#not-pony

[mlpnevernever]

Just a bit of doodles to show while I draw the next bit of story.

[pony-palace-blog]

Not pony-related, but we just learned that Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has passed away.  This man helped shaped a generation, and suffice it to say, we would not be the same people we are today if not for his influence.  Rest in peace, Mr. Iwata.  You will be missed dearly.

We extend our condolences to Mr. Iwata’s friends and family.  We hope they can cope well and fast in the midst of this travesty.

[thundertempest]

Alice was a fairly normal girl. She lived with her parents, she had a close group of friends, she took ballet classes on the weekends and after school and had been in a few local productions, and was generally a happy, normal teenager in her last year of high school. The only thing worth noting about Alice was that she was rabidly obsessed with the Twilight series. Posters covered her walls, all bearing Edward Cullen's thoughtful, brooding face staring down at her, and she owned three copies of each of the books, and all of the movies thrice over as well.

Her friends called her obsessed, and tried to point out that the Twilight series wasn't even that good, but Alice ignored them. She daydreamed about meeting a vampire, and he would sweep her off her feet, and they'd have a perfect romance, and she would heal the holes in his heart, and they would all live happily ever after.

She even wrote fanfiction on the internet, under the name 'AliceXEdward4Ever', and had gotten many, many messages about her writing. Had she actually bothered to read any of them, she would have been shocked and appalled that so many people would call her out on her bad grammar, one dimensional characters, Mary sues, poor plot, abysmal formatting and generally awful stories. Most of her friends had given up trying with Alice, and simply hoped that she would grow out of the Twilight phase eventually.

But one night, as Alice lay awake, dreaming of Edward swooping into her room and romantically watching her sleep, she was distracted by a crash from her living room. Getting up and walking towards the room, being as quiet as she could, she found that the intruder was a man wearing a grey hoodie, with what looked like leather belts strapped across his chest, and jeans and sneakers. Alice hid behind the couch as the man looked around the room, searching for something.

"Come on out, Dimitri. You can't escape," said the man, somehow both quiet as a whisper and yet louder than the school bell in the dead of the night. The man in the hoodie sighed when there was no response, and from one of the belts that Alice could see, produced a single knife. With a flick of the man's hand, it turned into five, and three of them quickly whizzed off into the darkness of the room. All of them only drew thunks of sound as the blades embedded themselves in the wood. The fourth one got a cry.

"You ripped my coat!" declared a voice with an upper-class accent, and a man in a dark cloak materialized in the room, only to immediately be pinned to the wall by more of the shining knives.

"Now, can't we work this out?" asked the man in the black cloak, "Can't we make a deal or something that doesn't involve me dying?"

"No," stated the man in the hoodie, pulling out a gun and taking aim at the cloaked man, "We can't." and with that, he pulled the trigger.

Alice watched as the man in the cloak reeled back from the shot, his head falling backwards and beginning to dissolve into ash. Within seconds, there was nothing left, and the man in the hoodie collected his knives and turned to leave.

"Stupid fucking vampires," muttered the man, as he jumped out of the hole in the wall, and Alice had to reboot her brain.

[thundertempest]

Break Me, for heldinhishands

(original fiction characters. These are from a just beginning project, so they may be a little less polished)

  "Look," began The Hunter, as Diana sat up on the bed, "I get that you want to exterminate all of the monsters, but we can't just kill them all. In a lot of cases, they've been beneficial to the world, and that's why..."

"Bull," said Diana, "you don't know shit. My mother, my father, hell, my whole family was murdered by those things. I can't forgive them, I won't forgive them. As far as I'm concerned, they're all fucking guilty. So you can take your alliances, and shove them where the sun don't shine." The older man simply stared at Diana until she had finished her rant.

"You done?" he monotoned, "Let me make this abundently clear. I do not care what your motivations are. all that matters to me is if you can follow my commands, and maybe, maybe, you'll at least learn to not get yourself killed. I can kill you seven different ways from here that will not leave a mark. I have another six that will make it look like my boss killed you. My point is that the Night School would have assigned you to me for a reason. I trust them, and they're the ones who put the 'Protected' scheme into place." The Hunter rose up from the chair, and Diana was suddenly fearing for her life, though she wouldn't let it show.

"I could kill you. I'm not going to," said The Hunter, "That may change if you keep spouting angsty crap like that, though. I have a hard enough task as is, I don't need you spouting your fucking tragic backstory about why you hate an entire sect of existence every other day." He bagan to stalk out of the room, his feet making little to no sound, even on the wooden floor.

"When you finish bemoaning your horrid past, meet me downstairs. We have work to do."

---

Not quite angst, but I still like it.

[thundertempest]

Mourn Me, for heldinhishands

(using two of my own original fiction characters, Abigail Toombs and Feng Siberiovitch)

There had been little time during the final battle, and the explosion of the underground facility for Abigail Toombs to fully realise what the cyborg had done for her. It wasn't until well after, when she was sitting in the front row of his funeral that it fully hit her. A sixty year old, cybernetic assassin, had given his life up for her. Abigail let loose a chuckle, burbling through a stream of tears, as if she couldn't decide if she should be laughing or crying.

As the coffin was lowered into the earth, Abigail looked around at the small gathering. Most of Lucille le Fay's school was here, and from what Abigail had heard, that was at Lucille's insistence. The man's partner, Ariane something, was standing at the back of the crowd, the immense rifle that Feng had carried everywhere held in the crook of her arm. Abigail felt herself being pulled up by someone, and forced to stand at the head of the crowd, such as it was.

"Feng Siberiavik," she began, only to be corrected a second later by Ariane calling out the correct pronounciation of the Russian's last name, "Right, Siberiovitch. I can't say he was a friend. and he certainly started out as an enemy, but by the end, he..." Abigail fought back a fresh wave of tears, wiping her eyes witht he back of her hand, as she remembered seeing the Russian contract killer engulfed in a wall of flame, artificial skin melting from the heat.

"He made his choice," Abigail's hand clenched into a fist, her nails digging into her palm to try and distract her, "And for better or for worse, it's made. I'm not going to pretend that I miss him-that would be stupid. but for whatever Feng Siberiovitch was, i'll always remember him as the man who saved me from this," said Abigail, raising her arm to show the burn scars tracing their way over her hand and up her forearm, before stopping at her elbow. Abigail let her arm fall, and with it, all of her strength vanished, and Courtney had to help her back to her seat.

'Some one gave their life for me,' She thought, 'he fucking gave his life for me. Why would he do that?' Abigail barely heard Ariane's speech, so engrossed with her thoughts, finally processing what had really happened six months ago.

[thundertempest]

Diana glared at the old grandfather clock, quietly ticking away at the side of the entrance hall of the mansion just outside the town. 5:36 pm. As she watched, the second hand crossed the 12, and with an audible click, the minute hand advanced one place. 5:37 pm. When she’d been assigned a mentor, a new program that The Night School was trying out, she had expected her mentor to be someone worthy of her talent as the top graduating student of the last class. And she’d at least expect them to be punctual. She’d already been waiting here for seven minutes, and was due to have met her mentor at 5:30. Diana glared at the clock as it ticked over to 5:39 pm. She turned and stomped away, even though time was trickling away. She was losing precious monster-hunting time waiting for her so called ‘mentor’, and decided that she would be better served by actually going out and killing the things that terrorized the night.

As Diana reached the door, the clock ticked over to 5:41, and she put her hand on the handle.

“I wouldn’t do that, If I were you,” came a smooth voice from behind her, with just a touch of wrongness to it. Diana had always been good at sensing the monsters of the night, and upon turning around, she found herself staring at a well-dressed businessman, who was just a touch too pale, a bit too good-looking for his apparent age. Her silver-plated pistol was out of its highly visible side holster before the obvious vampire could hopefully react, but before she could pull the trigger and eradicate the stain on the earth, a knife clanged into the gun, sending ripples up her arm, and forcing her to drop the gun. From a chair at the side of the room that Diana hadn’t noticed before, a man stood up. He was maybe five or six years older than her, dressed in a dark grey hoodie, jeans and sneakers. Brown hair swept across his forehead, just clearing the man’s steel blue eyes, and beneath the man’s right eye was a tattoo. Diana gasped. She knew this man from Night School’s records-his real name eluded her right now, but she knew his moniker; The Hunter. The only student to graduate a full two years early in the last ten years.

“Fucking hell, girl,” he said, picking up the gun and glancing at the clock on the other side of the hall. “I’ve been sitting there for the last seventeen minutes, and you never noticed me. Did you slack off during your observation training, or is the Night School not teaching that bit anymore, and hoping you just get lucky?” The Hunter pressed her pistol back into Diana’s hand, and turned to the vampire.

“Sorry about that, boss. Guess they sent me an overzealous one.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the vampire, “I’ll leave you two to do whatever you need to. Do put some ground rules down for her though, will you?”

“Got it. We’ll probably be done by one. We’ll try not to wake you.” The vampire waved, and headed deeper into the mansion, and The Hunter turned to face Diana.

“Right, before we go any further, I have some questions. Firstly, why the fuck did you come dressed  in full gear? You look like you’re off to start a fucking war.”

“I was under the impression,” said Diana, her voice cold and steady, “That our purpose is to hunt everything that stalks the night, not work for them.” The Hunter sighed.

“We do whatever we must to fufill the goal of keeping the people of the world safe and more importantly, unaware of what we do. Sometimes that means killing. Other times, it requires more subtlety.  Secondly, are you aware of the ‘Protected’ list? My boss, and his immediate clan are all on it. Thus, no killing them without three different kinds of say-so, and mine is one of them.”

“The Protected list is a bunch of bullcrap,” spat Diana, shoving her pistol back into its holster with far more force than was recommended. “we should just kill all of them and be done with it.” The Hunter sighed, and moved.

A shift to the side, and Diana reeled back as The Hunter’s foot slammed into her stomach. She was not given time to recover, as the heel of the man’s other foot slammed into her head, knocking her to the floor.

“When you can beat me, missy, you get to decide what we do. Until then, you are my little bitch, got it?” he snarled, and Diana decided that now would be a good time to go unconscious.

----

Taken from writersyoga's prompt:

Look at the time on the clock nearest you. Write a story about the time on the clock that includes the line, "She/he/ze turned and stomped away, even though time was trickling away."

[thundertempest]

My Boss, The Vampire

The elation I felt at being invited to the interview was very, very short-lived, especially after I figured out that my interviewer was a vampire. Though, to be honest, the questions about my health history and blood type were a huge tip-off, as were the blackout curtains in the room. Still, the job was exactly as advertised: manager of house affairs, with a very generorous salary, full health plan and full room and meals included. Of course, there was also the fact that he told me that he would be feeding off of me every now and again. I very quickly made my argument that he would not be feeding off me, and he agreed.

The blessed and sanctified seven round revolver, loaded with blessed silver rounds probably helped that along. Did I mention that I’m a professional monster hunter? I knew from my night classes that Vampires didn’t exactly fear silver, but a bullet to the head is still a bullet to the head, no matter what you are. And again, the fact that they’d been cooled in blessed water helped. Still, I didn’t pull the trigger, and because of that, I’m still talking.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Professional Night Creature Exterminator working for a Vampire. Doesn’t seem like a good fit, does it? One of us should have killed the other ages ago. And truth be told, even after four years of working together, I still don’t trust him, and he probably doesn’t trust me. But I was younger, more naieve, and I didn’t pull the trigger. And hey, I needed the money: blessed silver bullets don’t fall off trees, you know.

 Still, it was a bit of a shock to find out that this vampire, these supposed monsters who only preyed upon the innocent was also actually a rather successful businessman, who still tried to maintain an image, at least, of normalcy, and thus had a house to look after, a fridge to keep stocked. It was honestly a little weird, because our teachers had vilified them a bunch at Night School. As it turned out, the one who had turned him into a vampire had been a lawyer. I eventually found out there was this whole sect of business, white-collar vampires, and believe me, if it weren’t for the fact that one of them employed me, I would probably have murdered them all.

For his part, Micheal, my boss the vampire, did allow me to keep hunting. Something about ‘cleaning up the trash’ or something, so I actually have a decently high success and extermination rate, because between my own research and Micheal’s connections, there was very little I couldn’t find. Only thing he asked me was that I not murder any of his personal friends without consulting him first. It was still awkward whenever one of my ‘colleagues’ asked me if I’d murdered my boss yet, though, because he’d been as good as his word-I had a practically permanent home, never needed to worry about food, and all I had to do in return was keep a house clean, the maids and gardeners paid, and not kill my boss. He even tolerated me taking over the kitchen on Sundays to clean my weapons, and finding someone who will let you do that is rare, and he didn’t even pester me about what all of them did, though that was probably more so that if I did eventually decide to kill him, he wouldn’t know in excruciating detail, how I was going to do it. I’ve had roommates who insisted, upon finding out what I did for a living, on knowing exactly what every single thing in my not insignificant arsenal did, which was a large part of why the Night School counselled us to keep our professions hidden.

Still, my boss for four years was a freaking vampire.