here’s the thing inspired by Salty’s college headcanons. This took longer than I wanted, but I’m still pretty happy with it.
(way too many months later), oh yeah, definitely took WAY longer than I ever expected, because depression sucks. So welcome back to...uh...me...and I hope you enjoy the read.
“A premise by next class!” Vin’s ears twitched at the voices behind him. “I knew Professor Knoalle wasn’t going to be an easy teacher, but it seems like a crunch.”
“We only have the class Monday and Thursday...and today’s Thursday. You have three days. Besides, Your Highness, I wouldn’t have thought this would be difficult for you.”
“You don’t need to know much Eco Theory to Channel, Caj.”
Vin stuffed the last of his books into his bag and headed out. Professor Knoalle had let them out early - with the suggestion they head over to the campus library to get started on devising a thesis. He wanted to go there...but at least half the class was likely to be there and he wasn’t sure he was up to the interaction which was bound to end up taking place.
He had a few hours before his next class...there’d be plenty of time to run over to the public archives. It’d probably be useless for forming his premise, but Vin...really didn’t want to deal with his classmates. He knew he’d make a fool of himself if he ended up in a social situation with any one of the young nobles in his class.
Vin brooded about his luck in classmates on the way to the public archives...all the while half-wishing his mother had never been convinced to allow him to take the high school exit exams two years early. A year earlier or sticking with his regular class to its graduation and he’d have missed being in the same year with people from such notable families such as the Praised House of Veger, the Glorious House of Praxis, and even a Prince of the Most Royal House of Mar. And there were others - it was like the noble families had timed births or something.
How was he supposed to cope if he had to interact so far above his own station?
Vin waved distractedly to the librarian manning the check-out desk and made a beeline for the sciences, ready to loose himself in the old familiar pages of books he’d read a dozen times if not more.
He wasn’t quite running, but the turn he made into the first isle was quick enough he ran right into one of the archivists, Ques Ur’Maier. Both of them rocked back from the collision, Vin falling onto his rear while Ques managed to catch his balance with the edge of a bookshelf and his cane.
“I-I-I’m s-sorry, Mister Ur’Maier,” Vin apologize, flushing. He’d managed to end up in an embarrassing situation after all....
Ques waved his apology off and leaned on his staff more heavily as Vin rose, left knee bent to keep the weight off the foot. The archivist pulled out a small handheld device, tapping the touch screen. An electronically generated masculine voice emitted from the speaker, “WHY THE RUSH, VIN?”
“Fir-first day of college, sir,” Vin said, clutching at his bag nervously. He had practically grown up in the public archives, but Ques Ur’Maier was not someone he interacted with often. The man was usually in the back room somewhere, where it was rumored he actually lived. “It was...ki-kinda stressful.”
Ques nodded absently, typing at the screen, “I SEE. CAN I HELP YOU FIND SOMETHING?”
“N-no, I’m just going to lo-look up some books to jog an idea for my Eco Theory paper, I know where to look,” Vin said, scooting to the side so Ques could leave the isle and continue on...to wherever he’d been going before Vin crashed into him.
Ques limped out, eyeing him curiously a moment. Vin slipped into the isle and headed straight towards the wall.
“ VIN,” the electronic voice called. Vin glanced back and Ques tapped another button, sending a pre-typed message to be played, “YOU MIGHT CHECK THE RELIGION SECTION. IF YOU CAN GET THROUGH ALL THE ‘HAIL PRECURSORS’, SOME OF THE WRITERS HAVE INTERESTING THINGS TO SAY ABOUT ECO.”
“O-oh,” Vin blinked. “Th-thank you, sir! For the recommendation.”
I’m trying to write Daxter snarking the Precursors, but this silly thing that happens before young Jak/Mar is taken from Spargus won’t leave me alone. Maybe if I write it down it will leave me in peace. SO HERE. It somewhat edited, but you never catch everything when you edit, you just hope to catch most of everything. Published books have errors. I have seen them.
Leave it to me to say I’m gonna focus on writing and then not do anything for...what...a week....
There’s more stuff in my drafts.
~
Damas ordered lunch brought to the throne room, claiming he was too busy to go down to dining. It left him alone with Mar and three Hora-Quan. Two were the kind specifically designed and created for bodyguards of the House of Mar, which took after the unfortunately near-extinct crocadogs in appearance, which had been domesticated by his ancestor’s family as beasts of burden, hunting companions, and protectors. The third was a small flying Hora-Quan, resembling a large scarabel, used by the Wastelanders instead of man-made radios.
Kor had sent Mar’s bodyguard just a few days ago. Like Damas’ own Mosslake and every Hora-Quan bodyguard of his line, his son’s Hora-Quan had been specially programmed by Kor personally. Mar had finally picked out a nickname for his new friend, who was playing gently with Mar in the pools and making sure the toddler didn’t topple in a way which could lead to swallowing water.
“Comli,” Damas held up a hand. The flying Hora-Quan descended from its preferred perch at the windows. “Open a channel to Chipset, please.”
Comli trilled and the yellow glow of its skull gem developed a pink shade.
“Pavora?” he called.
“Seem said you’re too busy to come down for lunch today,” the woman on the other end replied. Damas winced. "I suppose Mar’s staying with you, hmm?”
“I’m sorry about that, but I need you to come up to the throne room and have a word with your son about stealing ceramic bottles from the kitchen,” Damas requested.
“He’s your son too Damas,” Pavora growled at him.
“Not when I’m sitting down on the throne, he’s not,” Damas muttered in undertone.
"So get off your royal rear, it can’t be that hard,” Pavora said, “But is that where the jar of lungfruit syrup is? Recana was complaining about not finding any this morning.”
“Yes, the syrup,” Damas frowned, glancing around his chair where the jar was tucked out of sight, a sticky line of translucent white running down the side. “There’s not much left in it....”
"What? Did Mar feed it to his new friend?” Pavora asked, tone tinging in disbelief. Hora-Quan could, but usually did not, consume human foods.
“Get up here and you’ll find out,” Damas suggested.
“Fine, fine, fine, I’ll come up to you,” Pavora sighed. Comli’s gem went back to yellow. Damas bounced his hand and Comli zipped back to his overhead perch.
Next to him, Mosslake let out a raspy choking sound which represented laughter. Damas glowered at his guardian, reaching out with his staff to give the creature a light wallop to the shoulder. Mosslake crooned at him; then stood, limping over to join Mar and the new Hora-Quan in the water. Mosslake was thrice the size of Mar’s new friend, but the smaller one would grow quickly.
The rattle of the elevator alerted Damas to Pavora’s impending arrival. Chipset fluttered up to join Comli just as the dark brown locks of the woman’s hair rose into view, shortly followed the rest of her. Her her face was set into a slanted frown.
She brightened a little at the sight of Mar, who came sloshing over to the edge of the pool at the sight of his mother. The woman went over to ruffle his fluff of green hair, “And just what did you do, Mar?”
Mar pointed at his chest with left forefinger; lifted up his hands, curling his thumbs, ring fingers, and pinkies to his palm, holding the middle and index fingers pointed outwards and pressed together, tapping left middle finger to right index finger twice; then curled his middle fingers in, hooking his index fingers together, left palm upwards and right downwards only to unhook his index fingers, switch which palm faced up and which faced down, and re-hook them together.
“Oh really? What did you choose?” Pavora asked, a pitying look on her face. Dear old Mosslake and little Comli barely had proper nicknames at all. Granted, Mosslake had been named by Damas when the codger had been Mar’s age. But poor Communications Link....
Of course, she’d been silly enough to think his poor naming skills only extended to the Hora-Quan. Fool her once...but she wasn’t giving Damas naming rights again if they had another kid.
Mar held both hands palm upwards, fingers splayed, rubbing thumbs and middle fingers together, stroked his chin twice with left index and middle fingers; then while both hands were palm down, he splayed out the fingers of his right hand and curled the index, ring, and index fingers to his palm with thumb and pinky extended, stroking the air from over his right hand in a downwards slope twice.
“I see...Syrup is a cute name, Mar,” Pavora ruffled her kid’s hair again. “Is that why you took the jar? Recana was miffed she couldn’t find it this morning.”
Mar’s mouth formed a soundless, ‘oh.’
“Yeah, and you shouldn’t have taken the jar! You could have hurt yourself if it broke,” Pavora poked the child’s forehead, scowling. “Or fed it to Syrup.”
“He didn’t feed it to Syrup,” Damas interjected.
“Did he waste it?” Pavora’s voice pitched dangerously. Wasting food was a major taboo in any city, but in Spargus, it was a violation - you could loose a week’s food rations and maybe have to go a round in the arena (if you were an adult). The wastelands had no arable ground for traditional crops, scavenging and having their spies purchase from what cities were willing to sell (at high prices) only went so far. Mar shrunk down and Syrup whined, stepping up behind its charge. Pavora glared the Hora-Quan into cowering too.
“I get the impression it was an accident,” Damas said.
“Wasting is wasting,” Pavora stood straight, hands on her hips. “Where’s the mess, Mar?”
Mar pointed towards his father, whose expression was unimpressed. Pavora went behind the throne and found the jar. “...That doesn’t look so bad.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t,” Damas muttered. Pavora heard Mar’s feet slap wetly against the ground as he toddled over to her, jumped for her hand (she stooped so he would catch it and not fall) and submitted to his ‘pulling’ her to the front.
Mar pointed again to the throne, then held his left hand so the palm faced to the right, thumb against his forehead while his fingers waggled, then brought the underside of his left index and middle fingers onto the tops of the other ones, the remaining fingers and thumbs loosely curled.
Pavora turned a blank look on the King, “...Well...that explains why you can’t come down for lunch.”
“That it would,” Damas replied.
“...Don’t get glued to the seat, Damas,” Pavora said. “It’ll be a bit difficult for you to live up to your promise for tonight if that syrup puddle grafts you into the chair.”
“Just...send Sig up at the end of the day,” Damas sighed. “He’ll have more mercy on me than you.”
“Mmmhmmm...c’mon, Mar, let’s leave your old man, Mister Sticky Buns, alone,” Pavora said. “He’s got lots of work to do, and its lunch time. You hungry?”
Mar was giggling silently in response to her pun, but nodded. Pavora scooped him up into her arms, ignoring the slight dampness of his clothing. It’d finish drying out soon enough.
Channeling genetics vary from species to species. Mar was an alien whose genes are passed down from the parent(s). Nearly everyone in the House of Mar is a Channeler as a result of Mar’s alien genes, but how easily a Mar can Channel is dependent on native genetics. Channeling for the rest of the JnD world is based on how resistant an individual is to Eco - the more resistant, the less ease a Mar can Channel.
In Haven’s era, the people live in the middle of a city powered by Dark Eco, which is the base form of all Eco Colors and so tolerance is super-high to all Eco colors, which makes Channeling super-rare outside the House of Mar.
In Sandover’s era, there were a lot more people capable of Channeling. It used to be more common an even longer time ago.
Yeah, pretty much. Dark Eco’s the base slurry where the four Colors come from. What’s being resisted is mutations from eco - the ones from Dark Eco have never been shown to be anything beneficial ever - and the best way to resist the mutations is by blocking of the ability to channel period. It compounds as the generations go on.
Channeling genetics vary from species to species. Mar was an alien whose genes are passed down from the parent(s). Nearly everyone in the House of Mar is a Channeler as a result of Mar’s alien genes, but how easily a Mar can Channel is dependent on native genetics. Channeling for the rest of the JnD world is based on how resistant an individual is to Eco - the more resistant, the less ease a Mar can Channel.
In Haven’s era, the people live in the middle of a city powered by Dark Eco, which is the base form of all Eco Colors and so tolerance is super-high to all Eco colors, which makes Channeling super-rare outside the House of Mar.
In Sandover’s era, there were a lot more people capable of Channeling. It used to be more common an even longer time ago.
So I went to watch Aqua’s scene on Destiny Islands for the prologue of Into the Thicket, and I decided to crack open the transcript feature, because the auto-english captions are usually terrible and sometimes funny and:
I got a lovely shot of Sora tbh and he definitely is the spitting image of An the Night. Also, somehow Aqua’s giggling over the cute kids at 2:00 somehow reads as ‘mine nephew’.
Sounds like someone was super-disgusted about Terra for some unfathomable reason and didn’t understand his character development. What even auto-caption?
And this just looks like Aqua’s internal dialogue is a lot less polite than how she talks to people. Don’t ruin how pure Aqua is for me YouTube!
It was fortunate her hand was held tightly by the tall dog-like person who apparently was friends with Sora. She could barely see through her tears, let alone the confusion of awakening in this strange ruin of a building bigger than anything back home on the Islands. Bigger than anything which could be built back on the Islands. It frightened her somewhat she hadn’t seen the sky more often than not.
They were besieged every few steps by strange black monsters with glowing eyes. The fowl-like person leading their headlong charge was attacking back with what could only be magic, trying to keep the forward path clear. He wasn’t always successful, and she would have to make herself small in whatever nook she could find while the two animal people fought.
Kairi vaguely recognized those protecting her. She vaguely recollected memories which belonged more to Sora than to her. It was less conscious thought and more a dream she couldn’t recall but knew she’d dreamed. It was also distracting, which made her more useless than she already was. If only Sora was here. If only Riku was here.
Remembering Riku’s ghostly form holding back the golden eyed monster in human guise chilled her. She didn’t understand it. Riku had been an apparition, struggling against something darker than anything Kairi could remember - darker than any of the creatures attacking her and Sora’s friends, though she instinctively knew they were kin.
These creatures...Kairi could feel the tiny sparks of light buried within the darkness which shaped their bodies. She thought she could hear those sparks crying out, “Lost! Lost! So dark! I am lost! Lost!”
Her own heart ached with sorrow. They reminded her of sad-angry-jealous-hurting creatures similar but different to these shadows she had seen as a child, which she could only just remember now. It had been a different kind of darkness which screamed with the voice of a small child from a thousand different creatures.. Kairi could barely remember those creatures who shouted with one voice, infinitely multiplying itself. While no less heartbreaking, the innumerable voices from these shadows was more nauseating.
If only she could fight like all her friends or even the kind blue lady with sorrowful eyes which sometimes haunted her dreams. She had never liked the weight of instruments meant to inflict pain in her hands. It was a burden and responsibility Kairi now regretted shying away from. She was dead weight. Even Tidus with his silly painted broomstick would be more help than she was.
“We’re almost back to the ship, Kairi,” the canine-person said reassuringly.
Kairi hummed, too out of breath to reply with words just then. They were on one of the strange basket-cage machines which moved around the giant building they were in. They had a moment to rest.
“I’m out of Ethers, Goofy,” the fowl-person murmured.
“We’re almost out, Donald,” the other animal-person said reassuringly. “Once we’re back to the ship, we’ll get Kairi safe to Traverse Town.”
Kairi hugged herself, trying not to be discomforted at being left out of the conversation and spoken of as if she weren’t there or just some piece of cargo.
“It’s what Sora would’ve wanted,” Goofy said.
“Sora’s not dead!” she blurted out. The pair of animal-people looked at her. She clenched her fists tightly, lowering them to her sides, stiffly controlling her volume, “He’s not dead.”
“He may as well be,” Donald retorted, the angry bite in his words almost accusing. The look in his eyes told her the bitterness was for someone else, she was just an easy target to snap at.
“I’m not going to think of him like that,” Kairi crossed her arms again, turning away. “I won’t!”
Awkward silence fell and the transport eventually reached its destination. Kairi got into a sprint-ready position as the machine slowed down, determined that even if she was dead wight in combat, she wasn’t going to hold them back during flight.
Sooo, I’m still working on the blog. It’ll probably be a bit before it’s anything like ‘finished’, but I migrated what works I’d published on my personal blog to here, so...progress.
*thumbs up*
I’ll be mostly following writing blogs on this account, with prompts and advice and that sort of thing.
Hey @saltysaltdog, I finally got that Jak only missed his mom by a couple of months idea ficlet done. (it’s roughly 2700 words give or take a few, oi)
For some Author’s Notes, Jak’s mom (Pavora) was inflicted with chronic anterograde amnesia from abuse of memory-altering drugs forced on her by Veger (using her well-being against the Kid to keep him obedient) and long-lasting partial amnesia from general trauma and lack of anything familiar within Haven. In this, Pav and the Kid have more or less just escaped from Veger - probably no more than a day or two before Dax breaks Jak out. If I were to use the idea that Veger took Jak’s mom in a fic following canon, then Kor would’ve seen to her demise so that Samos could then ‘find’ the child for the Underground’s cause.
(As if I needed another AU idea.)
is any of the metal rider au been posted online? i would love to read it.
Unfortunately not, as I haven’t even finished a first chapter even though I started planning…oh…sometime in the later half of last year? Even my notes for the first arc of the AU are kinda…incomplete. I have weird motivation issues where I don’t give up on a project, but rarely am able to move forwards either.
Buuuut, I’ll post some of what I’ve got typed under a cut. Keep in mind, its very rough material still. It might feel a bit scatterbrained.
