authoronfire-blog - Tumblr blog

[authoronfire-blog]

~FANFIC GIVEAWAY~

You know how people do giveaways for fanart commissions? I’m doing that with fanfic. Yeah you heard me.

RULES:

Reblog with what your request. If you fail to do so, you will not be entered.

Likes don’t count.

Infinite reblogs, however I recommend entering with a different request each time unless you’re really desperate for a specific scenario.

Winner(s) will be selected by ME. That’s right, no random number generator. I’m going to choose the best request(s) and write it/them. I will definitely pick at least one winner, but depending on the number and quality of requests I might choose more.

REQUEST GUIDELINES

Winner(s) will be selected on a rolling basis until March 1st so be quick!

Go forth and have fun!

[authoronfire-blog]

GIVE ME A CHARACTER;

and I’ll break their ass down:

How I feel about this character

All the people I ship romantically with this character

My non-romantic OTP for this character

My unpopular opinion about this character

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

[authoronfire-blog]

In the dark of the early morning, Violet was finally able to breathe out again. Her hibernative state had left her in a stasis so profound that she had, for a night, been breathing wrong. As the sun rose, she felt her muscles unknot and she stretched, her hair becoming less stiff and her limbs ceasing their static state. As she had already been standing, she had no need to rise in order to walk, groaning as her joints creaked, through the forest and onto the sparse plains, crossing the hills until she found the city.

What a strange place, she always thought, but she would always tolerate it for Haylay.

[authoronfire-blog]

Hiatus

Due to limited online access during Thanksgiving break, there will be no daily updates on To Be Continued until Tuesday at the latest.

Whether or not I'm going to play catch-up and have five posts for you then has yet to be decided.

[authoronfire-blog]

As panicked as I am, my mind is racing to conclusions. "A ghost?" I yell, "I'm a ghost?" I think I see the guy who mentioned it flinch, while the rest of the team says nothing. I wonder if they can hear me, but I don't care.

Turning on the first guy, I practically shriek hysterically. "What do you know? How do you know it? What are you?" I clutch my own face. Oh god, I'm having a panic attack from being ignored like this. "What am I?"

The room feels dark. I can practically feel the sweat on this guy's brow as he stays stationary, clearly unsure what to do.

I jerk my gaze away from him to face the source of a sudden sound: the leader of the S.W.A.T. team barks out a command to leave the house. They do, but the mystery guy doesn't. He slowly raises a finger to where his lips would be, indicating that I be quiet and patient.

They leave the front door boarded up, with some cautionary yellow tape strewn halfheartedly across it and around the front yard.

Breathing a sigh of relief, the remaining person moves to the kitchen table and pulls off his mask. I'm a little surprised to see that he looks a little foreign; he didn't have an accent except for being muffled.

He pulls out a chair and sits down, indicating me to do the same. "You want some explanations," he says, his tone bordering on formal. "I can give you at least some of them. Just sit down, your hovering is making me nervous."

To be continued...

[authoronfire-blog]

Due to some technical glitch, I actually had today's kitten the whole time. It appears that writtenkitten had saved my writings from the last day and registered it as deserving a whole new kitten. I'm flattered, to say the least, but I would have gotten nowhere if I had simply gone with it.

This is the kitten I was rewarded with. In celebration, though, I wrote a little further along than I would have normally. (Though there's no reason I shouldn't try to do so more often in the future, hmm.)

I hope you enjoy the extra length and kitten in today's installment.

[authoronfire-blog]

This isn't making any sense at all. Slowly, out of sheer curiosity, I turn my head slightly, as if I will be able to properly see without turning around more.

The S.W.A.T. team doesn't seem to be doing anything of use now. They're looking through my cupboards and things. I must have missed an order to search my house.

Hang on, isn't that a bit rude? Don't they need a warrant?

"Hey!" I say, but only one of them so much as glances up. He gets right back to opening kitchen drawers immediately. "Hey, stop it! I want to see your warrant before you search my house!"

I'm completely ignored. Pissed off, I turn around to face them properly, chasing after the guy who looked up. "What's wrong with you guys, can you not see me or something?"

This guy just keeps ignoring me. He seems determined to keep his back to me.

Huffing, I turn to the nearest other one. "What's the deal? You all must be in on it, he's not the only one ignoring me."

I think I see the first guy shake his head a little, but I'm already pissed as fuck, and he has no control over me. I reach out and tap this guy on the shoulder.

It happens so quick I'm not completely sure of it, but the guy turns around with his gun up, and that knocks me off balance. I manage not to fall, but now he's got his gun raised, my hands are in the air again.

"Whoa, dude," I say, "Calm down, I'm just trying to--hey, hang on."

The rest of the team is in a fuss, all like, "What happened?" and "Did you hear something?"

The only one who hasn't asked the dude a question is probably the first guy who looked up when I talked. He's just staring silently before he says calmly, "Must be a ghost or something."

[authoronfire-blog]

I'm a little surprised, to say the least. I stand stock-still as they begin to enter, but slowly I think of what I've seen in movies and how I don't want to be suspicious, so I raise my hands and lock them behind my head. "I'm unarmed," I say, above my usual speaking volume so that I can be heard clearly. "I don't know why you're here, but I'm willing to cooperate."

They ignore me. They all surround my dinner guests and start touching them. My guests don't seem to mind--in fact, they hardly move at all. The S.W.A.T. leader shakes his head. "Any survivors?"

I'm not sure what anyone would have survived. My cooking isn't that bad.

Everybody shakes their heads, though. I feel my ears burn, embarrassed that these people found all these dead people and I just kept talking, apparently straight through their untimely deaths.

I don't turn around because that would be suspicious, but I do say, "I didn't realize. It must have been an accident."

"Cause of death?" one of the S.W.A.T. men asks, rudely ignoring me.

There's a brief pause, and then someone else says, "Poison gas."

I frown. I've never worn a gas mask in my life. I wouldn't still be here if the room had been filled with poison gas.

To be continued...

[authoronfire-blog]

Somebody knocks on the door. Nobody answers.

There's another knock, more brisk. Still, of all of us sitting here, nobody answers.

I look around at us all. "Is somebody going to get that?" I ask plaintively.

They don't answer me.

Sighing, I stand and go to get the door. It opens, though, with a few soft clicks, and I stop to assume my most humble position.

The door is only slightly ajar, and nobody comes around it at first. I say, "Come in," in my most friendly and hostly voice.

Slowly, I see something change in the dim lighting, a little tiny bit of change. Someone pokes their head around the corner, and at first I can't really make out details, only a dark shadow over hir face--understandable, since xe is back-lit. But as xe opens the door further, I can see an odd protrusion, and as he turns his head to wave back where xe came from, I can make out the clear truth: xe's wearing a gas mask.

I'm surprised, and rendered stock-still when the door opens completely and the first person--gender still hard to infer--and hir posse are all fully decked out with gas masks, rifles, and body armor. It's possible to see, by the light at the end of the first person's rifle, each bullet-proof vest emblazoned with the white letters S.W.A.T.

To be continued...

[authoronfire-blog]

When are you going to get up? Stand up now. Get the fuck off your chair and stand up.

That's right. You can do it. And just like you can do that you can do other things. It seems hard but you can do it, and maybe you do it shittily but you can do it. Don't get mad at yourself. Get mad at the world for not working for you. You deserve a little narcissism in your life.

Now what are you going to do once you're standing? You're going to do whatever the fuck you want. You want to paint pretty pictures on the wall? Well, the wall's a rental, so tape some paper up over it, but then you can go to town. You want to fuck everything up? Well good for you, you've already done it, you manly-ass man you. You want to do absolutely nothing? Tough cookies, princess, but you're going to have to do more than that.

You want to see the stars, remember that. Not too close, of course, 'cause those get way too hot and stuff. But you can see them just fine from just outside, right? Well enough, anyway. You want better? Keep moving so you can make it to somewhere smaller and farther from the city, bet you'll be able to see the milky way from there, huh?

[authoronfire-blog]

New challenge.

The 100 Theme one wasn't going as well as I'd hoped. I'll still pick at it, but I'm not pushing myself on it.

In the meantime, I'm challenging myself to write at least 100 words a day. This will be achieved through writtenkitten.net, so each one will come with a kitten picture. How's that for a deal?

[authoronfire-blog]

I told myself I wasn't going to do NaNoWriMo, but then I had a few hours between flights and layovers and I was thinking of these things:

Something (a challenge/prompt/funny thought) Mom and I shared: a damaged hand requiring you to do a dictation, and asking strangers to take it down for you

What if everyone you meet is a criminal in some way? If everybody had to commit a crime, who would commit which one(s)?

An old prompt/plotline that I thought of: for some reason, a lesbian has to come out to literally the whole world (or at least country), one step at a time.

Somehow all that jumbled together into something strange and mysterious that I don't completely understand. Unfortunately, Frankie seems quite insistent on keeping Yuki's secret, so I don't think I'll be able to properly finish this or anything.

Anyway. Happy reading! ~Z 

I thought I was doing a favor for myself. I thought it was a simple act of goodwill, a mere means of expressing my excellent citizenship.

Well, it was goodwill. What it wasn’t was simple, not given all of the things that would result.

All of this confusion started with a question, of course, as all good stories, I would soon learn, do. In this case, the question was, “Could you take some notes for me?”

At the time I had looked at Yuki’s hand, then that of a complete stranger, and seen a good enough reason: her hand was bandaged, and though it was her left hand, it stood to reason that she could well be left-handed—in fact, this was enforced by the slight, flat bulge of a smart phone in her left pocket. Old habits die hard, after all, a fact that I know too well.

Well, of course I nodded, and then recalled that most people depend more on their hearing, so I said, “Sure.”

Yuki smiled, a friendly kind of smile that I haven’t seen so much of lately but saw plenty of in my first encounter with her, and pulled from her neck a lanyard, which surprised me slightly though I’m sure I never showed it. She held the end of it, showing the array of items attached to it: two silver keys, one brass one, one black one, USB flash drive, and a keychain with the name FUMIE embroidered on it.

I glanced down at the laptop in my lap and up again at her, to see that she had somehow single-handedly uncapped the yellow-cased USB flash drive and held it towards me. “I don’t have Microsoft Word,” I said, hoping that she didn’t take it the wrong way. (It was true, of course. I never bothered to spend money on anything that wasn’t completely necessary, a skill that I’ve been trying to pass on to Yuki since.)

Shrugging, Yuki said, “It’s a Notepad document I’m writing on.”

That made me raise my eyebrows, but I took the USB flash drive anyway and plugged it into my :F port. I silently hoped that she didn’t use word-wrap, or at least wouldn’t act surprised when she complained about the varied lengths of the lines.

“The document is called secret dot TXT,” Yuki said, and proceeded to try to say something else. I disregarded it.

“I’m not opening anything until this scan finished,” I said, staring at her in a way I’ve been told is unnerving. I didn’t mean to unnerve her, of course, I simply was allowing myself an unusual behavior in exchange for doing such a strange task.

With a cheeky grin, one more recently familiar to me, Yuki said, “I don’t blame you. Have you learned from experience, or are you just determined not to?”

I shook my head and said, “I just intend not to. You are the first stranger I have let plug into my computer, Fumi.” (I meant to say Fumie, but at the time I was less familiar with pronunciation of such names and as such assumed that the IE made an EE sound. I was wrong, as I learned later.)

Yuki blinked at that. I’m still not sure if she was only pretending to be shocked or not. Pretend is not a thing that I’m good at noticing. But she smiled after that with a nod like she understood and she said, “That’s pronounced Foomee-eh,” she said, according to the pronunciation system that I knew at the time, “but it’s not my name. My name is Yuki,” she said, and held out her hand.

The antivirus finished just then, so I clicked it, and then held out my own hand. “Mine is Frankie,” I told her. I’m almost surprised I didn’t tell her sooner. I’m quite fond of my name.

Beaming that same friendly smile, Yuki said, “It’s good to meet you, Frankie. I’m a lesbian.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure what to do with this information. At first I just kind of sat there and opened the document that Yuki had specified. For a brief second I wondered if Yuki’s sexuality was the title secret on the .txt document, and imagined the Courier New font reading my name is Yuki I am a lesbian my name is Yuki I am a lesbian I am a lesbian my name is Yuki I am a lesbian I am a lesbian I am a lesbian and so forth. That was silly, though, and I dismissed it as such. (Perhaps it would be more likely to be random rather than a perfect n+1 pattern.)

Slowly enough, I realized that such a confession warranted an answer. I looked up at Yuki who was, sure enough, looking at me expectantly, almost nervously, and said, “I am a bisexual.”

Yuki breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Oh thank you, for a second I thought you were a conservative.”

I shrugged. As comfortable as I seemed to be with plugging a stranger’s USB flash drive into my computer, I was not so comfortable with discussing politics with her, no matter how likely we were to agree. Then I said, “Where would you like for me to begin your dictation?” There were numerous lines of text—more than I could fit on my window, in fact. I maximized the Notepad window to see if that would change. It didn’t.

“Oh, you’ll have to scroll down to the end,” said Yuki, shuffling behind me and thus making me quite glad that I had already maximized the window. It was still unnerving, though, as I held down the page down key and watched the lines scroll. Honestly, it would be a while still until I was comfortable with this kind of intrusion, particularly as she pointed her ring finger at the bottom of the page as though it would expedite things. “There,” she said when it stopped, which was pretty obvious.

“Could you read the last paragraph aloud for me?” Yuki asked this, and I frowned a little bit as I tried to read the one continuous line, scrolling the cursor sideways every few words, speaking haltingly and jarringly as I have always been wont to do. I’m not a very good reader. I frowned even more and took a large breath in the middle of the sentence when I realized that Yuki would be able to read beside me anyway, but I read it anyway.

“Grinning, Susan popped her bubble gum and drew a picture of it in the air. ‘It’s just a turn the the right, darling, and straight on ‘til dawn.’ Of course Tina wouldn’t get the joke, being as young as she was, but there was no telling the cleverness that Susan felt in the appropriateness of the joke.” I recited all this terribly. If you know me, you may be aware that my words are good in the rare case that I can say them.

Yuki nodded and said, “Okay. On the next line, start with (quote) Your heart’s in Never-land? Really? (end quote) Tina’s eyes widened with wonder at her new friend’s ability to live with one of her internal organs in such a distant place from her body (period) You got all that?”

“…from… her body. Yes,” I said, not ashamed of having made slight adjustments in grammar. I’ve never been a huge fan of contractions in dialogue, partially because I’m not always well-understood when I use them myself.

Flashing another smile, Yuki said, “Thanks. What train are you heading on?”

The characters said nothing at all about anything remotely relating to trains, but I typed her words until she added, “That’s a question for you, Frankie.”

I looked up expectantly. “Old Town,” I said frankly. “Is this relevant to your novel?”

“It’s not a novel,” Yuki said. I wondered what it was. “It’s not a memoir, either,” she added, and I had no idea what it was.

“Then what is it?”

Yuki looked around us. The train platform was empty save for a dozen passerby scattered along the two sides of the tracks. A small breeze blew leaves in from the north northeast. It was crowded for a train station in the U.S., nothing at all like home where the trains were smaller but actually used. Despite the crowd (or complete lack thereof) she leaned in close before whispering in my ear, “Can you keep a secret?”

There are things I could say here about the secrets I’ve kept, but it wouldn’t be keeping them. Someone I know committed suicide because of things that she wouldn’t tell her parents, and somebody else had a secret child, and that’s all that I’m comfortable saying without feeling invalidated as a secret-keeper: some things are too revealing to say even without naming anybody, even knowing that the very person who told the secret wouldn’t know that it was told again.

I leaned closer in and breathed, “Yes,” knowing full well that I was keeping a good number of secrets from her, that she kept a good number of them from me, that she could lie to me, that she could change my life if I let her.

[authoronfire-blog]

I told myself I wasn't going to do NaNoWriMo but then yesterday this happened

[authoronfire-blog]

014: Mask

After the long day of riding, it was a huge relief to stop for the night. Antero took his helmet off with a sigh as the sun set, relishing the cold air after the stiffling air of his desert suit. "Come on, Tore," he added to his charge, "the air is much nicer outside." Tore sat on the bionic horse, almost completely still, the small glass visor showing nothing but shadow in the fading light. If he received any response, Antero couldn't hear it through the muffle of Tore's suit. "I know your father warned you about ever taking your suit off," Antero said, sighing and dismounting to approach Tore, "but the sun's away now. It's safe. Your father has never seen a real desert in his life." "I don't want to get out," Tore said, her voice almost squeaky and impossible to hear. Antero stripped the torsal shield off of his suit and crossed his arms. "There's no sense staying in there. It's just hot now. But the sun doesn't burn and the sands don't storm at night, come on out before you scare everyone away." Her suit chinked as Tore inclined her head slightly, sounding dejected. "But… the suit is the only thing that keeps the men away." Antero raised an eyebrow. "The culture is very different here, isn't it? But the threat of your father remains very present even for the men here. They would stop flirting as soon as they knew that he doesn't approve, you know." Immediately, Tore shook her head. "No that's not--that's not the problem." When the rattling finally ended, she added, almost too quiet to be heard, "They're very civil. Almost too civil." Before Antero could answer, he was greeted by a few of the caravan's men, clearly glad to be out of the cabins and into the cool night, ready for a good party. With callous laughs and slaps on the back, they chatted loudly about the hunting ahead. "Hey Antero, where's that kid of yours? He needs to man up and come along." "Still wearing your suit? Loosen up, it's cool out here." "Come on, man, stop hanging out with these weird stuits and join us." But they left soon, retreating from the presence of Tore's suited, mounted form. As soon as they were out of earshot, she sighed. "They want me to be something they're not," she said sadly.

[authoronfire-blog]

013: Haunted

Mao and Hana sat on adjacent seats on the bullet train, lifting Kim in unison so that she could sit half on one lap and half on the other. It would be a long ride home, particularly given the long emotional ordeal they all had been through: all that anybody had wanted to do was morn, but just when they thought that the police questions were done with, they all had to be repeated for the American diplomats. Of course it was a murder-suicide--it was hard to see why anyone was confused when Hannah had spelled the whole thing out in her note. And yet, they continued to suspect Isamu until Mao had to mention the financial accounts just to make them leave her brother alone for breakfast. Hana looked forward to returning to her painting, and Mao looked forward to sleeping, and Kim… When Kim fell asleep, half an hour out of Tokyo, Hana leaned her head on Mao's shoulder to have a quiet conversation. "It's dreadful," she said, "but it's good that this happened, isn't it?" Mao nodded numbly. It was good that she had brought Hana with to the family emergency: it had forced her to come out to her little brother and, more importantly, Hannah had approved, and though the circumstances leading up to it were unfortunate, they were lucky to have the opportunity to adopt land in their laps when they had struggled so hard to get a donor. It would be strange, especially since Kim was American and knew very little Japanese, but they would adjust, and it would be okay. Hana leaned up and kissed Mao's cheek. "You will be a good mother. Even if your English isn't very good. I will help." She leaned again on Mao, smiling down at Kim. "She's a happy child, for one who has been through so much. She reminds me of me, when I was younger." When Mao didn't respond for a moment, Hana added, "I don't know much about when you were younger." Mao shrugged slightly, looking down at Kim as well. "I don't remember much. There is a photo album, though, at home. I should have shown you before." And yet, despite saying this, she felt a heavy weight in her stomach: her childhood was not something she liked to face. But she did. When they arrived at their small house, Hana led Kim by the hand and showed her all the rooms, saying (in a valiant attempt at English), "Whoops, now your room is my room! You in my bed can sleep, I with Mama Mao. Tomorrow we buy beddo!" And as soon as Kim was safely tucked away, Hana opened the box full of scrapbooks and photo albums at the kitchen table and sorted until she found Mao's. "Here," she said, opening it, and laughed, seeming delighted. "You used to be bad at hiragana! How did you think that Mao has three characters? Silly Mao," she said, and Mao leaned on the nearest counter, missing some of what Hana said next. The mistakes later made Hana frown. "Your mother seemed nice, why does she keep writing your name wrong? Is this a friend of yours? Why are you not in this picture?" As Hana's frown deepened, Mao's headache grew, until it wasn't just in her head but under her breath that she multiplied pair after pair of prime numbers, trying to calm herself down. She saw it coming when Hana gaped. The image was clear: a woman and her son and daughter, all of them wearing black in a graveyard. Hana would be able to recognize Etsuko, twenty years of wrinkles erased, and Isamu, looking fifteen when the date on the photo said he must be sixteen, but the other girl--oh, there was some of the family resemblance, even though she was only seven, but it wasn't a face that was around today. "Mao…?" Hana sounded scared, wondering why Mao wasn't in the picture. "I'm here," she said, and walked to stand behind her finace and look over the picture like she didn't recognize it. "That's my mom," she said, as if it wasn't obvious. "And Isamu." Then she leaned over, sighing. "That was at my dad's funeral. It was terrible. We lost him and my little sister at once. One thousand five hundred seventy-seven," she added, tapping the scrawled 1983 next to it. Hana didn't answer at first. Mao watched her try to do the math: was it possible for Mao to appear ten years younger than Isamu in that image when it was common knowledge that she was actually two years older? Could this have been another family, was Mao taking the picture for them, did somebody stand in for her? Slowly, Hana turned around to look Mao in the face, and Mao stared sadly at the picture. The only answer, for a while, was "Five times twenty-three: one hundred fifteen," a reference to the date. Then Mao set her hand on Hana's shoulder, making a gentle motion not unlike a massage. "I'm real," she said, as if it was any comfort to know that there was some confusion. Clearing her throat nervously, Mao added, "Mother made me take that picture. Isamu took the picture in his book, it has me and Moriko in it. You can see the next time we go. Hopefully it'll be a happier reason than this time." And then, her voice almost impossibly tight, she finished, "Moriko…jumped off the roof that night. She missed Father so…" She wiped at a tear just before it fell onto the yellowing pages of the album, and Hana stood from the chair to give her fiance a tight hug. Neither of them would bring it up with Isamu. At no time would they go to visit Mao's father's grave. Both of them were too afraid that the truth would be different, and Mao had no intention to tell her fiance that her name had been on a gravestone for a very long time, even if her current body had never died.

[authoronfire-blog]

Warning: the following piece includes the following, which may not be suitable for younger audiences:

sexual themes (graphic depiction(s) of sexual act(s))

questionable sexual morals (prostitution, dubious or absent consent, and/or excessive fetishism)

drug themes (distorted perception, addiction)

The alley was bright in comparison to the sorts of places he frequented, a bustling street next to the garbage dumps and bathroom stalls and caved-in clubs that he usually did this in. He was a whole ten feet away from the garbage dump this time, the alley accessible only from the Worst Toilet on Greenleaf, which happened to be only for paying customers at a club with half the ceiling caved in.

At this point in his life, Dane thought this was rose petals and candlelight.

He licked the dealer's fingers, mouth too dry from the drug to properly coat them, and ground against them when they teased his entrance. He lost control over the noises he made as soon as he felt the dealer's head, and he squirmed wildly when the cock filled him, hands scrambling over the brick wall that he was pressed against until his nails bled. He rocked back and forth, letting moan after desperate moan rip through his throat, but when he lowered a hand to touch his member, the dealer grabbed his wrist and pinned it to his back, yanking his hair.

"This isn't for you," he hissed, and gave a particularly harsh thrust. Dane gave a strange hiccuping cry, his forehead pressed against the wall and likely to start bleeding soon, but pressed his hips back, taking deep, rapid breaths in an attempt to calm himself and regain a sensible rhythm. It proved impossible, though, as every time he felt it coming back, the dealer would slap him or drag his nails across his back or even pull out completely so that he could ram himself back in, each time more painful than the last. He could barely collect his thoughts enough to remember that he had to please the dealer--though whether this was the drug or the dealer, he wasn't sure.

It was the first time he could remember not thinking about the drug or the process of getting it.

Of course it didn't last: the dealer came, gave Dane his deal and a quick injection as a sort of tip, and Dane didn't see that dealer again for a while--a month, perhaps. And then it wasn't for a quickie--this time, he moved in. He learned to call the dealer Bennedict, as did all of the other boys who lived in that house. Some of them even believed it was his real name.

But he didn't have to worry about where to find the drug. It was open to him whenever he pleased, just as he was open to Bennedict whenever he pleased. Dane was a favorite for three whole weeks before being demoted to an observer as a part of Bennedict's exhibitionist fetish.

And yet, there was something nice about the daily struggle that he forgot about until after Bennedict died.