BONUS ROUND 4 - PROMPT FUSION
Aug. 24th, 2023 06:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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yurishippingolympics
"Fusion is just a cheap trick to make weak prompts stronger!" - a quote from Steven Universe, probably
for this bonus round, it's all about combining two ideas. for example "high school AU" + "secret identity" or "soulmate au" + "mafia au"!
to submit a prompt or fill, reply to this post on Dreamwidth!
Fills can be in any format, and you can fill any prompt (even if it's your own or your teammates)!
for your prompt post title, please use the following format:
PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:
PROMPT: VOTER
for your fill post title, please use the following format:
FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]
if you are participating as a vote-only member, use this format:
FILL: VOTER
POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 100 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:
First 4 fills by any member of your team: 100 points each
Fills 5-10: 50 points each
Fills 11-20: 40 points each
Fills 21-50: 30 points each
Fills 51+: 25 points each
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-02 01:01 am (UTC)ship: suletta mercury/miorine rembran
words: 661
warnings: blood, allusion to unhealthy eating habits (eri has not been feeding on blood regularly)
There’s blood on her shirt.
Miorine opens her eyes drowsily, somewhat convinced she’s surfacing from some sort of weirdly vivid nightmare, and the girl holding her in the low gravity blinks down at her like she didn’t quite expect her to survive.
“Oh,” Miorine says.
The girl’s eyes — soft and infinitely blue — widen. “Oh,” she agrees. And then, “I’m so sorry.”
She raises her head slowly, feeling rather like she’s just been hit by a bus. “Sorry about what?”
Probably not the first question she should be asking, seeing as there’s still droplets of blood floating in the artificially warm air around them.
The girl’s face contorts. She turns away from Miorine, suddenly looking inexplicably guilty. “My sister. She, um. She d-didn’t know she needed to feed so badly. She sort of, uh, ran off, but she says she’s sorry too. She didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Feed. It doesn’t send horror thrilling down her spine like it should. Maybe it’s the after-effects of the awful day she’s had, maybe it’s the exhaustion and the nightmares and the blood loss and the weirdly comforting guilty smile of the girl holding her still in the middle of her father’s space station, but she can’t really bring herself to care all that much.
“Feed,” Miorine echoes. “Feed?”
Her eyes really are distractingly gentle. “O-oh! That was rude of me, I’m sorry. I should have — well."
The girl glances between them, then down the corridor, scanning for something. Miorine settles her head against her shoulder and watches her, piecing together the last few hours in her mind.
(She had been coming from the last meeting with her father — the last one of the day, she’s sure of it — and something had tackled her away from the propulsion vehicle and pushed her to the metal ground. She’s sure she must have blacked out after that.)
“I think,” the girl says carefully, “we’re not being followed. Or listened to.”
“Security cameras,” Miorine manages. She shakes her head.
“Eri is very thorough. All the cameras will be down.” She smiles, almost to herself. “She’s good with computers.”
//
Suletta Mercury, it turns out, is a vampire.
Miorine thinks she takes the news rather well.
“... So your sister ruined my shirt?”
Suletta scrunches up her face. It shouldn’t be endearing. “And nearly drained all the blood from your body, Ms Miorine. I think that’s —”
Miorine huffs. “Yes, but she also got blood all over my shirt.”
“And I don’t know how I’ll ever make it up to you —”
“You’re not responsible for her actions,” she says snippily. “She’s a decades-old vampire and you’re — what, 16?”
“17,” Suletta corrects slowly, realisation dawning in those soft blue eyes. “I-it really would be easier if you just —”
“I can get her — and you — a regular supply of animal blood if you promise you’ll stick around.”
“Wh — wait, what?”
//
Their arrangement is this: Eri, who has never regularly fed on blood in her life, sneaks once a week into the station’s kitchens. Miorine bribes the cook into leaving the doors open, even though Suletta assures her that Eri could break in easily. And, in return, Suletta promises her that she’ll figure out a way for Miorine to vanish out of her father’s reach, even if it takes all of her immortal life to do it.
“I want you to rely on me,” she says one night, holding the door open for Miorine with one hand and a blood bag in the other. Her voice has that wonderful determined quality to it. “I want you to know that you can rely on me, Ms Miorine. It’s the least we can do.”
Eri steps up behind them, pushing Miorine gently forward and breaking her from whatever spell Suletta’s voice had her under. “Just say the word,” she says cheerfully. “And — hey — invite me to the wedding?”
Suletta elbows her sharply and she spins backward, laughing as the momentum sends her rotating back into the kitchen.
PROMPT: TEAM OC
Date: 2023-09-02 07:02 am (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM OC
Date: 2023-09-02 07:03 am (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM OC
Date: 2023-09-02 07:05 am (UTC)FILL: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 09:36 am (UTC)A/N: One day I would love to write a girl who does this deliberately, but unfortunately Haori is much too pure for such shenanigans. I hope you enjoy!
Ship: Susato Mikotoba/Haori Murasame (The Great Ace Attorney)
Word Count: 704
"What do you mean, it's your fault?"
Oh, this is Haori's worst nightmare. She briefly debates swallowing her next words, but Haori learned never to lie to Susato the last time Haori was put on trial for murder. "I… uh… I made it."
"What?" Susato's voice goes so high-pitched that the audio connection briefly fizzes out. "Wh—but—why, Haori?"
"I thought so," says a new voice from off-screen. Is that Professor Mikotoba? "It was signed with Murasame-san's digital fingerprint, and the lab's security around those is the tightest it can possibly be."
It is Professor Mikotoba. Haori buries her head in her hands: worst nightmare ever. "I'm sorry!"
"B-but—" Susato almost never stammers; Haori must have really caught her off guard. "I don't — why were you developing a military-grade weapon!?"
"It wasn't supposed to be a weapon," Haori says miserably. "It was supposed to be an attraction detector!"
Susato: "An attraction…"
Mikotoba: "…Detector?"
Haori nods. She can't bear to look at Susato, so she addresses the professor. "See, all the love potions on the market are designed to make someone fall in love with you. But they're all far too overwhelmingly powerful for anyone who doesn't want their crush to be in love against their will! What I — I mean, what people really want is to just be able to tell if their crush likes them back or not."
"So what was it supposed to do?" Susato asks, curious.
"It's a very fine aerosol spray," Haori explains, getting into it now that she's safely away from the feelings bit of this and into the science. "It dissolves into the epidermis and uses the capillary blood vessels to travel to the heart, where it binds to the pacemaker muscles, and to the brain, where it looks for the combination of chemicals that usually signifies romantic attraction, and when electrical signals are being sent at unusually high rates to the pacemaker cells and oxytocin and all the other chemicals are detected in the brain, all the molecules glow at an infrared frequency, which you can see with these goggles. Which means that the ones remaining in the epidermis should also start glowing—"
"So your — er, significant person would look like they were glowing when you see them?" Haori blinks, and realizes that Susato is actually scribbling in her pink notebook, brown eyes alight. A strand has loosened from her loops of hair, and Susato brushes it aside absentmindedly as she underlines something. Then she looks up and tilts her head. "Why are you looking at me like that, Haori?"
"No reason!" Haori yelps. She hadn't realized she was staring. "Um — yes, you're right! Though I'd have to have the goggles on. And they would only glow if they were actually, you know, attracted. That's why it's called the attraction detector."
"I don't think that'd be a problem," Susato muses.
"What?"
Professor Mikotoba coughs. "Apologies for the interjection, Murasame-san, but I believe you were about to explain why your aerosol spray is curently zombifying the citizens of our good city of Tokyo."
Haori groans. How was she supposed to know her molecule was only one disulfide group away from hijacking the entire nervous system?
After it's all over, Susato asks, "So who was it?"
Haori chokes. "Who was what?" she returns, trying to buy time.
"Your — significant person," Susato clarifies, cheeks going pink. Haori can't believe she's fallen in love with someone who can't even say the word crush — actually, no, she can believe it. "For the attraction detector. Who did you make it for?"
"Uh er um I," says Haori intelligently. They've paused in front of the Mikotoba residence. "I-isn't your grandmother wondering where you are?"
"I told her I was on a date."
Haori's mind goes completely blank for a single, beautiful second, before Susato smiles at her — a tentative, hopeful smile — and extends her hand like a Victorian gentleman. "What do you think, Haori?"
Haori takes a deep breath and looks Susato square in the eye. "Susato Mikotoba, would you please sweep me off my feet and take me to the milk bar?"
"I would love to," Susato says, smile broadening into a grin, and Haori can't help but beam back.
PROMPT: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 09:53 am (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 11:25 am (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 11:33 am (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM FIRE EMBLEM
Date: 2023-09-02 11:54 am (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 12:05 pm (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 02:31 pm (UTC)PROMPT: TEAM FRANMAYA
Date: 2023-09-02 02:34 pm (UTC)FILL: TEAM FIRE EMBLEM
Date: 2023-09-02 05:27 pm (UTC)Words: 253
Summary: Are you a gambling man?
There were no guarantees in life. Edelgard learned that a long time ago.
The name on the back of her hand burned as she laid it flat on the ground to set her weapon aside.
“Over five years ago…” Edelgard breathed, her voice shaky. She couldn’t help but smile a bit up at Byleth. “Over five years ago, we first met. I always knew you would be a gamble.”
Edelgard kept her eyes firmly on the ground. She could no longer look up to see the sky. The only thing she could hear was the sound of Byleth’s footsteps against the stone floor and the pounding of her own heart in her ears.
It didn’t matter. She knew her well enough. She could picture the pensive expression on Byleth’s face. The hardness in her piercing green eyes as her steady hands unsheathed her blade.
“You’ve heard about the Fodlan myths, correct?”
“Yes.”
“They say that the name on the back of your hand… It will either be the greatest or worst thing that could possibly happen to you. Not many are willing to take the risk.”
Byleth’s breath seemed to catch at that. “Edelgard, what are you saying?”
“I took the risk. It was too difficult to resist the moment I first saw you.”
Byleth’s boots stopped in front of her. Edelgard reached down to rip off the gauntlet from her left hand where the words seemed to sear her skin.
“I thought we could change fate… I wanted to walk with you…”
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-02 10:59 pm (UTC)words: 428
ship: blake belladonna/yang xiao long
“Bounty hunter?” Blake guesses.
The girl sprawled out on the couch blinks up at her, blonde hair thick with drying blood. “How did you know?”
She sets the girl’s order — one coffee, dark as mortally possible — down on the low table between them, pointedly avoiding the scabbard and its suspiciously green stains lying carelessly on the wood. “Well, you’re carrying around an awful lot of weapons, for starters.”
The girl grins. “I’d say it’s a reasonable amount, all things considered, but do go on.”
Blake folds her arms over her chest. Her smile has no right to be as charming as it is. “And you’re covered in blood that isn’t yours.”
“Oh, really? Didn’t even notice.”
“And —” Blake points to the sack hastily pushed under the table, “you’re carrying around a dragon head.”
The girl folds her arms behind her head. “How do you know it’s a dragon? Could be my rations for the evening, Miss…?”
“Belladonna,” Blake says, feigning indifference. “Blake Belladonna.”
“Yang Xiao Long. My non-draconic rations and I offer you our thanks for your hospitality.”
“You’re remarkably singed,” she observes, sidestepping the particularly disarming edge to the brightness in those lilac eyes. Yang is, she guesses, teasing her — pushing her buttons to get her to crack a smile and/or stop with this specific line of questioning, and it doesn’t help that she’s almost magnetically charming —
“I like to live dangerously,” Yang shrugs. “And, hey, if you happen to know anyone who would be in the market for a few dragon scales —”
“I’ll be sure to tell them to steer clear of you,” Blake finishes, biting her lip to keep herself from smiling.
\
“I have no idea how you managed that.”
Blake shrugs. “A reward for putting up with her patronage, apparently.”
Weiss eyes the dragon head on their counter and takes a measured step back. “And who did you manage to charm into this… donation, exactly?”
“You know the bounty hunter girl?”
“The one who keeps flirting with you in front of our nice normal customers?” She wrinkles her nose. “Yeah, I know the one you mean. What did you do to piss her off? Is this a sign of our impending doom?”
“She said it would pay for all of our repairs,” Blake says, gesturing to the smashed window courtesy of last week’s bar fight. “She knows a guy who’ll take it for 200 crowns.”
Weiss’s jaw drops. Blake thinks of how Yang had winked and offered her a date as she’d dropped the dragon head on the counter and suppresses a smile.
FILL: VOTER
Date: 2023-09-04 10:05 am (UTC)fire emblem fates, caeldori x soleil
“Soleil? You're staring at me and not saying anything,” Caeldori says, setting down her teacup. Her nervous fingers twist holes in her napkin, as she visibly resists the urge to check if her headband has slipped out of place. “Is there food on my face? Stuck between my teeth? You promised you'd tell me if there was.”
Soleil just cups her chin in her hands and smiles even wider. “Naw,” she shrugs. “I just keep getting distracted by how adorable you are! You're so cool in every way, Caeldori! You're gorgeous and brilliant and strong – maybe even as strong as me, kee hee! I can't look away!”
Caeldori flusters more with each simpering compliment, averting her gaze to study the vase of Nohrian dusk-blooming roses at the center of the table. The full force of Soleil's attention is difficult to weather. Some of her cheesy lines could have been lifted straight out of Caeldori's romance novels – except those were typically spoken by a prince courting his lady, a predictable cliché standard to any heteroromantic commercial fiction in Hoshido. There's safety in knowing the genre as well as she does, which is exactly what makes the fantasy a comfort she can retreat into.
Reality is... messier. Soleil is somehow both the dashing prince and the lovely lady rolled into one, and Caeldori...
Caeldori doesn't exactly have experience with girls. Not only in dating, but not even in friendship, to be blunt. Having her feelings reciprocated for the first time in her life is strangely humbling. She wishes there had been an instructional handbook she could have read beforehand to give her some idea of what she should expect, and how she should behave, so as to not make an utter embarrassment out of herself in her first relationship.
Soleil, on the other hand, is so casual with her affections that Caeldori is beginning to worry she's misinterpreted their situation. Soleil does talk to everyone like this, doesn't she? She's a flirtatious social butterfly, which basically makes her Caeldori's polar opposite. The waitresses at this Nohrian teahouse all know Soleil as one of their regulars. She's probably taken a hundred different girls out to tea here already. It's all a big game to Soleil, who never commits to anyone.
Maybe to Soleil, Caeldori is just a desperate, lovesick fool, a typical romance novel protagonist mooning after anyone who will pay her the slightest attention whatsoever. She should be ashamed of herself, letting her heart rule her head like this. She should be better than this. She spent so long in front of the mirror with her combs and oils trying to make her hair perfect today that she neglected her morning naginata drills, and will have to practice well into the night so that she doesn't fall behind in her fitness regimen.
She has to be better than this.
Caeldori flinches visibly when Soleil touches the back of her hand. “Heya,” Soleil calls, cocking her head to one side. “You okay, cutie? You had a real serious look on your face. I mean, you're always serious, but like... extra serious. Am I coming on too strong? I just can't help it, I really like you!”
“You like everyone,” Caeldori blurts before she can help herself. She straightens her posture and schools her expression into something calm and dignified, in an attempt to salvage her honor. “I, however, do not take this so lightly, and require a formal commitment. Please, communicate your expectations of me in a couple, and I shall endeavor to meet all of them. I, I may not have experience, but I promise to learn quickly to make up for my lack of skill, so–!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Soleil sputters, throwing up her hands in surrender. “I already said I like you and I wanna go out with you, didn't I? I like you just the way you are, so you can relax already! You're trying wayyy too hard!”
Caeldori nods in stiff acknowledgment. “Relaxing may... also be an area I lack experience in.”
“I can see that,” Soleil chortles. “You sound just like Siegbert. It's okay, Caeldori. All I want is to have some fun together!”
“Sorry.” Caeldori wilts, just a little. “I... might not be the most fun person to go on dates with. You'll probably get bored of me before long.”
“Are you kidding?” Soleil snorts. She leans across the table to tuck a lock of Caeldori's hair behind one ear, before flashing her a reckless grin. “You're like, perfect. I'll never get bored of how beautiful and graceful you are with your naginata, soaring through the sky on the back of your pegasus, like an angel of war! You must spend forever practicing to make it look that good. Your elegance and talent take my breath away!”
“Do you... watch me often?” Caeldori glances up, a faint hope stirring in her breast. “I always pay careful attention to my appearance, so that I remain presentable at all times, even on the battlefield. And of course I practice flying maneuvers and naginata drills every day. Putting the effort in makes me feel better about myself,” she explains in a small voice. “You noticed?”
“Of course I noticed!” Soleil cheers, thumping her knee against the underside of the table in her enthusiasm and making their teacups rattle. “It's really distracting how pretty you are, hee hee! I almost got brained by a Vallite in our last battle because I was staring at you instead of them. But I don't just like you for your looks, y'know. I think you're a really, really cool person. I admire you a lot, Caeldori. I'd be proud to call myself your girlfriend, if you want to!”
Soleil utters such brazen words without a hint of embarrassment, not even as the waitress comes to collect their cold tea and overhears the whole thing. She is just as shameless as the rumors say.
Caeldori is still blushing when the cake arrives, one plate with two forks. And here is a whole new kind of challenge she must bravely navigate: a messy, unhygienic affair that threatens to leave buttercream frosting smeared on her face or crumbs sullying her white dress – a cardinal sin.
Caeldori steels her nerves, picks up her fork, and meets Soleil's eyes with blazing determination. Maybe she doesn't know how to relax and enjoy life the way Soleil does, but Caeldori has never been one to back down from a challenge.
She's never had a girlfriend before, but she's ready to learn.
Re: FILL: TEAM OC
Date: 2023-09-04 05:55 pm (UTC)Re: FILL: team nobamaki
Date: 2023-09-04 05:56 pm (UTC)FILL: VOTER
Date: 2023-09-05 10:42 am (UTC)fire emblem fates, nina x velouria
Velouria lays flat on her stomach, head buried in her folded arms, and sulks. Nina is late.
The feeble Nohrian sun will be setting soon, and Nina knows she shouldn't be wandering the Woods of the Forlorn at night. No one should. Hordes of shambling, masterless Faceless will snap her up in an instant, even if she is scent-marked as a favorite treasure of the big bad wolf. They should know Velouria is the most fearsome monster of them all. They should fear her, but they're mindless beasts who chase anything that moves. If they hunt Nina, they do so at their own peril.
She'll make a point to slowly and thoroughly devour every scrap of whomever and whatever eats her reckless Nina.
Velouria rolls over onto her back and pouts at the ceiling of their treehouse. Shadows from the gnarled tree branches are lengthening like fingers in the dying light, reaching further and further into the rafters. She'd rather just have Nina here with her, but she's prepared for either outcome. She's starting to get hungry.
All of a sudden, the rope ladder to their secret hideout rattles. Velouria's ears twitch, and she sits eagerly upright. Finally.
Sure enough, Nina's mischievous face pops up from the trapdoor, grinning ear to ear. “Made it! Here I am, babe! Hope the snacks are worth the wait,” she announces, clambering into their treehouse with her bow and arrows strapped to her back, and an overstuffed pack slung across her shoulders. She dumps her hefty load with an exaggerated sigh, then hauls the ladder up behind her. “You have me all to yourself for the next three days!”
Velouria leans in suspiciously, sniffing her all over for any hint of injury. Sweat, castle dust, forest mud, bog water, food smuggled out of the royal kitchens. No blood, no wounds. (No clingy scents of anyone else touching her, either. Good. Velouria can't help getting a little jealous sometimes when Nina lives in Castle Krakenburg with her family and all those other humans around, instead of in a proper den in the woods with Velouria, where she belongs.)
“Took too long. Don't want you anymore,” the wolfskin mutters balefully, though her swishing tail betrays her true excitement.
Nina just smirks as she settles cross-legged on the floor, then reaches out to fondle the soft velvet of Velouria's ears. Velouria whines, melting like candle wax under Nina's clever fingers. Her ears are delicate, too sensitive to allow just anyone the honor of touching, but when Nina strokes them, Velouria's traitorous tail starts thumping against the ground without her consent. Damn it.
“Happy to see you too,” Nina murmurs, kissing her on the tip of her nose. “Missed you. Love you.”
Velouria just growls under her breath, nudging her head against Nina's hands to demand more.
Nina giggles and obliges her. She's sure gotten a lot better at reading Velouria's signals. Soon Velouria is curled languidly in her lap, head pillowed between Nina's thighs, as Nina pets her just the way she likes. This is the way things are supposed to be.
As Nina strokes Velouria, sending shivers of warmth through her small, limp body, Nina chatters on and on about what she's been up to in her absence. Her bright, animated voice banishes the weighted silence of their lonely hideout, even if Velouria tunes out the actual words. Nina complains about her annoying dad, brags about her scouting missions, divulges the plot of library books she's been reading – and she never seems to mind that the conversation is wholly one-sided, or that Velouria doesn't really care about the comings and goings of humanity.
Even when Nina shows off the sparkly trinkets stuffed into her pack and adds them to the treasure chest they share, the things Nina stashes are of little interest to Velouria. See, Nina's tastes are less like a wolfskin, and more like a magpie. Shiny rocks, coins, and antique objects crafted out of metal, all junk stolen from the rich noble houses in Windmire – and Nina doesn't even keep those for herself!
No, the only thing Nina doesn't redistribute to the less fortunate is her rather sizeable collection of pornography (and literary depictions of the courting and mateship rituals between fictional gay men doesn't stir anything in Velouria's loins whatsoever). Those books are nothing but junk. But Nina can store her weird erotica alongside actual treasure, like snake skins and bat wings and deer skulls and the biggest, coolest dust bunnies Velouria is able to collect.
Velouria will still guard their treasure chest with her life.
She wraps her arms possessively around Nina's midsection and squeezes her tight. Nina trails off from whatever she was rambling about, and gazes fondly down at Velouria.
“...Still feeling a little needy, huh?” Nina teases. “That's okay. It's kinda nice, feeling wanted for once.”
“Do want you,” Velouria grumbles, nuzzling her face between Nina's thighs. “Stay here forever. Don't leave.”
“Not forever, my next mission is coming up,” Nina says, a little wistfully. She plays with Velouria's ears between the pads of her fingers, rubbing soothing circles into her fur, until Velouria makes a soft crooning noise and digs her claws in. “But... I'll always come back to you. Okay? I promise, I'll always come back.”
“You better,” Velouria huffs. “Or else I'll track you down and eat you.”
Nina laughs, taking it as a joke. Then her expression falters, seeing the deadpan look on Velouria's unchanging face. “Oh. You're being serious.”
“Yup,” Velouria agrees.
“Good thing I was being serious, too.” Nina winks, then leans down, pressing a kiss to Velouria's cheek.
Velouria says nothing. Her expression says nothing as well. But the telltale thud, thud, thud of her tail against the floorboards says it all.
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-06 03:00 am (UTC)words: 294 ship: suletta mercury/miorine rembran (sorry the formatting is wrecked -- better more readable version here! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_VMlmP6vUxlejp0o_TpgVI44_vBTo5q3s5IzBV6ptk0/edit?usp=sharing)
\
miorine <3: suletta
why is there a ghost girl in your seat
suletta mercury!: YOU CAN SEE HER??
miorine <3: uhh
why wouldn’t i be able to
she looks exactly like you just
smaller?
suletta mercury!: Oh jeez
Im so sorry i told her not to follow me
miorine <3: ????
suletta mercury!: Can anyone else see her?
miorine <3: uhhh i doubt it why?
suletta mercury!: I am SO sorry about this Please extend my apologies to the teacher :< And the rest of the class
miorine <3: what?? why?? suletta SULETTA???? what oh my g-d
suletta mercury!: Im sorry!!! It was the only way i could get her to leave you alone Ummm Hold on one sec Can you come to the toilets on the first floor?
miorine <3: i mean i can try i hate physics g-d
miorine <3: oh hey ghost girl’s back she’s just staring at me
suletta mercury!: AGH Ill can be there in five
miorine <3: dw about it go back to your whatever it is you were doing she isnt bothering me she just really looks like you
suletta mercury!: Yeah she really does haha Umm if you’re sure she’s not bothering you Let me know if she starts messing stuff up Shes not supposed to be outside Youre taking this all really well!! A lot better than i thought you would 😭
miorine <3: weird shit always happens to me this is like the most normal part of my week so far
suletta mercury!: Ghost girls are normal for you?? Okay my free period has ended uhhh We can talk more over lunch?? If you want!! I will get eri to leave you alone haha i promise
miorine <3: greenhouse?
suletta mercury!: Greenhouse!! <3
miorine <3: <3
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-06 03:14 am (UTC)words: 431
ship: penny polendina/ruby rose
warnings: emetophobia
Rose petals, Ruby thinks, staring at the red smudged against the bathroom floor. How poetic.
She’d barely made it into the bathroom before the attack this time, coughing up petals all over the tiles instead of into the toilet like she’d been aiming for. It’s not the end of the world, but cleaning it all up will be a nightmare. If they survive the next few hours, Weiss might kill her.
She’s only been gazing aimlessly at the floor for a few minutes when there’s a soft knock on the door behind her. Ruby whirls around, hand halfway to Crescent Rose, and relaxes instantly when she hears Penny’s voice instead of — well.
“Ruby? Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she lies, “just felt a bit sick. I’m okay now. No casualties.”
Penny laughs softly. She’d set her hand on Ruby’s shoulder earlier — just touched her, and that had been enough to set her off again. “Are you sure? I can do a scan if you’re worried about any illnesses.”
Ruby pictures her finding red rose petals blooming in her lungs and all the questions that would follow, and allows herself a small smile. “That’s okay, Penny. I’ll be alright.”
She thinks she’s a pretty good liar, all things considered.
\
The Schnee Manor is eerily silent now. Ruby pads silently through vast, yawning hallways and into empty room after empty room, peering at the wreckage of an empire. She leaves a trail of red petals on the carpet.
She can’t have been alone for more than fifteen minutes when she hears voices, and swerves into a huge dining room — not the one they’ve been camped out in — to avoid them. There are huge paintings on the walls, and she stares pointedly at them instead of letting herself tune into the conversation passing by. She’s never really liked to eavesdrop on her friends.
Except — this isn’t a conversation. This is one person, talking rapidly to herself, muttering assurances over and over again, desperate, afraid —
“You’re not here. I am okay. I am stronger than you. I will not hurt my friends. I will not hurt my friends. I am stronger than you. I will not —”
Penny lets out a small hiss of exertion, and Ruby can picture her now, pressing the heels of her hands into her forehead and breathing in and out, useless as it is. Her fingers close around a petal in her pocket, one of the few survivors from her last attack in the corridor.
She wishes she could help.
She doesn’t know what will happen to her if she does.
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-07 02:37 am (UTC)Fandom: She-Ra and the Princess of Power (2018)
Ship: Adora/Catra
Catra finishes putting the finishing touches on the soulmark, peeling the prep paper off carefully so it doesn't smudge. Hopefully the girl from Craigslist was able to figure out how to apply it from her instructions - she tried to make them as idiot proof as possible, but she's painfully aware of how creatively people can fuck things up. Her normal fare is simpler than this, but there's always someone who manages to fuck it up.
Making coverups for soulmarks isn't as lucrative as other jobs, and she's glad of that, really. Most of her clients are covering soulbonds that went south for one reason or another - death, abuse, irreconcilable differences that their biology didn't account for. The only clients that don't have a painful story are the escorts. They say a soulmark chills business, but Catra knows how to make it disappear, at least for a week or so.
A lot of her clients assume she's covering a soulmark, and she doesn't correct them.
Anyway. It pays enough to cover rent and canned soup, but when someone reached out to ask if she could fake a soulmark instead of covering it, she was interested enough to bite. So now she was applying her fraudulent soulmark, a rich golden splash, and hoping she can fix anything the client messed up. Grayskull didn't have time beforehand for Catra to do it, and she hasn't frantically texted yet, so she has to assume everything's fine.
She just has to put on the suit she had to buy for Scorpia's wedding and get through a few hours of some holiday party or something. Piece of cake, and it'll pay her rent through the winter. Maybe the escorts are onto something.
She's not giving someone from the internet her address, so she's loitering in front of the library when the car stops. It's older than she would have expected, streaks of dirt speckling along the back, almost obscuring the bumper stickers. If she hadn't gotten half of the fee as an advance, Catra wouldn't have believed this is Grayskull's car, but when the window rolls down she can see the golden soulmark at the base of the neck, just above the collarbone. It looks real - if Catra wasn't looking for it, she wouldn't see the slight texture that betrays its nature.
"Are you Catra?" Grayskull asks, stress in her voice, and - yeah. She's hired a stranger to pretend to be her girlfriend. Catra would be anxious too if she had anything other than money on the line.
"The very same." Catra drops into the passenger seat, and at least the car is cleaner inside than outside. Grayskull is - hot, with lean muscle unmistakeable where her dress reveals her shoulders, skin so flawless it seems to glow. Catra's makeup is perfect, but she has to stop herself from checking it.
"Thanks for doing this," Grayskull says. "They just will not get off my back. The mark was super easy to put on and it looks so good, next time I can probably do this without you."
Catra ignores the flare of disappointment. She doesn't even know this person, she can think with her libido later when this is over and she's home. "So, Grayskull, how'd we meet?"
"First of all," Grayskull says, "if we're dating I assume you call me Adora? That's my name. No one calls me anything else."
"I was just going to call you increasingly sappy pet names all night. Will that work for you, princess?"
Adora's face darkens. Catra's going to make enough money to replace her crap desk chair and have fun. "Sure, uh, kitten."
Hot and awkward. Oh no. "Okay, so you're not convincing at all. Stick to your strengths, which I assume you have."
"Escrima," Adora says, "which, to answer your question, is how we met." She must sense her confusion even with her eyes on the road, because she says, "It's a martial art, I train with a sword. You're not going to have to talk about it, no one will let me talk about it and I want to."
"Never heard of it," Catra says, and Adora launches into a clearly long-stored explanation, and when Catra unfocuses her eyes she can see it, sweat on her brow, hands tight on the hilt of a blade. She's never seen a kalimpan, and she doesn't recognize a number of the words Adora's using to describe it, but she wants to see one, now. Maybe she can get Adora to show someone a picture before the evening is over.
They're parked too soon. When Adora's done smoothing her dress, Catra holds out her hand. Adora eyes it, and Catra says, "I mean, we ought to sell it, right?"
Adora takes her hand, and the skin over her collarbone buzzes with a sensation she's never felt, and goddamn it, it's on the opposite side from the fake one. Catra can barely focus on the fact that this cute weirdo has been assigned to her by fate or whatever because she's way too annoyed that she's wasted all that time designing the fakes, that of course are on the same side.
Adora gasps next to her. "This isn't hap-"
"Yeah, sugar, apparently it's happening." Even the sound of Adora wincing at the name doesn't help. "I have my kit in the car, hopefully my shit will only take long enough to get off for us to be fashionably late."
"Wait." Adora faces her, reaches for her other hand. "We're soulmates. You - I don't want to go to the party anymore. I just want to get to know you."
The majority of the soulbonds Catra sees have ended badly. Catra's not naive enough to believe that a soulbond means anything more than an ugly tattoo two people share. But Scorpia looks at Perfuma like she hung the moon, and Catra's never seen her happier. When she sees the mark on Adora, blue and yellow swirl with a jagged edge that she can't make sense of - she's never felt possessive like this before. What does she have to lose, really?
"If you really want to waste my acting talents, snookums, I guess it's your loss."
Adora smiles and it feels like she's looking at the sun and Catra will have to keep her busted desk chair for a little longer, it looks like.
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-07 03:19 am (UTC)Fandom: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Ship: Adora/Catra
(this was a lot of fun!)
"A German cappuccino," the woman says with a smile that's probably meant to be charming, "with three shots of hazelnut."
Adora bites her lip. It's so close to the passphrase that she's tempted to just let it go, but not all operatives are as flexible as her. Hope would stand here stone-faced until the poor new hire finally spit out the correct words, down to the intonation. "Are you sure?"
The woman frowns, thinks a moment. "Four shots?"
Adora's so antsy having the envelope under the counter like this, she should just hand it over. Then she can focus on actually being a barista, which is a larger part of her job than special-ops training had indicated. "Our German cappuccino isn't good today, I would try something else."
The woman rolls her eyes. "Cut the crap," she says. "You know what I'm saying."
"I get that you're new," Adora says, pulling out the envelope, "but memorizing the correct passphrase is kind of 101."
"Whatever." The woman's smile isn't trying to be charming anymore. "Just give me the package so I can get out of here."
Adora pauses. The Alliance calls them drops. She's never seen this agent before, and the awkwardness around the passphrase that she was so willing to chalk up to inexperience doesn't seem so innocent now. "What's your callsign?"
"Snows," the woman says, too fast, and maybe she would have gotten away with it if Glimmer hadn't been talking last week about the young irritating shorter than Glimmer girl she was partnered with. This woman isn't tall by any means, but she's not more than a couple inches shorter than Adora. "Look, I'm sorry. I'll read the brief better next time."
"Something you might not know about me," Adora says, sliding the envelope back under the counter next to her service weapon, "is that I used to work for the Horde. I know your terminology."
The woman grins then, too many teeth, eyes bright. "Oh, She-Ra. I'd been hoping it was you. They didn't change much about your face when you defected, did they?"
The more the woman speaks, the more her voice sounds familiar. Adora rests her hand on her service weapon and presses the alert button with the other. "You know who you're dealing with, don't I deserve the same courtesy?"
The woman laughs, harsh and cruel, and no amount of vocal resurfacing will stop Adora from recognizing that voice. "Has it really been long enough to forget me?"
They've given Catra a new face, but it's her as certainly as if she'd had her own. Adora hopes she's wearing a contact lens in her yellow eye, and they haven't replaced it entirely. It's been two years and Adora still thinks about her every day. She still wakes up from dreams where, instead of disappearing into the shadows, Catra gets on the skiff with her and runs.
"Catra," she says, "the Alliance will take you too. I'll vouch for you, I'll make sure they process you fast, I-"
Catra hops up to sit on the counter, leans towards Adora. "What exactly," she says slowly, glare deepening, "makes you think that I would follow you anywhere?"
Adora has her service weapon in her hand. Glimmer would have fired as soon as the enemy agent revealed herself, but Adora can't. Everyone who objected to her use in the field was right, she's too easily compromised. "Catra, please-"
Something buzzes somewhere and Catra groans, the same way she used to when they got brown rations for the fifth day in a row. She shoves off from the counter. "I'm not done with you, She-Ra. Catch you later."
"Don't call me that," Adora says. "You know my name."
Catra pauses by the door. "Adora's dead to me," she says, roughened voice cold. Bells jingle when the door slams, and Adora hits the lockdown button so she knows she won't get any real customers when she sits down on the floor to cry.
FILL: TEAM OCS
Date: 2023-09-07 04:28 am (UTC)Words: 385
This was the story of how we got a dragon.
The day started out like any other day. We woke up, kissed each other, then we went out to meet Maggie, who had been on night duty the other night. Lucy and I took turns kissing her, which was both the perfect greeting, as well as signalled a change in shifts. I would take up the gun, patrol the area for any zombies. Lucy would cook breakfast. It was to be the start of a fine enough day.
And I was looking forward to breakfast that day, because we had managed to barter some of our mandrakes for real bacon. Actual bacon! Not just spam or luncheon meat! I had missed the taste of real, smoked bacon. And because Lucy was Lucy, I knew that it would be delicious. She cooked great things with dull canned rations; with actual food she may actually produce ambrosia.
But then Maggie said that she had something she wanted to show us, and when she brought us to see what was there, I knew that we were going to have a lot less to go around.
She showed us this little dragon. Small, misshapen wings. Couldn’t be older than a few months. Might have been abandoned by its nest for being a runt. It was such a poor thing.
We just had to take it in.
They wanted to name it Will, after me, Willow. Which was well, it was kind of an honour. And as I saw little Will eat up our bacon, our only meat left in the house, I knew that I had to train this little one to at least be a decent guard animal. We weren’t going to throw him out, that’s for sure. But if he couldn’t work, well, we really couldn’t afford to just keep an animal around as a pet like that . He needed to be useful to us in some way.
But I’m not going to let Maggie or Lucy down like that, the softies. I’d kept dragons before, when I was younger, and the world was in a better state. It takes a firm hand, and a lot of patience, but I’ll be sure to whip our little Will into a guard dragon that we can be proud of.
FILL: TEAM CATRADORA
Date: 2023-09-07 04:34 am (UTC)words: 659
ship: penny polendina/ruby rose
extra notes: penny the robotgirl ever
Ruby chalks the sudden burning sensation in her chest up to shock. Penny is alive, after all, alive and in Mantle all this time, and she thinks she could cry with the relief of it. It feels, in this moment, like the entire world has shifted under her feet — like the sun and stars and the broken moon are orbiting around them, and only them, and if she could have her way nothing would ever tear her out of Penny’s arms again.
Much later, she determines it must be a bruise. Penny had slammed into her at an absurd speed, after all, and she’s pretty sure if she hadn’t been aiming for a hug she might have broken a rib or two. Besides, Penny is made almost entirely of metal. It’s only logical that she’d have left some kind of physical impact.
She sits on her bunk in the Atlas dormitory and kicks her legs idly as she waits for Weiss to finish her turn with the shower, trying desperately to ignore the burning feeling. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but still.
“What’s got you so distracted?” Yang hums.
Ruby turns her head to glance over at her and discovers her sister’s head in Blake’s lap — because of course — and her eyes glazed over with exhaustion, fingers grazing over Blake’s hip and Blake’s forearm like if she lets go of her for even a second they’ll both die instantly. In a particularly sisterly move, she chooses to ignore the obvious comeback.
“Just a bruise,” she shrugs, “don’t worry about it.”
Yang snorts. “A bruise from what? Having a robot girl slam into you at full speed?”
Ruby is, regretfully, too far away to aim a kick at her shoulder. “She was excited to see me.”
Yang pauses, and when she replies, her voice is suddenly careful. “Excited is definitely a word I would use, yeah.”
Whatever response Ruby could have come up with to that is cut off when Weiss slams open the door to the dormitory bathroom and announces that she’s ready for bed. Ruby takes the easy way out of the conversation and bolts through the door behind her before she can so much as finish her sentence.
//
“Penny is your soulmate?”
“Shut up,” Ruby hisses. “No one outside this room can know.”
Jaune makes a face. “Not even Penny? You know, your —”
She slaps a hand over his mouth before he can continue. Her other hand comes up to tug the hood of her cloak lower — not that she needs to; her outfit covers her collarbones just fine — making sure the name scrawled in fine green letters across her skin is hidden adequately. “Especially not her.”
“But don’t you think she might want to know?” Blake hums. Not a direct question, not really. She has a habit of asking questions like these as though they’re passing thoughts.
“Well, yeah, but —” Ruby flushes, letting go of Jaune’s face when his noises of protest start to get louder. “I don’t want to overwhelm her! And I don’t want to push her away! I just — I just got her back, guys.”
Yang huffs a laugh. “Ruby, she adores you.”
“Okay, but —”
“She adores you,” Ren echoes. “If anything, she’ll short-circuit with joy. And who’s to say she doesn’t know already?”
“I kind of wish you hadn’t said that,” Ruby mutters, clamping down on the sudden sick breathlessness rising up from her gut. He smiles apologetically.
//
Penny does, in fact, know already, as it turns out. Not that they’re able to get anything out of either of them about it.
“We’re waiting to see where this huntsman thing takes us,” Ruby says unconvincingly, three weeks after their first ‘talk’ about it. “You know, beating Salem, saving the world, that kind of stuff.”
“Uh-huh,” Yang nods, “and that’s why you take so many patrols alone together?”
She smirks when Ruby’s hand comes up unconsciously to hover over her collarbone. “You know it.”
FILL: TEAM OCs
Date: 2023-09-07 04:52 am (UTC)Words: 441
“So, my father was a sailor,” she explained. “And my mother was a mermaid.” That part was obvious. I looked down at her long, golden tail. In all my years of travel, I had never seen a tail like that before. Perhaps it was a type of colouration one only really got in this region of the world.
“I see,” I replied. There was a notably more human character to her than other mermaids. Or well… less fish-like, I suppose. “So, what do you think about that?”
She shrugged. “I guess it’s fine. It’s just… a part of life, I suppose. He came over to visit as much as he could, and my Mum had her whole family, so it wasn’t like I had a lonely childhood. How about you? What’s your family like?”
It was my turn to shrug. “I’m not really sure. I’m a… I’m actually an orphan…”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” I chuckle a little, attempting to bring a little levity to the conversation. “But uh… I wouldn’t say I had a very lonely childhood either. The crew of the Saltmaiden took me in, and so, I guess my crew’s my family now.”
She nodded, finger tracing the rim of her cup. They had interesting drinks in this sea cove. Some sort of fermented seaweed drink, according to her. Being raised on a boat, practically, I was open to trying any number of odd things. The fermented seaweed tasted nothing like I’d ever tasted before, but I couldn’t say that it was bad.
Miriam had suggested I try dating, while the Captain was trying to win the boat back from those siren boat thieves. We were essentially stranded in the Magi Isles until then, but she said that it was a good chance to relax for a bit. Do some things we’d been meaning to do.
Dating was new to me, but it was going well. The mermaids here treated girls liking girls as a fairly regular thing, compared to most other places I’d been to.
I took a gulp of the seaweed drink - note to self, pick up some for the trip back - and asked my date, “So, how do you feel about long distance dating then?”
She smiled. “It won’t be too bad. We’ve got messages in bottles. We’ve got whale mail. Like, I saw it play out with my Mum and Dad right? If I really liked someone enough, I think I will put up with whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.” She held her hand out, a faint smile spreading across her features.
I smiled, reaching out to grab her hand. “I’m glad to hear that.”