Tag Archive | character: alexa

Visible Bisexuality: Go (bi) Yourself (redux), a Facets Ficlet.

Sep22

Okay, if Summer, Mellie, and Bishop are mellow and low-key about their bisexuality… Cole is not, and neither is Alexa.

This comes after Trouble in Doubles and Kissing One’sself (NSFW); the gist of which is that the Facets Team – Alexa, Cole, Josie, Aerich, and Peter – have opened a Door into a world which has not only exact copies of them but clones as well.

Facets of Dusk has a landing page here.

Cole had spent the day kissing – and fucking, and being fucked by – himself and several variations on Alexa. He’d thought the day couldn’t get any more interesting – a high bar already when you spent your life bouncing from world to world.

They had finally gotten dressed, mostly because two Josies and one Aerich were getting very impatient, and two impatient Josies were even more persistent than one. They had finally left the room, because Peter had gotten himself punched by probably-clone Alexa for asking far too many questions, many of which really deserved worse than a punch.

Out of the room, they had gone around a corner and run smack dab into… Cole blinked. He looked at Alexa, dopple-Alexa, and clone-Alexa, although he wasn’t quite sure which was which. He looked back at the man who was staring at them. Who was, for all intents and purposes, Alexa.

He waggled his eyebrows at dopple-Cole, whose face grew into a slow grin.

Peter sighed. “We are never getting anywhere here, are we?”

“Look at it this way,” one of the female Alexas offered, “they generally only make three or four clones of any given person. He’s – they’ve – got to get tired of fucking mes eventually.”

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Cloaked

Mar25

For [personal profile] rix_scaedu‘s prompt. Facets of Dusk has a landing page here.

The Door was hard to push, this time; Alexa held the doorknob open while she, Cole, and Xenia shoved it until it opened enough to let them through.

Once through, it was easy enough to see what had happened: rubble had fallen on the other side, obstructing the door. Most of the building had fallen, actually, leaving a single wall, braced and supported with scrap wood.

“Ruins?” Josie picked up a stone, and frowned. “No…”

“No.” Steven’s instruments were beeping. “No, this is fresh damage. Nothing here has been sitting for more than a couple years.”

“Put that away.” Cole dropped his gun in a side pocket and pulled out a knife instead. “Xen…”

“Got it. What’s up?”

In the center of this, Alexa and Aerich shared a look. The team did this, sometimes. They would wait until their skills were needed.

“How do you know you’re in a cyberpunk world?”

“Too much tech. Like that place with the blond you liked…”

“That’s real specific.”

“The one with the implants.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“There’s no tech here.” The lean really-not-an-assassin, really, looked around. Alexa had already made the connection. She grabbed her cloak out of her pack and nudged Aerich to do the same.

“Exactly. And how do you know when you’re in a sword and sorcery universe?”

“Cole, I’m not a goddamned student.”

“No tech.” Alexa stepped forward. “Dragon-claw marks on the stone. No wires anywhere. And that’s a castle in the distance.”

“What does that make us, then?” Josie, noting Alexa’s cloak, was doning her own.

They didn’t need to see Aerich’s face to know he was smiling. It showed in his voice. “Well, I do believe we’re the adventuring party of mysterious strangers.”

 

Originally posted here.

Into the Doorway, a beginning for Facets of Dusk

Jan16

To Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt.

Facets of Dusk has a landing page here

This is the beginning of their first mission, so comes before almost everything.

They had their assignment.

They had several assignments. There was the primary mission and two spoken secondary missions. There were their individual assignments, overt and covert. And there were a couple that did not come from their nominal leaders.

They had their gear.

Alexa had her Diplomat Clothes, wrinkle-resistant, fast-drying, and professional-looking in almost any environment.

Cole had his weapons. All of them. He had basic survival gear and a full uniform with no insignia anywhere. And he had weapons.

Josie had her backpacking gear and an apothacary’s worth of herbal… things. Nobody knew what they were for, but they were light.

Peter had his instruments, and then some more instruments, and a large pad of paper. Nobody knew what they were all for, and some of them were heavy, but Peter carried them all.

Xenia had her weapons, her climbing gear, her survival gear, and her weapons. She weighed every single item, and discarded anything that would weigh her down.

Aerich, as far as they could tell, planned on going forth with an expensive suit, a stunning chin, and monumental arrogance. Very few of these weighed anything, at least.

They had their team.

Xenia shared a look with Cole. Both of them looked at Peter; Xenia’s lip curled. Cole glanced at Aerich, his hand resting on his gun. Aerich’s lip curled at Josie. Josie’s nose wrinkled at Xenia. Xenia looked sidelong at Alexa. And Alexa was giving Peter the stinkeye.

They had their door.

Alexa. It all came down to Aleandra Bianchi. Cole stepped up to one side of her, Xenia to the other. This ought to be a military operation. It ought to be an exploratory mission. Instead, it all hinged on a former diplomat with a barely-tested ability to open doors into other worlds.

Peter ran his instruments over the doorway – deep in the archives of the university, well-camouflaged by opening, mundanely, to a supply room full of microfiche. Three of his instruments screamed at him every time they got near. It was definitely The Door.

They had their orders. Alexa opened the Door. Six mavericks stepped into the doorway.

A team would step out.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/452614.html. You can comment here or there.

The Stars, a story of Facets of Dusk for the Giraffe Call

Jan15

For cluudle‘s prompt.

This comes after Gender Play, here.

Facets of Dusk has a landing page here

“I can’t see the stars.” Alexa clutched Xenia’s hand. Alex. Today, she was he was Alex, and she-he-Alex was Xenia’s companion.

And her companion had the jitters. Xenia glanced up into the night sky. This world was dark at night, the only luminescence allowed thin strips along the sidewalks. Blackout curtains covered every window.

And tonight, there were no stars out at all. “That can’t be good.” She sniffed the air. The air was crisp, traffic being limited in daytime and, of course, totally missing at night. Somewhere, someone was burning a roast. A hot dog vendor – or this world’s equivalent – must be right around the corner.

And over it all, the smell of ozone and the suggestion of something very, very larger. “Lex, we need to get inside. Now.”

“We’re still three blocks from the party.”

“We should be close to the Tyen Tunnel our contact told us about.”

“But we were going to get some fresh air.”

Either Alex-a was playing her role too well, or she’d just gotten a little too used to being the one in the front of the charge. “Go… Goram fuck it, Alex, if you don’t get in that building right now, I am going to turn your ass a beautiful shade of purple when we get home.”

Alex-a meeped, and moved. “Xen…”

“Complain later, move now.”

Down the street, she could hear the hot dog vendor cheering. “Tell him who’s boss, sister.” She shoved Alex-a through the revolving door to the tunnel entrance as the skies opened op and the rain poured down.

“Turn my ass purple?” Alex-a muttered.

“Stay in character, and I won’t.” They watched the rain come down, washing the streets clean. More than washing; it looked like it was etching the pavement. No wonder there haven’t been many people out. “Well. That’s why your stars are missing.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/451560.html. You can comment here or there.

Icon Flash: Facets of Dusk & Ekwara

Dec6

Continuing flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

Today’s icon:

A Jaunx, from Ekwara

Icon & Art by Djinni

This icon was drawn at the same time as my Alexa icon, so it’s always been rather Facets-of-Dusk for me. This story crosses the Facets multiverse with Djinni’s comic Ekwara.

Facets does not yet have a landing page (whoops!) but it does have a tag, below

It was beginning to be old hat. Take a hand, wait for the chain to form, open the Door, step through. Alexa was getting very good at it. The rest of the team was getting good, too, at all the things they had to do when they reached a new location, recon and integration and information-gathering. They were, after so many false starts, acting like a team.

Alexa swung the door open, holding Josie’s right hand with her left, and stepped through. One step – the ground was soft, squishy grass. Two steps – it held her weight, and Josie’s, without buckling or sinking. Three steps – the terrain around them was wooded, bright green. She saw no buildings, which was odd. Normally, in order for there to be a door…

She looked around, a strange thought occurring to her. She’d seen those trees. She’s seen that cat-like creature over there, the one doing something that looked like casting a spell, opening a… a vortex of stars, much like some of her own Doorways. She’d read about this place.

She looked behind her, hurriedly. There was no door, just as slowly shrinking portal that Aerich was stepping through. That left Peter on the other side. Ignoring all protocol, she shoved Josie into Aerich, pushing both of them into the portal, and grabbed Xenia and Cole’s hands. “Back, back now!”

They had had enough close calls. They let her push them all back in. As the door shut behind them, Cole asked, mildly, “Alexa, what the hell?”

“I’ve seen that place before,” she told them, and then, because she had seen a number of worlds that they hadn’t, she clarified, “in a comic, a web-comic.”

“A comic,” Aerich scoffed. Peter looked up, curious.

“If we can prove that worlds that are fiction to us…”

“Ekwara,” she cut him off, “is where lost things wind up. And there was no door on that side.”

“Oh.” Aerich blinked. “A one-way Door?”

“Exactly. And, while it’s a lovely comic…”

“…we don’t want to get trapped there,” Cole agreed. “Good call, Alexa.”

She ignored the rush of warmth, mostly because, with that Door off-limits…

“So,” Xenia asked, “where do we go now?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/192102.html. You can comment here or there.

IconFlash – Alexa – Through the Door

Sep14

New flash series! I’m going to write one flash for every Icon I have, over 4 LJ accounts, 1 DW, and a whole bunch of not-currently-in-use, until I get bored or run out of icons.

(Yes, if you want to make me an icon to get me to write a flash about it, you can. In that case, I’ll even write 2x as much!)

I’m starting with DW, in alphabetical order. Today’s icon:

Facets of Dusk, Alexa.

Icon & Art by Djinni

There was always a moment, when she stepped through a Door, when Alexa felt as if she was walking in eternity. She closed her eyes, every time, despite common sense and protocol, but it didn’t help. For that endless moment, she was standing in space, the stars all around her, lost in the ice of Void.

She took a breath. She always remembered to breathe deeply when she was here, in the non-place. It smelled like nothing she’d ever felt anywhere else, like power and pleasure and fear. It felt like freefall, like firing a semi-automatic gun, like the best orgasm of her life.

Breathe in, breathe out, and step. The step was as important as the breathing; she’d learned quickly that the others didn’t see what she saw. They saw a doorway, felt maybe a small wrenching, and they were through. If they got impatient, though, if she was too slow, then they jostled her. The first time they’d jostled her, they’d ended up in one of the far-variant worlds, and it had taken them seven dangerous Door-steps to get back home. She did everything she could to make certain that didn’t happen again.

Step again, the stars still twinkling beneath her eyelids, the scent of the Void still stinging her nose, and again, to let the entire team through the Door. And then, with a long inhale and a slower exhale, find her fingers, rooting her into her team, into the teammate holding her hand.

And they arrived.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/128902.html. You can comment here or there.

Intro – Alexa

Jun15

Alexa had spent more time in the Doorways than anyone else she knew, more than, as far as they could tell, anyone in their world, possibly in any world. She was, much to Aerich’s continual annoyance, the resident expert on the things. And yet, every time they went through one, she had to swallow a surge of panic.

They held hands when they went through the Doorways. Roping off would be too obvious if, as they often did, they landed in the middle of a population center. But Alexa wasn’t certain that they would all end up at the same place otherwise, and Aerich couldn’t say yay or nay to that with any certainty, so they held hands.

They made sure it was Cole, or Josie or Xenia, who held Alexa’s hand – her left; she Opened with her right – and kept Aerich on the other end of the chain. And they all pretended they couldn’t tell she was white-knuckled, palms-sweaty, clinging to that hand for dear life until they were all through the Doorway.

She was grateful for the fiction. It allowed her to hold her head high and walk tall into strange worlds, to maintain the cool, perfect Lady Diplomat façade that had held her so well for so long. It allowed her to lie with her body, and smile, and act as if nothing had changed.

Everything had, of course, changed. Since the day she’d stormed out of Aerich’s house and ended up in the desert, both her public persona and her internal self had taken a bit of a beating. The Lady Diplomat, Alexa Bianchi, darling of the US Foreign Services, was missing, presumed dead. While the team had thoughtfully provided her a new set of credentials, as far as their homeworld was concerned, she no longer existed.

And in something closer to reality, Alexa herself wasn’t totally certain of her status, or, on bad days, of her existence. She tried not to think about that, though, as much as she could avoid it. She had a job to do. They all had jobs to do.

They had made it through the Doorway, intact, safe, and not falling through mid-air. She felt the hard soles of her boots click on pavement, took in a lungful of sooty air, and, with the rest of the team, took quick assessment of their surroundings.

“Carriage,” Josie warned, and they stepped back out of the road as the brass-and-iron contraption- not, technically, a carriage, but calling it a car would be entirely inaccurate – clattered by in an amazingly tuneful ringing of pipes.

“Steam and soot,” Aerich commented, brushing off his sleeves. “You take us to the most lovely places, Alexa.”


We met Cole from the Facets of Dusk team two weeks ago, and now we meet Alexa. Stay tuned for more!!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/57932.html. You can comment here or there.