#blb: clare ballard

[bread--quest]

for anyone and everyone you'd like to talk about in the prehistory disaster polycule:

1. Who is the better cook?

6. Who is always, always running late?

7. Who's clumsier?

13. Stay home/go-out? What are their date nights like?

25. (a lil sappy, but..) What do they like about each other?

it's still valentine's day somewhere (probably??)

1. Who is the better cook?

from best to worst: agan > parker > cote > clare > megan. agan sweep honestly! cote is a big fan of spicy foods because. well. spicy mod.

6. Who is always, always running late?

clare (SORRY IM LATE TRAFFIC WAS TERRIBLE) and agan (sorry im late i thought of like 5 other things i wanted to do on the way here). also occasionally megan (sorry im late i straight up did not want to come.)

7. Who's clumsier?

kinda surprisingly cote! ae's a fucking menace on the blaseball field but off it. um. being repeating makes it a lot easier to literally trip over yourself it turns out

13. Stay home/go-out? What are their date nights like?

clare and agan like to go out places (clare especially loves dancing), but somehow they always end up back at the apartment before too long. and honestly even going out is really just an excuse to spend a long time wandering around and talking :)

25. (a lil sappy, but..) What do they like about each other?

clare and agan: agan likes clare's enthusiasm and sense of adventure! clare likes agan's kindness and creativity. they also like. both have a little mutual admiration/insecurity around the other one's interactions with their team? clare wishes she could protect her team like agan can, and agan admires how clare leads the millennials.

clare and megan: hmm. it's very complicated i think because everything they like about each other is also kind of something they dislike about each other. but i'd say.... clare admires megan's determination and boldness (some might call it hubris), and she likes having someone she can really compete with. megan...megan just thinks clare is so cool, and makes playing blaseball look effortless, and makes friends so easily, and they like that they, megan ito, have the ability to get under her skin. they also are just both so competitive. do NOT invite them to board game night. there will be blood and tears and they will get divorced for the 27th time

[bread--quest]

nines mason + “mono no aware” for the untranslatable words thing? :0

mono no aware (japanese): a melancholy awareness that everything nice will fade combined with a rich enjoyment of this short-lived beauty.

i promise i can write stuff that isn't angst too. really. i swear

Day 97 is confusing enough for Clare Ballard II as it is. She is pitching, first of all, and though her memories seem to tell her she was an excellent pitcher, she doesn't seem to be quite that anymore. She lets in 5 runs in the first inning, and she watches her double across the field catch a glove as it falls glittering from the sky, and that is a whole mess of emotions she doesn't have the ability to process.

And during all of this, Battin' Island is Resonating. She feels it through her golden bones and up through her wingtips. She doesn't understand what it means, but it's something.

It's something comforting, even. She only allows two runs the rest of the game--still more then she'd like, but the Mills pull off the win, and that's what's important, right?

Right?

Clare Ballard II stays on Battin' Island after that game, letting the others go home without her, and that's where Nines Mason finds her.

"Hey," he says without prelude, sitting down next to her. They're both on the pitcher's mound, two imperfect parallels in a home that they want more then anything. "I'm Nines."

Clare II turns her head, blinks golden eyes. "Nines? I do not know of that player."

"It's a nickname," Nines says, voice shaking with the Reverb. "My legal name name name, if you wanna call it that, is is is is is is W--" A particularly loud wave crashes right next to them.

Clare II tucks her legs up to her chest, folding her wings around herself. "It is nice to meet you, Nines." Her body folds--almost collapses--forward suddenly, and she blurts in a voice that sounds much different from the usual Replicated phrases "I wish I had more time."

"You have more then I I I got," Nines says. Fae looks down at faer hands, which are already starting to blur and glitch away. "More then I have now."

"Are you a Replica too?" Clare II says.

"Gods, no," Nines says, more forcefully then he means to. Clare II looks hurt. "Sorry. I don't mean...I just...I'm different. I--I really hope I'm different."

"I hope I'm different too," Clare II says quietly, "but I don't think so. I am temporary."

"Planned obsolescence," Nines says with a nod. "Bendie used to rant about it all the time--still still still does, probably--they make things designed to break, so they can sell you more of those things. Fuckin' capitalism."

"I do not want to be designed to break," Clare II says. Her wings unfold, spreading to their full length. "I do not want to be designed at all!"

"I know," Nines says, tracing a line in the dirt. Not a line, actually. Numbers. 77. "I know."

There's a long moment of silence.

"I've missed the way the sunset looks from Battin' Island," Nines says. "It's...it's not like anywhere anywhere anywhere else."

"It is beautiful," Clare II says. "I love it."

"I do too."

"The Mills love me, for now. Did they love you too?"

"They do."

[bread--quest]

[ID: A digital drawing of a person, with most of her details obscured--she appears to be wearing black shoes, red pants, and a pink shirt, and are standing with hands out to the sides. It’s hard to tell more details because she appears to be covered in fire. She has long black hair that turns red at the ends, and her face is obscured by a golden scribble and multiple glowing red lines, looping around each other like a halo. She has huge bird wings, many times larger then her, that are red, orange, and yellow and look like fire. The background is dark gold. End ID.]

hey young blood, doesn’t it feel like our time is running out?

so uhhhh Secret Blaseball History unlocked and mills apparently used to have a LEGENDARY PHOENIX PLAYER named, of all things, clare ballard, and uhhhhh i love her! she’s terrifying and beautiful and cannot die.

[bread--quest]

do you ever just....thinks about prehistory. thinks about prehistory. thinks abo

(id in alt text!)

(also, memory-only version under the cut)

don't forget to click for quality and have a great day :)