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Hi
Because:
a) failing at life is my major past time
b) I feel kinda sad (real life, why art thou real?)
c) my life is a dark abyss etc due to strange reasons involving the sudden and abrupt loss of important academic documents
Therefore:
I post short, kinda substandard drabblefic lugged in over from IJ. Sorry, guys. Bad week. Too stressed to write anything real. My sendspace account also chose this brilliant moment to bite the dust, leaving me sad and DDDDDDDDDD: Hooray, Murphy! \o/
Baccano!
Ladd Russo: the sickness/the symptoms
The sickness wasn't the sickness; though anyone else might have called it that: guns, knives, murder and an affinity for neatly pressed clothes. Stuff you'd call manic or deranged - that's what's wrong with Ladd Russo, he's sick in the head with madness and violence.
'I'm not sick, Uncle,' Ladd laughs into the old man's face the day it gets brought up (you should go see a doctor, you crazy son of a --). He's shaving in front of his Uncle's mirror at the far side of the room, but even from that distance the elder man can see the glint and slide of Ladd's razor. He shuts his mouth.
Ladd comes over after he's wiped the lather off his chin. 'I just had a traumatic childhood,' Ladd says, soothingly. 'Losing my father and mother at a young age, it couldn't possibly have been good for me, could it? Leads to an unbalanced lifestyle, where I lacked all the maternal and paternal influences that would've shaped me into a wholesome young man. Isn't that so, Uncle? Being fostered into your care, all I had around me were weapons and grunts and people who shout a lot. Did I ever have a chance to play?' Ladd flips his neatly-folded razor blade up and down in the air. 'Did I ever get the chance to know the warm press of a feminine bosom up against my face, or the loud baritone of Daddy saying it's going to be all right? '
Ladd laughs when he smells the sweat and fear pour off of the old man. 'It's okay,' he says, reaching over to pat his Uncle on the shoulder. Pat (flinch), pat (flinch). 'All I'm missing is love. That's what's really wrong with me. It's all right. That can be fixed. Uncle,' he declares, his teeth making a white gash of a smile across his face, 'I'm going to go get married.'
Luck: I need a taste of what it's like
Seemed to Luck that Claire never really walked; he floated, or flew, soared - the ground wasn't good enough for Claire. There had to be movement, or height, the rush of air or the cold of altitude.
Luck had never been brave enough to venture either, had always had his feet firmly planted. Moved slowly, deliberately. Planned where he was going.
The real world bored Claire, and consumed Luck.
It was 1935, the Depression spiralling ever downwards, when Luck and Claire were on the balcony of Luck's room, looking downwards at the empty street below. The streetlights burned a low light in the witching hour blackness.
'How was the circus?' Luck said, abruptly. 'I never asked you before.'
Claire chuckled, and hopped up onto the bar of the balcony railing, balancing neatly. 'It was fun. Challenging for a while.'
'Were you ever afraid of falling?' Luck asked.
Claire looked down at him and smiled, half-indulgent, half full of amusement. 'No.'
'Give me a hand up,' Luck said, which did surprise Claire.
'What's this?' Claire asked, pulling his brother up. 'Luck Gandor, taking a risk?'
'I want to know how it feels like to be Claire Stanfield,' Luck shrugged, trying hard to find his centre on the limited length of the rail. 'You're more immortal than I am. But still, please remember not to try and catch me,' he added, and then let go of Claire's shoulder.
It was a glorious second of freedom, and then two more during the fall. It tasted like triumph and fire and alcohol and magic.
When Luck came to, he had a blanket over his shoulders and was seated in an armchair on the first level of the house.
'You're crazy,' Claire told him, but Claire was grinning, and grinning wide.
Final Fantasy VII
Elena: We'll kill one of yours
It was something of a pity that Midgar was a whoring city, a whore's city. The working days always dragged on into nights, and it was hard to find a friend in the small eateries and bars. It was a lonely city, if you didn't know anyone in it. Maybe a quarter of the population lived Plate-side, Plate-side where things were respectable, where there were schools and centres and clubs and places to sit. Thousands more lived further down the core: not necessarily slums, just in the in-between, wedged twixt the sky and the hell below.
Shinra employed hundreds of people whose lives centred around an early morning commute up and a late night commute down. Most of the engineers, soldiers and service staff barely saw daylight during their five day week. Some people found sanity in five-thousand-gil per hour arms down at the Honeybee; others found five-thousand-gil per hour nights easier to bear than the monotony of a life lived within the bowels of a ruthless corporate conglomerate.
Either way: a whore's city, and a city that whored. The Don earned enough from his girls that he really didn't need to do all the other things that he did: special jobs for the wrong kind of people, the kind of jobs that had top Shinra employees found dead and naked in slum streets.
They lost one of Junon's lead engineers to the Inn. He was found stripped of all his passcards, IDs and money. Urban Development had to go into a lockdown for two hours as the Turks combed through their databases in search of signs of potential infiltration. Later that night, Tseng sat the team down and said, 'Corneo's gone too far, this time.'
There were several strategies discussed: raze one of his smaller establishments, or pay a visit to his favourite girls.
'I think we can do better than that,' Elena said, shrugging out of her blazer. Reno looked at her, then laughed quietly and said, 'Sometimes we forget you have breasts, yo.'
Tseng gave the okay without needing to be heavily persuaded. 'I'd tell you to be careful,' he told Elena after she emerged from the toilets dressed more skimpily than any of the Turks had ever seen her. He looked at her: her hair was out of its neatly gelled position, blond strands now wispy and curled slightly at Elena's neck. Without the pants her legs took back their shape, curving against the seam of a dress that clung at all the right places. 'But in truth I think you need to start acting slightly sloppier.' Like this, she was beautiful and strong and nowhere near as loose as she needed to be.
'I can help,' Reno leered, but Elena flipped him the finger and went to smudge her lipstick and pull on a lousier pair of heels.
They went down slum-side separately; Tseng and Reno in the first-class cabins whilst Elena stood alone in the economy carriage. The men followed her from afar, and didn't interfere when the crony at the front door copped a feel when Elena asked if there was an opening at the Honeybee for a blonde with experience.
'How long do you think it'll take?' Reno asked, slumped against the wall of a shop long gone out of business.
Tseng shrugged. 'Not nearly as long as we might think, I suspect.'
The first gunshots sounded twenty minutes after Elena's entrance; a second later and Tseng's PHS beeped: took down one of Don's men, requesting backup, otherwise I might end up shooting the other two as well.
The Director actually laughed, quietly and under his breath, before he and Reno moved in. Tseng went through the doors, and Reno remained outside with an EM rod and a smile for anyone who was even thinking of legging it. 'You're gonna get a free show tonight,' he said to the man trying to get past him. 'Pull your pants back on properly and go see what the Turks are really good for, why don'tcha?'
Final Fantasy XII
Balthier: friendly fire
'There's no such thing as friendly fire,' Balthier says, plucking his gun out of Vaan's hands. 'Only bad aim, or backstabbing.'
Vaan makes a small grab for it, but the sky pirate's already put it well and away. 'Huh,' the boy says, put out.
Basch pats Vaan on the back. 'Now you talk like an Archadian, Balthier.'
'I am an Archadian,' Balthier retorts, running a cleaning cloth over the barrel of his weapon. 'Or I was, once.'
a) failing at life is my major past time
b) I feel kinda sad (real life, why art thou real?)
c) my life is a dark abyss etc due to strange reasons involving the sudden and abrupt loss of important academic documents
Therefore:
I post short, kinda substandard drabblefic lugged in over from IJ. Sorry, guys. Bad week. Too stressed to write anything real. My sendspace account also chose this brilliant moment to bite the dust, leaving me sad and DDDDDDDDDD: Hooray, Murphy! \o/
Baccano!
Ladd Russo: the sickness/the symptoms
The sickness wasn't the sickness; though anyone else might have called it that: guns, knives, murder and an affinity for neatly pressed clothes. Stuff you'd call manic or deranged - that's what's wrong with Ladd Russo, he's sick in the head with madness and violence.
'I'm not sick, Uncle,' Ladd laughs into the old man's face the day it gets brought up (you should go see a doctor, you crazy son of a --). He's shaving in front of his Uncle's mirror at the far side of the room, but even from that distance the elder man can see the glint and slide of Ladd's razor. He shuts his mouth.
Ladd comes over after he's wiped the lather off his chin. 'I just had a traumatic childhood,' Ladd says, soothingly. 'Losing my father and mother at a young age, it couldn't possibly have been good for me, could it? Leads to an unbalanced lifestyle, where I lacked all the maternal and paternal influences that would've shaped me into a wholesome young man. Isn't that so, Uncle? Being fostered into your care, all I had around me were weapons and grunts and people who shout a lot. Did I ever have a chance to play?' Ladd flips his neatly-folded razor blade up and down in the air. 'Did I ever get the chance to know the warm press of a feminine bosom up against my face, or the loud baritone of Daddy saying it's going to be all right? '
Ladd laughs when he smells the sweat and fear pour off of the old man. 'It's okay,' he says, reaching over to pat his Uncle on the shoulder. Pat (flinch), pat (flinch). 'All I'm missing is love. That's what's really wrong with me. It's all right. That can be fixed. Uncle,' he declares, his teeth making a white gash of a smile across his face, 'I'm going to go get married.'
Luck: I need a taste of what it's like
Seemed to Luck that Claire never really walked; he floated, or flew, soared - the ground wasn't good enough for Claire. There had to be movement, or height, the rush of air or the cold of altitude.
Luck had never been brave enough to venture either, had always had his feet firmly planted. Moved slowly, deliberately. Planned where he was going.
The real world bored Claire, and consumed Luck.
It was 1935, the Depression spiralling ever downwards, when Luck and Claire were on the balcony of Luck's room, looking downwards at the empty street below. The streetlights burned a low light in the witching hour blackness.
'How was the circus?' Luck said, abruptly. 'I never asked you before.'
Claire chuckled, and hopped up onto the bar of the balcony railing, balancing neatly. 'It was fun. Challenging for a while.'
'Were you ever afraid of falling?' Luck asked.
Claire looked down at him and smiled, half-indulgent, half full of amusement. 'No.'
'Give me a hand up,' Luck said, which did surprise Claire.
'What's this?' Claire asked, pulling his brother up. 'Luck Gandor, taking a risk?'
'I want to know how it feels like to be Claire Stanfield,' Luck shrugged, trying hard to find his centre on the limited length of the rail. 'You're more immortal than I am. But still, please remember not to try and catch me,' he added, and then let go of Claire's shoulder.
It was a glorious second of freedom, and then two more during the fall. It tasted like triumph and fire and alcohol and magic.
When Luck came to, he had a blanket over his shoulders and was seated in an armchair on the first level of the house.
'You're crazy,' Claire told him, but Claire was grinning, and grinning wide.
Final Fantasy VII
Elena: We'll kill one of yours
It was something of a pity that Midgar was a whoring city, a whore's city. The working days always dragged on into nights, and it was hard to find a friend in the small eateries and bars. It was a lonely city, if you didn't know anyone in it. Maybe a quarter of the population lived Plate-side, Plate-side where things were respectable, where there were schools and centres and clubs and places to sit. Thousands more lived further down the core: not necessarily slums, just in the in-between, wedged twixt the sky and the hell below.
Shinra employed hundreds of people whose lives centred around an early morning commute up and a late night commute down. Most of the engineers, soldiers and service staff barely saw daylight during their five day week. Some people found sanity in five-thousand-gil per hour arms down at the Honeybee; others found five-thousand-gil per hour nights easier to bear than the monotony of a life lived within the bowels of a ruthless corporate conglomerate.
Either way: a whore's city, and a city that whored. The Don earned enough from his girls that he really didn't need to do all the other things that he did: special jobs for the wrong kind of people, the kind of jobs that had top Shinra employees found dead and naked in slum streets.
They lost one of Junon's lead engineers to the Inn. He was found stripped of all his passcards, IDs and money. Urban Development had to go into a lockdown for two hours as the Turks combed through their databases in search of signs of potential infiltration. Later that night, Tseng sat the team down and said, 'Corneo's gone too far, this time.'
There were several strategies discussed: raze one of his smaller establishments, or pay a visit to his favourite girls.
'I think we can do better than that,' Elena said, shrugging out of her blazer. Reno looked at her, then laughed quietly and said, 'Sometimes we forget you have breasts, yo.'
Tseng gave the okay without needing to be heavily persuaded. 'I'd tell you to be careful,' he told Elena after she emerged from the toilets dressed more skimpily than any of the Turks had ever seen her. He looked at her: her hair was out of its neatly gelled position, blond strands now wispy and curled slightly at Elena's neck. Without the pants her legs took back their shape, curving against the seam of a dress that clung at all the right places. 'But in truth I think you need to start acting slightly sloppier.' Like this, she was beautiful and strong and nowhere near as loose as she needed to be.
'I can help,' Reno leered, but Elena flipped him the finger and went to smudge her lipstick and pull on a lousier pair of heels.
They went down slum-side separately; Tseng and Reno in the first-class cabins whilst Elena stood alone in the economy carriage. The men followed her from afar, and didn't interfere when the crony at the front door copped a feel when Elena asked if there was an opening at the Honeybee for a blonde with experience.
'How long do you think it'll take?' Reno asked, slumped against the wall of a shop long gone out of business.
Tseng shrugged. 'Not nearly as long as we might think, I suspect.'
The first gunshots sounded twenty minutes after Elena's entrance; a second later and Tseng's PHS beeped: took down one of Don's men, requesting backup, otherwise I might end up shooting the other two as well.
The Director actually laughed, quietly and under his breath, before he and Reno moved in. Tseng went through the doors, and Reno remained outside with an EM rod and a smile for anyone who was even thinking of legging it. 'You're gonna get a free show tonight,' he said to the man trying to get past him. 'Pull your pants back on properly and go see what the Turks are really good for, why don'tcha?'
Final Fantasy XII
Balthier: friendly fire
'There's no such thing as friendly fire,' Balthier says, plucking his gun out of Vaan's hands. 'Only bad aim, or backstabbing.'
Vaan makes a small grab for it, but the sky pirate's already put it well and away. 'Huh,' the boy says, put out.
Basch pats Vaan on the back. 'Now you talk like an Archadian, Balthier.'
'I am an Archadian,' Balthier retorts, running a cleaning cloth over the barrel of his weapon. 'Or I was, once.'
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Sumthin' for ya.
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