A Revolutionary New World Awaits You Bastards.
Back in 2010, I attempted a self-imposed challenge: alphabet ficsnippets ( A to M, M to Z). The idea was that the first snippet concerned one character whose name began with A and one whose name began with B, the second a B and a C, the third a C and a D and so on. As I had so much fun with them, I thought I'd attempt another type of alphabet challenge: snippets for each letter of the alphabet, each concerning two characters whose names begin with that letter.
As my snippets seem to be a bit longer this time, I'm probably going to post these in more than two instalments. This entry contains six: A, L, M, O, P and X, because I don't have the discipline to write them in alphabetical order. Also, I cheat outrageously in the very first ficlet by never actually having one of the characters appear or indeed be mentioned.
Fandoms represented in here are Glee, Final Fantasy XIII, The Mentalist, Death Note, Mulan, Red Dead Redemption, Dangan Ronpa, Phineas and Ferb, Kingdom Hearts and X-Men: First Class. Enjoy!
A: Blaine Anderson (Glee)/fal’Cie Anima (Final Fantasy XIII) (note: set in series two when Blaine is at Dalton)
“I’ve got a secret to tell you,” Kurt says. He’s trembling all over. This is such a bad idea. “And I really don’t want you to freak out, but I won’t blame you if you do.”
“Kurt,” Blaine says, gently, “you know you can tell me anything.”
Kurt takes a deep breath, and then, because he seems to have failed to say anything with it, another. “I’m a l’Cie.”
There. It’s out in the open.
There’s a horrible silence. It’s probably only a few seconds, but to Kurt it feels like decades.
“Oh,” Blaine says, bemused. “I thought you were gay.”
What?
“I am gay,” Kurt says. “How is that relevant?”
“Well, I just thought that was what you were going to tell me.”
“Have I never mentioned that? I sort of assumed you knew.”
“I did know. I thought I did, anyway. Looks like I definitely know now.”
Another silence, but this one is less horrible because Kurt is too busy being confused to worry about the immediate future.
“So,” Blaine says. “You’re a l’Cie, huh?”
“McKinley.”
“I kind of guessed.”
“I thought people from Dalton hated McKinley l’Cie.”
Blaine laughs a little. “Who told you that? Is that why you didn’t tell me this earlier?”
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you to go easy on us.” Or to hate me, he doesn’t add. “But I... I felt we were getting closer, and I didn’t want to keep something this big from you. You were going to find out sooner or later, anyway.” He tugs off his scarf, exposing the (extremely tacky) McKinley brand on the side of his neck. “If not by seeing this, my turning into a monster would probably have given you a hint.”
“You’re not going to turn into a monster,” Blaine says, serious now. “Whatever your Focus is, I’ll help you with it. What do you mean, you didn’t want me to go easy on you?”
“My Focus,” Kurt says. “It’s to win Nationals.”
Blaine stares at him for a moment, and then he undoes his tie and begins to unbutton his shirt. Kurt almost forgets how to breathe. When Blaine pulls his collar to one side, he forgets completely.
The elaborate 'D' brand stands out starkly against Blaine’s collarbone.
Blaine says, “So is mine.”
L: Teresa Lisbon (The Mentalist)/Light Yagami (Death Note)
“This is Light Yagami,” Lisbon says. “He’s gonna be helping us with the cardiac arrest cases.”
“I look forward to working with you,” Yagami says.
“Wait,” Rigsby says. “Yagami? As in the director’s son?”
-
“I know who it is,” Jane says.
“What, really?” Lisbon asks, startled. Jane is good, but this case has stumped the best. “And you’re just going to tell me? I don’t usually know you’ve got an idea until you pull some ridiculous stunt.”
Jane tilts his head, meaningfully. Lisbon looks.
There’s a horrible pause.
“Tell me you mean someone on the other side of that wall,” Lisbon says.
Jane says nothing.
Oh, God, this is going to be a nightmare. “Yagami? The director’s son?”
“We should talk about this outside,” Jane says, quietly.
-
“Do you have any evidence?” Lisbon asks, once they’re outside the building.
“No,” Jane says.
“So this is just a hunch.”
“I have good hunches.”
He does have good hunches, Lisbon has to admit. She doesn’t have to admit it out loud, though.
“The problem with not having evidence isn’t that I might be wrong,” Jane says. “I’m not wrong. The problem is we can’t convict him, so he’s free to kill. And he knows who’s working on the case. If we get too close and he notices, we’re all dead.”
“All right,” Lisbon says, “let’s say you’re right. Hypothetically. This killer is smart. He’s not going to kill all of us just like that. He’s got to know it’d look suspicious if everyone on the investigative team dropped dead except him.”
“Do you know what I’d do if it were me?”
“I really hope you haven’t spent too much time thinking about this.”
“I’d kill us one by one,” Jane says. “Make it look like the killer’s trying to scare anyone away from investigating. After the first couple of deaths, I’d quit. Nobody would blame me. And then nobody would suspect anything when I didn’t die.”
“You’ve definitely spent too much time thinking about this,” Lisbon says. “He’d be making it obvious the killer had inside information about the CBI, wouldn’t he? I don’t think he’d want to give that away.”
“I’m not prepared to risk you on that chance.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Jane doesn’t answer.
-
They find Light Yagami in the CBI parking lot, shot four times: arm, neck, chest. It’s clear from the bullet remnants at the scene that more were fired but didn’t connect. Someone who’s not that used to guns, not a great shot.
Lisbon finds Jane in his home, sitting on his bare mattress under the Red John smile and shaking.
M: Fa Mulan (Mulan)/Bonnie MacFarlane (Red Dead Redemption)
Mulan wakes not knowing where; there’s a strangely familiar feel about the place, but she knows for a fact that she didn’t go to sleep here. She rubs her eyes, sits up in bed with a wince, trying to re- she was shot.
When she pulls the bedclothes aside to check the wound, she finds that someone has treated it, bandaged it. It takes her a moment to realise that whoever did the bandaging also removed her binding; her breasts fill out her men’s shirt awkwardly.
“Morning,” a voice says from the doorway, and Mulan looks up sharply. It’s Miss MacFarlane, the woman who gave her a bed for the night before she ran into trouble with bandits.
Miss MacFarlane was kind to her, and now she’ll know she was deceived. Mulan flushes, embarrassed, and tries to pull the bedclothes around herself.
“You got yourself shot,” Miss MacFarlane says. “We had to call in a doctor to piece you together. Turns out you’re no man, Mr Fa. How’d you come to be wearing that getup?”
Mulan hesitates, but there’s no hiding it now, and Miss MacFarlane doesn’t seem the type to be involved with the Bollard twins.
“My father was abducted by a gang,” she says. “I have to join the gang and rescue him. I can’t do that as a woman.”
Miss MacFarlane raises her eyebrows. “Now this I have to hear. Tell me from the beginning what happened.”
So she does.
“That’s a hell of a story, Mr Fa,” Miss MacFarlane says, when Mulan has finished explaining. “Not sure if I believe it myself, but you helped us out around the ranch, and I don’t suppose it’s my business what a lady wants to wear in her own time.” She jerks her head. “When you’re feeling healthy enough, come and see me. Rest of your boy clothes are up at the house. If you’re telling the truth, I might just know someone crazy enough to go into the den of wolves with you.”
O: Oerba Yun Fang (Final Fantasy XIII)/Mondo Oowada (Dangan Ronpa) (note: I'm referring to Fang as 'Yun' here, because that's the closest she has to a surname as we understand the concept)
Silence fell across the gymnasium as everyone tried to make sense of what they had just heard. Mondo was trembling with anger. Trapped here forever? It had to be some kind of sick joke.
“So we have to kill someone to escape,” Togami said, apparently to himself, with a smirk that seemed out of place. “How interes-” and then his eyes went very wide and he coughed up something that looked a lot like blood.
Yun pulled the bloodied blades of her lance out of his back, and for a moment, as Togami choked and collapsed to the floor, everyone just stared, frozen.
“Was that thing on her back a weapon?” Monobear asked, sounding surprised.
“Togami-kun!” Naegi exclaimed in horror, running and dropping to his knees beside him.
“Get your... commoner’s... hands... off me,” Togami gasped through a mouthful of blood.
“Maybe I should have made a rule about bringing your own weapons in,” Monobear said, thoughtfully. “Ah, well, you live and learn. I guess Togami-kun doesn’t, though.”
Asahina was staring at Yun, her hands over her mouth. “H... how could you...”
“Didn’t you hear that bear?” Yun asked. “The only way we’re getting out of here is if we kill someone else. You lot can do what you like, but I have no intention of staying here forever.” She jerked her head towards Togami, still dying on the floor. “Besides, I didn’t like his attitude.”
“But still!” Mondo spluttered. “You stabbed him in the back! Like a coward!”
“He was in front of me. Easiest to reach. I can stab you in the face if you like.”
“I was... I was going to win,” Togami choked out. “I’m smarter than any of you... how can I... how can I die now?”
“You’re lucky I wouldn’t hit a girl,” Mondo snarled.
“That’s sweet,” Yun said. “Chivalrous, like. You can hit me as much as you like, sunshine; I can defend myself.”
“But why would you do such a thing?” Oogami asked.
Yun turned to stare at her. “What, have I not made myself clear?”
“Of course it was a despicable act,” Oogami said, “but why kill him here, now? What would that achieve?” She held up her electronic student ID card in one muscular hand. “The rules on these cards say that one can leave only if no other knows they committed the murder.”
There was a pause. Togami twitched and coughed and gradually stilled on the floor. Naegi seemed to be hyperventilating.
“Damn,” Yun said. “Guess I should’ve read those things first.”
“I think it’s time for our first school trial!” Monobear trilled.
P: Patrick Jane (The Mentalist)/Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb)
“All right, listen up,” Lisbon says, striding into the bullpen. Jane is going to be difficult about this, she knows, but if he’s warned in advance at least he’ll have time to consider how to be difficult a little more stealthily, rather than being difficult immediately to the new arrival’s face. “Hightower’s assigned a new agent to our division.”
Jane sits up sharply on the sofa.
“Do we know anything about them?” Van Pelt asks.
Lisbon shrugs. “Not much. He’s transferring here from another organisation.” She hopes nobody asks which organisation; the acronym wasn’t remotely catchy and she can’t remember it at all. “But I’m sure he’s very capable, or Hightower wouldn’t have asked him to work with us.”
“We don’t need another agent,” Jane says. “We’re fine as we are.”
“Really?” Lisbon asks, folding her arms. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s not your call.”
“So my feelings on the matter aren’t important here?”
“You’re a consultant,” Lisbon says. “So no.”
There’s a strange chattering noise behind her, and she turns around.
...okay, what is that thing in the door? It looks like some kind of animal, it’s - is it a platypus?
It’s a platypus.
A platypus standing on two legs.
A platypus standing on two legs and wearing a hat, which it tips politely to Lisbon.
Lisbon stares.
Their new agent is a platypus.
Well, it can’t be more trouble than Jane.
X: Charles Xavier (X-Men: First Class)/Xion (Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days)
Charles closes his eyes, and he settles his mind, and he searches. Thousands of people are going about their daily routines, but he’s becoming more and more adept at picking out mutant signatures; by now he can filter through hundreds of ordinary humans in a matter of seconds. He does at one point drop into the mind of a man who turns out to be only colour-blind, but nobody’s watching, after all.
There’s a girl sitting alone on a clock tower, young, short black hair, and something about her pulls at Charles. He slips into her mind, and-
Charles jerks back so sharply that he feels the wires tug.
“Another mutant?” Erik asks, raising an eyebrow. Charles hadn’t heard him come in.
Charles takes the helmet off and sets it carefully aside, trying to conceal the shivers running through his hands, before he answers. “I don’t know.”
Erik’s mouth twitches into an almost-smile. “What would we do without your remarkable gift?”
She certainly isn’t an ordinary human, Charles thinks, massaging his temples. “I suppose we’d best pay her a visit.”
-
“Xion?” Charles asks.
Xion turns around, taking a step back. She’s wearing a black cloak with a hood that shadows her face, but she’s definitely the girl Charles saw through Cerebro; he feels the same pull from her, just standing here. “How do you know my name?”
Charles takes a deep breath and enters her mind again; it should be easier to read her at close range. Her name is Xion, and she has two best friends, and then - and then he finds himself in a vast black nothingness, just like before. He can’t read the minds of the dead, of course, but he imagines that if he could they would be precisely that.
He drags himself out of her with a shudder.
-
“Not one of us after all, then?” Erik asks as they walk away.
“She’s too young, Erik,” Charles lies.
-
Charles closes his eyes, and he settles his mind, and he searches. Thousands of people are going about their daily routines, but he’s becoming more and more adept at picking out mutant signatures; by now he can filter through hundreds of ordinary humans in a matter of seconds. He does at one point drop into the mind of a man who turns out to be only colour-blind, but nobody’s watching, after all.
There’s a clock tower, and something about it pulls at him, but when he skims over it he finds nobody.
“Find anyone?” Erik asks, when Charles eventually abandons the search. Charles hadn’t heard him come in.
Charles frowns as he sets the helmet aside. “No.”
And that's all for the moment!
The fabulously-named Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair, if you're curious, is a game about a group of students who have been trapped in a prestigious school; the only way to escape is to kill someone without anyone else finding out you did it. It's never been released in English, but it's being translated with screenshots over here; there are links to the entire story so far in the first post. If you're anything like me, you will become super high-school level attached to almost every character and then get really distressed both when murders are committed and when you realise who the murderer is. I read through the second chapter yesterday and ended up all teary.
(EDIT: Should probably mention that the Let's Play link leads to the Something Awful forums, which have a rather idiosyncratic profanity filter. For 'gently caress', read 'fuck'; for 'poo poo', read 'shit'. I think 'fucking' becomes 'loving' as well. Mondo Oowada's speech becomes very weird if you're not aware of this. (Mondo, incidentally, is my favourite and I love him.))
I actually started reading Dangan Ronpa because someone said that Touko Fukawa, the 'Super High-school Level Literary Girl', was me. This was, I have come to realise, rather an uncharitable thing to say.
As my snippets seem to be a bit longer this time, I'm probably going to post these in more than two instalments. This entry contains six: A, L, M, O, P and X, because I don't have the discipline to write them in alphabetical order. Also, I cheat outrageously in the very first ficlet by never actually having one of the characters appear or indeed be mentioned.
Fandoms represented in here are Glee, Final Fantasy XIII, The Mentalist, Death Note, Mulan, Red Dead Redemption, Dangan Ronpa, Phineas and Ferb, Kingdom Hearts and X-Men: First Class. Enjoy!
A: Blaine Anderson (Glee)/fal’Cie Anima (Final Fantasy XIII) (note: set in series two when Blaine is at Dalton)
“I’ve got a secret to tell you,” Kurt says. He’s trembling all over. This is such a bad idea. “And I really don’t want you to freak out, but I won’t blame you if you do.”
“Kurt,” Blaine says, gently, “you know you can tell me anything.”
Kurt takes a deep breath, and then, because he seems to have failed to say anything with it, another. “I’m a l’Cie.”
There. It’s out in the open.
There’s a horrible silence. It’s probably only a few seconds, but to Kurt it feels like decades.
“Oh,” Blaine says, bemused. “I thought you were gay.”
What?
“I am gay,” Kurt says. “How is that relevant?”
“Well, I just thought that was what you were going to tell me.”
“Have I never mentioned that? I sort of assumed you knew.”
“I did know. I thought I did, anyway. Looks like I definitely know now.”
Another silence, but this one is less horrible because Kurt is too busy being confused to worry about the immediate future.
“So,” Blaine says. “You’re a l’Cie, huh?”
“McKinley.”
“I kind of guessed.”
“I thought people from Dalton hated McKinley l’Cie.”
Blaine laughs a little. “Who told you that? Is that why you didn’t tell me this earlier?”
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want you to go easy on us.” Or to hate me, he doesn’t add. “But I... I felt we were getting closer, and I didn’t want to keep something this big from you. You were going to find out sooner or later, anyway.” He tugs off his scarf, exposing the (extremely tacky) McKinley brand on the side of his neck. “If not by seeing this, my turning into a monster would probably have given you a hint.”
“You’re not going to turn into a monster,” Blaine says, serious now. “Whatever your Focus is, I’ll help you with it. What do you mean, you didn’t want me to go easy on you?”
“My Focus,” Kurt says. “It’s to win Nationals.”
Blaine stares at him for a moment, and then he undoes his tie and begins to unbutton his shirt. Kurt almost forgets how to breathe. When Blaine pulls his collar to one side, he forgets completely.
The elaborate 'D' brand stands out starkly against Blaine’s collarbone.
Blaine says, “So is mine.”
L: Teresa Lisbon (The Mentalist)/Light Yagami (Death Note)
“This is Light Yagami,” Lisbon says. “He’s gonna be helping us with the cardiac arrest cases.”
“I look forward to working with you,” Yagami says.
“Wait,” Rigsby says. “Yagami? As in the director’s son?”
-
“I know who it is,” Jane says.
“What, really?” Lisbon asks, startled. Jane is good, but this case has stumped the best. “And you’re just going to tell me? I don’t usually know you’ve got an idea until you pull some ridiculous stunt.”
Jane tilts his head, meaningfully. Lisbon looks.
There’s a horrible pause.
“Tell me you mean someone on the other side of that wall,” Lisbon says.
Jane says nothing.
Oh, God, this is going to be a nightmare. “Yagami? The director’s son?”
“We should talk about this outside,” Jane says, quietly.
-
“Do you have any evidence?” Lisbon asks, once they’re outside the building.
“No,” Jane says.
“So this is just a hunch.”
“I have good hunches.”
He does have good hunches, Lisbon has to admit. She doesn’t have to admit it out loud, though.
“The problem with not having evidence isn’t that I might be wrong,” Jane says. “I’m not wrong. The problem is we can’t convict him, so he’s free to kill. And he knows who’s working on the case. If we get too close and he notices, we’re all dead.”
“All right,” Lisbon says, “let’s say you’re right. Hypothetically. This killer is smart. He’s not going to kill all of us just like that. He’s got to know it’d look suspicious if everyone on the investigative team dropped dead except him.”
“Do you know what I’d do if it were me?”
“I really hope you haven’t spent too much time thinking about this.”
“I’d kill us one by one,” Jane says. “Make it look like the killer’s trying to scare anyone away from investigating. After the first couple of deaths, I’d quit. Nobody would blame me. And then nobody would suspect anything when I didn’t die.”
“You’ve definitely spent too much time thinking about this,” Lisbon says. “He’d be making it obvious the killer had inside information about the CBI, wouldn’t he? I don’t think he’d want to give that away.”
“I’m not prepared to risk you on that chance.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Jane doesn’t answer.
-
They find Light Yagami in the CBI parking lot, shot four times: arm, neck, chest. It’s clear from the bullet remnants at the scene that more were fired but didn’t connect. Someone who’s not that used to guns, not a great shot.
Lisbon finds Jane in his home, sitting on his bare mattress under the Red John smile and shaking.
M: Fa Mulan (Mulan)/Bonnie MacFarlane (Red Dead Redemption)
Mulan wakes not knowing where; there’s a strangely familiar feel about the place, but she knows for a fact that she didn’t go to sleep here. She rubs her eyes, sits up in bed with a wince, trying to re- she was shot.
When she pulls the bedclothes aside to check the wound, she finds that someone has treated it, bandaged it. It takes her a moment to realise that whoever did the bandaging also removed her binding; her breasts fill out her men’s shirt awkwardly.
“Morning,” a voice says from the doorway, and Mulan looks up sharply. It’s Miss MacFarlane, the woman who gave her a bed for the night before she ran into trouble with bandits.
Miss MacFarlane was kind to her, and now she’ll know she was deceived. Mulan flushes, embarrassed, and tries to pull the bedclothes around herself.
“You got yourself shot,” Miss MacFarlane says. “We had to call in a doctor to piece you together. Turns out you’re no man, Mr Fa. How’d you come to be wearing that getup?”
Mulan hesitates, but there’s no hiding it now, and Miss MacFarlane doesn’t seem the type to be involved with the Bollard twins.
“My father was abducted by a gang,” she says. “I have to join the gang and rescue him. I can’t do that as a woman.”
Miss MacFarlane raises her eyebrows. “Now this I have to hear. Tell me from the beginning what happened.”
So she does.
“That’s a hell of a story, Mr Fa,” Miss MacFarlane says, when Mulan has finished explaining. “Not sure if I believe it myself, but you helped us out around the ranch, and I don’t suppose it’s my business what a lady wants to wear in her own time.” She jerks her head. “When you’re feeling healthy enough, come and see me. Rest of your boy clothes are up at the house. If you’re telling the truth, I might just know someone crazy enough to go into the den of wolves with you.”
O: Oerba Yun Fang (Final Fantasy XIII)/Mondo Oowada (Dangan Ronpa) (note: I'm referring to Fang as 'Yun' here, because that's the closest she has to a surname as we understand the concept)
Silence fell across the gymnasium as everyone tried to make sense of what they had just heard. Mondo was trembling with anger. Trapped here forever? It had to be some kind of sick joke.
“So we have to kill someone to escape,” Togami said, apparently to himself, with a smirk that seemed out of place. “How interes-” and then his eyes went very wide and he coughed up something that looked a lot like blood.
Yun pulled the bloodied blades of her lance out of his back, and for a moment, as Togami choked and collapsed to the floor, everyone just stared, frozen.
“Was that thing on her back a weapon?” Monobear asked, sounding surprised.
“Togami-kun!” Naegi exclaimed in horror, running and dropping to his knees beside him.
“Get your... commoner’s... hands... off me,” Togami gasped through a mouthful of blood.
“Maybe I should have made a rule about bringing your own weapons in,” Monobear said, thoughtfully. “Ah, well, you live and learn. I guess Togami-kun doesn’t, though.”
Asahina was staring at Yun, her hands over her mouth. “H... how could you...”
“Didn’t you hear that bear?” Yun asked. “The only way we’re getting out of here is if we kill someone else. You lot can do what you like, but I have no intention of staying here forever.” She jerked her head towards Togami, still dying on the floor. “Besides, I didn’t like his attitude.”
“But still!” Mondo spluttered. “You stabbed him in the back! Like a coward!”
“He was in front of me. Easiest to reach. I can stab you in the face if you like.”
“I was... I was going to win,” Togami choked out. “I’m smarter than any of you... how can I... how can I die now?”
“You’re lucky I wouldn’t hit a girl,” Mondo snarled.
“That’s sweet,” Yun said. “Chivalrous, like. You can hit me as much as you like, sunshine; I can defend myself.”
“But why would you do such a thing?” Oogami asked.
Yun turned to stare at her. “What, have I not made myself clear?”
“Of course it was a despicable act,” Oogami said, “but why kill him here, now? What would that achieve?” She held up her electronic student ID card in one muscular hand. “The rules on these cards say that one can leave only if no other knows they committed the murder.”
There was a pause. Togami twitched and coughed and gradually stilled on the floor. Naegi seemed to be hyperventilating.
“Damn,” Yun said. “Guess I should’ve read those things first.”
“I think it’s time for our first school trial!” Monobear trilled.
P: Patrick Jane (The Mentalist)/Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb)
“All right, listen up,” Lisbon says, striding into the bullpen. Jane is going to be difficult about this, she knows, but if he’s warned in advance at least he’ll have time to consider how to be difficult a little more stealthily, rather than being difficult immediately to the new arrival’s face. “Hightower’s assigned a new agent to our division.”
Jane sits up sharply on the sofa.
“Do we know anything about them?” Van Pelt asks.
Lisbon shrugs. “Not much. He’s transferring here from another organisation.” She hopes nobody asks which organisation; the acronym wasn’t remotely catchy and she can’t remember it at all. “But I’m sure he’s very capable, or Hightower wouldn’t have asked him to work with us.”
“We don’t need another agent,” Jane says. “We’re fine as we are.”
“Really?” Lisbon asks, folding her arms. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s not your call.”
“So my feelings on the matter aren’t important here?”
“You’re a consultant,” Lisbon says. “So no.”
There’s a strange chattering noise behind her, and she turns around.
...okay, what is that thing in the door? It looks like some kind of animal, it’s - is it a platypus?
It’s a platypus.
A platypus standing on two legs.
A platypus standing on two legs and wearing a hat, which it tips politely to Lisbon.
Lisbon stares.
Their new agent is a platypus.
Well, it can’t be more trouble than Jane.
X: Charles Xavier (X-Men: First Class)/Xion (Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days)
Charles closes his eyes, and he settles his mind, and he searches. Thousands of people are going about their daily routines, but he’s becoming more and more adept at picking out mutant signatures; by now he can filter through hundreds of ordinary humans in a matter of seconds. He does at one point drop into the mind of a man who turns out to be only colour-blind, but nobody’s watching, after all.
There’s a girl sitting alone on a clock tower, young, short black hair, and something about her pulls at Charles. He slips into her mind, and-
Charles jerks back so sharply that he feels the wires tug.
“Another mutant?” Erik asks, raising an eyebrow. Charles hadn’t heard him come in.
Charles takes the helmet off and sets it carefully aside, trying to conceal the shivers running through his hands, before he answers. “I don’t know.”
Erik’s mouth twitches into an almost-smile. “What would we do without your remarkable gift?”
She certainly isn’t an ordinary human, Charles thinks, massaging his temples. “I suppose we’d best pay her a visit.”
-
“Xion?” Charles asks.
Xion turns around, taking a step back. She’s wearing a black cloak with a hood that shadows her face, but she’s definitely the girl Charles saw through Cerebro; he feels the same pull from her, just standing here. “How do you know my name?”
Charles takes a deep breath and enters her mind again; it should be easier to read her at close range. Her name is Xion, and she has two best friends, and then - and then he finds himself in a vast black nothingness, just like before. He can’t read the minds of the dead, of course, but he imagines that if he could they would be precisely that.
He drags himself out of her with a shudder.
-
“Not one of us after all, then?” Erik asks as they walk away.
“She’s too young, Erik,” Charles lies.
-
Charles closes his eyes, and he settles his mind, and he searches. Thousands of people are going about their daily routines, but he’s becoming more and more adept at picking out mutant signatures; by now he can filter through hundreds of ordinary humans in a matter of seconds. He does at one point drop into the mind of a man who turns out to be only colour-blind, but nobody’s watching, after all.
There’s a clock tower, and something about it pulls at him, but when he skims over it he finds nobody.
“Find anyone?” Erik asks, when Charles eventually abandons the search. Charles hadn’t heard him come in.
Charles frowns as he sets the helmet aside. “No.”
And that's all for the moment!
The fabulously-named Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair, if you're curious, is a game about a group of students who have been trapped in a prestigious school; the only way to escape is to kill someone without anyone else finding out you did it. It's never been released in English, but it's being translated with screenshots over here; there are links to the entire story so far in the first post. If you're anything like me, you will become super high-school level attached to almost every character and then get really distressed both when murders are committed and when you realise who the murderer is. I read through the second chapter yesterday and ended up all teary.
(EDIT: Should probably mention that the Let's Play link leads to the Something Awful forums, which have a rather idiosyncratic profanity filter. For 'gently caress', read 'fuck'; for 'poo poo', read 'shit'. I think 'fucking' becomes 'loving' as well. Mondo Oowada's speech becomes very weird if you're not aware of this. (Mondo, incidentally, is my favourite and I love him.))
I actually started reading Dangan Ronpa because someone said that Touko Fukawa, the 'Super High-school Level Literary Girl', was me. This was, I have come to realise, rather an uncharitable thing to say.