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infinitepryde:
Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.
Since I usually write shortfic which doesn't especially lend itself to this sort of thing, I will expand "story" to include RP and canon. Have at.
infinitepryde:Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.
Since I usually write shortfic which doesn't especially lend itself to this sort of thing, I will expand "story" to include RP and canon. Have at.
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no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 04:10 pm (UTC)1/2
Date: 2009-07-08 06:56 pm (UTC)"Don't worry, you shouldn't have to use it. Hold onto it just in case, all right?"
Laguna had smiled as he'd said it, sounding as cheery and carefree as ever, but still Squall couldn't help but feel like he'd just seen his father look his real age for the first time that he could remember.
From somewhere outside the Presidential Palace there came a low rumbling like distant thunder. Sitting on the floor behind his father’s desk in the presidential office, Squall stared down at the gun in incomprehension.
"What the heck is going on...?"
"You ought to stay back here yourself, Laguna," Uncle Kiros had said in the midst of fitting his long-disused katar to his hands.
"No way! I used to be a soldier too, you know."
"Yeah, well now you're the president of Esthar. You should think about your responsibilities."
His father had simply ruffled a hand over Squall's hair, and Squall, still paralyzed by the weight of the pistol in his hands, hadn't had a chance to even think about trying to wave him away.
"Believe me, Kiros, I am."
It felt like he’d been sitting there for hours.
"Squall?"
Beside him, Ellone did her best to smile, but she still looked worried.
"It'll be okay," she said. "Nothing's going to get all the way into the palace."
"Take care of your sister," his father had told him, the last thing he'd said before he and Uncle Kiros and Uncle Ward had disappeared through the office doorway and into the hall outside.
Squall looked back down at the gun in his hands.
"I don't get it," he said.
"Squall--" His sister scooted a little closer to him to put her arm around his shoulders.
"I seriously don't get it. Monsters coming out of the sky, Galbadia attacking, a sorceress... It’s like some kind of bad dream."
It was unthinkable that an enemy would get as far as the presidential palace, Squall told himself. It didn’t help. It was unthinkable that Esthar would be attacked at all. The occasional target practice sessions on the range were for trips to Winhill, where the occasional caterchipillar or bite bug still sometimes managed to wander into town. Esthar was safe.
From somewhere at the other end of the hallway came the indistinct sounds of shouting voices, and a staccato popping that might have been machine gun fire. Ellone’s arm pulled tighter around Squall, her fingers digging into his shoulder, and the two of them sat very still, listening anxiously.
A deep, muffled boom vibrated through the floor, making Ellone flinch. After that, silence.
Squall gripped the pistol tightly with clammy hands and tried not to think about how there’d been the hitch of a leg cramp in his father’s step as he’d left the office.
2/2
Date: 2009-07-08 06:56 pm (UTC)“What are you doing?” Ellone rose up to call out to him anxiously across the desktop. “Uncle Laguna said to stay here.”
“It’s okay,” he told her; “I just wanna see what’s going--”
The office door blew in with a force that knocked Squall off his feet, throwing him back against the solid bulk of the desk hard enough to force the air right out of him. Wreathed in wisps of smoke and steam, a tall blond guy in a long white coat loomed in the shattered doorway, boots crunching on the splinters that littered the floor.
Squall’s first dazed, stupid thought was that the guy couldn’t have been much older than he was.
“Squall!” Ellone cried out, her voice shrill will panic. The blond guy smiled nastily and hefted a bloodied gunblade up against his shoulder, scattering drops of red against the white coat.
”Take care of your sister,” his father had told him.
Squall raised his pistol and fired and fired and fired and fired.
It was that easy. More splashes of blood bloomed on the long white coat; he swayed, looking down at himself with an expression of foolish disbelief, and almost in slow motion dropped, first to his knees, then crumpling to the floor. He really couldn’t have been that much older than Squall; Squall found himself watching the uneven rise and fall of his back in time with a wet, soft rattle of indrawn breath, once, and once more, and then nothing.
He’d just killed a guy, Squall thought numbly. He could hear Ellone from behind the desk - was she crying? - but he couldn’t quite remember how to move.
“Useless,” said the dispassionate voice of the sorceress, and then she was stepping over the dead body, dragging her long black skirt through the pool of blood that was spreading over the floor, and Squall remembered how to move after all but it didn’t matter anyhow. He’d only half managed to lunge up onto his feet before she made a contemptuous gesture with a clawed black hand; there was a flash of cold bluish light and he fell hard back against the desk again with the wind knocked out of him.
It felt like there was a spike of ice driven through his shoulder, and it took Squall a confused moment to realize that was because there was a spike of ice driven through his shoulder, pinning him to his father’s desk like a bug in an insect collection.
Ellone’s scream went on forever.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 04:18 pm (UTC)Luck gives Eve a strange whistle to use were she to ever find herself in troubleno subject
Date: 2009-07-08 09:34 pm (UTC)--
What am I doing?
An icy wind whipped Eve's skirt around her legs as she clung to the outer frame of the window, three floors above the pavement with nowhere to go but the long drop into the alleyway below her.
"Someone like you shouldn't be involved in such business," Luck Gandor had said just that morning, gold eyes stern and full of disapproval. She should have listened, but whether she liked it or not she was the head of the Genoard family now and there had been the possibility of doing something to help what was left of her family and she hadn’t been able to leave it alone, whether or not anyone else would help her.
And this was where it had gotten her: hanging out the window of a seedy old building in a bad neighborhood, holding her breath and hoping for - what, exactly?
”Do what you want,” Luck had said, sounding faintly irritated. ”I can’t stop you.”
Should have listened...
The light through the window was abruptly blotted out by the broad silhouette of the coarse man who leaned out through it. He turned his face toward her and his eyes narrowed in dark satisfaction. “Found you, little girl.”
Eve gasped and tried to flinch away, but there was no purchase along the wall, so instead she squeezed her eyes shut. Any moment now would come the rough hands, dragging her back in through the window, and then--
There was a startled sound from a man’s deep voice and Eve felt something big brushing close past her, and in the next moment there was an abbreviated shout and sick sound of impact from the pavement below, and then only the wind.
Had he fallen somehow?
She dared to open her eyes to look, but what she saw first was a young man’s face hanging upside down right in front of her, the wind blowing his red hair in all directions.
“Yo,” he said, pleasantly.
Eve yelped and lost her grip on the windowframe.
She only fell for an instant before hands caught both her arms, leaving her dangling in the air, feet kicking helplessly at nothing. “Whoops,” said the young man, as casually as if she’d done nothing more worrisome than accidentally dropping a glove. “Don’t do that.”
She didn’t have the chance to do more than blink foolishly before he hauled hard at her arms and set her swinging out from the wall, and for the next few moments the whole world went into a mad tumbling blur and she couldn’t tell up from down. I am going to die-- but before she’d finished the thought she was being set down right-way-up on her feet by an arm about her waist, and she was standing safely on the ground in the alley next to the building, and the bright-eyed young man in his long black coat was looking down at her and seeming a bit pleased with himself.
“So you’re the girl,” he said, taking an interested look at her. “Luck’s picking them young. But you’ve certainly got brass. I like it.”
“Um,” said Eve, for a moment at a loss for anything more coherent to say, and then, foolishly, “You are--?”
“Call me Vino,” he said. “Or Felix, that’s all right too. Anyway, come on; the sooner I make sure you get home all right, the sooner I can come back and finish cleaning up here.”
Eve had the niggling feeling that there were several other questions that she ought to be asking, but the shapeless lump lying in the alley only a few yards away was just resolving itself to her eyes as the body of the man who’d been leaning out the window and leering at her a few moments before, and this was all just a little bit much for one evening. She decided she really didn’t want to know right now what Luck Gandor had to with Vino or Felix or whatever his name was coming to her rescue out here in the middle of the night. Or what he meant by “cleaning up.”
So she just nodded, and wrapped her arms around herself against the chill of the night air as he shepherded her out of the alley.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 10:11 pm (UTC)oh my god
did--you just--
*LOSES IT*
YOU ARE A GENIUS
Now Claire's surname will officially be 'Sarutobi' forever.
Argh, I love your writing! <3 <3
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 10:16 pm (UTC)Luck's version of "I felt like I had to give you something" = sending Claire to stalk Eve just in case.
Killing everyone in the place because they messed with Luck's girlfriend, however, was probably Claire's own idea.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-07 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 10:11 pm (UTC)It's also really short, because.
--
"Ow," said Dyrk, picking himself up off the red dirt and gingerly touching his jaw where Kolkin had slugged him.
Kolkin could manage a pretty impressive glare for someone whose single eye was a perfect off-center circle of glass and metal. "I've owed you that for months."
Because Kolkin had a point, Dyrk offered him a sheepish grin. "Yeah, I guess you have. For what it's worth, I'm sorry?"
"If you two are finished--" Cosmic Boy, fingers still fussing absently with his power inhibitor, tipped his head towards the makeshift resistance HQ. "--we've got a lot of work to do."
"Right." Dyrk hastily brushed Braal's red dust of his clothes and quirked an eyebrow at Kolkin. "Want to fill us in?"
no subject
Date: 2009-07-08 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 03:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 04:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-09 05:28 pm (UTC)