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Crushes, a drabble of Doomsday for @inspectorCaracal

May3

Transcribed as best as I could manage from talking-to-myself on the way home last night. All new students.

“Well, I’m going to be cy’Lightning. It’s obvious I’m meant to have Professor Inazuma as my Mentor.” Hadley leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.

Her friends were not quite as charmed.

“Because you want to stab people with sharp things?” Farina giggled at the idea.

“Because you’re going to be really good with lightning?” Aquilo raised sculpted eyebrows.

“Because you’re really fascinated by Old-Japan history?”

“No!” Hadley sulked. “No, because he’s lovely and I am destined to be closer to him, that’s why.”

“Oh, come on.” Aquilo tsked, smirking. “It’s obvious he’s gay.”

“You don’t know that! Just because you like him…!”

“No, he’s not my sort. And come on, it’s – you know. You know know, when you’re gay.”

“Oh, good. More of your magical gay powers.” Farina grumbled. “Next thing we know, you’re going to be levitating the professors.”

“Well, I might,” Aquilo tsked. “I haven’t Changed yet. But look, he’s gay.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Keala shook her head. “Haven’t you seen him with Professor Cynara? They’re obviously together.”

“No. They’re not. He’s gay.” Aquilo sighed irritably. “Why can’t you accept that?”

“Haven’t you met Maihallr? She’s Professor Inazuma’s daughter with Professor Doomsday. And it’s not like Sweetbriar is quiet about her family, and she’s Professor Cynara and Professor Inazuma’s granddaughter. They have two generations of children together. Two Generations. They’re obviously in love.” Keala shook her head, as if at everyone’s idiocy.

“Uh! What does this have to do with me being cy’Lightning? I mean, come on. It’s not like the rest of you don’t like professors, too.” Hadley threw herself backwards in the chair in frustration. “Come on, Farina. Admit it.”

“Well… I mean. Yeah. Professor Chthon. Have you seen him? Or heard him?”

“Mmm.” It was a group sound: Professor Chthon was gorgeous, with a deep, throaty voice.

“And Aquilo?” Hadley pushed.

“Oh, you all know. Professor Aegislaw.” He shook his head sadly.

“But isn’t he…” Farina’s gesture was unclear, but everyone knew what she meant.

Aquilo sighed. “Yes. So very very straight. But that doesn’t mean I can’t lust after him. I mean, come on, it’s not like either of you have a chance for anything serious, either, with the Professors – even if Professor Inazuma somehow isn’t gay. Or in love with Professor Doomsday.” He shrugged defensively and flailed in the only direction left. “What about you, Keala?”

“Not a professor.” She hunched her shoulders. “Not into that. Too old. I mean, come on, you said it. Professor Inazuma and Professor Doomsday have two generations of kids. They’re a bit older than we are.”

“Then who?” Hadley was still sulking, but she was leaning forward again. “Come on, Kee, everyone else told, and you always keep so many secrets. Come onnnn.“

It was Keala’s turn to flop back in her chair. “Ejnar,” she muttered under her breath. “Ejnar cy’Underground.”


[personal profile] inventrix wrote this piece “as a thematically similar partner” to the above story. 😀 😀 😀

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/932438.html. You can comment here or there.

A Job Offer, a story of Doomsday Academy

Mar27

“You tore the city down?” Ric’s voice was the tone usually used for discovering someone had murdered a pile of babies.

The woman in front of him held up both hands placatingly. “We took pictures. We took pictures of everything and I used a flyer to get photos from the air. And everything written was saved and put in the library. There’s some artifacts you might find interesting in our museum – that is, if you take the job.”

They were back to the job again. “Why me?” Ric frowned. The woman spread her hands in an expressive shrug; Ric plowed on. “I mean, you said that your power could find anything. I can understand that.” Finding your missing pen didn’t register as all that strange; Ric, it seemed, could grant wishes. “But why me? There have to be plenty of teachers in the world, even Ellehemaei teachers – even teachers from Addergoole.”

For a split second, it seemed as if the woman was blushing. She coughed and looked away. “I know your father.”

“…that’s nice. I mean, I don’t.” He’d met his father – four times now, if his count was right. That was different from knowing him.

“I Kept your father. I’ve Kept quite a few people, over the years. One a year, more or less, since my second year. So… quite a few.”

Ric’s mother had been Twelfth Cohort, his father something earlier. He’d lost track of the years, but he was pretty sure they were somewhere in the late 30’s or early 40’s of Cohorts now. If this woman was older than his father… “That’s quite a few Kept. So, again… why me?”

“Well, ‘child of someone I’ve Kept, who happens to have the skills I need, might be interested in the job, and could benefit from it’ – that’s a pretty refined search to start with. And I mayyyy have,” she dragged the word out, and again Ric thought he might see a blush, “limited it to only a few of those Kept. My favorites, as it were.”

“That’s a pretty specific power you have.”

“I’ve pushed its limits. I like pushing its limits.” She smiled brightly. “You don’t have to answer today, you know.” Her smile slipped easily back into a professional expression.

“You brought a teleporter today.”

“Well,” she looked back to where her teleporter was waiting, reading a book and seeming to pay them no mind, “he does make things easier.”

Ric looked her over again. She was clean, her (dyed-red) hair, her fingernails, her clothes. Her clothes looked new, too, brightly colored and with no patches or thin spots anywhere. She looked rich. “Does this job pay?”

She grinned at him, as if she knew she had him. Well, she probably did. “That all depends on what currency you want to get paid in.”

Ric is Athanaric; he is the son of Hroderich, who I don’t see in any stories except as a mention (Cya Kept him directly before Pellinore. Hroderich is a grandson of Aelfgar (as is Howard; Leo is Aelfgar’s son; Aelgifu is his daughter… Aelfgar has a lot of kids…)

Also new Djinni Icon!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/915665.html. You can comment here or there.

Intro to Doomsday: Thirds

Nov22

Cya leaned against the wall and stared blankly at her office. The principal’s office, ha, and how much time had she spent there growing up, a lifetime and a world and kids, grand-kids, and great-grandchildren ago.

“This is the year.”

The boy – man, give him that – at the desk didn’t look up. He was shuffling papers, and probably regretting ever talking to the redhead leaning on Maureen’s fence. “Which year? It’s the eighth year of an eight-grade school. It’s a full roster year.”

He might not even know. “It’s the year my granddaughter – mine and Leo’s – comes to school.”

That caught his attention. “You and Leo, err, Lightning-Blade? Inazuma?”

Cya didn’t mean to chuckle, but the look was so – so very. This one was so much more thoughtful than so many of the boys she’d Kept, so much more serious. And he still got that look.

It was different than the Howard look, she mused. But then again, she’d never had a child with Howard.

Yet. They were still young, as fae went. There were always possibilities.

The boy – man – her Kept recovered quickly. “I thought Leo was… I didn’t think you two had…”

“He is and we didn’t.” It had stopped hurting when she said that. Hell, she’s known that before she’d known she was in love with him. “But we’re fae. We have two children together, Viddie and Mai. And Viddie’s third child is Sweetbriar.”

“Oh!” He glanced at the roster. “Sweetbriar… sh’Ce’Rilla, that’s a mouthful.”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “Orlaith – ‘Rilla’s mother – tells me when she & Silas had her third, she told him ‘no punctuation.’ Some people have strange ideas of appropriate names.”

“Like Cyndequil?”

“Like Cyndequil.” She patted his head. “How your father even- That’s another matter. Like that.”

Quill – he of the unfortunately Pokemon name – shrugged it off. “So – your granddaughter?” He did the math. “Your first one not promised to Addergoole.” He did some more math. He was good with math, after all. “It makes me wonder…”

Quill might look like so many of the other boys she had collared over the years, but she had chosen him for far different reasons. Cya let him think. He usually ended up somewhere interesting.

He shot her a look that was half guilty and half pensive. “…maybe I ought to start thinking about my own third.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/852946.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday: Discussing the Student List (@inventrix, @skysailor99)

Nov21

I hope I got him right I hope I got him right

“Solon? Solon Dragon-Chaser?” Leo was leaning over Cya’s shoulder, looking at her list of parents-of-potential-students. “Solon Dragon-Chaser, hunh. Surprised he’s still alive.”

“The people in the town he’s in called him Scholar Solon.”

“Yeah. Heh.” Leo leaned back, smiling. “We called him that, too, or Doctor Solon. He had always read a book on something, whatever we were fighting.”

Cya resisted taking notes. “What happened to him?”

“He went off to one of those enclaves, you know, the ones in the middle of the old cities? Up north somewhere, I think. Something about a woman.” Leo trailed off, staring off into space.

Cya didn’t know what to do when he did that, had never known, so she did what had served her well for decades: ignored it. “The clerk in their town – it’s a farm town now, one of the ones that stayed out of the war and pretty much didn’t change except the walls?”

“Mmm.” Presumably, Leo had seen those, but, just as presumably, some place that bordered itself against gods and bandits alike had not been high on his visiting rota when he’d been monster-hunting. Cya didn’t like to ask, and so she didn’t.

“Well, the clerk was very helpful. I told him I was looking up family that had gotten scattered.” It was a story that served her well in some towns, the ones less scarred and thus less suspicious. “She’ll be ten in July.”

“Solon Dragon-Chaser’s daughter?” Leo grinned. “Yes!”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/852516.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday – Picking

Nov20

OKay, so far I have five intros:

The Birds, the Birds
Chaos & Madness
I’ll Take This One
Pick a Card
Leaving Home

Still taking character trait prompts Here.

I also have Sianna, Sweetbriar, and Austin the Samurai Catboy. (Sianna’s intro here).

2 and three might be the same character, in which case I still need one more. 4 is a boy, and also the trickster good with magic. 5 is probably dark-skinned and either blonde or blue-eyed.

I have these suggestions still:

Someone who was raised thinking Faeries Are Bad. – that is not 5 but could be 1-4
a purebred Mara Change. (those 2 @inventrix) (that could be almost any of them – later)
kid with some kind of special needs? Physcial handicap? (@dahob)

I need to put them all together.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/851990.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday Intro – The Birds, The Birds

Nov20

Nano project #5 is the first novella in a series of 8, following 8 students through their 8 years at Doomsday Academy.

That means, of course, I need to figure out 8 students. Three I had pregenerated: The Catboy Samurai and his best friends Sianna the dancer and Sweetbriar the prickly. The other five…

Here’s a little something about one.

I’m about to the point where I have to start deciding if these are 5 different characters or bits from the same people. Also, I could use more: http://aldersprig.livejournal.com/977386.html on LJ or http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/849230.html on DW.

The birds were following you.

The birds had always been following you, as long as you could remember.

But you were leaving home, now. You were leaving everything you’d ever known, and the birds – the birds were still following.

The loud ones were yelling at you, which wasn’t the most fun in the world, but it was worse because you were on a wagon with other people, all of them heading towards Boom Town, Cynopolis, and they were starting to look at you funny.

A sparrow landed on your shoulder. “Oh,” the nice lady next to you exclaimed, “he must be hungry.”

You didn’t have the heart to point out that the dull coloration meant that the little bird was a girl. “Just lonely,” you said instead. “There aren’t that many sparrows around here.”

From the look on her face, it may not have been the safer answer.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/851712.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday Intro: Chaos and Madness (@lilfluff)

Nov19

Nano project #5 is the first novella in a series of 8, following 8 students through their 8 years at Doomsday Academy.

That means, of course, I need to figure out 8 students. Three I had pregenerated: The Catboy Samurai and his best friends Sianna the dancer and Sweetbriar the prickly. The other five…

Well, here’s a little something about one.

The school was big. It wasn’t big-big, not like the ruined city you’d seen once, but it was still big, and it was inside a city, a not-ruined city with walls and houses and animals.

And it was busy, everyone going here and there and everyone talking to everyone else. There didn’t seem to be any order. There didn’t seem to be anyone in charge.

There were people in collars, sure. Everywhere had people in collars. But you saw one of those people in collars telling someone not collared what to do – and the not-collared person went and did it!

You found a quiet place where you wouldn’t be in anyone’s way, a little platform up in a tree. It didn’t look like anyone had been using it recently, so you probably weren’t breaking any rules.

From here, you could watch the students and teachers – you assumed they were students and teachers, but it wasn’t like any school you’d ever seen – the strangers and the slaves, and try to figure out where everyone fit in.

It didn’t seem like anyone did, that was the thing. And, more than that, there didn’t seem to be any place for you to fit in.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/851113.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday Intro: I’ll Take This One

Nov18

This one’s a bit darker than the otherones. Probably because I came up with it myself. <.<)

“I’ll take that one.”

The red-haired woman strode into the shop where you were working and pointed right at you.

The foreman coughed, stuttered, and, rather than throwing her out, ran and got the boss.

You weren’t stupid. You kept working. This could be a test.

The woman stood there, not watching you, but watching the place. Her nostrils flared and she rolled her weight back onto her heels. You glanced at the exit, at the other workers in the shop, and back at the exit. If she decided to bring this place down on your heads, you thought you might be able to get out, but the littler kids on the other side would have trouble.

Maybe it wouldn’t come to that this time; this angry visitor could be different than the last one. Maybe the foreman had learned.

The boss hurried in. “Ah. I hear-“

“I want to buy this slave from you.” She was pointing at you again. Why did she keep pointing at you?”

The boss coughed. “Ah. We don’t sell the children-“

“-away from their mothers, of course you don’t, that would be wrong. I’ll buy the mother and any other children, too.”

You flinched. Your mother was one of the boss’s favorites right now. Would he…?

Of course he would. “Of course. She’s right over here.”

Brittanny had the same coloration as you, at least if you squinted. But she was not your mom, and her kid looked nothing like you.

The redheaded woman frowned. “No. No, and you wouldn’t be trying to separate a mother from her children, now would you?” Something about her posture suggested violence, although she had no visible weapons. You considered hiding under your workstation. You weren’t stupid, though. This could be a test. You kept working.

The boss took a moment to consider whether or not he was stupid. Or, at least, that’s what it looked like to you. “No. Of course not. One moment.”

It took many moments, during which you worked and the woman glared at the place as it if had personally offended her. You didn’t bother wondering why she wanted you. It still could be some sort of test.

It was only when they had finished bickering over the price, only when she had said the words to your mother, your sister, and you, only when you were in her wagon and on the road, that you thought this might be real.

Whoops, note. “said the words.” The kid doesn’t really know quite what’s going on there, but that’s the transference of Belonging of zir mother to the redheaded lady.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/850110.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday Intro: Pick a Card (@vundablog)

Nov17

Nano project #5 is the first novella in a series of 8, following 8 students through their 8 years at Doomsday Academy.

That means, of course, I need to figure out 8 students. Three I had pregenerated: The Catboy Samurai and his best friends Sianna the dancer and Sweetbriar the prickly. The other five…

Well, here’s a little something about one.

“Okay, pick a card.”

The caravan driver was being very patient, and you could tell. Then again, you’d been dropped on the caravan with two bags and a crossbow, and you were pretty sure that she felt bad for you.

And, really, you’d been dropped on a caravan with two bags and a half-sized crossbow, you were (you were pretty sure) just a few weeks away from your 10th birthday, and, while you didn’t really count the people that had just dumped you as parents, they were the only family you could remember. If you were going to take advantage of the fact the caravan driver was tolerating you, well, who could really blame you?

Besides, when you did particularly good magic tricks, she gave you an extra treat. You were a growing kid, right? Hopefully. You needed all the food you could get.

“All right, you’ve got your card in your mind, now put it right back in here, and I’ll just shuffle these up, just like this.” The guy you’d once thought was your father had taught you to shuffle, as well as several other card tricks. “And there we go. Is this your wallet?”

The cute smile was the trick. If you got that wrong, then you weren’t doing adorable magic tricks, you were a pickpocket. It was a thin line.

You held your breath. Slowly, the caravan driver smiled.

Today, you got to be a cute kid doing cute tricks.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/849667.html. You can comment here or there.

Doomsday Intro: Leaving Home (@inventrix)

Nov17

Written this way so I don’t have to put specific characters w/ specific intros until I’m ready

“All right.” Mom was being more cautious than normal, which was saying something. Three holstered weapons showing, never mind how many were hidden. Behind her, Uncle Tedd had the rifle out of the holster and his free hand on the gate.

Until today, the gate had been the end of the world. Until today, the world had consisted of two hundred acres of woodland and pasture and garden, fenced in with 10-foot-tall wire fencing and then with a wall twenty feet inside that and something magic and weird inside that. Until today, the world had been ten people, fifteen during the wintertime. Until today, the world had been very small.

Today, a woman in a wagon was waiting by the gate, and Mom and Uncle Tedd were checking all their weapons. Today, Uncle Tedd was staying home – which never happened – and Mom was leaving. Mom, and you. Leaving the farm. That never happened. That was never supposed to happen.

You clung to the bag Mom had handed you, and tried not to stare at the lady driving the wagon.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/849591.html. You can comment here or there.