick his thumb out again. Someone’s got to stop. If they don’t, it’s sleep-in-the-woods-and-hope-they-don’t-die-of-hypothermia time. How cold does it have to be before that gets to be a serious problem? Would they be better off carrying on walking down the road, trying to get to a town and sleep in a doorway? But America’s freakin’ huge, they could be walking for hours and still get nowhere. Someone could stop. Unless they’re a crazy murderer or something, in which case maybe walking would be better. He still feels sick and he feels so tired, even though he’s spent most of his time in hiding asleep. Come on, he tells himself, get it together, do right by her, but he can’t make the words mean anything -
“It’s all right.”
Noriko slides her hand into his, their gloved fingers entwined in his pocket, and sticks her other hand out, thumb up. Shuuya wants to tell her not to, he doesn’t want whoever picked them up to have done it because they saw a pretty girl, he doesn’t want any attention being drawn to Noriko. He tries to speak but the words don’t line up. She squeezes his hand. “Shuuya, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He wants to ask her how she can have any hope, after all that’s happened, when it’s so dark and so cold, but she looks back at him and manages a smile. “It’s okay,” she says again. “We’re here and it’s okay.” And turns back to stare out at the road again.
[Title] See a Better Future
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 209
[Notes/Summary] Kei was always cynical, but sometimes even she can feel hopeful.
Kei would probably have described herself as a cynic. Difficult not to be, when you’ve been part of an anti-government anti-establishment resistance group since you were old enough to understand the concept. Difficult not to be, as well, when you spent all your time reading up on the secrets and lies and corruptions of the people who are meant to serve the public good. Not to mention how you saw the city levelled and the resulting reversion to savagery that ensued.
They’ll rebuild Neo-Tokyo, just like they always do. They’ll elect new leaders, who’ll generate new funds and commit them to new useless flagship projects or new illegal and unethical human experiments. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the underclass will revolt and everything she and Kaneda have seen and done will be forgotten. Of course.
Yet, sometimes, when she’s clutching Kaneda round the waist, the bike going so fast it brings tears to her eyes, sometimes she blinks and thinks she sees the towers and skyscrapers of a new city in the distance. The sun’s always out, and the roar of the engine seems to fall away, and in the stillness she can believe that maybe, this time, perhaps they can create something better.
ten soaring hopes
[Title] With My Body I Thee Worship
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] R for sex
[Word Count] 845
[Notes/Summary] Raito/Mikami. Mikami's God shows his appreciation.
You deserve my gratitude for making this new world a reality
[Title] Everything to Gain
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 527
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya doesn’t get why other people feel the need to fake it.
They’re walking home after basketball practice. Just Shuuya and Mimura - Yutaka busted his ankle and stayed behind to wait for a lift from his mum, and Yoshitoki’s on extra cleaning duty. Sun’s out and the birds are singing and Shuuya’s hardly a basketball prodigy but it was a good game and at moments like this it’s easy to forget that bad things exist at all.
Except that before practice Tadakatsu was sounding off about how his mum was saying he should really think about doing kendo or something, a traditional sport, something to make him look patriotic. And Shuuya had said, Don’t do it if you don’t want to, man, you already do baseball and b-ball, you’ll burn out, and Tadakatsu had looked at him like he was an idiot and said, Yeah, well, I didn’t expect you to understand.
“You got that introspective look on your face,” Mimura says. “Like you’re trying to remember the lyrics to every Dylan song, backwards.”
“Introspective’s a big word for you,” Shuuya says, which is a half-hearted comeback but Mimura’s not friends with him for his witty repartee, right? “I don’t know, I was just thinking about what Tadakatsu was saying earlier.”
“You worried about your patriotic image? Because, let me tell you, getting kicked off the baseball team and taking up rock music is not going to help -”
“Ha ha. No, just… I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like an alien who crash-landed here. I don’t get why you’d care so much about what other people think that you’re like hey, son, do this completely pointless sporting activity just to boost your image.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Mimura says. “You’ve never seen people talking shit to impress a girl they like? Or pretending their watch is brand-name to make it look like they’re rolling in it? I mean, if you’re really struggling, come round to my house sometime, see my parents working overtime to save face -”
“You should talk, you don’t put on an act either. You just are that disgustingly awesome.”
“You know it,” Mimura says automatically, and then, “Thing is, Shu, I reckon you don’t get it ‘cause you never had it. You’ve always been weird and just said what you think. You figure you’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain. S’why you’re so optimistic and full of hope about the world all the time. You’re the walking embodiment of things can only get better.”
Shuuya would like to deny it in order to prove a point but he thinks that maybe it’s kind of true. Even before Mum died, he was still kind of loud and people laughed at him because his dad was dead and he just said what he thought.
He shrugs. “What are you, then? An optimist under all the cynicism?”
“Nope, I’m so awesome I don’t need to fake it. Everything about me’s the way I want it to be.”
Shuuya rolls his eyes, even though he’s not going to disagree. “Guess hanging out with you can only help me. Maybe that’s why I’m doing it.” And Mimura grins and says, “You know it,” and they keep walking.
[Title] Borrowing Trouble
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G. Brief mention of bullying
[Word Count] 513
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda’s always been afraid.
When Matsuda thinks about it, he’s always been kind of afraid.
Not like anxiety-afraid, not like can’t go outside or anything like that. Maybe afraid’s not even the right word. Try uneasy. Or nervous.
Just… he was mostly lucky in school. He was never super-popular, never popular at all, but he wasn’t one of those kids who get bullied every time they set foot in a classroom. He got hassled a few times, of course. Everyone does, unless they’re really lucky, and he’s kind of an idiot, so of course he was going to screw up and attract the interest of someone who didn’t like him so much. It was fine. He learnt to goof around and get the jokes about himself in before other people said them, and then laugh and not mind when they did, and not annoy people who shouldn’t be annoyed.
(His dad said people who won’t stand up for themselves are cowards, but he also said people who make trouble for themselves and argue about the status quo are stupid, so it cancels itself out, really.)
So really it’s not that he’s afraid someone might hurt him. More that… more that there are bad people out there, and terrible things, and he wants - he really wants to be someone who’s stopping that. He wants to be in a world where it’s all been stopped. He’s relied on luck so far, luck and being a police officer and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but those things won’t save you if you attract the attention of someone who wants to hurt you. You’re not supposed to admit that, you’re supposed to believe you’d be able to fight back, but Matsuda’s not that much of an idiot.
What he’s - what he’s nervous about, if he’s honest, is that sooner or later, something will come along that will test him, and he’ll be found lacking. That’s partly why he stays on the Kira case. The other reason is that the Chief does, and the Chief is someone who would never be found lacking, would always do the right thing, is never afraid, and never, never weak.
Sometimes, without meaning to, he thinks that Kira must be like that, too. He knows that’s wrong, that Kira’s doing the wrong thing by definition, but under that knowledge there’s something else. A lot of Kira’s victims are the kind of people who’d present someone like Matsuda with impossible choices. A lot of people, these days, are going along with a new status quo, one where people like Matsuda don’t have to keep deciding whether to not make trouble or to stand up for what’s right. Matsuda’s staying on the case, of course he is. But sometimes when he thinks about things staying like this and Kira just… making it clear what’s right, sometimes when he thinks about this, he feels… hopeful, like everything’s going to be okay. Not that he isn’t still nervous. Sooner or later there’s going to be a test. He thinks he knows what it might be.
[Title] Tested to Destruction
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 298
[Notes/Summary] Rattmann watches Chell as she works her way through the testing.
He watches her from behind the walls.
Of course she’s not the first he’s seen. He’s watched dozens by now, and knows there are dozens more who ran the mazes while he was asleep or in no state to watch anything. They make it through the first few chambers and then, as they get hungry and thirsty, as they get tired, as they get scared, they realise they’re going to die and he sees them realise it, the numb hopelessness in their eyes. Some of them give up right then, they curl up in the corner until they pass out. Some of them run at the High Energy Pellet or hurl themselves into the water. Some of them just fire portals blindly at the wall like one of them will open up to reveal an escape route.
She’s different.
She falls over and over again. She loses her footing, she nearly slips off platforms into the murky depths below. She misses shots. She gets winged by bullets. She rubs a hand across her forehead - once or twice across her eyes - swallows, licks dry lips, prods her teeth with her tongue and frowns at the noticeable taste of blood. Steps into rooms and spends a good while looking, and watching, and frowning. Works out potential solutions and narrows her eyes as she sees how precise the timing’s going to have to be. Stands on the edge of fifty-foot drops, opens a portal at the bottom. And dives.
The determination never leaves her eyes.
He tells himself he’s waiting for her to fail, that hope is dangerous, that it doesn’t matter how tenacious she is because these chambers were designed to test everything to destruction. But it doesn’t matter. Hope is dangerous but she’s given it back to him anyway.
[Title] Don’t Doubt Yourself
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 217
[Notes/Summary] Beat thinks about his arrival in Tokyo-to.
Two days after the whole saving-the-world thing, Beat finds himself back at Benten-cho subway station. Sun’s out, and light streams down the slope to the ticket barriers. He doesn’t go in, just rocks back on his heels and leans against the wall. It’s early afternoon, so not many people about; a few students and tourists is all. It’s still and quiet and he can kind of see himself, the guy he’d been weeks ago, rocking up in Tokyo-to like Hey, I’m gonna make my fortune here - except of course he hadn’t been, he’d been like, Shit, what am I doing, this is the big city, what if I get murdered? And wall-eyed from lack of sleep and kind of smelling of travel and train. He’d basically been figuring if he didn’t get murdered, and found a roof to sleep under, that’d be as good as he could hope for. Hadn’t been counting on friends. Definitely hadn’t been counting on saving the world. He grins at dorky past-him, who’d shown up in the small hours when it was still dark, and thinks, Hey, man - you got this. He’s full of dumb-ass hope for the future, even though there’s no guarantee he won’t be blown away by a police-manned tank tomorrow. He hopes past-him can catch some of it.
[Title] Start of Beautiful
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 353
[Notes/Summary] Tetsuo/Kaori. It wasn’t very romantic when he asked her out.
It’s not really that romantic, when Tetsuo asks Kaori to go out with him. They’re sitting up on the roof like always, and he’s been quiet and kind of snappy and she’s wondering if something bad happened and then suddenly he just takes a deep breath, turns to her, and blurts out, “So I was thinking maybe you should be my girlfriend. Like. If. If you want to be.”
Kaori stares at him and she feels her face go bright red. Tetsuo stares back at her and he’s blushing as well, and scowling, and starting to say, “I mean, if you don’t then it’s fine, I just thought -” and she realises she hasn’t actually said yes. Her face is so hot and she’s smiling so much it’s hard to get the words out so she sort of stammers, “No, I mean - I mean, yes. Yes, I do want to,” too loudly, like she’s someone trying to show off in class.
Tetsuo stares at her bug-eyed like he honestly didn’t expect her to agree.
“Like, for real?” he says, and frowns now, looking at her like she might be trying to mess with him. He does that sometimes, even to her or to Kaneda, assumes that it might all be a trick. She doesn’t mind, she knows it’s not safe to assume anything with most people. So she gives him a smile - she means it to be reassuring, but it’s sort of giggly and shaky - and she nods again. “For real. I… I’d really… I’d really like to be your girlfriend,” and feels herself blushing even more, she’s not sure she knows how to be anyone’s girlfriend and Tetsuo is her best friend, what if she messes everything up? But he smiles back at her now, looking kind of stunned but happy, and says, “That’s… that’s awesome. That’s really, really great,” and then, nervously, reaches out and puts his hand over hers. She turns it palm up and squeezes his. She probably will mess everything up, but right now it doesn’t matter, right now she can believe that everything’s going to be perfect.
[Title] Role Model
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG, brief mentions of sex, infidelity and death
[Word Count] 402
[Notes/Summary] Shinji’s got reasons for enjoying his uncle’s company.
You ever asked, Shinji would tell you he hangs out with Uncle because the old guy’s pretty cool and gives him free soft drinks. Or because it gets him away from his parents. Or because no one else can challenge him at b-ball. Something like that.
The real reason’s sappy as hell and so it stays unspoken. But the thing is, being at home is kind of a drag. Yeah, yeah, food and clothes, think of the starving children in the decadent capitalist west, etcetera, but there’s his dad, coming back from a love hotel at three in the morning, and there’s his mum, telling a friend how much she cares about them and then calling someone else to talk shit about that best pal’s clothing choices. You kind of think Geez, is this all there is? A reasonable job and a reasonable house and a roll in the hay with a secretary while everyone gossips about each other and occasionally makes snide remarks about lack of patriotism just for the power play. Not to mention the way they close their eyes to every wrongful arrest or show trial or Program broadcast and just stick with things like that don’t happen to people like us. Either it makes you want to throw something through a window, or to crawl into bed and never wake up.
Uncle’s different. Uncle never talks shit about anyone, he just says what he notices, if it’s relevant, and sees both sides, when he can, and really doesn’t give a damn about how many rallies you go to or what brand names you’re wearing. He sees a bunch of ninth-graders having to massacre each other every year and he says what any normal person would think, which is, that’s horrific. If he’s got a girlfriend, or if he’s got several girlfriends, it stays on the down-low and, as far as Shinji can tell, no one gets hurt.
You watch him, you feel there’s hope for the future. You can think, hey, he’s a blood relative, maybe I can grow up to be a little more like this and a little less like the corporate stuffed shirt across the dinner table. You can think, there are options.
The real reason’s sappy as hell, but that’s not why he never tells it. More like he never put it into words until after Uncle died and he realised what he’d lost.
[Title] Lighthouse
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] G
[Word Count] 232
[Notes/Summary] Yuka’s estimation of Yukie has just gone up several notches.
Yuka had always figured Yukie was a pretty cool friend, but this just takes the cake. Girl not only keeps her head when she wakes up in the Program, not only refuses to play, but comes to find all her friends and rounds them all up and takes them to a hideout? That is cool. The bedroom is small and dusty and smells of damp, but it smells of sea air too, and the walls curve round. There are two bunk beds, she and Satomi curled up on one of them (Satomi not asleep but pretending to be) and Haruka and Chisato on the other (Chisato snuffling slightly; Haruka had been crying earlier but now she’s gone quiet). Yukie outside, at the top of the lighthouse, keeping watch. Yuka thinks that it’s funny - in the Program, you’re not meant to trust anyone, and they all let Yukie take one of the guns and watch over them like it was no big deal. But it wasn’t a big deal. In here, in the darkness full of their breathing and the waves crashing outside, it doesn’t matter what’s happening to other people. They’re here and they’re safe and Yukie’s protecting them. In here, right now, Yuka can even believe her amazing pal might find a way out of this. After all, you’ve got to have hope, and people like Yukie make it way easier.
[Title] Frostbite
[Fandom] Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 372
[Notes/Summary] Shuuya and Noriko, newly arrived in America, try and hitch a lift.
They’re standing by the side of a motorway. It’s freezing. It’s so cold Shuuya’s eyeballs might be solidifying, and he stopped feeling his fingers a while back. There’s piles of grimy snow around them, and hard, frozen mud under their numb feet.
Shuuya takes a deep breath and tries to pretend it’s made him feel better. It doesn’t, much. He’s hungry, and the petrol smell of the roadside is bringing back memories of the seasickness on the trawler. More than that, it’s bringing back memories of being on the fishing boat. When they left the island. Kawada’s shirt and hand glistening with blood -
Noriko, next to him, squeezes his arm.
“Sorry. I’m on it.” He needs to stick his thumb out again. Someone’s got to stop. If they don’t, it’s sleep-in-the-woods-and-hope-they-don’t-die-of-hypothermia time. How cold does it have to be before that gets to be a serious problem? Would they be better off carrying on walking down the road, trying to get to a town and sleep in a doorway? But America’s freakin’ huge, they could be walking for hours and still get nowhere. Someone could stop. Unless they’re a crazy murderer or something, in which case maybe walking would be better. He still feels sick and he feels so tired, even though he’s spent most of his time in hiding asleep. Come on, he tells himself, get it together, do right by her, but he can’t make the words mean anything -
“It’s all right.”
Noriko slides her hand into his, their gloved fingers entwined in his pocket, and sticks her other hand out, thumb up. Shuuya wants to tell her not to, he doesn’t want whoever picked them up to have done it because they saw a pretty girl, he doesn’t want any attention being drawn to Noriko. He tries to speak but the words don’t line up. She squeezes his hand. “Shuuya, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He wants to ask her how she can have any hope, after all that’s happened, when it’s so dark and so cold, but she looks back at him and manages a smile. “It’s okay,” she says again. “We’re here and it’s okay.” And turns back to stare out at the road again.
[Title] See a Better Future
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] PG
[Word Count] 209
[Notes/Summary] Kei was always cynical, but sometimes even she can feel hopeful.
Kei would probably have described herself as a cynic. Difficult not to be, when you’ve been part of an anti-government anti-establishment resistance group since you were old enough to understand the concept. Difficult not to be, as well, when you spent all your time reading up on the secrets and lies and corruptions of the people who are meant to serve the public good. Not to mention how you saw the city levelled and the resulting reversion to savagery that ensued.
They’ll rebuild Neo-Tokyo, just like they always do. They’ll elect new leaders, who’ll generate new funds and commit them to new useless flagship projects or new illegal and unethical human experiments. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the underclass will revolt and everything she and Kaneda have seen and done will be forgotten. Of course.
Yet, sometimes, when she’s clutching Kaneda round the waist, the bike going so fast it brings tears to her eyes, sometimes she blinks and thinks she sees the towers and skyscrapers of a new city in the distance. The sun’s always out, and the roar of the engine seems to fall away, and in the stillness she can believe that maybe, this time, perhaps they can create something better.