windlion

Guardian snippet from a longer fic I am not sure if I will get around to writing-- this is mostly because I was complaining to Flidget, "WHY HAS NO ONE GIVEN ME SHEN WEI DOING FORMS?!" I guess I'll have to do it myself! :D

As a professor, even as a scientist, it was reasonable that Shen Wei would take care of his health. Stepping away to the gym for an hour or two was not to be unexpected, and would likely even be encouraged. So it would not be out of character if he left the lab with that explanation.

He repeated this to himself as he walked across the campus, even as he hoped that no one had the chance to see the note he’d left at the door, conscientiously turning the lights off in his wake. There was little risk of the grad students coming back; he’d turned them out to sleep with firm orders not to return before eight a.m. at the earliest. However, he knew there were more eyes on him and the university than he’d like.

And some of those may report back to the SID.
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Da Qing drummed his fingers restlessly on the table, rings flashing in the light, "What if Kunlun didn't die?"

Zhu Hong scowled at him, "That's a corpse--he's not getting any livelier."

Da Qing could feel the wheels turning into place. "We're the only ones who know."

Gelan, who found him, Sang Zan, who she called, then Zhu Hong and Da Qing. Da Qing let a speculative look cross his face as he considered Zhu Hong first: she was a predator, efficient, ruthless in her own way. "Unless you want to step up and take over?"

The way she balked for a split second, eyes going wide before narrowing into an implacable, scornful expression, he knew she didn't want it. Not yet. "I could. Why not you?"

Da Qing drawled, "I'm a lieutenant, I'm not a leader. Too much work."

"Lazy."

"Smart." Da Qing stretched, from toes to fingers reaching for the skylight. "This crew is too rowdy for the likes of me."

Zhu Hong snorted, but it wasn't in disagreement. She looked directly at the other two in the room. "What about you?"

Gelan looked pale, more fragile than usual in the protective arms of her boyfriend. Sang Zan frowned at them, hesitating. He didn't want to let go of her to sign, so he scowled and stammered, "Not me. Too much fighting."

Gelan raised her hand to rest it on his, turning her head up so that he could follow her lips as she spoke, "Ah Zan's right. Kunlun was the only one who could hold the factions together."

Da Qing smirked at the room, "So, we're in agreement that it's best if Kunlun didn't die."

Zhu Hong leaned forward over the table, sharp fingernails threatening to scratch the lacquer wood. "Except he did. How do you plan to fix that?"

Da Qing didn't let himself retreat from the attention, thought of every single time he'd caught Kunlun out of the corner of his eye or heard his voice and nearly said another name instead. Training had saved him from tripping over his tongue, and luckily Kunlun had allowed the familiar nicknames without protest as Da Qing wormed his way into the triad.

"I know someone who can be Kunlun."

(For the . . . spirit of Six Sentence Sunday, if not the proper count.)

“Why didn’t you say that you have the skill to transform earlier?”

“It’s …” Shen Wei’s hand twitched, and he forcibly stilled himself, breathing carefully. "It’s not my skill; it’s a gift.“ He paused, long enough that (Kunlun) wondered if that was all he had to say on the subject, until he finished quietly, "I would not use it selfishly.”

(Kunlun) arched his brows, but Shen Wei held his lips firmly pressed together. "If it’s a gift, then isn’t a shame not to use it?“


(Auuuuuuuugh I need a name for this incarnation of Kunlun. Possibly something referencing foothills. A second river. An unexpected spring. Anything.)

So I found the Excessively Detailed Headcanon Meme and set it aside as something I wanted to do eventually, and today, I tackled it for Rafe~  And suddenly I discovered, how many ways can I say "Prim, proper, somewhat anal retentive, with little to no life?"   I'm going to have to do Foxfire next just so that the comparison is blindingly obvious.  I feel like they repeat a lot more here than they could have; maybe I'll switch out some of the questions for things that are more exciting or cover fresh ground. XD


Rafael DeCrescenza:

( In excruciating detail! ) 

I keep attempting to poke at this thing for my "I can't believe it's not Nano" - wherein the Nano is implied because any time I attempt to commit to something, that does horrible terrible no good things to my inspiration/ability to function.  I don't think I've fooled my brain, though, because this has been a stone-cold son of a bitch to actually get anything down for.   Instead I keep getting heaps and heaps of back story and details. 

So this is the kind of detail I keep getting.  *makes faces*  Elements are kind of a big thing here; not so much Avatar-ish, but it has a lot to do with how their magic works. A person might be anywhere on a spectrum between the four traditional points, with metal being the midpoint between earth and fire, lightning (energy) between fire and air, storm (weather) between air and water, and wood between water and earth.  Someone could reasonably expect to be the same alignment as the rest of their family.  Sarassa, while not being a magic-using country, still considers alignments the same way you’d think of a personality test or zodiac sign.

 

( Rafael vs The Sea )

 

( Foxfire vs Alignment )

 

 

 

Foxfire basically showed up and went  " I named myself after swamp gas!  This is how I roll."   So yes, word of warning that all the names are so bullshitted.  Especially the locations.  (It goes country - Sarassa, state/region - Ciant, city - Paracen.)  And even then I catch myself spelling them wrong so AHAHAHA internal consistency what internal consistency?  Sarassa is basically my fantasy Italy/Greece Mediterranean equivalent.  You want the history of Sarassa, I can give you that!  I can tell you what the city is like, how the three Watches of the Guard generally operate, how this poor bastard Rafe has generally spent any given year of his life. . .  ALL OF THAT.  Write you a coherent story involving the aftermath of foreign interests and prejudice intersecting with magic and mayhem, well, I'm afraid I'm fresh out.  Augh.

The story is supposed to be: Rafael's a stubborn, stiff-necked, ill-favored Lieutenant of the Night Watch!  Foxfire is a wastrel dilettante being pressed into service as an envoy from the magic-using country everyone hates and fears!  THEY FIGHT CRIME! (And stop wars.)

So, the tale of How I Nearly Killed My Best Friend In The Woods, But She Was Totally Asking For It.

There was a weekend, years ago, when I went to visit my then best friend at her college campus.  Staying at her dorm was a bit of a trial, because her university was strict on visitor rules and you absolutely had to be signed in/out . . . and there was a curfew.  This will be important later. 

Said campus adjoined a forested mountain ridge, upon which, my friend promised, was the best view of the city lights at night.  It was just a little hour hike out, she'd done it with friends while everyone in the group was drunk out of their minds.  We were sober, we had a flashlight, it couldn't possibly be that bad!  So what it was cold, I was wearing good waterproof walking shoes and she was raring to go.  We were Out for an Adventure. 

I should have known things were going to get exciting when the first part of this adventure involved crossing a stream upon a two-foot-diameter round pipe instead of a bridge.  Apparently if you were brave you'd just walk across the thing, but it was something like a six foot drop into cold water, and I compromised by throwing dignity to the wind and scooting across.  I have never had exceptional balance, and I have always had exceptionally bad luck.  No tempting fate for me!

The first part of the hike wasn't that bad, and it wasn't too dark to begin with.  Woods, I'm good.  The excitement came when we hit the rock face.  Oh yes.  See, the best way to get up this ridge to the outlook from the campus was diagonally up the cliff face.  With, you know, a better than hundred foot drop only a matter of feet to my left or a missed step behind me.  Yeaaaaaah.  Guess who had the flashlight.  Not I.  Guess who couldn't see where they were going half the time and was terrified of edges. 

*raises hand*

So I would yell at my friend to give me light to cross the not-so-pleasant patches, and she would. . . until I was about two thirds of the way across.  Then away the light went, each and every time, leaving me to traverse the last lonely dark steps on my own.  I was scared shitless.  And pissed as hell.  I get very . . . snarky when peeved, and I have two kinds of friends.  One thinks that I am Hell On Wheels and it is totally time to duck and cover when I am angry.  A direct quote is "I think my balls would shrivel up into my body if you were pissed at me."  The other thinks it is time for popcorn because man, the show has started.  You may guess which one she is.

I have no idea how more students from that school have not broken their necks doing that while inebriated.  Possibly you don't notice the drops so much when you're drunk.  There were a great deal of unpleasant moments, then we finally got to the top.  "Isn't it beautiful?" she said, as we looked across perhaps a handful of large buildings at night, standing beside a perfectly usable roadside outlook.  I silently thought a great deal of swear words and lamented that she had evidently never been to a city.  Not to mention-

"You mean we could have just drove here?!"
"Yeah, but it's not the same!  We hiked and did the real thing."
"We are not taking the cliff route down.  There has to be another way."

So I put my foot down, and she led us down the mountain, through the woods the whole way.  It was far less imminent death by long drops, and far more scrambling and sliding through wet leaves and humus on our backsides.  And a great deal less direct, as we ended up at the bottom of the mountain on a road with no idea where we were.  My friend insisted that if we went through the woods on the other side until we found the stream, we could then follow the stream to the totally-not-a-bridge, and we'd be back at the campus in no time.  She kept ranging twenty to thirty feet in front of me through the woods, taking the light with her, while I brought up the rear, tired, cold, and pissed.  We'd been on the go for several hours by this point and were well and truly lost.

And that was when I dropped straight into a hip-deep puddle of mud that I never saw coming. 

Waterproof shoes, when dropped below the water line, become fantastic water-filled buckets.  On your feet.

Cold, tired, pissed, and now wet and muddy from the hips down.  Shoes squishing with every step.  And my friend was still laughing at me.  Murder was imminent.

Then suddenly, we heard meowing.  Tiny, piteous meowing.  Two itty bitty kittens came out of the woods towards my friend, because she had the light.  They were so young, their eyes were still blue, and small enough to be scooped up in one hand.  We looked, but there was no sign of any others, and they were tiny and shivering.  We decided some asshole probably dropped the kittens off from the road.  Conclusion: like hell we're leaving tiny kittens in the woods alone, especially when it's this cold.  Murder averted. 

So we went to pick them up, one kitten each, and that's when we found out they were not actually kittens, they were miniature hellspawn.  In other words, feral.  They hadn't been handled before, but they knew they didn't like it. Now we had our moral quandaries in hand, hissing, spitting, clawing the whole way.  I, being in sound possession of common sense, demanded we head back to the road.  There was very obviously a correct (away from the mountain) and incorrect (towards the mountain) way to go on the road, and much better chances of us actually getting somewhere before dawn.  Lo and behold, ten minutes of walking later, we were back at the campus, wet, muddy, each holding a squawling kitten competing to declare which was being murdered louder.

It was in this state that we walked into her campus's police HQ, to politely demand they tell us what we could do with the itty bitty bundles of fluff.  Their answer?  Nothing.  It was now close to one thirty in the morning, since we'd started this lovely adventure at perhaps nine o'clock.  Not exactly vet or shelter visiting hours.

Dilemma.

We headed back to her dorm, and my friend pressed squawling ball of fluff number two into my free hand and went "Here, sit in my car while I go inside to figure out what to do."  Fantastic.  I got to sit, still wet and muddy in her cold, dark car, holding two angry tiny kittens instead of one.  For half an hour or more.  She finally came back with a backpack and declared that the only thing to do was to smuggle the kittens in, because no emergency vets would take them overnight since they weren't hurt.  They would catch hell from the university if caught with them in the dorm, because their pet rules were incredibly inflexible, but what could you do?  I was dubious but at this point, I was beyond not giving a damn and all for being able to put the kittens down where they could stop attempting to kill me.  I hadn't dared let them go in her car because they would undoubtedly hide somewhere and be impossible to get out again.  Into the backpack they went.  She took the bag o' kittens and we headed in.  Her roommate, a very kind soul all around, was waiting in the lobby.

My friend bolted for the elevator, leaving me with her roommate, and it was at this point we recalled that oh hey, two a.m. is well after curfew.   The RA on duty was not happy, but I was obviously In A State, so they allowed the roommate to sign me in.  Thank god.  When we arrived upstairs, my friend explained that the bag o' kittens had started meowing, and she made like a bandit before getting caught red-handed.  I pretty much shrugged and declared the mission a success.

So the two sister kittens spent the night in a spare aquarium before being ferried to a shelter in the morning, I had the best hot shower in the history of ever, and my friend escaped death.  Barely. 


(And now people totally know where my affinity for snarky-hissy-bitchy-wet-cat types comes from.  My brethren.) 

Bits and pieces of RotG fic that I am working on-  I have not yet figured out what order I am tackling these things if at all, because I have to knock out Shadowplay entirely, too. 

 

Allegiance - Pitch/Jack - the MMORPG AU no one knew they wanted!  featuring Pitch and Jack as skype buddies and in-game frenemies. 

 

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How To Train Your Nightmare - Gen-  because this was the first thing that came to mind when people suggest How To Train Your Dragon crossovers, not Hijack

 

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Unchained - don't look at me like that I have no idea what's going on - fearling!Pitch and host!Kozmotis symbiote headcanon

 

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Equinox - Gen - sequel to Midnight Sun - how to bring a Nightmare King into the Guardian fold, one orbit around the sun at a time.

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Fearless - Pitch/Jack - sequel to Taken -  the natural consequence of becoming too familiar with the incarnation of terror. 

 

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