yurishippingolympics | YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024

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bonus round

YURI SHIPPING OLYMPICS 2024 - BONUS ROUND 4

for this bonus round, the theme is historical fiction! prompts inspired by specific moments in (real or fictional) history.

this round will end on july 15th

Fills can be in any format, and you can fill your teammates prompts, but you cannot fill your own prompt.

You can post as many fills and as many prompts as you want!

for your prompt post title, please use the following format:

PROMPT: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

for your fill post title, please use the following format:

FILL: TEAM [TEAM NAME]

POINTS - BONUS ROUNDS
For prompts: 10 points each (maximum of 150 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

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Ancient Egypt, Amarna Period
A short-lived period during which Ancient Egyptian culture radically shifted under the rule of Akhenaten. Notably, the royal women of Amarna have more text written about them than any other women from Ancient Egypt. One notable example is the famously beautiful Queen Nefertiti. Many of the pharaoh's daughters were also bestowed the title of Queen.

1920s America party culture

Titanic AU

Ellis Island early twentieth century America

Joseon dynasty, the last and longest-lived imperial dynasty (1392–1910) of Korea

Silla Kingdom, Korea

Goguryeo Kingdom, Korea

Baekje Kingdom, Korea

Han Dynasty, China

Ancient Babylon, particularly the Hanging Gardens of Babylon

Classical Greece

Hellenistic Period, Greece

word count: 386

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall, neopolitan 2 second cameo

“You built your own ship?”

Cinder raps her knuckles on the side of the shuttle, grinning widely. Winter shifts her gaze away from her, suddenly finding her too bright to look at. “Partially.”

“You stole it,” she guesses. Cinder grins wider.

“Right out of Torchwick’s idiot hands. Say hi, Neo.”

A bi-coloured head pops up from inbetween the slats of the top deck and waves, then vanishes again. Bemused, Winter waves back. “And his sidekick?”

Cinder hums, leaning over the railing. The shuttle’s paneling creaks warningly. “Nah, she came willingly. We’re, ah, travelling.”

“Travelling,” Winter echoes, “right.” Cinder is hardly ever just travelling. The circles she moves in are always shifting with the winds, and Cinder shifts with them, digging her claws into power. She should have arrested her years ago, but something about her is alluring, captivating.

Cinder’s smile turns sharp, as if she knows this. She’s seen all of this in Winter’s eyes before. “You don’t believe me?”

“I never believe you,” Winter says easily. “How many times have I caught you doing something illegal with someone else’s property?”

“Only every time I come by,” Cinder says. She taps the side of the ship again, springs off the railing and slides down the side of the cargo hull. It’s a Valean model from a decade or so ago, but it still works just fine for her, apparently — her fingers move over the wood of the hull with familiarity, trusting it to guide her down to Winter’s end of the dock without slipping away or breaking. “Is it a crime to want to show off my nice new shuttle?”

“It’s a crime if it doesn’t belong to you.”

“Don’t be like that,” she laughs, stepping over a heap of old mechanical trash. Winter has never claimed her workshop to be a particularly tidy space. “I thought you’d like it. Being a shuttle expert and all.”

Winter has also never claimed to be a shuttle expert. She peers around Cinder’s shoulder at the ship, still determined not to catch her eye, and frowns. “You just wanted to get my attention,” she decides. Cinder laughs again. “You think it’s attractive when I enforce the law.”

“Only in my presence.” She steps closer, fingers curling around the hem of her jacket. “Generally I’m ideologically opposed.”

“Generally,” Winter echoes.

haikyuu!! yuri (ship: michimiya/aihara), link to ao3 fic here!

The 1970 Women’s World Cup, the first modern international championship of women’s football/soccer

The First Age of Middle Earth

Transformers: Hearts of Steel was such a cool concept but also such a loss since they didn't put in any of the femmes, so how about some yuri in that universe to help make up for them just dropping the chance for all the cool designs we could have had!! Pref mech/mech but fine with mech/human. Extra bonus if there's some cross faction.

word count: 1049

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

extra tags: vampires and all associated content warnings (allusions to death, murder, violence and blood), allusions to death of children, toxic as fuck yuri

“I know you’re here to kill me,” Cinder says gleefully. She runs her thumb along the corner of her lip, sucks blood into her mouth, and Winter watches the movement, transfixed. “You’re not very subtle.”

Her mouth works, searches for something to say, and comes up with a response entirely on its own. Her mind is still fixed on Cinder’s lips, which is, she supposes, at least half of the charm effect. “I wasn’t going for subtle.”

“Hmm.” She tilts her head to the side. Beautiful, Winter thinks, and shakes herself. “You should try it sometime. I think it’d suit you.”

She swallows thickly. There isn’t a sharp retort to that. Her fingers close around the hilt of the stake and find themselves too weak, too unsure; the angle isn’t right, she’ll drive it into Cinder’s chest and miss something vital, make her angrier, make her kill her —

A finger turns up her chin, drawing her gaze to Cinder’s eyes. Winter looks away, flushed and halfway to angry. “Determined, aren’t you?”

“You killed a whole village,” Winter says, finding her footing.

Cinder’s expression hardens. She steps back, away — a mistake, Winter thinks desperately, an opening, and finds her grip on the hilt of the stake again — and says, “Do you think I do anything without a purpose, Schnee?”

Vampires are indiscriminate killers; of course they don’t. Her purpose was that she was hungry, or that she was angry. Her purpose was that they were in the way. Winter grounds herself in this, thinks about the blood smudging Cinder’s lipstick being hers, and does not find herself quite so sucked in. She tilts her chin up angrily, meets Cinder’s eyes. “Yes.”

A smirk twists up the corners of her mouth. “You really are Atlesian, aren’t you? Ironwood through and through.”

She killed Ironwood too. Winter draws herself up as tall as she can from her position on her knees on the floor, flipping the stake in her hand. It’s an open threat, and possibly a stupid one, but she’s suddenly blindingly furious and she can’t bring herself to care.

“And you’re proud of it, too, aren’t you?” Cinder smiles, shows a flash of blood-streaked fang. “You know how old I am? Twenty-six. I burned down the village you’re avenging because they hung me, Schnee.”

“You killed children,” Winter snaps, blinking back the image of Ironwood’s eyes, dead and cold and empty —

“I let the children go.” Her voice drops, cold. “I burned down the village who murdered me, but I let the children go because I like to believe that the person I was when I died would have wanted them to live. And you —” Cinder’s hand raises, and Winter’s strength saps from her; her hand opens, her stake rolls away — “and every Atlesian hunter like you would think that it was good that I died, that it was just —”

She cuts herself off, hissing between her teeth. Winter slumps forward, clutching at her throat like she can stem the flow of non-existent bleeding. “It doesn’t matter. You’re not — you weren’t a prisoner here. Now — I’ll make up my mind.” Cinder eyes her. “But I was close to giving you my protection before you had to go and ruin it.”

It’s not a charm, Winter thinks, because the way Cinder says you like she’s remembering the taste of her blood on her tongue would be maddening anyway. She straightens, finding Cinder’s eyes again across the grand hall, framed in the starlight filtering through the window, and finds nothing but draining magic. No spell, no trick. “Kill me and you’ll bring the wrath of Atlas down upon your head,” she says, an empty threat.

Cinder smiles. “Do you really think so little of me? Go to sleep and pray that I don’t keep you here forever.”

Winter barricades her door and both of the windows in her quarters. It’s probably a useless endeavour, but it helps her feel safer. She barely sleeps as it is, eyes fixed on the moonlight filtering through the drawn curtains, praying a shadow doesn’t fall over them while she’s unconscious.

When she does eventually fall asleep, she doesn’t dream. She supposes it’s a blessing, but still — somehow — she aches to see Cinder’s face, aches for that strange fondness she’s glimpsed in candlelight before. She awakes tangled in sheets and covered in sweat, convinced Cinder is in her room with a blade to her throat, and falls asleep again with her breath catching and twisting in her lungs.

When the sun finally rises, she packs her things and gets ready to leave.

Cinder stops her at the door to the house, standing carefully out of the path of the sunlight. Winter only notices her when her hand snaps out to catch her forearm, only stops herself from swinging her suitcase into her face and bolting when her voice comes purring out of the shadow: “I told you to stay here, didn’t I?”

She turns her head. She can’t quite see her face. “You didn’t tell me I was a prisoner. I will do as I choose.”

“I would like,” Cinder says carefully, “to speak with you a while longer. You’ve been here almost three months, and still I know nothing about you.”

That — gives Winter pause. She’s been hunting vampires since she was fifteen, and not once has any one of them spent time trying to learn about their prey, to connect to them before they kill them. It forces her to reassess what she is to Cinder, how she slots into her view of the world.

She tilts her chin up. “If I say no, will you kill me?”

“If you say no, I’ll think about it very strongly,” Cinder says. Winter hears the smile in her voice. Her breath hitches a little, almost without her permission. “I won’t harm you if you try to leave, but I won’t help you either. The weather can be — cruel this time of year.”

“So, what? You want us to hear each other out? That’s not —”

“I told you when you arrived.” Her fingers tighten on Winter’s forearm; not hard enough to hurt, but enough to be a reminder of her strength. “I’m far from the worst one of us. I’d go so far as to call myself kind.”

word count: 1146

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

extra tags: child abuse, non-graphic descriptions of (healed) physical injury

It starts as an accident: Winter brushes the fingers over the poorly-concealed scars on her neck, Cinder hisses through her teeth and damn well nearly bursts into flame, and neither of them speak about it again. This tenuous thing between them is still so new, so fragile.

Still, she senses the questions on Winter’s lips — what happened to you? Why won’t you let me touch your neck? — and she despises herself a little more every day for being unable to answer. There are things about her past she hasn’t told anyone who isn’t long-dead, and she cannot imagine herself letting them spill from her lips any time soon.

They’re lying in a patch of shade together and admiring the particular blueness of the sky (an exercise in futility; the sky is always fucking blue — Winter admits she doesn’t understand it either, but it’s ‘nice’ and ‘a soothing recreational activity’, so they’re both doing it) when she brings it up. At her behest, Cinder rolls onto her side to look vaguely at Winter’s face so they can talk properly about it, and instantly regrets it. She’s looking at her with that weird, sad expression, the kind that says she’s spent too much time in her own head.

“About your neck,” she starts, and Cinder groans, “I’d like to apologise if I caused you discomfort. Or pushed a boundary, or anything similar. You mean a lot to me, and I —” she pauses, catching her lip between her teeth, “I don’t want to push you.”

Cinder sighs, sensing a moment of rare vulnerability coming on. “You didn’t. Seriously, Winter, it’s not that big a deal. You’re fine, just forget about it.”

“I’m not stupid,” she says earnestly — debatable, “I know there’s a reason you keep your neck covered, and I’m not asking you to tell me why, I just want to — respect you, really. And I haven’t been doing that very well.”

She has, is the thing. She’s stupidly respectful. It’s been drilled into her bones since she was born. Cinder doubts she’ll ever be able to work it out of her. She sighs, shakes her head. “You are, as I said, fine. I’m not, like, in deep personal agony about it. It was a little disruptive, and that’s all.”

“Hmm,” Winter says, like she doesn’t believe her. Which is fair enough, Cinder supposes, given literally everything about her. “Well, I’d still like you to know that I’m sorry.”

She rolls her eyes. “I accept your largely pointless but otherwise well-meaning apology and clear you of all guilt for your actions.”

Winter elbows her. Cinder elbows her back. The sky burns the same shade of blue as her eyes as the sun sinks below the dunes.

ii.

It happens like this: Cinder’s fingers settle on a thick scar on Winter’s hip when she kisses her, Winter stiffens, pushes her away, and then apologises profusely for about half an hour afterwards.

Cinder does not ask, because Winter probably wouldn’t tell her, but she knows enough about her childhood to assume. She’s grateful, then, for at least one thing Ironwood has done.

She settles her head on Winter’s shoulder in the aftermath of her apologies and says, “No, shut up, I’m the sorry one.”

Winter scoffs. “You haven’t done anything. I overreacted. You can — I don’t have any issues with you touching my scars, I just — got scared.”

She wraps her hands around Cinder’s back regardless, threading her fingers together. Cinder hums into her shoulder, nose pressed just underneath a purpleing bruise on her collarbone. “Alright. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. I’m not upset with you.”

She says it, Cinder’s paranoid mind thinks, like she’s trying to convince herself while she speaks. Then again, she always sounds like that. She sounds weird and nervous and uncomfortable when she isn’t in military uniform and/or on a battlefield; it’s just who Winter is. If she was upset with Cinder, she’d make it known. And she’d do it gently, because both of them understand the other in a way that should probably disturb her.

“You’re sure,” Cinder echoes.

iii.

“You can touch my neck,” Cinder says tightly, “if you want.”

Winter looks up at her, nods once. She doesn’t move the bindings around her scar, doesn’t try to kiss it — a relief; Cinder thinks she’d have burned the whole room down if she did — but nips marks into the hollow of her throat, her pulse point, the crook of her neck, her collarbones.

Military precision, Cinder thinks, always military precision.

iv.

She takes the bindings off. Winter wears a shirt with hip windows that Cinder drools over a little, but only a little.

She doesn’t know what does it. Maybe it’s the oppressive heat in Vacuo, maybe it’s the walls they’ve been breaking down, maybe it’s just fucking timing and instinct. Either way, Winter does not stare at her scars, and Cinder does not stare at hers, because they haven’t spoken about it but they understand.

Well, mostly: one night Winter props her hands on her hips, thumb brushing her scar, and says, “It was a letter opener, if you’re curious. He was a shit marksman.”

Cinder looks at her, nods. “Electric collar.”

Winter does something funny with her mouth. “Dead?”

She nods again. “All four of them. I did it myself.”

“Good,” she says grimly, “good.”

“How old were you?”

Winter twists to face her, apparently deciding that this is an answer that requires eye contact. They haven’t spoken about her missing eye or arm yet; they likely never will. “For my hip? Fourteen.” She smiles, and it looks a little wrong, a little twisted. “I told my father I wanted to become a huntress and he threw a letter opener at me. He was aiming for my leg. He thought he could stop me from trying permanently.”

Cinder whistles lowly. “Sharp fucking letter opener.”

“He was a shit marksman,” Winter repeats. “Ironwood wasn’t.”

They haven’t spoken about the — entire fucking right side of her body yet. The bridge of her nose, the burn scars, the marks from where laser fire tore through her flesh. They likely never will.

Cinder nods. “I was — I don’t know. Your age, maybe younger, maybe older. I don’t know how old I am, really.” Winter winces. To drive the point home, she adds, “I was an orphan. I was sold.” Because she’s feeling particularly spiteful, “To a hotel in Atlas.”

Winter hisses through her teeth.

Just because she can: “I killed them all.”

vi.

“I’m not going to talk about it anymore if you ask me,” Cinder says, worrying her lip between her teeth, “but the name of the hotel was The Glass Unicorn, and I burned it down when I came back to Atlas.”

Winter’s fingers twitch against the scar on her throat, the only sign of emotion to slip past her mask. “Good.”

word count: 410

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall, brief whitley schnee cameo

The phrase ‘Lady of the Lake’ conjures up such specific imagery that Winter assumes the woman walking across the surface of the water, leaking fire, is a hallucination — then, when it becomes clear that the rest of the knights in the entourage can see her too, some kind of new and weirdly specific omen.

It’s only when she opens her mouth to speak that Winter realises what’s going on. Her voice rolls across the surface of the lake along with the fog, sharp and assessing: “Well? Which one of you is looking for me?” and Winter jolts, fumbling for the sword at her side.

“I am,” she says, sinking to one knee, “it’s me. Ozma sent me.”

The woman snorts. She comes into view as she crosses the remainder of the surface between them, a figure in a burning column of fire, beautiful and dark-haired and fierce. “Ozma, huh? Then you’ll want this.”

She kneels too, mirroring Winter, and her hand dips below the surface of the lake, but the fire does not dim. When she rises, she brings a sword with her.

Winter’s jaw drops. She hears Whitley sigh behind her, long and low and disapproving, and if she could tear her gaze away from the woman on the water, she would be shooting him a glare.

“This is for you,” the woman says. “It doesn’t have a name, so go crazy. Return it to me when you’re done.”

Winter swallows thickly. “Um. Ozma said you would give it to me whenever I was in need.”

“Yeah, exactly.” She tosses the sword carelessly; Winter fumbles to catch it. “We don’t trust you with powerful instruments of destruction, exactly. You’ve got to give it back to me for safekeeping.”

“Ah.” She picks the sword up, pulls it to her chest. Her body burns with energy wherever it brushes against the blade, even through her clothes. It feels right, it feels good. “So I should come back — here?”

The woman shrugs, smiles, and Winter feels a little as though she’s been pinned to the spot. “Any body of water will do if you throw it hard enough.”

“Understood.” She swallows again. “And, um. What was your name?”

“The Lady of the Lake,” the woman says, inspecting her nails impassively.

“No, your name. I — mine is Winter.”

She pauses, glancing up at her. That smile drifts a little before it comes back into focus. Winter wonders what she’s thinking about. “It’s Cinder.”

Ship: Kemboja 'Kem'/Orchid. (OC/OC)
Word count: 1,157
Notes: Set in the mid-2010s in my fictionalised version of Southeast Asia (aka the past for my serial OCs).
Both Kem and Orchid are pontianaks/kuntilanaks, vampiric ghosts or spirits in Malaysian and Indonesian folklore, and Kem is wearing a kebaya which is a Javanese top usually worn with a sarong. We love monstergirl yuri, and I love writing SEAsian-centric stories <3

[Edit: just realised i double posted this oops, deleted the duplicate post]
---

“Hey, are you awake?” She gently shakes the young ghost’s shoulder, trying her best not to startle her. The ghost stirs a little, but even with a firmer shake of her shoulder Kem couldn’t get her to fully wake up.

“Heavy sleeper, I see,” she sighed. This one might need a firmer wakeup call. “HEY, WAKE UP!”

“AH!” The ghost yelped. She immediately sat up and stared furiously at the woman who yelled directly into her ear.

“Oh my God, why did you do that?! You nearly blew my eardrum.”

“Sorry about that, but you refused to wake up so I had to use some drastic measures.” Kem got up, straightened out her kebaya and lent out a hand to the young ghost. “I've seen you around here. In fact, it’s rare to find new ghosts in this area so I got curious.”

“Oh thanks—wait what?” What did this lady say? “Ghosts?”

“Yes, ghosts.” Kem repeated. “Oh wait, you’re still probably very confused. You’re dead, darling. You’re a ghost now.”

The newly turned ghost was stunned silent. Maybe telling her she was dead just as she woke up wasn’t the best idea, but Kem knew how much more frustrating it would be if this poor soul tried to talk to a living being who wasn’t a medium or wasn’t Fragmented.

“I uh, I-I—hold on, I’m just...” Poor thing.

“Take your time, darling. It will be a long while until you fully adjust. Can you walk?” The ghost nodded. “Good. How about we head to that shed there?” Kem pointed to a shabby, worn-down shed near a small metal gate. “It’s an infinitely better resting place than these trees, it may help you recover your thoughts better.” After another nod from the ghost, both made their way to the shed.

Now that the initial shock has worn off, the ghost started looking at her surroundings, trying to piece together where they currently are. There were many headstones, so many headstones; some were marked, some weren’t; some had offerings, some didn’t; some were kept immaculately clean and tidy, some were left to gather moss.

They finally reached the shed. There was a small veranda with a tin roof, in it was a single wooden bench facing the graveyard. Finally, they sat down on the bench.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better, I think.” The ghost relaxed her shoulders, she didn’t notice how tensed up they were.

“Good! I didn’t catch your name. My name’s Kemboja, but you can call me Kem.” Oh, another flower name.

“I’m Orchid.”

“That’s a very lovely name.”

“Is it? People always said it was lame to be named after a flower, kinda cheesy, no?”

“What?” Exclaimed Kem, visibly irritated. “Nonsense, there is absolutely no such thing as a cheesy name.” She gently lifted Orchid’s chin, their eyes now directly meeting, “I think it’s a wonderfully beautiful name fit for a beautiful person, and a beautiful name needs an equally beautiful pet name.” Kem pursed her lips, her eyes making good note of this flower’s features. Delicate freckled skin, bright brown eyes, a cute button nose. Delicate, dainty, fitting like her namesake.

“Hmm, how about ‘my dearest Orchid’? Or maybe ‘my darling Orchid,’ if that’s too much?”

All the while, Orchid stood there dumbfounded; she wasn’t used to someone complimenting her name in earnest, nor using a pet name. Her name had always been a sticking point for her, but just this once, having someone say it felt a little nice for once.

“Either one’s nice, I like them.” She got a bright, gentle smile from Kem in response, and Orchid’s heart fluttered a little as Kem let her chin go.

Orchid took a better look at Kem. It was extremely rare to see someone dressed neatly in a kebaya, even a simple one like what Kem wore. Only old aunties and grandmas would wear kebayas every day, but the woman in front of her barely looked 30. Judging by the way she spoke to Orchid, Kem was probably much older than she looked.

“Um, how long have I been sleeping?”

“Oh, under the plumerias? Probably around a day.”

“N-no, not under the trees, I mean how long have I been sleeping.”

Kem scrunched her nose and furrowed her eyebrows at Orchid’s response, before realising why she was being so cryptic.

“Oh, well that I can’t tell you, because I genuinely don’t know.” Orchid hung her head in disappointment. “Some souls instantly become ghosts under the right circumstances, some take days, months, even years. But what I can tell you is that you have been sleeping under the plumerias for about a day.” That probably didn’t help much, but it was something.

“Okay, fine. Well, will I know when I—y'know,” Orchid said, vaguely gesturing towards herself.

“Well I don’t know when exactly you’ll figure when and how you died. That’s something you need to figure out yourself. What I can do is help you adjust to your new undead life.” Kem straightened Orchid by her shoulders, startling the poor woman. “First, show me your teeth.”

“Wha-What? Why?”

“Just do it, my dear.”

Hesitantly, Orchid bared her teeth and watched as Kem gently studied them. “Nice fangs, my dear.”

“Oh thanks—wait, fangs!?”

Kem nodded. “Yup. Absolutely beautiful ones you got there. That makes my job guiding you a little easier.” She flashed her own fangs at Orchid. “Welcome to the club, Orchid, my fellow pontianak”

Orchid didn’t know what to think or say. Her being dead—God, I hate saying that—was already a lot to take in, but this?

“I know, I know. All this information is probably a little overwhelming for you right now, but you will get used to it. But first, you need something to eat. You haven’t had anything in at least a day judging by how long you slept, so you must be hungry.”

Now that Kem mentioned it, Orchid was feeling a little hungry. But rather than craving for something like fried rice or laksa, she craved for something with a little more body.

“There are some wild boars a little past that metal gate. Not as tasty as humans, but close enough. That should be enough to keep your cravings at bay.”

Past Orchid, however long ago that was, would have protested at the thought of eating wild boar, never mind draining blood from it, but her hunger was getting stronger and she couldn’t think straight.

“Okay, let’s go now.” She tugged at Kem’s sleeve, itching to get away from the graveyard.

“Hey, careful. This kebaya’s much older than you and I don’t want it ripped.”

“Oh, sorry. Wait, can ghost clothes get damaged?”

“Yes, and it’s a pain to get them fixed. Not a lot of tailors in the undead world, sadly, much less someone who can still handle clothing from the 1940s.”

Wait. 1940s!?

“You still have lots to learn, my darling Orchid.”

Edited 2024-07-09 00:31 (UTC)

JOKE’S ON YOU I HAVE THIS AU ALREADY

Ship: Susato Mikotoba/Haori Murasame
Notes: warning for misogyny
Edit: accidental double post deleted! whoops

“Ryutaro Naruhodo, was it?” Iris’s biology teacher smiles at her from over his champagne glass. “Wonderful to meet you. Your daughter is an absolute genius.”

Susato (“Ryutaro”) affects her best polite smile. “Surely you exaggerate,” she says, scanning him for any hint of listening devices on his person or the telltale hidden insignia of the National Progress Party.

Her mind supplies her with the facts: John H Wilson. Never married, no children. Worked in the bioweapons department during wartime; became a professor one year after tentative ceasefire. Rumors circulating about potential retirement.

Bioweapons. A small voice in her head wonders if the pleasant man before her has killed people she knows.

“Not at all, Mr Naruhodo, not at all!” He clasps his hands together. “She’s miles ahead of all her classmates. In fact, I was hoping to catch you today.”

“Oh?”

There it is, she notes: the jagged cross stitched into the inner collar of his jacket. So he supports Stronghart, though is somewhat discreet about it. Good information to have, she thinks; the National Progress Party is notoriously secret about its member list. WISE should be pleased.

“I should really be leaving this to the superintendent, but—” Another smile. “Iris is so brilliant, it seems a waste to keep her in the first grade sometimes.”

Susato absolutely cannot let that happen. Barok van Zieks only teaches college and first grade elementary, on account of a lack of supply of teachers, and he is by far her best chance of contact with the NPP before the almighty Parent-Teacher Conferences. “I’m flattered,” she says, widening her eyes. “Haori and I couldn’t be more proud of her, truly. But Iris needs a stable environment right now, and we wouldn’t want to part her from her friends.”

Wilson, thankfully, is polite enough to not point out that Iris doesn’t have any friends her age. Or maybe he just hasn’t noticed. “A stable environment?” he asks instead.

Susato is still 0.5 femtoseconds into calculating whether to go with My Ex-Wife Died And We Are Very Sad or I Am A Licensed Psychologist, when she hears a scream.

She turns.

A group of people are clustered around the chandelier to the left of the hall, looking up at the ceiling in dead silence.

Susato squints. Is that—?

“Haori!” She calls, and with an apologetic grimace at John H Wilson and an expert twist of the hand that refills his champagne glass, she dashes off.

(Wilson blinks. Had Mr Naruhodo just had that entire five-star champagne bottle in his coat pocket the whole time? How?

Well, it’s some damn good champagne, so he won’t complain. What a nice man, that Ryutaro Naruhodo.)

It is Haori; Susato would recognize that white ribbon anywhere by now. Her hands are cupped around her mouth. “I’m so sorry, sir!” she is shouting at the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to throw you that hard!”

Susato, having finally arrived, looks up.

Ah. What she had mistaken for a chandelier is actually a regular ceiling lamp with a man draped over it.

God, Haori is amazing.

“You bitch!” The man is screaming faintly. “You fucking — freak of nature, you —”

“If you speak to my wife like that again,” Susato says coldly, “I will personally see that the Board of Gottsreich Industries reconsiders your tentative reemployment, Mr Peroman.”

(Corey Peroman; worked in the explosives industry; two daughters who he sees once every three months; recently suspended for accusations of inappropriate behavior with coworkers—)

Peroman’s eyes had previously lit up upon seeing Susato’s approach. Hoping for a sympathizer, probably. Unfortunately for him, Susato is aware (objectively in her capacity as master spy Twilight) that Haori is probably one of the best people in the entire world.

“She threw me into the ceiling!” Peroman’s voice echoes faintly from the rafters.

Susato ignores him and turns to Haori. She almost switches to Japanese, but remembers their audience: “Are you alright?”

“What?” Haori blinks. “Oh! Yes, of course! But Ryutaro, that was…” She leans forward, brown eyes sparkling: “So dashing of you!”

Susato swallows. She’s doing it for the act. For the act. For the act.

Even so, she can’t help but admit: “Ah, it wasn’t… on purpose, honestly, I just — slipped.”

It’s happened more often on Operation Strix than the last five missions she’s been on combined. Susato should probably be concerned about that.

“Still!” Haori takes her hand, beaming at her. “You’re such a gentleman, Ryutaro.”

She taps twice on the back of Susato’s hand: their signal for Is this alright?

Susato taps back. Yes.

“What a sweet couple!” Someone coos in the background.

Susato, in a moment of brief madness, wonders if Haori would be alright if Susato — no, Ryutaro — kissed her, sweet and chaste and lingering. Wonders what the lipstick she’s wearing tonight tastes like. Wonders if she would kiss her back.

Wonders if Haori would consider it real.

The crowd around them, she knows, would see nothing out of the ordinary. A gallant man coming to a dainty woman’s rescue. They don’t know how hard Haori can punch; they don’t know Susato exists. It is simultaneously thrilling and sickening.

This is for the act.

“Ryutaro? Are you alright?”

Oh. Susato’s been staring. She clears her throat, looks away from the lock of Haori’s hair that curls against her clavicle. “Yes, of course,” she says. “What… happened?”

Someone from the crowd clears their throat. (Susato recognizes her: Olive Green-Ross, art teacher for the secondary-school department, in her fifties, married without children—) “I believe I can answer that,” she says, shuffling to the front awkwardly. “Mr Peroman was making… absolutely despicable comments about—” She looks down. “Me. And some others here.”

“He’s a disgusting bigoted harassing piece of—!”Haori winces at herself, then leans in to Susato. “He was saying horrible things about Mrs Green-Ross,” she says, lower. “And speculating about why she doesn’t have children.”

Ah.

“Thank you for throwing him,” Susato whispers back.

Haori grins at her. “It was mostly instinct, really. But anytime!”

Susato successfully shoves down the urge to kiss her again.

“I was serious earlier,” she says instead, turning to Green-Ross again, “about having a conversation with his employer.”

Green-Ross blinks, almost-hopeful. “You really could do that?”

“My friend reported him once,” someone else in the crowd pipes up. “Didn’t really do anything.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Susato acknowledges. “But I do have some — leverage, you could say.”

She truly, utterly despises that people are more willing to listen to her when she wears Ryutaro’s clothes and voice. She hates that one of her forms is privileged over the other. But Susato has to be practical here.

…And she doesn’t actually have any particular connections to the firm in question, but if a conversation doesn’t do the trick — a little wire fraud can’t be hard to expose. Especially not for someone whose fortune is as dubious as Peroman’s.

“I won’t mention any of you by name, of course,” Susato adds.

“Actually,” Green-Ross says. “I’d like if you did.” She smiles at her at last; it’s sharp. “Tell them Olive Green-Ross sent you, will you?”

Susato makes a mental note to not get on the art department’s bad side.

“I can do that,” she says, and smiles back.

“IS ANYONE GETTING ME DOWN FROM THE CEILING,” Peroman yells.

“You know,” Haori says conversationally, “I told him I was sorry, but I don’t feel all that sorry anymore.”

“He’s much more talented as a chandelier,” Susato agrees.

Haori laughs, brighter than sunshine. Then, in Japanese: “Ryutaro-san?”

“Yes?”

“I think someone’s coming over.”

Susato stiffens. Haori’s right — there are three suits looking at them from the other side of the room. Or rather, at the reflection of them in the wall-to-wall mirrors; clever.

“Observant as always,” she whispers.

“You know me!” Haori laughs nervously. “I just, um, took a lot of self-defense classes!”

Susato can deal with them — or investigate, anyway. But not as Ryutaro Naruhodo.

“How do you feel about a French exit, Haori-sama?”

Haori bites her lip. “But the ethnicity on my passport…”

“As in leaving without saying goodbye,” Susato clarifies quickly.

“Oh! I knew that! Alright,” and Haori flashes a grin. Her eyes glint. “Let’s get out of here.”

a/n: Corey Peroman is the best Ace Attorney name I’ve ever created I think

Edited 2024-07-08 03:38 (UTC)

80s delinquents.

word count: 684

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall, penny polendina

a/n: i've been writing bits and pieces for this au all over the bonus rounds lol, i went with them knowing each others' identities because i think that's just. really funny

Cinder leans forward, swirling liquid in her glass. Winter, who doesn’t drink, folds her arms over her chest and shifts back. “So,” she begins, and Winter nearly flinches, “tell me about yourself, Mrs Schnee.”

“There’s not much to tell.” She glances around, scanning the crowd inside the restaurant for lack of anything better to do with herself. “I have two younger siblings. I fought in the war. I work for Atlas. My first mission involved destroying my father’s company from the inside out, and when they didn’t want to pay for my therapy bills anymore, they set me up as a local detective to keep an eye on the Mantle community so they wouldn’t have to find anything better to do with me.”

Cinder’s lips twitch a little. “Your father?”

Winter doesn’t meet her eyes. “Jacques Schnee.” She smiles, joylessly. “I killed him.”

That’s not the official word, of course. The best thing her old boss ever did for her was take the blame himself. James Ironwood was a lot of things, but at least he knew she wouldn’t have been able to live with the weight of it.

Cinder’s mouth twists into something like a smile in response. She looks at Winter over her wine glass, dark liquid twisting inbetween her fingers, and says, “Good.”

“Good,” Winter echoes. It doesn’t feel good, sometimes. Very few things ever do. “And now they’ve called me out for this. I don’t know why; I’ve always been better at brute forcing my way through.”

“Not a very good spy, then,” Cinder smirks.

“Unfortunately,” Winter agrees. “But good enough for this.” She turns to let her gaze drift out of the windows at the front of the restaurant, through to the darkening sky and the soft buzz of the city. “I suspect they picked me because of the formal upbringing. It’s hard to shake.”

Cinder snorts. “I bet.”

“What about you?” She’s never been good at hiding her anxiety. Talking about herself tends to put her on edge. “You’re the — well. It takes a lot to work your way up to that point.”

Cinder’s eyes cool, harden. “It’s a long story,” she says evenly, “and not the kind of thing I talk about in public.”

“Mm,” Winter says. “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head. “If you’re good I’ll tell you later.”

Sudden heat rushes up her spine. Winter casts about for something else to do with herself and fixates on her wedding band instead, pretends to be occupied with the way the silver catches the light. “Mm,” she says again, noncommittally.

Penny adores Cinder, as Winter predicted. She sits on the couch opposite Cinder’s newly claimed perch of what Penny call’s ‘Winter’s dad armchair’ and interrogates her relentlessly — first about the wedding certificate, how they even convinced Robyn to forge it in the first place; then about Cinder’s methods of killing.

“That’s disgusting,” Winter catches her saying more than once, ferrying Cinder’s boxes to and from her room, “tell me more.”

Cinder laughs each time and barrels on. She takes a brief hiatus once to rifle through the box Winter is currently carrying and remove two absurdly long knives, grinning ecstatically.

Winter raises her eyebrows.

“Penny’s great,” Cinder says, and vanishes back into the living room.

Later, after they’ve bickered over the dad armchair and eaten dinner, Cinder gestures between the two of them and asks, “How’d this happen, anyway?”

“Winter has been assigned to be my legal guardian,” Penny says gleefully. “I’m infiltrating a school!”

“You’re going to school; I’m infiltrating it,” Winter corrects, wincing. “They want me to pose as Penny’s mother.”

“We’ve agreed if anyone asks I’ll tell them she’s my aunt,” Penny finishes.

“Both my siblings are younger than me, but we’ll make it work.” She looks down at the mug in her hands instead of meeting Cinder’s eyes, determined not to stare. She knows just how much the staring makes her uncomfortable.

“Uh huh,” Cinder says slowly.

“To Weiss and Whitley, she’ll just be — adopted,” Winter shrugs. “They’ll love her, of course.”

“I’ve been told I’m very likeable!”

“You are,” Cinder says, smiling.

word count: 403

pairing: winter schnee/cinder fall

fandom: RWBY

characters: winter schnee, cinder fall

a/n: i have a longer au i'm writing based off of bbc ghosts lol

“This is the bathroom,” Winter says, sweeping her hand out in front of her. Cinder follows her indication with an unimpressed expression.

“Are you sure? It looks more like an empty closet.”

“What? Oh.” Winter glances between her and the door, eyebrows furrowing. It’s a good look on her; it makes her look cute, thoughtful. “It used to be the bathroom when I lived here. They made it into a closet when the last owners moved in.”

“Inconvenient,” Cinder says, trying her best not to sound belligerent. Her body is still warm, somewhere on these grounds. She could be back there, grieving her own loss of life at regular pace like a well-adjusted human, but Winter insisted.

Winter, who found her gasping and terrified and curled up in a ball next to the smoking wreck of her corpse. Winter, who has experienced about three emotions in the two hundred years since she died. Winter, who picked her up and took her to the house and told her it’s alright, you won’t be alone.

She can’t blame her, she supposes, even if it is a little bit fucking annoying.

It’s not like this is real life, anyway. She has to play a game, here, has to strategise. She can’t afford to lose Winter’s support. Not yet; not here.

“Inconvenient,” Winter agrees, floating up and down in time with the wind coming through the huge open windows in the hallway. “I’ve been here a long time. They keep changing things.”

“As homeowners do.” Cinder leans half past, half through her, peering into the closet. There’s a fine layer of dust on the floor. She takes some small satisfaction in knowing that she can’t disturb it. “How long have you been here?”

“A century and a half.”

Cinder jolts, stumbling a little. “What?”

Winter tilts her head to the side, like she doesn’t understand the question. “I died in 1872.” She taps a spot over the bullet hole in her chest. “It was a very famous murder case at the time. My sister was furious. Anyway, is there anywhere else in the house that you haven’t seen yet.”

She doesn’t even know what she was doing on the grounds, and she’s still stuck here for the rest of time. Cinder swallows thickly. “I think I want to go to bed.”

“That’s fair,” Winter says, “it’s been a long day for you. I’ll find you a bedroom.”

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