Archive | February 20, 2014

The Collar Job, Part V (Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction)

Feb20

Part I (and on LJ)

Part II (and on LJ)

Part III (and on LJ)

Part IV (and on LJ)

This is … what happens when you let me watch an entire season of Leverage in a week and a half. *cough* Tír na Cali/Leverage fanfiction crossover.

It’s written in an experimental style for me, and, well, it’s fanfic, so pls. be kind.

Fade in from commercial; the back of a well-dressed redhead, again, and Eliot, clenching his jaw.

“Now kneel.” The woman’s voice is like knives, sharp and cold. We can see from the side of her that she’s smiling, pleased with this. Eliot, on the other hand, is not.

“Fu-”

The electric sound fills the air again. Eliot’s hands twitch and once again clench into fists.

“Kneel.”

Eliot kneels.

“Very good. I knew you could be trained.” She pats his shoulder; he says nothing. His head is down; his hair loose in his face. “I wonder if she’ll cut that hair. A pity, if she does, but she likes the military sort.”

“She?” The woman’s hand hovers on the remote; Eliot adds a grudging “Ma’am?”

“My darling little sister.” The words could burn. “And she’s coming. Be quiet and behave yourself until she gets here.”

“Ma’am.” He nods his head again, letting his hair cover almost everything.

“Aah, Anastasia! I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come!”

Another redhead enters; we’ve seen her before, at the very beginning clip, but looking at her next to Alessia, they’re prince-and-pauper twins.

“Alessia.” Anastasia’s stance is careful, legs shoulder-width apart; she’s wearing loose pants and a silk tank top that gives her plenty of movement range. “How can I help you?”

“I got you a present. I saw him in the store, and I just couldn’t help myself!” Lady Alessia is gushing. Her voice is sickly-sweet and her smile is painted on. “This is Eliot. Isn’t he lovely?”

Eliot looks up at the sisters, his expression just short of murder.

The Office.

“So, we’re down to two options.” Nate is glaring at the computer screen. “Hardison found both cars-”

“Parts of both cars. Let me tell you, Eliot’s going to be pissed.”

“If you want to vanish, you break all your connections, everything that ever tied you to your persona. The car would be a big part of that.”

“He wouldn’t.” Sophie’s hands are tight on the table. “Would he?”

“That’s option number one. Option number two-”

“No. Nuh-unh. No way.” Parker is shaking her head, no, no, no. “Sophie…”

“Let him talk, Parker.”

“I don’t like it either, Parker, but we have to accept the possibility that he’s been taken by the Californians.”

“Then he’s dead.” Hardison’s voice is flat. “There’s no way Eliot would stand for that. He’d make them kill him.”

“There is a good possibility that he’s dead, yes. Hardison, can you hack the Californian databases?”

Tír na Cali

“Now, you two have fun.” Lady Alessia makes shooing gestures. “Go on, Anastasia, enjoy him.”

The pauper twin looks between the two of them, Lady and angry slave a couple times, then seems to come to a decision. She nods at Eliot. “Stand up and come with me.”

Cut to commercial.

Part IV – http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/678175.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/673541.html. You can comment here or there.

February Writing, a So-Far Summary

Feb20

The Last Summary

Question du Jour: If I was going to put together of new and previously-written stories about one character from the Addergoole ‘verse (or possible one pairing), who would you like to see?

Ideas for Longfics.
January Writing Status

Bingo, etc.

OrigFic Bingo
The Storm – Amaya in her Second Year, Addergoole
Outnumbered – Nila and Tros, Fae Apoc
Balancing the Odds – Addergoole pre-addergoole
What was Lost – Shahin, Post-apoc
Exhaustion – the Aunt Family

Trope Bingo
The Special Captive, Tír na Cali/Criminal Minds Crossover, au: crossover
Betting on It – Space Accountant, “Bets/Wagers”
Excerpt Taking the Journey
Excerpt Unwelcome Guests

Random Bingo
A Row!
Treacherous Sister, Aunt Family
Gone Rummaging

Bonus Round
He Couldn’t Fail

Addergoole for Fun

Fuzzy on the Details – Ankara drabble
A Character Bloodline Profile
Addergoole/Criminal Minds Part III
After School – Pania and Efrosin
Kai-Rozen Drabbles
more Kai-Rozen Drabbles
and more Kai-Rozen Drabbles

The Cat in the Window _ Wordless Wednesday

Edally Academy
Getting Ready: Enerenarie
Almost There: Enrie
Almost There: Tairiekie

Personal: Kitty and pipes
Personal: Kitty

Friday Show and Tell
Friday Show and Tell

February is World Building Month
Giraffe Call, A Summary

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/673441.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Call So Far: A Summary

Feb20

The Call

And so far my villainous stories:

What, He’s Got Two Legs (no Verse)
Hard Choices
The Good Fight

Bully for You, Addergoole Yr 15
Dance the Dance, Addergoole Yr 15
Addergoole Microbits
Planning – Regine, and her plans
Post-Apoc
Do-Gooders
By the Time Anyone Noticed
Back Around Again

Pirates & Bad People – Space/Accountant

The Church in the Park – Fairy Town

Tangles and Knots – Stranded World
Stranded in Winter

Blame Game – Superheroes and villains.
Bad Dialogue and other Problems – Superheroes and villains.
Through Biology!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/673050.html. You can comment here or there.

The Storm

Feb20

For @DaHob’s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “Storm” square.

Addergoole has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ; the original series lives here.

Amaya has shown up before in Don’t Cry, Baby.

“The storm is at your command. What do you do with it?”

Amaya turned to look at Professor Valerian. Stare, really.

“I make it rain, Professor.”

“No. You made it rain when you were a child. When you were beginning to be a student, you made it rain indoors. Now, Amaya -“

“It’s a year later?”

“And what have you learned in that year?”

Amaya stretched. “To be careful.” She wiggled her fingers. “To be very careful with things more fragile than I and with things more powerful than I. I’ve learned Words.” She let her favorite ones roll off her tongue. Yaku. Kaana. And of course Tempero.” Water, Air, and Control. “I can push the weather with those.”

“You can. And you’ve been studying meteorology under myself, Professor Pelletier, and Professor Kairos.” The professor was watching Amaya, her expression patient. Amaya dug deeper.

“I have.” She nodded slowly. “Which means that I can use Idu-” She didn’t like that word, the one that meant Know, as much as the others “-to understand the storm. I mean, if there was real weather here.”

“I did tell you to bring a jacket.” Professor Valerian was, for the first time, wearing a coat herself – it was brown, with a thick velvety texture to it.

“You did.” Amaya slipped into hers. She’d had to buy it from the Store; the Village, despite being in South Dakota, rarely got cold enough to justify such a thing, and Amaya had come from a home far more southern than this. It was sleek and blue, the color of rain on the water. “And I did.”

She knew better than to ask too many questions. Professor Valerian liked certain questions – but only certain ones.

“Good. Let’s go, then.” The professor began walking, and Amaya followed.

It wasn’t long before the Professor was murmuring something to thin air – not a Working, Amaya didn’t think, but something like an introduction – and they were stepping out of the semi-controlled environment of the Village.

And into weather. It tickled at Amaya’s skin and brushed at her lungs, teased her and taunted her and grabbed at her fingers. There were clouds in the sky and wind in the air; there was a thunderstorm waiting to happen, just on the edge of the horizon.

“So.” Professor Valerian was smiling. Somewhere, her hair had come undone, and it flickered out in wild curls. “The storm is at your command. What do you do with it?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672732.html. You can comment here or there.

Pick a Number, Pick my writing.

Feb20

I have a randomized list of 18 things to write (although some are duplicates because I really need to write them). This includes:

February Worldbuilding
Bonus Round
Inner Circle
Addergoole Book One
Edits
Long Fic One
Edally Gear-up
Rix’s commish
RocNano Submit

and so on.

I can probably write between 5 and 10 today, and I’m giving anyone around a chance to be my randomizer.

Pick a number between 1 and 18 and I will write that piece (or 250-500 words thereof), in the order of replies received.

1. Long Fic One (16) – here
2. Edally Gear-up (4)
3. 713 (7) – here
4. Orig-Fic Bingo (6) – here
5. Bonus Round (3)
6. Post Summary (17.9) – here! http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/673441.html
7. Addergoole Book One (15)
8.
9.
10.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/669078.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Nineteen: Fae Apoc

Feb20

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February, I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The ninteenth question comes from [personal profile] rix_scaedu and is for the Faerie Apocalypse

What happens to someone who’s Changed and cannot find or persuade an adult to Mentor them?

I… do not know. I honestly don’t.

There are certainly kids like Reegan in these two stories:
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/411653.html
http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/588052.html
who have trouble finding a Mentor – because their family or they themselves are disliked, because there are no older fae in the area, because they Change out of a line that hasn’t had a Change in long enough that nobody knows what to do, or because they Change away from anyone or everyone.

And I suppose it’s possible, especially a couple centuries pre-apocalypse or immediately post-apoc, when the human population and thus the fae population are so thinly spread, that a fae child thus Changed could go unnoticed.

If so, it is almost impossible (unless they are sequestered in a tower full of fae books) that they will develop any use of Words – and that is for the better, because without guidance, Workings can quickly become disastrous.

Without a Mentor to guide them into learning to Mask, they are likely to stick out like a sore thumb. They will either become a mythic figure, a monster, a freak (assuming enough of a Change to stick out, of course) – or they will be locked up, studied, stared at.

Their innate, if mild, will probably be entirely usable and controllable with practice. If they have a more excessive power – pyrokinesis, for instance, or storm-calling – they are likely to come back to “strange Change” above, to bringing way too much attention to themselves.

It’s likely, pre- or post-apoc, that they will eventually bring enough attention to themselves inadvertently, one way or another, and some fae will find them.

Then the question becomes: what are the intentions of that fae?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672382.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding Day 18: Fairy Town

Feb20

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.
Every day in February (or most days), I will answer one question about any one of my settings.
The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!
The eighteenth question comes from Kelkyag and is for Fairy Town

What made Fairy Town different?

Nobody knows!

Okay, that’s cheating, and also a lie.

Long before Fairy Town was Fairy Town (and, really, it is only Fairy Town to those in the know), it was a holy place; deep in the crossroads park that was, once, the center of a small town, there is a shrine.

There is, if you ask the right people, some disagreement as to who the shrine is to; there has always been disagreement over it, and if you dig into the dirt anywhere in that park, you will find bones, many of them humanoid.

What nobody argues about is that the shrine is a place of power.

It is not the only one in this variant of the world; indeed, when mankind first came here, there were many, like springs.

But, for as powerful as they are, there are many ways a place of power can be desecrated, blocked off, broken. And many of them were.

Others had cities grow up around them, as Fairy Town did. And in the cities growing up, some places locked the power into place with ancient and sometimes horrible magics, and some people bound the fae from entering with blood rituals and complex prayers, or, at least, things they thought were prayers.

(In a couple places, this was tried and did not succeed. In those cities, only those completely fae-blind and the nastiest of fae live, and those are not nice places at all).

In Fairy Town, the rituals did not take hold, and the place of power acted, as they all did, as a magnet for those who were fae, for those who had Faith, for those who were Strange and Wyrd. And without the rituals and call-them-prayers to hold the fae out… they just kept coming, and they settled.

And there they have been ever since.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/672076.html. You can comment here or there.

February is World Building Month. Day Sventeen (Catching up): Aunt Family

Feb20

[personal profile] piratekitten has declared February world-building month.

Every day in February (or most days), I will answer one question about any one of my settings.

The question post is here, please feel free to add more questions!

The seventeenth question comes from Kelkyag and is for The Aunt Family

What actually happens when someone becomes The Aunt?

It differs for every Aunt and differs with every branch of the family, but the basics of it remain more or less the same.

The entire family, out to the rare person the family has lost touch with who might not even know what an Aunt is, and right in to the sisters and mother of the Aunt (if they are still alive; the Aunts are often very long-lived), feels a snap of loss when the Aunt dies, no matter how far away they are; depending on the power of the Aunt, other branches of the family may feel it as well.

At that moment, the Aunt needs to have chosen a successor. If she has not – and that does happen on occasion – the power chooses someone itself. This can lead to… issues.

Assuming the Aunt has chosen a successor, the power does the psychic equivalent of knocking on said successor’s door; she has some sort of sensation, often likened to a very very large dog waiting patiently or, in more rare cases, to suddenly being under the crest of a wave about to fall.

It is always a question, however, always an invitation. The power does not invade without the soon-to-be Aunt’s consent.

But, again, if she says no – and a few have – the power chooses someone else. And, again, this can lead to problems.

Almost all members of the extended bloodline of the Aunt Family have some psychic power; the successor to the Aunt line usually has more than her fair share of what is called the Sight, the Skill, and the Spark.

This has been described as dialing that all up to eleven.

The power overwhelms the new Aunt for a moment – longer if she is not particularly strong, shorter if she is very strong – and then settles in. With it comes not so much memories as vague feelings accumulated through the years – there is no trace of the former Aunts in this, but there is, instead, memories the power has of the Aunts it has served.

And then it is hers, until she dies and the process begins again.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/671806.html. You can comment here or there.

*Flop*

Feb20

I left work sick on Monday and spent most of the time between then and now sleeping or feeling miserable.

Back nao.

In better news, Theo is feeling much better!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/671646.html. You can comment here or there.

I have Gone Bingo Mad

Feb20

au: crossover [au: space] locked in [au: alternate gender norms] [ hurt / comfort]
bets / wagers [unrequited love / pining] [ bodyswap] [ wingfic] [mind control]
matchmaker [ chosen family] [FREE
★
SPACE] 		[telepathy / mindmeld} [ coming out (of the closet)]
trapped in a dream [ transformations] [road trip] [au: fantasy] [power dynamics]
au: college / highschool [fork in the road] [ presumed dead] [meet the parents / family] [futurefic]

So [community profile] trope_bingo gave me a card…

As always, I WILL write the first prompt; after that, I’ll write at least one Bingo going out from that prompt and after that I’ll write as the mood hits or as I’m commissioned to continue.

Note: although this is primarily a fandom bingo, I’m writing original fic for all, because this is me. Trope Bingo’s Definitions.

My January Card, My December Card, and a couple bonus rounds are still open, too. I’d better get writing!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/637047.html. You can comment here or there.