Acquiring Students
When my tablet runs out of battery…
The Crew Continues
Crew, Continued
The Day
A Pact
The Pact Slips, Part I

Content: implied sexual suggestion

“I… I want to know. And I don’t trust anyone else.”

For Kerr, that was a speech. Still, Aron had to ask. “Anyone?”

“Any other guys,” Kerr grumbled. “And you…”

His shirt was already off. His roommates were already gone for the weekend, heading off on some trip Kerr had begged off of. Aron swallowed.

Kerr shifted backwards. “Unless you don’t like guys…?”

“No, no…” Aron leaned in for the most gentle kiss he could manage. “I like you just fine.”

~

“I want to know,” Astarte demanded. “I want to know what’s so hot about you.”

“So hot?” Sunny would have been worried, she thought, if it had been anyone but Astarte. “What do you…?”

“Why Kerr would have broken the pact. Why you? Why…?”

“I could ask Aron the same thing, couldn’t I?” Sunny raised her eyebrows. Not that she’d have to ask Aron… Astarte was gorgeous in an entirely different way than Kerr was. “Or you could just try and find out.”

“Try?” The anger that had rushed Astarte in like a storm faded away, and she sat down, looking stunned. “You mean…”

“Well,” Sunny smirked, “It’s not like we’re really holding to the pact anymore…”

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Acquiring Students
When my tablet runs out of battery…
The Crew Continues
Crew, Continued
The Day
A Pact

Content: implied sexual suggestion

“Kerr is all wrapped up with that girlfriend, and, well, it’s not really sex if we…” Astarte’s gestures left no doubt what she had in mind, and Aron’s body left no room for argument about its opinions on the matter.

“But we…”

“It’s not really sex. It’s fine.”

~

“I really loved her, you know.” Kerr stared at his empty mug; Sunny had taken away the bottle he’d been using to refill it. “I really…”

“I know, honey.” Sunny petted his hair and tried to soothe her crewmate. “It sucks. I know.” It’d only been two weeks before that her short-lived first relationship had seemed to fade away into the ether.

“You get me. Why do you get me?”

Sunny swallowed. The look in Kerr’s eyes, she ‘got’ that all right. She knew where this was going. “Because I listen, love,” she murmured, throaty and maybe a bit inviting. “That’s all. I listen.”

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Acquiring Students
When my tablet runs out of battery…
The Crew Continues
Crew, Continued
The Day

Doomsday Academy, a few years under a decade before Cya Keeps Leo.

“It’s not that it’s gross…” Aron spoke carefully, his eyes darting between his three crewmates. “It’s just that it seems wrong when they’re just…” His hands lifted as if ready to make a gesture, then flopped to the bed, and his cheeks colored.

Today they were in Sunny’s cy’Red dorm, stacked on her bed, because one of Aron’s cy’ra were… engaged… with a cy’Sweetflower. Loudly.

“And I mean, sure, they’re having fun, but then there’s going to be that loud mess like there was with the last one, with Silva, and with Kit before that. At this rate, he’s not going to be able to talk to anyone in the school by the time he graduates.”

“We’re not going to do that. Right?” Sunny looked between the three of them, her crew. “We’re best friends. We’re crew. We’re not going to get all… all sexy and start fighting with each other, right? Right?”

“No sex,” Astarte agreed with a sharp nod.

“Sex is for outside the crew,” Kerr agreed, very quietly.

“It’s a deal.” They put their hands together and shook, all for one, one for all.

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Acquiring Students
When my tablet runs out of battery…
The Crew Continues
Crew, Continued

Doomsday Academy, a few years under a decade before Cya Keeps Leo.

“We’re a day, you know.” They were on Aron’s bed again, cy’Lightning having proven the best at dealing with the nascent crew. Sunny was laying over the foot of the bed, staring at the ceiling. “Sunshine and darnkess,” she gestured at Kerr. “Stars,” she flopped a hand at Astarte, “and if we bend your name we get Aroon, and that’s a dawn.”

Aron raised his eyebrows. “That’s a day,” he agreed slowly. “Is that what we are?”

Sunny propped herself up to look at Astarte. The smaller girl looked back, twitched an eyebrow. Sunny shrugged one shoulder.

“Yeah,” Astarte answered. “I guess we are.”

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Acquiring Students
When my tablet runs out of battery…
The Crew Continues

Doomsday Academy, a little over a decade before Cya Keeps Leo.

“So what do we do about cy’rees?” The four of them were flopped in the fourth-year students’ dorm all on Aron’s bed. He, in turn, was studying the long tail Kerr had recently grown.

“Do?” Astarte peeked up at him through a fringe of hair. “We pick them, right?”

“But we’re not all going to pick the same one, are we? I mean, we could… ’cause if we don’t, they’re going to split us up.” One hand went protectively over Astarte and the other over Kerr, leaving Sunny to snuggle into his arm on her own.

“Well…” Sunny mused… “it’s a small school. It’s not like they can actually separate us.”

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After/part of When my tablet runs out of battery…, which is after Acquiring Students

Doomsday Academy, a little over a decade before Cya Keeps Leo.

Kerr was not talkative. He communicated when Miss Ascha pushed him in class. He told the cook what he wanted, at lunch. With Aron and Sunny, he preferred gestures and a minimum of words.

When he brought Astarte over to Aron and Sunny, the day she arrived – the first day of their second year of school and her first year – he did so without words. He took her hand and gave a tug; she followed. He tugged again, and she walked with him, her white-pale hand in his dark one, until he tugged her one more time to pull her in front of him, presenting her very clearly to Sunny and Aron.

Aron understood. “Hi,” he said, if for no other reason than to prove that one of them actually talked. “We’re a crew, or we will be when we’re old enough. Want to join?”

She was as small as they had been a year ago, her eyes wide. But she smiled. “You’re funny,” she told Kerr. “I like that.” She tilted her head at Aron, looked down at her hand, still firmly held in Kerr’s, and giggled. “I think I already did.”

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…I write long-hand.

This comes after Acquiring Students and is the beginning of a series of character-establishing notes/stories/ficlets.

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This is set a little over a decade before Cya Keeps Leo. Well, the end bit is a decade-plus; the ‘finding’ parts are earlier.

There were things Cya looked for when doing student recruitment.

She looked for slaves she could justifiably rescue, children born into slavery that would Change if given the right environment and would thrive or at least survive at Doomsday. She looked for children that would need rescue, kids that were living in fae-unfriendly places that risked being slaughtered when – or if – they Changed.

She looked for post-Addergoole conceived children born to Addergoole students, “third kids”, they called them.

She looked for children with unusual powers – her own power, which showed up immensely rarely; teleportation, which was uncommon and very useful in this post-collapse world; mind control, which was thankfully rare and required careful handling; telepathy, although she had only found one of those in all the years she’d been doing this.

She also looked for kids who were the right age, whose parents were fae or Faded, who could make it to Doomsday or who could accept her help moving to Doomsday.

And in all cases, she started looking for kids who were much younger than Doomsday age. She wanted to be sure that the parents knew about the school in time to make a decision.

Sometimes she found them early. Sometimes she didn’t find them until it was almost too late. She hadn’t figured out the patterns yet.

Sunny, she found when she was five, running around the family ranch doing child-sized errands while carting three kittens in the kangaroo-pouch of her jacket.

Kerr, she found three days before school, working in a landfill mine on a chain gang with twenty other children. She set her jaw and made a note to come back soon to deal with the slave-owner.

And Aron she had to keep finding; his family-group kept moving around. But she convinced his mother the same way she’d convinced Sunny’s family – with shameless bribery.

There were others that year, children from as far as her teleporter could reach, and one she’d made him make three jumps to reach. It was a full year of twelve, and, considering the mix, Cya quietly gave Ascha a raise.

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