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yurishippingolympics2024-07-16 11:56 pm
a1c0bb) wrote in yurishippingolympics2024-07-16 11:56 pm
Entry tags:
Character A prefers to compete as an individual when Character B is trying to convince them to join a team.
To: Winter Schnee (w.schnee@atlas.edu)
From: Weiss Schnee (w.schnee@remnant.com)
Dear Winter,
Have you Dr Fall’s response to your paper? She’s been alleging that your sources are unreliable to anyone who’ll listen. I tried to get Emerald to talk her out of it but she’s determined to attract your attention.
Your loving sister,
Weiss
[attachment - C.Fall Aura Theory]
//
To: Cinder Fall (c.fall@salem.edu)
From: Emerald Sustrai (e.sustrai@salem.edu)
Both Weiss and I think it would be a bad idea to publish your paper as it is. I’ve never met Winter in my life, but I’m taking Weiss’s word for it when she says she’s terrifying. I don’t think she’ll let you live it down and it’s possible you’ll take a significant hit to your reputation if she’s feeling particularly spiteful. Remember, she comes from old money and she was practically born with a pen in her hand. I don’t think it’s right that she could ruin you, but it’s something we should probably be keeping in mind.
Your friend,
Em
To: Cinder Fall (c.fall@salem.edu)
From: Mercury Black (mercuryyyyyy@remnant.com)
girl are you sure about this
//
To: Weiss Schnee (w.schnee@remnant.com)
From: Winter Schnee (w.schnee@atlas.edu)
Good evening.
I have seen, and I’m taking the steps to prove her wrong. As much as I hate to admit it, she brings up several important points. I should have taken more care with the construction of my paper — her criticisms are mostly linguistic loopholes. Fortunately, I’ve been reading some of her other work and I take issue with how she conceives of Aura regeneration, so I think it’s at least worth discussing in an academic setting. :)
Your loving sister,
Winter
//
weiss has sent an image
weiss: so
this bodes well
em: oh my g-d
oh no lol
weiss: i’ve never seen her do that in my life ever
it’s like a train of thought she typed out and hit enter on
she drafts every email like she’s drafting a war-ending memo
and she put a fucking smiley face on it
i think she might actually kill cinder
im so sorry in advance
em: nah she kinda asked for it
weiss: well if it’s any consolation i think she’ll leave a body
merc (third wheel): at least leave her a career at the end
my g-d
u were right shes terrifying
weiss: i love her so much but she has never heard of doing things in moderation
she may actually just drive to cinder’s house and stab her
//
To: Emerald Sustrai (e.sustrai@salem.edu)
From: Cinder Fall (c.fall@salem.edu)
lol. what’s the worst she can do? she’s an annoying prick and she deserves to be reminded that she’s not above criticism. i am not above publishing academic essays out of spite
To: Cinder Fall (c.fall@salem.edu)
From: Emerald Sustrai (e.sustrai@salem.edu)
Well, it was nice knowing you. Mercury sends his condolences.
Your friend,
Em
Edited 2024-07-25 21:50 (UTC)
“Oh my G-d,” Cinder says loudly the moment Winter walks through the door, “leave me alone.”
Winter stops with her hand on the doorknob. She glances between Cinder crouched on the kitchen table and Emerald curled under it, then back to her car outside. When her gaze returns to the two of them — and they really do look like a pair of guilty children — her eyes have hardened. “No,” she says, and drops her backpack on the floor.
Cinder feels for something on the table she can launch at Winter’s head and comes up empty. Curse her lack of foresight. She should have known Winter would be here; they always find the same places, always manage to show up at the same times, and it would be a lot less annoying if Winter weren’t actually hired to investigate —
“We should probably go,” Emerald whispers from under the table. She’s right, technically. Winter is part of Atlas’s paranormal investigation department, which means that she’s a cop for hire who goes around abandoned buildings and shouts loudly in case the ghosts can hear her. If she’s got her hands on a case, it means Cinder and Emerald (who have been hunting ghosts since before people actually cared enough to report it to the police, thank you very much) technically are here illegally, and it means Winter could have them arrested for trespassing on a crime scene.
Technically.
Cinder wouldn’t put it past Winter, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s too much of a coward to report her. She leans over the edge of the table until she can catch a glimpse of Emerald’s face and shakes her head, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Nah, she’ll just have to suck it up. She likes it when I’m her competition.”
“I can hear you,” Winter shouts from down the corridor. At some point she must have taken what she needed out of her bag and scuttled off. Cinder hops off the table so she doesn’t continue to look stupid in front of her ex-something and pokes her head into the corridor to look for her.
“If you can hear me,” she challenges, “why don’t you stop me? Tell me to fuck off?”
“Cinder,” Emerald hisses from the kitchen. Cinder ignores her.
Winter has made her way into the living room and is setting up her equipment already, shoulders hunched forward like she can hide the movement of her hands from view. She doesn’t even look up when Cinder comes in, just asks, “So, what have you found?”
Cinder blinks. She was expecting a lot more of a fight than that. “Probably just a standard kid haunting. The house was owned by an old couple who lost one of their daughters young.”
Winter nods decisively. “That matches the reports I’ve been given. Any luck establishing contact?”
Cinder gestures to herself, scowling. ”What do you think, Miss Professional?”
There’s a glimmer of challenge in her eyes when she glances up. “I’ve got three days to get this girl out. Are we working together or apart?”
Cinder doesn’t even have to think. “Apart,” she says, and Winter’s answering smile lights up the whole room.
Cinder has long resigned herself to another boring week of easy kills. She sits in the back of the waiting room while she listens to Mercury mop up another idiot convict and counts the paces of a space she knows by heart, imagining the give of flesh under her blade —
And this is why she hardly looks up when the gate at the back of the room opens and a woman is shoved through. She only realises there’s another person in the waiting area when the woman sits down next to her — not even opposite, next to, like she isn’t practically the only decent warrior in the whole city — and starts plaiting her own hair.
Cinder glances up from the dirt floor and finds her looking back, wide-eyed and curious. It isn’t a good look on her; she has the kind of serious blue eyes you only find on nobles who think the weight of the world rests on their shoulders. She takes the whole image of her in — white hair, scars, pristine tunic, sword in hand — and she has to laugh, just a little.
The woman stares at her, and then glares. It’s a good glare. “What?”
“Sorry,” Cinder says, still laughing, “but you? What are you here for?”
She bristles. “I’m here because I’m good.”
“And that’s why your tunic is stainless.”
She turns the sword in her hand so it catches the light filtering in through the slats in the roof. There are nicks and dents in the surface, a lifetime of wear and tear that could only come from someone who knows how to use it. Cinder eyes it, then her.
“You’re Cinder, aren’t you,” she says, like she already knows. “My name is Winter. Who are you scheduled for?”
Cinder shrugs, determined not to be surprised by the forwardness. Nothing is supposed to surprise her anymore, not really. “I don’t know his name. Some convict they got in the other day. Mercury is killing his friend now.” She tilts her head towards the chaos outside, the noise of the crowd roaring as a body strikes something hard.
Winter winces visibly. “I’m supposed to be killing him.”
That’s awfully forward, but Cinder doesn’t think about it. She doesn’t think about much, these days. The noise from the crowd swells, then cuts off: this is her cue.
She rises to her feet, sword in hand. “Do me a favour and let him live. He’s the most interesting person here.”
Winter stares at her back as she walks to the gate. Cinder shrugs the force of her gaze off. “And would you extend the same sympathy to me?”
“I’d at least consider it. You’re hot,” she says, and the gate rolls open.
"Anything you can do I can do better- I can do anything better than you~"
A poltergeist that WILL be acknowledged and a skeptic intent on debunking the phenomena.
2 collectors but there's only one new [blank] left in stock!
oh i LOVED this. sara berry as kira makes so much sense and i'm always happy to see more sara/julie content in the world!! also oh my god what an insane coincidence, i first heard the ballad of sara berry from this animatic and the creator would later go onto make an animatic to hurricane from death note the musical. the death note sara berry connection runs deep...
Cinder starts banging furiously on the walls of the cell the moment the door closes. Winter watches her from her bed with a kind of detached curiosity. Her eyes are far too tired for her stare to burn.
It takes her more than half an hour to get sick of it, too. A new record. After the fourteenth attempt to fry the locking mechanism on the paneling with her Grimm arm fails miserably, Cinder whirls on her — it’s the only thing she can think to do, and there’s no one else in the cells with them.
Her anger dies almost immediately, if only because of how pathetic Winter looks like this. Still, it doesn’t stop her from snarling wordlessly and slamming her non-Grimm, non-electrocuted arm straight into the paneling between them. Winter doesn’t even flinch, just stares pitifully.
The fight drains out of her, too. Cinder sinks to her knees in front of the wall of her cell and digs her claws into the floor, just for something to do. Winter stares blankly at the top of her head.
Breath scrapes out of her, picks up in time with her heart pounding in her ears. Does she even have a heartbeat in her Grimm arm? Does it matter? Is the whole of her going to be Grimm one day? Does that matter, either? It was supposed to matter. Does any of it —
“Cinder, if you panic you’ll burn the whole place down.”
Cinder’s head snaps up without her telling it to. She finds Winter’s eyes through the blue paneling and glares, snarls wordlessly again. There’s the assumption of indignation there, enough of a threat to deter her from saying something again.
Winter stares back evenly, expectantly. Awaiting a response.
Her fingers curl into the metal floor. Winter makes a soft disapproving noise that dies in her throat. If she wants a response, Cinder decides, she’ll have to work for one; there’s no way she’s stooping low enough to let Winter g-ddamn Schnee look at her with even a shed of sympathy —
She sighs heavily, folding her arms over her chest. “You’ll be pleased to know we’re going to fall out of the sky anyway. So you can make it worse, if you want. We’re both dying here.” Her eyes narrow. “Salem isn’t coming to save you.”
Fire curls from Cinder’s mouth, wreathes her head in smoke. “You’d better pray she doesn’t.”
Winter scowls. “You’d better pray General Ironwood doesn’t decide to have you executed before we hit the ground.”
“Oh, please. We both know he’ll execute you first.”
She stiffens. At least, Cinder thinks she does, and she’d much rather run with that assumption than leave a blow hanging between them.
//
The city falls slowly. Cinder crawls up onto the bed in her cell to watch it happen, letting smoke bleed from the corners of her mouth. Underneath her, the floor shudders and groans as mechanisms fight to correct themselves, and Winter starts to smile.
“What?” Cinder snaps once, when the look on her face gets too smug to bear.
Winter’s eyes flick over to her. She really does have an intense stare. “They succeeded.”
“Who?”
“The kids,” she says, sounding proud, sounding triumphant. “They’ll either kill or save us all.”
That ignites something — strange in Cinder’s gut. She stares through Winter, stares through the flickering cell paneling and the hazy dying overhead lights, and finds her body moving. Finds something tight in her hands, something curling in her chest, something —
“Cinder,” Winter says sharply, “Cinder, don’t—”
The wall explodes outward, blue fragmenting into nothing, metal twisting. Winter lurches backward and vanishes behind her bed. Cinder watches her with a kind of distant fury, something violent and desperate unwinding through her fingers, bleeding white and red and black.
//
Winter carries Cinder’s unconscious body up through the empty halls of the Academy until she finds a portal. There’s movement on the other side: people running, flares of colour. Weiss, she thinks, surely Weiss.
She rubs soot from her eyes and holds Cinder closer. And then, terrified, she runs.
“She’s making a competition out of stealing from us,” Winter mutters. “We need to increase security. I need to find — give me about twelve hours and I’ll have a full report of our weak areas. I’ll find — I’ll — Weiss, where’s my flashlight?”
Weiss shrugs. “Where it always is. Why are you pacing?”
“Cinder Fall called me,” she says urgently. It doesn’t really have the effect she’s hoping for; Weiss rolls her eyes and gives up trying to count how many times she’s crossed the room, turning away. “She directly admitted her intentions. I have a recording of the conversation and proof that it came from her, all I need is to —”
“Or maybe,” Weiss says patiently, “we move the painting to a second location and put one of the thirty-five — sorry, thirty-six alternate versions you commissioned for this exact purpose in its place. And then, we track her and wait to see what she does with it. How long do you think we have?”
Winter paces faster. Weiss sighs audibly. “She called me from her apartment at 3:14. She lives approximately half an hour away by foot, but she won’t come by foot because that is, objectively, fucking stupid. She’ll attempt to infiltrate after closing hours because she knows I’m a night guard. I —”
“I’ll call Ruby,” Weiss announces.
“Please don’t call Ruby.”
“I’m going to call Ruby.”
Weiss steps out of the room before Winter can stop her and pulls out her phone. The sounds of her protest follow her into the corridor.
Ruby picks up on the third ring. “Hello, Curator.”
Weiss rolls her eyes at empty air. “Hello, Huntress-in-Chief. Winter is —”
“I can hear you!”
“ — Winter is asking if you wouldn’t mind bringing a few of your lot down here, preferably within the next thirty minutes or so —”
“I am very distinctly not.”
“ — and taking up stations where she directs you to.”
Ruby sighs, long and hard, on the other end of the line. “Really? Three minutes before my shift ends?”
“Really,” Weiss says sternly. “She’s convinced someone is trying to rob us. Do you think I was going to go to the police instead?”
Ruby hums. “You are my best-paying customer. Okay, I’ll round a few people up.”
Weiss hangs up before she can start teasing her and walks back into her office. Winter is, somewhat predictably, taking measurements of the windows. She doesn’t even have the presence of mind to look ashamed about it.
Weiss folds her arms, raises an eyebrow. “What are you doing?”
Winter’s tape measure clicks back into itself. “Taking measurements,” she says, like it’s obvious.
AHHH THANK YOU!!!! and oh my god that's insane i've literally watched that hurricane animatic… people will see Absolutely Perfect Teenagers Who Also Do Murder Sometimes Maybe A Lot and go is anyone going to animate that and not wait for an answer
(also a little bit of shameless self-promo but i did write more sara/julie for bonus round 1…)
Face Off Cinderella AU (fictional elimination style cosmetics artist gameshow from the webtoon "Make-up Remover")
volleyball au *cough* haikyuu *cough*
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