Liar, Liar

--Yet each man kills the thing he loves-- Independent Alvin blog from Tales of Xillia. Please be sure to read my About Writer page. Spoilers are rampant. Playing post-game by default, but open to mid or pre-game threads. Note that I don't have knowledge of Xillia 2, and have based my characterization solely on the first game.

[broadswordandpistol]

HEY EVERYONE

My dear friend and RP buddy Lu ( @lightning-of-kharlan / @lucius-of-cornwell ) is going to be at PopCultCon this weekend. Why is this a deal?

Because as Indicrow Cosplay, she’s bringing the coolest stack of props you’ve ever seen for you to rent and take pictures with. There’ll be a photo station at her vendor booth, and plenty of great props to choose from, from swords, spears, and staves to treasure chests, potion bottles, and baskets of fruit and flowers. I’ve seen the pix, they’re on her website too, and they’re terrific.

This is her first time doing this, so if you’re going to be there, drop by and say hi! If you can’t make it, please send her some encouragement and maybe some suggestions as to where to bring her convoy next!

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GO SEE LU, SHE IS GREAT

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"Yo!" she calls out to the older brunet; she had planned to ambush him as he was on his way to work that morning. The teen had a big, radiant smile on her face. Behind her, she had a container; as he came closer, Leia reveals it to him and holds it out to Alvin. "I made a lot of food last night," she lied, "So, I thought I'd give you some--there's curry bread, karaage, I don't remember if you like squash or not, but there's some simmered kabocha..." (1/2)

"What else is there... Oh yeah!" she hands a small thermo flask out to him, "Some cold brew coffee~ You better appreciate it." she crosses her arms and grins triumphantly. Maybe she went a bit overboard for a day that's just about appreciating your friendship with others. (2/2)

--

“Leia..!” Alvin blinked, nonplussed for a few solid seconds as the food was revealed...and revealed...and revealed...and the cold brew--

His mouth watered. Alvin’s hands were quickly filled with the container and the coffee.

“Man, you really know how to cook for an army, don’t you?” He lifted the hand holding the cold brew and hooked his arm around her shoulders in the best hug he could manage without dropping the food.

“’Course I appreciate it. If it’s your cooking, it’s bound to be good. Thanks, Leia.”

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RULES : TAG FOLLOWERS YOU WANT TO KNOW BETTER !

TAGGED BY: @broadswordandpistol​ puns

TAGGING: anyone else who is feeling their inner chaotic nature and wants to answer questions however they please

NAME It starts with letters of the alphabet and ends with letters of the alphabet

STAR SIGN:  Odin’s hand thing

HEIGHT: Exactly the same as my supervisor

WHAT’S YOUR MIDDLE NAME? This also contains letters of the alphabet

PUT YOUR ITUNES YOUTUBE ON SHUFFLE. WHAT ARE THE FIRST 6 SONGS THAT POPPED UP?

This is going to be a nightmare of over twelve years of digital audio files

Sooner or Later (breaking benjamin)

Excalibur (UBW extended)

Writing Excuses Season 9 episode 28

Dismantel. Repair. (anberlin)

Chase you Down (runaground)

It has Begun (starset)

Several episodes of Nightvale came up and were not included

EVER HAD A POEM OR SONG WRITTEN ABOUT YOU? No, but the reverse is true

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PLAYED AIR GUITAR? Steering wheel drum forever

WHO IS YOUR CELEBRITY CRUSH? eh?

WHAT’S A SOUND YOU HATE; SOUND YOU LOVE? the recorded man on the nu-6 lists; how quiet it is when there’s feet of new snow on the ground

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS? I believe in you

HOW ABOUT ALIENS? I mean the concept is good

DO YOU DRIVE? people crazy? Nah, they usually appreciate it

IF SO, HAVE YOU EVER CRASHED?  my computer crashed several times in college and i put in a new hard drive all by myself

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? technically vertigo and disequilibrium, a practical guide to diagnosis and management. 

DO YOU LIKE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE? solvent are bad don’t do it

WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW? idk

WHAT’S THE WORST INJURY YOU’VE EVER HAD? wisdom teeth surgery the first, probably

DO YOU HAVE ANY OBSESSIONS RIGHT NOW? t h e v o i d

DO YOU TEND TO HOLD GRUDGES AGAINST PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE YOU WRONG? i have never held a physical grudge but i imagine it would feel like really dense tar that’s too heavy for the amount of space it appears to take up

IN A RELATIONSHIP?  unearthly screeching

[broadswordandpistol]

expatriots-wife

  bonafidebittersweet  RULES :…

I only had to read it with one eye! =D

Two points for Lu. I laughed out loud.

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LU PLS

[mercuryartes]

“This is really how you live your life, huh?”

I’ve wanted to draw this–or a version of this scene–for awhile now, and I finally decided to draw it from Presa’s point of view.   Lineart done in SAI, colors and effects done in Adobe photoshop 7/SAI.

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づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ ┻━┻ Campaign make a person happy: send this for the 10 tumblrs that you most admire, if you receive it 3 times or more consider yourself loved! ❤ ❤ ❤

THANK YOU BLONDIE! Right back at’cha

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づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ ┻━┻ Campaign make a person happy: send this for the 10 tumblrs that you most admire, if you receive it 3 times or more consider yourself loved! ❤ ❤ ❤

<3<3<3

YOU TOO KAT THANK YOU!!

[taleswhumpweek]

Do you like seeing your favourite character in pain?  Is a fic never enough until your fave gets roughed up a little?  This is the event for you!

Tales Whump Week is an all-Tales event based on creating fics, art, or whatever around the theme of making the characters you love go through hell.  Create your pieces, post them the day of the prompt with the tag #TalesWhumpWeek, and we’ll reblog them here!  

The Prompts

Feel free to interpret these as literally or as metaphorically as you wish!

Day 1 (Sep 23): Wounds Day 2 (Sep 24): Missing Day 3 (Sep 25): Self-Destruction  Day 4 (Sep 26): Accident Day 5 (Sep 27): Sick Day 6 (Sep 28): Deprived Day 7 (Sep 29): “Stay with me”

[lucius-of-cornwell]

E4 Odin and E10 Niles!

I feel like the latter is definitely the reaction to the former.

@outlawandoutlandish

[broadswordandpistol]

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  “Coffee run! Who wants what?”

“Dirty chai; two shots of espresso, spicy, not sweet.”

“Tea in your coffee? You traitor.”

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“Me? Couldn’t be.”

“I’m a man of refined tastes.”

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gentleidealist:

The words ‘of course you’re not supposed to kill them!’ were written plain as daybreak across Lloyd’s face. The teen’s fists clenched. Neither were necessary, as Alvin’s defiance collapsed like a pricked balloon.

They wandered closer to the tents, Lloyd unintentionally leading. He collected a pair of cups from a nearby water station, filled them, and handed one to Alvin.

“I don’t know if there is either, or how to break a contract,” he said soberly. “But trying is better than doing nothing. You said I should ask the mages, so let’s go ask the mages. You’d probably know better who to talk with than I would.”

It was easy to list behind Lloyd, pausing when he paused, taking the offered cup in a mechanical motion. Adrenaline was finally clearing from his system, taking some of the fire with it. The entire mess of the situation was a grey-colored jumble in his mind. 

The kid hadn’t even hesitated before forging a path. That was a warmer thought; leading came naturally to him. 

Alvin took a drink of water and rolled it around in his mouth before swallowing. He took a mental count of the mages he’d met at the camp. The commander with the red hair and short temper didn’t seem the type to care; there was Soren, though the only person Alvin had seem him be civil with was Ike. The dark-haired mage on horseback? He seemed well-read, if nothing else.

“What is it about magic that makes everyone who practices it so cranky?”

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gentleidealist:

The distant look in Alvin’s eyes told Lloyd that it still stung. His friend was back on the battlefield, not focused on what was in front of him. “Driving them away is better than anyone dying,” he reminded him. “That’s something you can fix later. Death is permanent.”

Lloyd shuffled through the leaves as they walked together. It helped him settle his thoughts as he picked through what Alvin had said about the Emblans, and the contract.

“So your friends were forced to fight you,” he concluded aloud, “And you had to push them away so that no one would get hurt … well, get hurt worse.” Alvin must be beyond distraught despite the calm front he was wearing, Lloyd realized. It was unlike Alvin to slip in his storytelling, but the number of friends had shifted from one to more, and whatever he’d tried to do to rescue them hadn’t worked.

“So what’s going to happen when they fight you again? Because if they don’t have any choice, they will. But you do. You’re not going to sit here and wallow in it until they have to kill you, are you?”

“Am I supposed to kill them instead?” Alvin snapped. He regretted it immediately. Lloyd’s words came from a place of truth, and it wouldn’t do any good to argue that. He didn’t know what reparations could be made. Leia had been willing to forgive him before, but who knew if she would give him grace in this.

And Richard. Their mutual trust had been slow and hard won, and he’d pitched a rock through the window of it. Shattered glass was hard to make whole again.

“No. No, I’m not going to do that.”

Regardless, this left him with a new uncomfortable variable. Even in hatred, he didn’t want his friends (former friends?) with no choice but to end his life. He was a far cry from the man he’d been scraping tooth and nail against Jude Mathis under the canopy of Hamil’s trees. He knew how to live, now. 

“I don’t know if there’s a fix for this, kid,” Alvin said, stripping the harshness out of his tone. It came more subdued, but better than angry. “Not unless you know anything about breaking an Emblian contract?”

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gentleidealist:

Spelling it out wasn’t exactly what Lloyd had in mind. He simply hadn’t understood why neither of them could leave.  Alvin’s explanation shed a little light on that question tangentially, but trying to comprehend that was less important than answering his friend’s question in turn.

“So to keep your promises, you did something so that he’d leave in one piece. That doesn’t make you a traitor, Alvin. You tried to do your best for him,” he said simply. “Sometimes there are no good answers, so you just do the best you can with what you have.”

Lloyd chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. That ‘contract’ … he’d heard the word around camp, but what it was hadn’t stuck. “Are you being paid to fight or something? Kiran said they were looking for heroes, but it sounded like I could go if I didn’t want to help out. I wasn’t going to turn everyone down, though, since it sounded like they really needed the help.”

Alvin opened his mouth with a reply on his lips, let it hover, and dropped it in a sigh. It hadn’t seemed like his best. The opposite, really. A callback to his worst old habits. He had lied to Richard. That enough was condemning. The fact he’s had to do it head-on like a bullet to the temple made it worse.

“You make it sound easy, Lloyd,” he said mildly. He folded his hands behind his head. Crisp wind filtered through the sides of his coat. 

“The contract is different in Embla,” Alvin said. “They don’t have the choice of helping, like Kiran gave you. It’s crueler there. You’d have to ask one of the magic users for more detail.”

“I did this all backwards. I wanted to bring them over to Askr, not drive them away.” 

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gentleidealist:

Lloyd stiffened. Alvin had a friend on the other side, on the Emblan side. 

It was easy to justify fighting when the enemy didn’t have a face. Less so when it was a face you knew and cared about. Lloyd was very sure that Kiran and the  soldiers hadn’t been lying to him about how dangerous Embla was to their survival, but Alvin was right, facing a friend on the field of battle was terrible.

And Alvin had won, through a loophole, somehow. No wonder he’d looked so awful. Lloyd had never gotten the full details, but he’d seen first-hand Alvin’s efforts at trying to shed a shadier past. To have to use that tool set against a friend … Lloyd hadn’t liked tricking Colette with the coffee, despite doing it, and this was probably much worse than that.

He backtracked to the earlier part. That, at least, was something he could probably get clarified. “I don’t think I get it. What do you mean, he didn’t have a choice, and you didn’t either?”

“Gonna make me spell it out for you, kid?” Alvin cracked a laugh. He tugged at his collar and started walking vaguely in the direction of the camp, motioning Lloyd alongside him. 

“I made a promise to a friend,” Alvin said, “a while ago. I said I was done running away when trouble came knocking, done leaving my friends. Came back to bite me in the ass.”

His hands curled to fists in his pockets. “I couldn’t break the contract. I couldn’t fight Richard, and I couldn’t run. So I had to make him leave. And I...” hurt Leia again. It didn’t matter how--all he remembered was her motionless on the ground behind Richard.

“Well. Once a traitor always a traitor, huh, kid?”

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gentleidealist:

“Just all of a sudden?” Lloyd contemplated the thought. Forcystus had never been his friend, but he believed that he would have made a solid ally, if they could have come to terms. Kind of like — like Genis, he realized.

There were times when he’d wondered what would have happened if Genis had decided to take Mithos’ side in their conflict. They’d known each other for years. Lloyd had watched him grow up and struggle with his own identity and with how half-elves were treated, and he could not blame Genis for being hurt and angry over that. He’d done his best to help his friend as much as he could through those times, although they were never easy for either of them.

“I guess I would wonder what had made him change his mind, and I’d try to find out,” he answered. “People don’t usually do that out of the blue. Something must have influenced his decision that I didn’t know about.” He looked down at the ground in thought, unconsciously mirroring Alvin’s stance. “I’d try to see if we could work it out, before anything else. I guess it’d be harder if he was trying to kill me, though.”

“If he didn’t have a choice?” Alvin said. “And you didn’t either?”

Agitation crept up the back of his neck. Had it been dumb luck that landed Richard on the wrong side? It could have just as easily been Alvin with Embla. He’d been brought to Askr with no particular rhyme or reason. 

“It’s crap,” Alvin said. His pitch creaked. He’d tried to force anger earlier to make it easier; now the rage was earned, directed more at himself than anything else. These words came louder. “He was fighting for Embla. What was I supposed to do?”

Hard to break a curse when you didn’t know the secret to click the lock open. Richard had been tight-lipped and bound by contract.

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gentleidealist:

Lloyd fell quiet for a moment. There was a lot to unpack in those few words, and Alvin often said less than he meant, leaving Lloyd to pick out the pieces. It was kind of like talking with Colette sometimes, although he doubted Alvin would appreciate the comparison.

Alvin shouldn’t have won … but he fought dirty and did, and felt bad about it. Lloyd had seen him kick monsters in the face when they weren’t looking, and stick a bandit in the back, too, the time they’d been hired out to clean up the highroad. It wasn’t as simple as his fighting style. This was more personal, somehow, if he was taking it that hard. Something where his life was less important than his word — but he couldn’t just sit back and sacrifice his life, either.

This was complicated.

“It sounds to me like you wish you hadn’t won, but losing on the battlefield isn’t an option.” They both knew that. “Did you run into someone like Forcystus?” He’d told Alvin about him once; how he’d admired the half-elf’s fighting style and sense of honor, and his willingness to stick to his beliefs, but in the end, Lloyd couldn’t convince him to change those beliefs. It still hurt, even knowing their fight was inevitable and that he couldn’t afford to lose.

Alvin tipped his head back, looking skyward. It seemed impossible that the day wasn’t even over yet--he felt like he’d lived three in one. Maybe if he hadn’t felt so tired, it would have been easier to slot a grin into place and close the conversation. Lloyd was easy to talk too, a blessing and a curse. He was insightful, for how young he was.

He was right about one thing. Losing wasn’t an option. Losing meant dying, and Alvin wasn’t ready to step into an open grave. The thought was a hollow comfort, given the crime. 

“Say you’d known Forcystus for a few years,” Alvin said. “And you’d protected each other, and you’d...” Alvin exhaled. “You’d been friends. Then one day you look up and he’s on the wrong side of the field. What would you do?”

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gentleidealist:

“But you like fighting.” The words slipped out before Lloyd could reconsider them. He did, briefly, and decided he was right the first time. Alvin did enjoy straight-up combat, at least when it was monsters.

Everything in Alvin’s body language screamed ‘change the subject’, although the crack about the rhieard rang true to Lloyd’s ears. Which meant … what?

“Did they beat you?” That couldn’t be right. If they’d been beaten, Alvin would be — but he wasn’t.

“No. I won.” Alvin said. He came out alive, on top, after skimming the top of his head on a loophole. That used to be a point of pride. “I shouldn’t have. I’m not supposed to be fighting dirty anymore.” He sighed.

“Maybe I lost after all.”