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Monthly Word Count - August
TOTAL: 12 567 words.
Considering I was interrupted by vacation, this isn't too horrible. Considering most of it is snippets and "let's add 500 words to this scene" and very few actually COMPLETED and therefore postable scenes, hrrn. Still progress though, so I'm forbidding myself to bitch too much.
Posted:
-Gundam Wing / His Dark Materials : three gen daemon ficlets, Heero with Relena, Duo, and Trowa (1 883 words)
-Territoriality ofic - Neve Serrano, pre-story: Counseling (274 words)
-Dragons and their Boys -- Nataku Episode Zero (1 383 words)
WIP:
-Teamwork 3 epilogue tidbit (yeah, i'm writing bits of the epilogue before the, oh, three or four chapters that come before it. I make sense.) Naruto and Kyuubi. (404 words)
-Teamwork 3 chapter 11, one scene and a half; smallish Sasuke scene and the start of a Naruto scene, and I still need to tweak both. (1 759 words)
-Random ot3 thingie with Sasuke as the instigator of TeamLove, actually pretty much all rambling I'll have to cut out in the end, if I don't end up trashing the whole fic because it's not working. (that, or make an actual story out of the ramblings, it comes across like a summary instead and telling instead of showing is baaaad, but it doesn't fit with the rest of the oneshot either.) (296 words)
-DCMK: Swingersverse: The Shinichi/Kaito/Heiji threesome; 370 words of porn (still incomplete!), and an outtake/sidefic/scene that happened in the middle that was not relevant to the porn so did not belong in the main fic but DID belong in the overall "figuring out polyamory" setup (1 681 words).
-Sequel for Sanctuarium, the GW/SGA crossover. (406 words)
-Restore, main fic (1 214 words of Aeris POV scene, 123 of random padding for Cloudscene, 544 of Zack, all in progress)
-Restore, Cloudette sequel (306 words of stupid)
-Restore, that survival/horror scene that wants to be part of the actual fic, Tifa&Seph (764 words)
-Tripletsverse; some Team Hebi (787 words)
-that old Blobsuke AU (Sasuke and Sakura, 515 words)
-Steal (zack and kiddies) (402 words)
... I was REALLY SCATTERED this month. Seriously, I'm not even talking a chapter, none of these SCENES is complete, save the Teamwork one with Sasuke, and it'll need added padding anyway.
BUT ANYWAY.
--
Teamwork 3 epilogue tidbit, Naruto and Kyuubi. (not sure i'll keep it, but it's cute, so hey.)
--
Naruto stared at the endless blue of the sky, hands tucked behind his head and warm sand slowly trickling down to fill the hollows under his neck. Mmh. So good.
Actually... Maybe he was getting a little too warm. Just a little.
He gave a mental prod, and another when the first got no response. 'Hey, Kyuubi... you wanna?'
Irritation and befuddlement were his two first responses, and then as the demon fox lifted the meaning from his mind, offense. /I am not a cub/ came the snarl, with undertones of both "I don't even do that anymore" and "You don't think I'm stupid enough to be pacified with that".
'Fine, whatever. I don't care if I'm a cub or not!' and he flipped on his front on the sand, pushed himself up on hands and knees, and started digging with great enthusiasm.
It took Kyuubi about a minute eyeing him sideways with great disdain before the demon fox slid closer and cautiously nudged at their hand, inside. Naruto gave some control easily.
The next instant Kyuubi had taken over both arms and was showing him how it was done, goddamnit, teeth gritted in determination and incidentally showering a much wider area in cold, damp sand. Naruto choked, he was trying to keep from laughing and accidentally insulting Kyuubi so hard.
/There. That's how it's done./
Pff. 'I see. Yeah, much better.' He even managed to feel serious, somehow. Kinda. Surface-deep. Kyuubi was suspicious for a couple of seconds but after that Naruto flopped on his side in the cool, shadowed hole and... oh, neat. The sounds of the sea were strangely muted; they could see the sky straight overhead but there were walls all around. 'Too bad sand shifts too much, it might be cool to have a tunnel hideout.'
Kyuubi didn't answer, but for a fleeting moment there were burrows in his mind, solid earth all around, hiding and shielding -- entirely unnecessary for such a dangerous creature, of course, but ...
'We'll need somewhere to get away from their nagging, anyway,' Naruto commented philosophically, and cautiously didn't tell Kyuubi that everyone else would have a room of their own in their home so he might as well have one, too. Kyuubi would take it as charity again.
--
Teamwork 3 chapter 11, Sasuke scene
--
She moved well. She'd have to be a lot faster if she wanted to get him that way, sharingan or no sharingan. He let his eyes go red and started dodging, watching her smooth, practiced movements. There was a bite in them that reminded him of Neji more than any other Hyuuga he'd ever watched fight, a hint of fire.
There were plenty of reasons not to like the Hyuuga clan. There had been something of a rivalry between their clans pre-massacre. (He'd been young and hadn't paid much attention at the time, honestly.)
They'd offered to adopt him in when he was orphaned -- just so happened they would get their hands on the sharingan if he said yes, and if this ended the Uchiha for good that was just a bonus. (They weren't the only ones who'd offered, and objectively speaking he could see it was an offer that didn't cost much and might have rewarded enormously, but he held a faint grudge against all who had tried their luck.)
Hinata was in love with Naruto. Naruto found Neji hot.
(With their eyes closed they looked like family.)
"Haa!"
A wall of raw chakra, straight from her striking palm; he jumped back, accompanying the impact, rolled in the air, landed already shaping katon seals.
(they looked like family Hinata's long hair was glossy and black Hiashi's jawline was his father's they all moved like people who'd lived all their life practicing the traditional gestures (there was a Branch cousin who wore his hair in a ponytail that fell between narrow shoulders and walked all light and cat-footed))
Defeating her faster might have been humiliating, but dragging it on would only be a show of pity, and he wasn't in the mood.
--
Random ot3 thingie with Sasuke as the instigator of TeamLove -- this part looks more like a Sasucentric weird clan thinger. XD; oops.
--
There's people in the village who don't carry enough Uchiha blood to ever awaken the sharingan and thus were denied the right to the name (it saved them), but the potential sleeps there anyway. Yoko says she doesn't much like the thought that someone might attempt to see whether a breeding program with her children and her sister's children could have it resurface, and if they can find an arrangement... but all Sasuke cares about is, are you kin? and they are, distant kin but kin anyway, and so he'll protect them.
He doesn't want there to be any owing, any obligation between him and his kin. Sachi says that's exactly why they want to. It'd be weird to be father to two children when he and their mothers were never close, and there's Sakura who might be hurt. But he wants Itachi's children more than he wants his own at this point, so it works out fine for everyone. He can deal with being an uncle in loco parentis.
--
DCMK: Swingersverse: outtake/sidefic
--
Kuroba was balancing his full sake cup on his forehead, but quietly, and Heiji had no trouble believing this was the most discreet he could make himself be. Heiji snorted out a laugh and nudged him with his foot.
"Yer gonna hurt something bein' so quiet. You don't drink?"
"Eh, not often." He turned laughing eyes Heiji's way; Heiji catalogued the expression, utterly unlike Kudo and horribly endearing anyway. "Am I scaring you? I promise I know how to simmer down and stay put without it being a harbinger of doom."
"Uh huh," Heiji teased.
"Usually I wouldn't believe him either," Kudo said from Kuroba's other side, leaning forward so he could smirk at Heiji past his doppelganger's head. "This is one situation that fits the parameters of those rare exceptions."
"Which is?" Heiji prompted, sure the answer would be something like ‘when he's post-mind-coital'.
"Well, there's fish in your pond."
"Oi!" Suddenly two sake cups were resting on the gallery floor, and Kuroba was on Kudo, attempting to cover his mouth with his hand. Kudo merely twisted his head this and that way and kept speaking.
"There's... fish in my pond," Heiji repeated slowly.
"And if he's too noisy they might hear him and track him down... slowly... flopping around on the ground all wet and gluey and scaly... Until they find him..."
Kuroba slunk off Kudo and gave him a jaundiced look. "I hate you forever. I'm going home and taking Ran and we're going on the lam without you." A pause. "Also I'm drinking your sake." He picked up both cups and gathered them close, hunching over them.
Kudo sat up, batted imaginary dust off his yukata primly, and grinned at Heiji over his bowed head. "Kidding. Actually he's being quiet because he's post-mind-coital."
"There's always a little more room for a small, quick mindfuck," Kuroba grumbled under his breath, even as Heiji laughed. "Hope you don't sleep too deeply tonight."
--
Sequel for Sanctuarium, the GW/SGA crossover.
--
John nodded a greeting at him, and then another, longer look; Heero arched an eyebrow in question. From the door Rodney was watching them, arms still crossed defensively -- forgotten in favor of staring at him cross-eyed.
"... You're kind of a shrimp, aren't you?" John commented, hands on his hips, as he looked him up and down. The top of Heero's head reached his chin, but only just.
Heero shrugged. "Cockpit takes up less space in the machine that way."
Distracted, Rodney eyed Wing with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. "Huh, yes, I thought so -- it was custom built for you, wasn't it?"
Heero nodded as he walked up to him; it didn't betray much sensitive info to say that.
"No, seriously! You looked much bigger when you were dragging me around and being all commando of death-y!" The expression on Rodney's face was now turning to pure consternation. " ... Older too."
There was better light at the hangar's exit; they'd both stopped, so Heero stopped too, bland-faced. This was an issue he'd preferred not to have if possible. He was not a child, damn it.
"I don't care how Asian-faced you are and how that somehow magically prevents wrinkles. You can not be over twenty-one. Uh, assuming your planet has a similar length of rotation--"
"It does. I'm not."
John swore under his breath, a word in a language Heero didn't recognize; the dismay in it came out clear enough anyway. "... Tell me you're over eighteen, at least."
Heero had to stop and calculate how long the trip had taken. "As it happens, yes." For, uh, about three weeks. Assuming he'd been born somewhere close to the date he'd written down at random on his first ever official ID, which frankly he had not the first clue about.
--
Restore, main fic
--
"...Hey," he said eventually, voice rough, low.
She smiled faintly, an acknowledgement almost as subdued as his own. She didn't want him thinking she took him lightly; she remembered how badly too much levity had gone over with Cloud and Tifa.
He looked away, as if there was something in the middle of the street. "Wasn't s'posed to go in."
There was a hint of embarrassment in his voice -- being forbidden things like a child? Being caught lurking? She smiled a little wider. "I'm not supposed to come out either. In case someone who knew me before sees me."
He grunted. "Makes sense."
"I figure since you're here it'll be maybe a few more hours before I can come out again, anyway... it doesn't matter much anymore if rumors start to spread now."
He spared her a quick glance, but otherwise didn't respond. Aeris let the silence fall again, cars driving past and people dodging their stretched out legs on the sidewalk, some sparing the unlikely pair they made mildly curious looks, most of them not even that much. There was a rhythm to the street just like there was one to the Lifestream, ebb and flow, patterns just out of reach that she felt she ought to be able to read.
There was a pattern to Barret's thoughts, and she couldn't read them (no matter what Sephiroth thought) but she felt the ebb and flow of his anger, his betrayed feelings, his anguish. His love. His gratefulness.
"Tifa tells me that Marlene calls my mother Grandma," she said quietly into one of those lulls. "I can't tell you how much it means to me. Knowing I would be leaving her alone -- it was..."
"Goddamnit." Barret rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand, angry and pained both. "I can't figure out how pissed off I am at you. You're not fightin' fair."
Of course not. She was fighting to win.
--
Restore, that survival/horror scene that wants to be part of the actual fic, Tifa&Seph
--
"I'm more durable than you are," he said, a strange, barely there smile on his lips. He held out his hand.
Tifa stared.
"Strife's waiting."
Cloud might be stuck down there with a broken leg or worse. Tifa sucked in a breath, shuffled closer, and swung onto his back.
Her legs were barely settling at his hips when he dropped under the Plate. He swung hand to hand along the pipe, scanning darkness underneath for she didn't know what, and then swung his weight again and let go. Tifa's hands tightened on his shoulders.
The void took them.
There was no sound past a whistle of air in her ears, strangely deadened; nothing beyond. The Sector was lost in the gloom; Tifa squinted against the wind, could only see a few blocks, and nothing that moved in any of the twisted streets.
They landed on a rickety roof, old damp wood splintering under Sephiroth's feet. Tifa was ready to absorb as much of the impact as she could with arms and legs, but when the roof broke under them and they fell another story her grip slipped and she crashed against his back; her chin struck the back of his head.
"--ow." She let go, slipped hurriedly to the ground, rubbing her chin, trying not to rub her chest. She took two steps back out of his personal space before she even took a look around. He turned, arched an eyebrow at her.
She would have had to go right past him to go to the door and look for stairs down... and she might have, to prove she wasn't afraid, but when she looked around again it was... a typical slum room, just enough light to guess how dirty with disuse and spiders in must have been, but knickknacks and personal things on the walls; someone else's room, someone else's house, and they hadn't been invited. She turned to the window and yanked the swelled window frame open.
She sat on the edge of the window and swung her legs out, dropped onto the street. Sephiroth followed without a word. The street was narrow and without a sign, and she'd never learned that particular sector by heart; she had no clue how to orient herself. She looked up; the hole was a small dot of light far overhead. There were other pinpricks like stars. They'd fallen a bit at an angle, so if they went, um, maybe left...
Sephiroth lifted two fingers to his mouth and whistled, two short and two long, the kind of sound that seemed even louder, farther-reaching in this twilight.
"He'll be up on a roof," he said. At first the fact that he wasn't even looking at her irritated Tifa (though she had to be honest with herself; seeing his cat eyes turned her way made her tense too), but then she realized he was scanning the street, the pitch black corners. Maybe they didn't seem so dark to him.
"Is there anything over there?"
"... No." Turning away brusquely, he went to a nearby awning, kicked off a metal barrel to jump up. Tifa followed with only a little frown, puzzled. She didn't think it had been quite a lie... not quite.
--
Tripletsverse; some Team Hebi (man is the mood different from normal tripletsverse. XD)
--
The Uchiha hideout was a sinister place. Suigetsu didn't rattle easily; he explored with more distaste and eyerolling annoyance at the lack of light than real unease. Nevertheless he couldn't pretend that the whole hollowed-hill compound wasn't creepy as fuck, and after years enjoying Orochimaru's own hideouts he knew creepy. Seriously, a throne room?
"What'd you guys find?" he asked. "Cause personally I found a lot of missing torches, missing windows, missing carpets and sheets and padded seats and anything but bare stone that's also missing chunks here and there. Oh yeah, it's missing another Uchiha, too."
"Get off that seat" was Sasuke's only response. Suigetsu considered telling him "make me"...
As much as he loved ribbing Sasuke -- about his prissy attitude, his goddamn Leaf-ness, his 'I am your leader, peons!' -- there was a time to keep prodding, and one to get out of the way. When Sasuke's eyes were already red with the sharingan and he bled killing intent through every pore, it wasn't the best season for prodding.
"You call that a seat?" he grumbled as he slipped off his uncomfortable stone perch, so he wouldn't look too easy. "It's a goddamn throne, there's not two ways about it."
Sasuke ignored him utterly, eyes scanning the room in a way that made Suigetsu doubt he even truly saw it. The walls were covered in clan emblems, swirls, stylized sharingan commas, but also in pitted holes and gashes, as if there had already been a battle here, years and years ago.
Suigetsu brushed a bit of rubble off the steps that went up to the throne and sat, sighing. It had taken the four of them two weeks after Deidara to track down all the Akatsuki hideouts in the area; they'd even confirmed two recent-ish Itachi sightings. After that, nothing.
If Sasuke's brother were anywhere nearby, and willing to be found, he'd be in here, Suigetsu was sure. But of course their fearless leader hadn't accepted Karin's "There's not even a rat alive in here, Sasuke!" at face value.
"Juugo. Anything?"
Juugo made his way across the empty space to meet Sasuke in the middle of the huge, high-ceilinged room. (Totally a throne room, seriously what the hell, Uchihas. Apparently Sasuke came by his arrogance honestly.) "A few of the smarter birds remember seeing a human in the forest outside, but the memories are vague, it could be any time between a week and a couple of months ago."
Sasuke didn't say anything, stone-faced. His chakra flickered. Suigetsu grinned to himself and trailed his hand up the handle of his sword, in case all that killing intent triggered Juugo.
"Nothing!" Karin snarled when she walked in in turn, hair and shirt caked with dust. "I told you, not even a --"
"Did you check for genjutsu?"
"Did I -- of course I checked for genjutsu, what do you take me for? There's no one who can trick me with genjutsu--"
Suigetsu watched fascinated as Sasuke visibly gritted his teeth. He'd never thought the guy had this much emotion in him. Thwarted was an interesting look on him. "Uchiha Itachi could," he said, low and quiet and warningly, but Karin was busy batting dust out of her clothes and snarling and didn't notice.
"Yes, well, even if Uchiha Itachi is laired here somewhere watching us from his corner of perfect invisibility, apparently he's too much of a voyeur to bother coming out, so it's the exact same thing in the end, isn't it?"
A second of silence.
"What are you grinning at, you kappa-bastard?" Karin demanded, eyeing Suigetsu with open suspicion. He sighed.
"Aw, crap, Karin, you ruined it. I wanted to see if Sasuke or Juugo would lose it first."
--
that old Blobsuke AU (team seven... IN SPACE.)
--
She had been working at the labs for a whole five months before Sasuke bothered to remember her from one day to the next. There were a dozen interns taking turns giving him his daily checkup, all interchangeable in their white blouses and green hair-covering caps; he hadn't cared.
"Do you know," she had said one day, with a needle in his elbow and a bright delighted grin on her face, "that none of your samples were ever destroyed by sarkatoxin? The strongest dosage we tried barely gave them pause. My god, you're immune to W-3, I want all our frontline soldiers to be like you!"
After that, he remembered her.
"Haruno."
"Sit down, I'll be with you in a minute," she said without looking at him, sorting papers.
He might have looked forward to it, perversely. Oftentimes the red, pulsating rage that gathered between his temples as he waited for another such comment was the only feeling he would have all week.
"Extend your arm, please."
She was still polite, but she didn't smile at him anymore. On the other hand she hadn't asked someone else to cover her shifts -- sometimes she even took over other people's. Trying to prove to herself she wasn't scared of him, he was sure.
"Or maybe you never did scare her, and she just decided to stop caring instead."
He twitched; she looked up from the needle she was sliding in, an eyebrow arched. "I'm sorry, did you feel that?" Her voice held more neutral incredulity than apology.
"No," he muttered, though he would have preferred not to have to say anything.
In the end his anger always passed without a trace, one red-hot moment in a sea of grey.
There were worse things than the grey, though. "The dosage on my suppressants needs upping," he admitted, brusque and to the point.
She stared at him for a second and then gave a short nod, touched the button on her wrist-com and went back to taking her samples, every gesture calm and calculated, but subtly faster, too. "How bad is it? Scale of one to ten. Normal day being--"
"Normal day is a three." They always wanted to put his baseline at one or zero, which... no. "This -- four, five, maybe."
A couple of security guards appeared at the door of the lab, hands on their gun holsters. Sasuke ignored them.
--
Steal
--
There's a reason Zack went to ground in Cosmo Canyon apart from those miles and miles of jagged cliffs and caves and other such hiding places.
In Cosmo Canyon, fooling Shinra people is a national sport.
Not a lot of easily accessible Mako, either -- supposedly -- so Shinra people never push too hard. Which is good for them because when they're around central heating fails and prices hike harder than a mountain trail up the red hills.
Or maybe they never hang around long enough to find a good Mako vein because of the lack of welcome. It's a bit of an egg and chicken thing.
Doesn't help that what locals call a road, Midgar people call a goat trail. Zack feels like he ran his own trail twice, with a full pack, between all the chasing after wayward children he did and all the "daddy carry me".
Still, it went okay.
Also he's gambling not only his but their lives on the lack of stranger in the village but there is just about zero choice. Not like he can leave them alone at home. There's only bad solutions and worse.
"Howdy, neighbor!"
A wiry old man gives him and his gaggle of silver-haired kids a long, suspicious look. Zack puts sweet, shy, quiet Ludmila on the ground and snatches up Jake before he can go investigate and ruin the man's vegetable garden, hard-won over friable rock and dry, powdery soil. He grins as he sits Jake on his hip and waves, pretending that Jake isn't kicking his leg hard enough to bruise even a SOLDIER and going "noooooo!".
"Howdy, neighbor," Nadine repeats dutifully, lips pursed in concentration. The man unbends enough to flick her a smile. After a second he comes up to his fence and holds out a hand for Zack to shake. Zack shakes obligingly, though he has to juggle Jake around a bit first. He's still wriggling like a cut worm.
"Grig Poulson."
"Hi. Zack Strife."
"So." The man eyes the pack. The pack eyes him back. "The five sisters land you with a lovechild each?"
Zack chokes, gives a startled laugh. It's an interesting explanation; he'd run with it if he could tell Poulson believed it even a little bit. "Something like that, yeah."
Poulson looks at the kids again. Gabe and Nadine are still staring back, the way they watch interesting monsters (those they don't have the sense to be scared of); Ludy is hiding behind Zack's legs.
"Nice eyes they've got."
Considering I was interrupted by vacation, this isn't too horrible. Considering most of it is snippets and "let's add 500 words to this scene" and very few actually COMPLETED and therefore postable scenes, hrrn. Still progress though, so I'm forbidding myself to bitch too much.
Posted:
-Gundam Wing / His Dark Materials : three gen daemon ficlets, Heero with Relena, Duo, and Trowa (1 883 words)
-Territoriality ofic - Neve Serrano, pre-story: Counseling (274 words)
-Dragons and their Boys -- Nataku Episode Zero (1 383 words)
WIP:
-Teamwork 3 epilogue tidbit (yeah, i'm writing bits of the epilogue before the, oh, three or four chapters that come before it. I make sense.) Naruto and Kyuubi. (404 words)
-Teamwork 3 chapter 11, one scene and a half; smallish Sasuke scene and the start of a Naruto scene, and I still need to tweak both. (1 759 words)
-Random ot3 thingie with Sasuke as the instigator of TeamLove, actually pretty much all rambling I'll have to cut out in the end, if I don't end up trashing the whole fic because it's not working. (that, or make an actual story out of the ramblings, it comes across like a summary instead and telling instead of showing is baaaad, but it doesn't fit with the rest of the oneshot either.) (296 words)
-DCMK: Swingersverse: The Shinichi/Kaito/Heiji threesome; 370 words of porn (still incomplete!), and an outtake/sidefic/scene that happened in the middle that was not relevant to the porn so did not belong in the main fic but DID belong in the overall "figuring out polyamory" setup (1 681 words).
-Sequel for Sanctuarium, the GW/SGA crossover. (406 words)
-Restore, main fic (1 214 words of Aeris POV scene, 123 of random padding for Cloudscene, 544 of Zack, all in progress)
-Restore, Cloudette sequel (306 words of stupid)
-Restore, that survival/horror scene that wants to be part of the actual fic, Tifa&Seph (764 words)
-Tripletsverse; some Team Hebi (787 words)
-that old Blobsuke AU (Sasuke and Sakura, 515 words)
-Steal (zack and kiddies) (402 words)
... I was REALLY SCATTERED this month. Seriously, I'm not even talking a chapter, none of these SCENES is complete, save the Teamwork one with Sasuke, and it'll need added padding anyway.
BUT ANYWAY.
--
Teamwork 3 epilogue tidbit, Naruto and Kyuubi. (not sure i'll keep it, but it's cute, so hey.)
--
Naruto stared at the endless blue of the sky, hands tucked behind his head and warm sand slowly trickling down to fill the hollows under his neck. Mmh. So good.
Actually... Maybe he was getting a little too warm. Just a little.
He gave a mental prod, and another when the first got no response. 'Hey, Kyuubi... you wanna?'
Irritation and befuddlement were his two first responses, and then as the demon fox lifted the meaning from his mind, offense. /I am not a cub/ came the snarl, with undertones of both "I don't even do that anymore" and "You don't think I'm stupid enough to be pacified with that".
'Fine, whatever. I don't care if I'm a cub or not!' and he flipped on his front on the sand, pushed himself up on hands and knees, and started digging with great enthusiasm.
It took Kyuubi about a minute eyeing him sideways with great disdain before the demon fox slid closer and cautiously nudged at their hand, inside. Naruto gave some control easily.
The next instant Kyuubi had taken over both arms and was showing him how it was done, goddamnit, teeth gritted in determination and incidentally showering a much wider area in cold, damp sand. Naruto choked, he was trying to keep from laughing and accidentally insulting Kyuubi so hard.
/There. That's how it's done./
Pff. 'I see. Yeah, much better.' He even managed to feel serious, somehow. Kinda. Surface-deep. Kyuubi was suspicious for a couple of seconds but after that Naruto flopped on his side in the cool, shadowed hole and... oh, neat. The sounds of the sea were strangely muted; they could see the sky straight overhead but there were walls all around. 'Too bad sand shifts too much, it might be cool to have a tunnel hideout.'
Kyuubi didn't answer, but for a fleeting moment there were burrows in his mind, solid earth all around, hiding and shielding -- entirely unnecessary for such a dangerous creature, of course, but ...
'We'll need somewhere to get away from their nagging, anyway,' Naruto commented philosophically, and cautiously didn't tell Kyuubi that everyone else would have a room of their own in their home so he might as well have one, too. Kyuubi would take it as charity again.
--
Teamwork 3 chapter 11, Sasuke scene
--
She moved well. She'd have to be a lot faster if she wanted to get him that way, sharingan or no sharingan. He let his eyes go red and started dodging, watching her smooth, practiced movements. There was a bite in them that reminded him of Neji more than any other Hyuuga he'd ever watched fight, a hint of fire.
There were plenty of reasons not to like the Hyuuga clan. There had been something of a rivalry between their clans pre-massacre. (He'd been young and hadn't paid much attention at the time, honestly.)
They'd offered to adopt him in when he was orphaned -- just so happened they would get their hands on the sharingan if he said yes, and if this ended the Uchiha for good that was just a bonus. (They weren't the only ones who'd offered, and objectively speaking he could see it was an offer that didn't cost much and might have rewarded enormously, but he held a faint grudge against all who had tried their luck.)
Hinata was in love with Naruto. Naruto found Neji hot.
(With their eyes closed they looked like family.)
"Haa!"
A wall of raw chakra, straight from her striking palm; he jumped back, accompanying the impact, rolled in the air, landed already shaping katon seals.
(they looked like family Hinata's long hair was glossy and black Hiashi's jawline was his father's they all moved like people who'd lived all their life practicing the traditional gestures (there was a Branch cousin who wore his hair in a ponytail that fell between narrow shoulders and walked all light and cat-footed))
Defeating her faster might have been humiliating, but dragging it on would only be a show of pity, and he wasn't in the mood.
--
Random ot3 thingie with Sasuke as the instigator of TeamLove -- this part looks more like a Sasucentric weird clan thinger. XD; oops.
--
There's people in the village who don't carry enough Uchiha blood to ever awaken the sharingan and thus were denied the right to the name (it saved them), but the potential sleeps there anyway. Yoko says she doesn't much like the thought that someone might attempt to see whether a breeding program with her children and her sister's children could have it resurface, and if they can find an arrangement... but all Sasuke cares about is, are you kin? and they are, distant kin but kin anyway, and so he'll protect them.
He doesn't want there to be any owing, any obligation between him and his kin. Sachi says that's exactly why they want to. It'd be weird to be father to two children when he and their mothers were never close, and there's Sakura who might be hurt. But he wants Itachi's children more than he wants his own at this point, so it works out fine for everyone. He can deal with being an uncle in loco parentis.
--
DCMK: Swingersverse: outtake/sidefic
--
Kuroba was balancing his full sake cup on his forehead, but quietly, and Heiji had no trouble believing this was the most discreet he could make himself be. Heiji snorted out a laugh and nudged him with his foot.
"Yer gonna hurt something bein' so quiet. You don't drink?"
"Eh, not often." He turned laughing eyes Heiji's way; Heiji catalogued the expression, utterly unlike Kudo and horribly endearing anyway. "Am I scaring you? I promise I know how to simmer down and stay put without it being a harbinger of doom."
"Uh huh," Heiji teased.
"Usually I wouldn't believe him either," Kudo said from Kuroba's other side, leaning forward so he could smirk at Heiji past his doppelganger's head. "This is one situation that fits the parameters of those rare exceptions."
"Which is?" Heiji prompted, sure the answer would be something like ‘when he's post-mind-coital'.
"Well, there's fish in your pond."
"Oi!" Suddenly two sake cups were resting on the gallery floor, and Kuroba was on Kudo, attempting to cover his mouth with his hand. Kudo merely twisted his head this and that way and kept speaking.
"There's... fish in my pond," Heiji repeated slowly.
"And if he's too noisy they might hear him and track him down... slowly... flopping around on the ground all wet and gluey and scaly... Until they find him..."
Kuroba slunk off Kudo and gave him a jaundiced look. "I hate you forever. I'm going home and taking Ran and we're going on the lam without you." A pause. "Also I'm drinking your sake." He picked up both cups and gathered them close, hunching over them.
Kudo sat up, batted imaginary dust off his yukata primly, and grinned at Heiji over his bowed head. "Kidding. Actually he's being quiet because he's post-mind-coital."
"There's always a little more room for a small, quick mindfuck," Kuroba grumbled under his breath, even as Heiji laughed. "Hope you don't sleep too deeply tonight."
--
Sequel for Sanctuarium, the GW/SGA crossover.
--
John nodded a greeting at him, and then another, longer look; Heero arched an eyebrow in question. From the door Rodney was watching them, arms still crossed defensively -- forgotten in favor of staring at him cross-eyed.
"... You're kind of a shrimp, aren't you?" John commented, hands on his hips, as he looked him up and down. The top of Heero's head reached his chin, but only just.
Heero shrugged. "Cockpit takes up less space in the machine that way."
Distracted, Rodney eyed Wing with a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. "Huh, yes, I thought so -- it was custom built for you, wasn't it?"
Heero nodded as he walked up to him; it didn't betray much sensitive info to say that.
"No, seriously! You looked much bigger when you were dragging me around and being all commando of death-y!" The expression on Rodney's face was now turning to pure consternation. " ... Older too."
There was better light at the hangar's exit; they'd both stopped, so Heero stopped too, bland-faced. This was an issue he'd preferred not to have if possible. He was not a child, damn it.
"I don't care how Asian-faced you are and how that somehow magically prevents wrinkles. You can not be over twenty-one. Uh, assuming your planet has a similar length of rotation--"
"It does. I'm not."
John swore under his breath, a word in a language Heero didn't recognize; the dismay in it came out clear enough anyway. "... Tell me you're over eighteen, at least."
Heero had to stop and calculate how long the trip had taken. "As it happens, yes." For, uh, about three weeks. Assuming he'd been born somewhere close to the date he'd written down at random on his first ever official ID, which frankly he had not the first clue about.
--
Restore, main fic
--
"...Hey," he said eventually, voice rough, low.
She smiled faintly, an acknowledgement almost as subdued as his own. She didn't want him thinking she took him lightly; she remembered how badly too much levity had gone over with Cloud and Tifa.
He looked away, as if there was something in the middle of the street. "Wasn't s'posed to go in."
There was a hint of embarrassment in his voice -- being forbidden things like a child? Being caught lurking? She smiled a little wider. "I'm not supposed to come out either. In case someone who knew me before sees me."
He grunted. "Makes sense."
"I figure since you're here it'll be maybe a few more hours before I can come out again, anyway... it doesn't matter much anymore if rumors start to spread now."
He spared her a quick glance, but otherwise didn't respond. Aeris let the silence fall again, cars driving past and people dodging their stretched out legs on the sidewalk, some sparing the unlikely pair they made mildly curious looks, most of them not even that much. There was a rhythm to the street just like there was one to the Lifestream, ebb and flow, patterns just out of reach that she felt she ought to be able to read.
There was a pattern to Barret's thoughts, and she couldn't read them (no matter what Sephiroth thought) but she felt the ebb and flow of his anger, his betrayed feelings, his anguish. His love. His gratefulness.
"Tifa tells me that Marlene calls my mother Grandma," she said quietly into one of those lulls. "I can't tell you how much it means to me. Knowing I would be leaving her alone -- it was..."
"Goddamnit." Barret rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand, angry and pained both. "I can't figure out how pissed off I am at you. You're not fightin' fair."
Of course not. She was fighting to win.
--
Restore, that survival/horror scene that wants to be part of the actual fic, Tifa&Seph
--
"I'm more durable than you are," he said, a strange, barely there smile on his lips. He held out his hand.
Tifa stared.
"Strife's waiting."
Cloud might be stuck down there with a broken leg or worse. Tifa sucked in a breath, shuffled closer, and swung onto his back.
Her legs were barely settling at his hips when he dropped under the Plate. He swung hand to hand along the pipe, scanning darkness underneath for she didn't know what, and then swung his weight again and let go. Tifa's hands tightened on his shoulders.
The void took them.
There was no sound past a whistle of air in her ears, strangely deadened; nothing beyond. The Sector was lost in the gloom; Tifa squinted against the wind, could only see a few blocks, and nothing that moved in any of the twisted streets.
They landed on a rickety roof, old damp wood splintering under Sephiroth's feet. Tifa was ready to absorb as much of the impact as she could with arms and legs, but when the roof broke under them and they fell another story her grip slipped and she crashed against his back; her chin struck the back of his head.
"--ow." She let go, slipped hurriedly to the ground, rubbing her chin, trying not to rub her chest. She took two steps back out of his personal space before she even took a look around. He turned, arched an eyebrow at her.
She would have had to go right past him to go to the door and look for stairs down... and she might have, to prove she wasn't afraid, but when she looked around again it was... a typical slum room, just enough light to guess how dirty with disuse and spiders in must have been, but knickknacks and personal things on the walls; someone else's room, someone else's house, and they hadn't been invited. She turned to the window and yanked the swelled window frame open.
She sat on the edge of the window and swung her legs out, dropped onto the street. Sephiroth followed without a word. The street was narrow and without a sign, and she'd never learned that particular sector by heart; she had no clue how to orient herself. She looked up; the hole was a small dot of light far overhead. There were other pinpricks like stars. They'd fallen a bit at an angle, so if they went, um, maybe left...
Sephiroth lifted two fingers to his mouth and whistled, two short and two long, the kind of sound that seemed even louder, farther-reaching in this twilight.
"He'll be up on a roof," he said. At first the fact that he wasn't even looking at her irritated Tifa (though she had to be honest with herself; seeing his cat eyes turned her way made her tense too), but then she realized he was scanning the street, the pitch black corners. Maybe they didn't seem so dark to him.
"Is there anything over there?"
"... No." Turning away brusquely, he went to a nearby awning, kicked off a metal barrel to jump up. Tifa followed with only a little frown, puzzled. She didn't think it had been quite a lie... not quite.
--
Tripletsverse; some Team Hebi (man is the mood different from normal tripletsverse. XD)
--
The Uchiha hideout was a sinister place. Suigetsu didn't rattle easily; he explored with more distaste and eyerolling annoyance at the lack of light than real unease. Nevertheless he couldn't pretend that the whole hollowed-hill compound wasn't creepy as fuck, and after years enjoying Orochimaru's own hideouts he knew creepy. Seriously, a throne room?
"What'd you guys find?" he asked. "Cause personally I found a lot of missing torches, missing windows, missing carpets and sheets and padded seats and anything but bare stone that's also missing chunks here and there. Oh yeah, it's missing another Uchiha, too."
"Get off that seat" was Sasuke's only response. Suigetsu considered telling him "make me"...
As much as he loved ribbing Sasuke -- about his prissy attitude, his goddamn Leaf-ness, his 'I am your leader, peons!' -- there was a time to keep prodding, and one to get out of the way. When Sasuke's eyes were already red with the sharingan and he bled killing intent through every pore, it wasn't the best season for prodding.
"You call that a seat?" he grumbled as he slipped off his uncomfortable stone perch, so he wouldn't look too easy. "It's a goddamn throne, there's not two ways about it."
Sasuke ignored him utterly, eyes scanning the room in a way that made Suigetsu doubt he even truly saw it. The walls were covered in clan emblems, swirls, stylized sharingan commas, but also in pitted holes and gashes, as if there had already been a battle here, years and years ago.
Suigetsu brushed a bit of rubble off the steps that went up to the throne and sat, sighing. It had taken the four of them two weeks after Deidara to track down all the Akatsuki hideouts in the area; they'd even confirmed two recent-ish Itachi sightings. After that, nothing.
If Sasuke's brother were anywhere nearby, and willing to be found, he'd be in here, Suigetsu was sure. But of course their fearless leader hadn't accepted Karin's "There's not even a rat alive in here, Sasuke!" at face value.
"Juugo. Anything?"
Juugo made his way across the empty space to meet Sasuke in the middle of the huge, high-ceilinged room. (Totally a throne room, seriously what the hell, Uchihas. Apparently Sasuke came by his arrogance honestly.) "A few of the smarter birds remember seeing a human in the forest outside, but the memories are vague, it could be any time between a week and a couple of months ago."
Sasuke didn't say anything, stone-faced. His chakra flickered. Suigetsu grinned to himself and trailed his hand up the handle of his sword, in case all that killing intent triggered Juugo.
"Nothing!" Karin snarled when she walked in in turn, hair and shirt caked with dust. "I told you, not even a --"
"Did you check for genjutsu?"
"Did I -- of course I checked for genjutsu, what do you take me for? There's no one who can trick me with genjutsu--"
Suigetsu watched fascinated as Sasuke visibly gritted his teeth. He'd never thought the guy had this much emotion in him. Thwarted was an interesting look on him. "Uchiha Itachi could," he said, low and quiet and warningly, but Karin was busy batting dust out of her clothes and snarling and didn't notice.
"Yes, well, even if Uchiha Itachi is laired here somewhere watching us from his corner of perfect invisibility, apparently he's too much of a voyeur to bother coming out, so it's the exact same thing in the end, isn't it?"
A second of silence.
"What are you grinning at, you kappa-bastard?" Karin demanded, eyeing Suigetsu with open suspicion. He sighed.
"Aw, crap, Karin, you ruined it. I wanted to see if Sasuke or Juugo would lose it first."
--
that old Blobsuke AU (team seven... IN SPACE.)
--
She had been working at the labs for a whole five months before Sasuke bothered to remember her from one day to the next. There were a dozen interns taking turns giving him his daily checkup, all interchangeable in their white blouses and green hair-covering caps; he hadn't cared.
"Do you know," she had said one day, with a needle in his elbow and a bright delighted grin on her face, "that none of your samples were ever destroyed by sarkatoxin? The strongest dosage we tried barely gave them pause. My god, you're immune to W-3, I want all our frontline soldiers to be like you!"
After that, he remembered her.
"Haruno."
"Sit down, I'll be with you in a minute," she said without looking at him, sorting papers.
He might have looked forward to it, perversely. Oftentimes the red, pulsating rage that gathered between his temples as he waited for another such comment was the only feeling he would have all week.
"Extend your arm, please."
She was still polite, but she didn't smile at him anymore. On the other hand she hadn't asked someone else to cover her shifts -- sometimes she even took over other people's. Trying to prove to herself she wasn't scared of him, he was sure.
"Or maybe you never did scare her, and she just decided to stop caring instead."
He twitched; she looked up from the needle she was sliding in, an eyebrow arched. "I'm sorry, did you feel that?" Her voice held more neutral incredulity than apology.
"No," he muttered, though he would have preferred not to have to say anything.
In the end his anger always passed without a trace, one red-hot moment in a sea of grey.
There were worse things than the grey, though. "The dosage on my suppressants needs upping," he admitted, brusque and to the point.
She stared at him for a second and then gave a short nod, touched the button on her wrist-com and went back to taking her samples, every gesture calm and calculated, but subtly faster, too. "How bad is it? Scale of one to ten. Normal day being--"
"Normal day is a three." They always wanted to put his baseline at one or zero, which... no. "This -- four, five, maybe."
A couple of security guards appeared at the door of the lab, hands on their gun holsters. Sasuke ignored them.
--
Steal
--
There's a reason Zack went to ground in Cosmo Canyon apart from those miles and miles of jagged cliffs and caves and other such hiding places.
In Cosmo Canyon, fooling Shinra people is a national sport.
Not a lot of easily accessible Mako, either -- supposedly -- so Shinra people never push too hard. Which is good for them because when they're around central heating fails and prices hike harder than a mountain trail up the red hills.
Or maybe they never hang around long enough to find a good Mako vein because of the lack of welcome. It's a bit of an egg and chicken thing.
Doesn't help that what locals call a road, Midgar people call a goat trail. Zack feels like he ran his own trail twice, with a full pack, between all the chasing after wayward children he did and all the "daddy carry me".
Still, it went okay.
Also he's gambling not only his but their lives on the lack of stranger in the village but there is just about zero choice. Not like he can leave them alone at home. There's only bad solutions and worse.
"Howdy, neighbor!"
A wiry old man gives him and his gaggle of silver-haired kids a long, suspicious look. Zack puts sweet, shy, quiet Ludmila on the ground and snatches up Jake before he can go investigate and ruin the man's vegetable garden, hard-won over friable rock and dry, powdery soil. He grins as he sits Jake on his hip and waves, pretending that Jake isn't kicking his leg hard enough to bruise even a SOLDIER and going "noooooo!".
"Howdy, neighbor," Nadine repeats dutifully, lips pursed in concentration. The man unbends enough to flick her a smile. After a second he comes up to his fence and holds out a hand for Zack to shake. Zack shakes obligingly, though he has to juggle Jake around a bit first. He's still wriggling like a cut worm.
"Grig Poulson."
"Hi. Zack Strife."
"So." The man eyes the pack. The pack eyes him back. "The five sisters land you with a lovechild each?"
Zack chokes, gives a startled laugh. It's an interesting explanation; he'd run with it if he could tell Poulson believed it even a little bit. "Something like that, yeah."
Poulson looks at the kids again. Gabe and Nadine are still staring back, the way they watch interesting monsters (those they don't have the sense to be scared of); Ludy is hiding behind Zack's legs.
"Nice eyes they've got."
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(But tripletsverse Team Hawk makes me laugh way too much. Also, Zack is using Cloud's surname? Awwww. ♥)
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He was using Zack Gainsborough elsewhere. I wonder what he'll do once he runs out of friends to rename himself with. And Sephiroth who doesn't even have a surname to steal!! D: Seriously Sephiroth, being a bad friend there.
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Re: X-D
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And OMG, I'd almost forgotten about the SGA crossover. Must reread. Now.
Thank you for the snippets. I can't wait to read the full scenes! :)
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Sasuke is a possessive bastard. XD He doesn't mind sharing with Sakura because Sakura belongs to him too, but anyone else, hssss.
Thank you for the comment, lovely~
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I finally wean myself off re-reading fanfiction.
AND THEN YOU DO...YOU DO THIS.
-flail-
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D'AAAWWWWW ZACK!!