Archive | March 2014

Episodes Cast List – **Names Needed Please**

Mar31

Okay, you guys have 24 hours to help me name these guys.

You’ve met Holly needs-a-last-name here: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/699732.html; she’s the Hacker

The Mentor: David needs-last-name
This gentleman stands just over 6′ tall. He looks to be in his early 60’s, just about retirement age.
He’s African-American, with dark brown skin; he keeps his hair cropped short, and the temples have gone white. He has smile lines, and worry lines, and little lines around his eyes. He likes to joke that he’s “older than he looks,” and it’s true; he has fae blood and is pushing 80.
He started this team as a one-man job in 1990, soon after the Surge (When magic started becoming terrifyingly common). It started when he watched the burgeoning social problems rising in the new magic-using and magic-being population, and sought to head off new racial tension issues before they could become entrenched.
He has a paternal protectiveness over the team and tends towards firm-but-kind management.

The Entry Specialist First-name Markov
This woman is slender and barely over 5′ tall. She has avoided sun her whole life and thus doesn’t quite look her early-40’s age. She’s got a dancer’s build, with wild ginger hair and an irrepressible smile. Her great-grandmother on one side was an immigrant from (undecided: Russia, or one of the Scandinavian countries), as was her grandfather on the other side. She was raised by her grandmother and an uncle when her mother realized she was deaf and refused to deal.
She was sliding into tight spaces and opening doors that could not be open before she graduated from high school; she has a fondness for “collecting” magical items. She wasn’t so much recruited as she informed The Mentor that he was going to hire her.

The Talker: Sônia McDonald–Desjardins
This woman appears to be in her mid-twenties. She comes from mixed ancestry- Brazilian on her mother’s side and considerably-mixed-Canadian-mutt on her father’s side – and has deep brown skin, black hair, and high cheekbones out of the mix. She stands a little taller than the Entry Specialist, about 5’6″ tall, and is very slender; she wears her hair cropped short and androgynous and likes to dress in a gender-ambiguous manner.
She has been a puma-shifter since she was bitten as a young child (two years after the surge), and is actually just about the age she appears. She was working as a lobbyist when the Mentor recruited her, after a 4-year polysci degree. She is bright, she is beautiful, but most of all she is immensely charismatic and a social chameleon.

The Hitter
Tentatively named Ted Connor.
Teddy is The New Guy. He’s only been working for the team for about a month; he is a job-bouncer, and the Mentor is not entirely certain he’s the best man for the job, but he has several qualities which could, with the right handling, make him a valuable member of the team.
He’s 5’10” tall, muscular, with very-short-cropped curly sandy brow hair, an upturned nose, and a light smattering of freckles, which he hates – his primary ancestry is Irish, with a bit of French and English thrown in for good measure.
He did his 4 years in the Army right out of high school, and in the two years since then has tried at least 6 jobs. He has EMT and combat medic training, and has worked as a security specialist and bodyguard, as well as as a personal trainer, nurse-assistant, and security guard.

Support staff to follow in the next few days.

The team also needs a name!

P.s. They’re an extralegal team devoted to dealing with/researching/defusing situations/possible crimes involving magic users, magical creatures, and fuzzy grey zones of law. I think Mentor and Talker probably do some lobbying work, too.
P.P.S. The First Surge – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_milestones#The_Day_of_5_billion

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/701205.html. You can comment here or there.

A Summary of Recent Writing

Mar28

Last Summary

Feedback Requested

Meme – pick-a-pairing
Fill in the Blank 1
Fill in the Blank 2
Giraffe Call Perks

Meta

February is World Building Month
Day 31 – Fae Apoc

March is Women’s History Month
Day 1 – Shahin
Day 2 – Kai
Day 4 – Rin
Day 5 – Regine

Written

Episodes
Character Sketch One – The Hacker
Cast List and Episodes Lists
A Start

Dragons Next Door
Biting the Foot

Addergoole
The Answer is No
These are Not the Things You’re Noticing

Fae Apoc-ish
With Words Like Magic

New Setting
A Place Description

Stranded
Untangling Knots
The Language of the Strands

FanFic, Really?
The Collar Job Part X
The Collar Job Part XI
The Collar Job, Deleted Scene
The Collar Job Part XII

Addergoole/Criminal Minds Xover

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/700995.html. You can comment here or there.

The Collar Job, Part XII

Mar28

Part I (and on LJ), Part II (and on LJ), Part III (and on LJ), Part IV (and on LJ), Part V (and on LJ), Part VI (and on LJ), Part VII (and on LJ), Part VIII (and on LJ), Part IX (and on LJ), Part X (and on LJ), Part XI (and on LJ), Deleted Scene (and on LJ)

This is … *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.

And now back to the plot

Fade in: Sophie, Hardison, Parker, and Nate are looking at the screens, standing shoulder to shoulder as Hardison flips through files.

“Dead – poisoning. Dead – pet tiger got her. Dead – slipped and fell off a balcony into a pool that happened to have a hair dryer drop into it. Seriously.” Hardison shakes his head. “Dead, assassin.”

“Well, that’s not even trying.” Sophie clucks. “Someone is picking off members of the family line here, aren’t they? This is a little crass even for California.”

“You’re telling me. The thing is – Alessia, Anastasia, and Adalia, they used to be the youngest three sisters.”

“So someone is cleaning up the line of succession.” Nate frowns.

“And there’s nothing saying it isn’t the girl who has our Eliot. Is that her?” Sophie shakes her head. “She looks common.”

“I think she looks pretty.” Parker is frowning. “Too pretty. But look at the way she’s standing, the way her hands are. Thief?”

“Parker, she’s royalty.”

“A moment ago she was common.”

“All right, all right you two. Nate, can’t you-?”

“Don’t look at me.”

“Right. So, she could be a thief, Parker, because we don’t know much at all about her. She did her mandatory two years in the service – “

“What, like Israel?”

“Pretty much exactly, except that their royals get a pass, they all do their FBI-like Agency. So there’s nothing about her service, anywhere. It’s all redacted. Everything.”

“What about the Agency servers?”

“Girl, you think I can just waltz into their secure servers?”

“Yes.”

“Well, good because I did. And there’s nothing there, either.”

“So, this girl, that owns – oh, I hate that word – that owns our Eliot right now, she’s a cipher, a blank page.”

“Does that mean we can scribble on her?” Parker smiles.

Sophie’s smile in return is unkind. “Oh, yes. We are going to scribble in all of her margins.”

~

Eliot wakes tied to Anastasia’s bed; the petite redhead is curled on top of him, her head on his shoulder, the curve of her body figleafing both of them. He twitches, but she’s got him bound pretty well. “Ana,” he whispers, and then, a little louder, “Anastasia.”

He twitches against the ropes when she doesn’t wake, and says her name a little louder. “Ana… your Ladyship.” Her shoulder twitches but she says nothing. “Damnit…” He twists until he can see the ropes binding his wrists and then, with a soft grunt and trying not to move much, he starts to twist out of the bindings.

Ana’s eyes open, but she says nothing; she watches him for a moment and then closes her eyes as Eliot manages to finish untying his first wrist.

Cut to commercial.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/700738.html. You can comment here or there.

The Collar Job, Deleted Scene

Mar28

Part I (and on LJ), Part II (and on LJ), Part III (and on LJ), Part IV (and on LJ), Part V (and on LJ), Part VI (and on LJ), Part VII (and on LJ), Part VIII (and on LJ), Part IX (and on LJ), Part X (and on LJ), Part XI (and on LJ).

This is … *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.

(this one is a Deleted scene between parts XI and XII. It is far less prime-time safe than the rest of the fic)

~~ Deleted Scene ~~

Lady Anastasia stands, her feet spread shoulder-width apart, her hands loose at her sides, knees slightly bent. In contrast to Lady Alessia, she’s wearing loose pants and a cami; her hair is in a loose ponytail.

She’s looking at Eliot, who hasn’t moved from his chair since she changed his collar, replacing the shock collar with something light and gold. He’s looking at her. His hands are loose in his lap, his feet flat on the ground.

“Tie me up.” When he speaks, it’s sudden and harsh; she rolls forward on her toes.

“What?” Her hands tighten and loosen, not quite making fists. “I just took the cuffs off.“

“Look…” He rolls his head and tries again. “Look… Lady Anastasia… I make you nervous. I get that. So tie me up.”

“How am I going to tie a specialist like you so that you can’t just use it as a weapon?” She’s rolling forward on her feet again: thinking about something.

“Tie me to your bed.” Eliot holds his hands out, baring his wrists. “If it’s that thing over there, I can’t break it.”

“Why?” She steps forward, stops again. “I just got the shock collar and the cuffs off. You fought them the whole time.” With his wrists up, the chafe marks are obvious.

“That wasn’t the cuffs. That was her.“ He steps up, and Lady Anastasia lands back abruptly onto her heels. “You’re being nice. Polite. I like it. And you’re frightened of me.”

“If I tie you to my bed…” She smirks at him. “It’s going to raise different issues.”

Eliot smiles. “You were straddling me a minute ago.”

“That I was.” She watches him as her smile slides back off her face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“I’m always serious. Are you?”

She licks her lips, and then, reaching a decision, takes a step back and gestures at the bed. “You first.”

He doesn’t say anything, letting his actions speak for him.

Her bed is a monstrosity of wrought-iron, metal shaped like trees twisting up to the ceiling. Nobody makes her bed; the sheets are tossed near the footboard, and the pillows are in disarray.

Eliot lays down on the bed, shifting until he’s comfortable, and reaches over his head, grabbing the headboard with both hands. “Looks like it’s made for it.”

“It probably was.” Anastasia straddles his stomach; somewhere between her sitting room and her bed she’s gotten a looped length of blue nylon rope. “You will tell me if anything is unpleasant, uncomfortable, or unwanted.”

He smirks at her. “Yes, Lady Anastasia.”

It gets an embarrassed chuckle, which it was supposed to, and gets her moving with the rope, which it was also supposed to.

She pulls his pants off before she ties his ankles, leaving him spread-eagled across her white sheets. She hesitates for a moment when he’s tied, a bandanna in her hands.

“Do it.” He leans forward, straining against the ropes. “Go ahead.” He winces. “…Lady Anastasia.”

“How long did my sister have you?” She folds the bandanna carefully and ties it over his eyes.

“I don’t know. A week?” He can’t shrug, tied as he is, but he moves against the ropes. The bedframe doesn’t move.

“Mmm. Let me make it up to you?” She reaches over and turns off the lamp.

“Whatever you want.”
~~ End Deleted Scene ~~

Part the next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/700738.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/700461.html. You can comment here or there.

With Words Like Magic, a rather odd story

Mar28

This was written for [personal profile] jjhunter‘s prompt in return for the purchase of Dreamwidth paid time. It’s… a little weirder than I intended.

It was raining, the water coming sideways at gale speeds. Strange for it to be raining tonight, to give Cassna the cover of the storm when she most needed it.

She didn’t bother with an umbrella. In this weather, it was worse than useless. Instead, she murmured a poem, not even bothering to be quiet about it; nobody could hear her. There was nobody to hear her; aside from the hobo crouched under an overhang, the street was empty.

“Yaku, kanaa, blow,” she murmured,
“Tempero thýella, pass,
“Move past me tonight.” She skipped three times in the blowing storm and finished the verse.
“Swing your stormwinds around me,
round and sideways but not here.”

She bowed to the storm as the winds slipped around her – sideways and upwards, as the storm was pressing harder, but no longer touching her.

With a modicum of protection against the weather, the storm was actually a boon. There was no-one but the hobo to see her, nobody to wonder why she was stepping out of the doctor’s office at eight at night. There was nobody to stop her, and that, more than anything, is what Cassna needed right now.

She turned off of Monroe and on to Alexander, bracing herself against the wind. There was only so much a poem could do, when the whole world was distilled down to the wind and the rain.

There was one hobo sitting on the porch of an abandoned house, and a sad street cat hiding under the same porch. A third hobo. Once is an accident. Twice is coincidence. Three times… She ducked a curtsy at the hobo and murmured a couplet of luck at the cat.

The cat mewed in response, probably just at the attention – there were cats who spoke the language of magic, and a few who spoke of poetry, but rarely were they combined, even more rarely than in human-likes.

Alexander slid into Clinton with another turn, towards the city. There was a bum watching her from the shelter of a bus stop, and three big yellow toms perched atop the same shelter.

Cassna nodded politely at them. What was four times, then? No longer a coincidence, that was certain, even in this weather.

In this lucky weather.

“My footprints are wind, my path is the sky.
My inscrutable ways should be given a bye.”

She whispered the couplet under her breath, wincing at the stretch that the last line was, and twisted her way into the path of the wind.

Three dance steps put her an inch above the ground; a twist and a pirouette turned her down one street while her reflection cha-cha’d down a second. She was three blocks from her goal, and she had to get there before the storm truly hit. A tanka could hold off some rain, but not a hurricane.

The bridge over the 490 was tricky in the blowing wind. Cassna held onto the railing and skipped herself across, murmuring haikus about the bird’s flight.

She made it to Court Street buffeted only by flying newspapers and, once, a banana peel, turned left there and nearly stopped her dance at the sight of a hobo leaning against a lightpole. Leaning against a lightpole and looking straight at her, however impossible that might be. But she’d gone far past coincidence and far past enemy action.

“It’s far to dire to be outdoors; you should find shelter somewhere warm.” She pressed the first bill that came to hand into the hobo’s chapped fingers.

He looked at the bill, pocketed it, and looked back at her. “So should you, little bird, so should you.”

“There’s a place to be and I have to be there, nothing to see,” she shrugged, “nothing to see here.”

“Indeed. Inside and warm.” He half-bowed and slipped into the parking garage.

Strange. The world was strange and the weather was getting only stranger. Cassna skipped and swirled, getting the feel of the storm again and the feel of the poem still holding the edges of the rain off of her.

The poem-spell was wavering and the storm was growing. She had to hurry. She cut across the street, twisted twice to still the storm for a moment, and turned onto South Ave with a hop-skip and a jump.

Between the two sandstone faces of the Library, the storm seemed to still. Cassna tilted her head to the sky and breathed in slowly.

“Here we stand,”
She reached her arms up to the storm.
“Hand to hand,”
She let the air dance around her, picking her off her feet.
“Far from land,”
A twist, a swirl, and a bow to the storm.
“Knowing songs like fire,
“Knowing love like water,
“Knowing Magic like poems,
“Knowing always
“Here we stand.”

She found herself on her feet again, and bowed once more. The bow was deep, and showed her a hobo watching, his hands in his pockets. The rise was a flourish, and showed her another, at the far end of the block.

A pirouette showed that their numbers were growing; three on each end. No coincidences. Not when you were in the midst of a poem.

“You’re surrounded,” the tallest informed her. Cassna only smiled.

“Yes, I am.”

“You have something we want.” All of them stepped forward. The oldest-looking one had his hand out, beckoning, suggesting. He looked like he was calling a feral cat.

It wasn’t the worst analogy. Cassna nodded at him, not losing track of the others. “Yes, I do.” She touched her pockets.

“You will give it to us now.” Again, they stepped closer. Now the skinniest one was reaching out to her, too. He’d been the first she’d seen, back on Monroe Ave. No coincidences.

“No.” She took a step, not going anywhere, just the first step in a dance.

“You have no choice.” They were nearly close enough to touch her now, and all of them reaching out for her. “You are surrounded.”

“There is always a choice.” Cassna threw out one hand to the Library building which hunched out over the river, her other hand out to the new building, its sandstone still bright and yellow. “I am surrounded,” she agreed. “With words like magic.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/700235.html. You can comment here or there.

Memmmme for a Friday

Mar28

Stolen from Tumblr

1) Give me a pairing.

2) Give me an AU setting.

3) I will write you a three-sentence fic.

(Any pairing from any of my ‘verses, any fandom I know enough about to take a stab at characterization, or any X of any of those)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/700027.html. You can comment here or there.

Character Sketch One for Episodes: The Hacker

Mar28

The kid Genius/Hacker/cleric
Holly (needs a last name)

No, sorry, it’s not like that. But if you can show me proof to the contrary, I’ll consider it.

Holly is a voracious consumer of knowledge in all its forms, and has been her entire short life.

Nineteen as the story starts, she was sat on her parents’ laps in front of computers at the tender age of four, and has been at a keyboard ever since.

She denies claims that she’s a prodigy, despite the fact that she is working towards her doctorate in robotics at the moment.

She found fandom and cosplay very early, coming by it honestly – her parents having taken her to Darkovercon when she was 2 months old. She enjoys anime as well as many of the modern sci-fi/fantasy TV shows, writes fanfic in her spare time, and has a vibrant social life online.

She identifies as bisexual but has yet to find someone who she values enough, whose sexuality lines up properly with hers, to engage in anything further than necking with IRL.

She maintains several discrete identities online and three IRL, not counting her forays into MMORPGs.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/699732.html. You can comment here or there.