SASO Referees (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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sportsanime2017-05-28 06:52 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2017-05-28 06:52 pm
Entry tags:
Bonus Round 1: AUs
SASO 2017 is over, but this round is perpetually open to new fills (no new prompts).
Please read this whole post before commenting to ensure that your team gets the most points possible. (There are changes from last year!)
RULES
- Submit prompts by commenting to this post with an alternate universe idea, along with a ship from one of our nominated fandoms. There's a comment template below for your convenience.
- Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. (This is not the sports anime gen olympics.) Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Izumi & Sakaeguchi). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Izumi/Sakaeguchi). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
- An AU can be a canon divergence, e.g. "what if [character] was the Team Captain instead of the canon captain character?", or a completely different setting altogether, e.g., pop idol AU, coffee shop AU, superheroes AU, etc.
- Fill prompts by leaving a responding comment to the prompt with your newly-created work.
- Remember to follow the general bonus round rules, outlined here.
FORMAT
Bonus round shenanigans all happen in the comments below. Brand-new works only, please.Required Work Minimums:
- 400 words (prose)
- 400px by 400px (art)
- 14 lines (poetry)
Format your comment in one of the following ways:
| If PROMPTING: | If FILLING: | If FILLING as a TEAM GRANDSTAND participant: |
PROMPT: TEAM [YOUR SHIP]
| FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING]
| FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING]
|
Posts not using this format will be understood to be unofficial discussion posts, regardless of what they contain. They, like all comments in this community, are subject to the code of conduct.
If you see anyone breaking the code of conduct (e.g., causing drama, being rude) anywhere (not just DW), please contact the mods immediately.
SCORING
These numbers apply to your team as a whole, not each individual teammate. Make as many prompts/fills as you want!For prompts: 5 points each (maximum of 50 prompt points per team per round)
For fills:First 4 fills by any member of your team: 20 points each
Fills 5-10: 15 points each
Fills 11-20: 5 points each
Fills 21-50: 2 points each
Fills 51+: 1 point each
All scored content must be created new for this round.
Etc.
If you're hunting through the prompts looking for what to fill, a good trick is to view top-level comments only (see the line of links below this post).Have a question? Check The FAQ first. If you still need help, feel free to contact the mods. Happy fanworking!
FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, T (Part 1 of 2)
Other Tags: none
Word Count: 3073 words
(note: it's been AGES since i've practiced, i also don't know if the Cordeiro school would even teach the throw i describe. sorry for potential inaccuracy!)
***
The monster never steps foot in the light of The Mario Cordeiro Academy. It lurks by the dumpsters, as close it can get without actually technically approaching. Sometimes Ringi catches it running away at night, its dark shape a disruption against the colorful light of Barra Da Tijuca’s clubs and bars. Occasionally she sees two massive eyes catching the light in the distance, like a cat’s.
It takes her weeks to catch it.
“Woah!”
It’s so easy, it’s almost a disappointment. She sneaks around the dumpster one night and twists its arm against its back. The monster’s body hits the dirt as easily as any kid her age. It… looks like any kid her age. Short hair chopped blunt. Skinny, bony limbs flailing in a slightly over-sized shirt and shorts. Colorful stickers on scabby knees.
Ringi frowns.
She releases her hold. “Get up.” She says, not quite relaxing as she stands. “And don’t try anything funny.” She lets her fingertips brush the holster at her hip, her father’s hunting knife somewhat too big for her small hand, but comforting.
The monster- the kid? - it turns around, and slowly gets up. Big dark eyebrows and bigger, darker eyes lift to match her face. It’s almost exactly her height.
A smile splits its face.
“Wow, that was so good!” It suddenly leans in, enough to make Ringi stumble one step backwards. “Was that judo?!”
Ringi quickly regains her composure, scoffing. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“Well, no! I used to live in Japan.”
“Japanese, huh?” Ringi leans back in, giving the monster-girl a toothy grin. “So the old men were right. What are you, a tanuki? Kitsune?”
It cocks its head, doglike. “Huh? I’m Yuzuko. Mawatari Yuzuko.” It suddenly brightens up. “Oh, sorry!” A grubby little hand suddenly appears in Ringi’s face. She can see the muck and dirt under its stubby fingernails. “My name’s Mawatari Yuzuko! Muito prazer!”
Ringi pointedly ignores the offered handshake. “You know people are looking for you, right? My dad’s been trying to find you for like a week.”
“Eh? Why come?”
“They said there were rumored sightings of a Japanese monster in the area. And you’ve been lurking around our dumpsters every night like some creepy little rodent.”
“Oh, you saw me?” The monster rubs the back of its head, laughing. Ringi didn’t even know monsters could laugh. She already hates it. “Jeez, I was kind of trying to stay out of view and everything…”
Ringi’s lip curls. She looks the monster up and down. Batos had holes on the top of their heads, or at the very least, hats to cover them. Kitsune apparently had inhumanely beautiful faces. This monster, kid, girl, it just looks like a regular human. No hat, no hole, no sleek, elegant cheekbones. Just a cartoon printed shirt and those weird bug-eyes.
The hand by Ringi’s knife relaxes, just a bit. “Why have you been hanging around the school?”
“Oh, well…” The monster digs the toe of her sneaker into the dirt. “I was kinda hoping… I could maybe join?”
Ringi rolls her eyes. “It’s not a place to play around. Everyone who trains there is serious.”
“I’m serious too! And when I saw you in there, I was kind of hoping maybe I could join too? You seemed to be my age.”
“Your age- wait,” Ringi’s body feels tense all of a sudden. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Oh, no no, I just saw you go in most days! And you seemed to be the only kid… oh,” the monster frowns for just a moment. “Or is it that you just go cuz your dad goes?”
A slap in the face, a punch in the gut, even a mouth of fangs around her throat- anything would have been better than the hot sting in Ringi’s cheeks or the drop of her stomach at those words.
“I didn’t think about that…” The monster blathers on, oblivious, not noticing Ringi’s fist clenching. “I mean, I would have just gone in and asked myself, but I can’t go in a place where I haven’t been invited yet.”
The back of Ringi’s neck goes ice-cold.
“Oh! Since we’re friends now, maybe you could invite mOUFF-”
The monster’s breath is pushed out of it as Ringi’s fist digs into its stomach. Ringi quickly braces her ankle behind the monster’s foot, taking it by the shoulders and bringing it to the ground, hard. She straddles its hips, pleased to see that it dropped its doofy, infuriating smile.
“Joke’s on you,” she spits. “My dad’s school doesn’t just teach judo, or luta livre.” She finally pulls the knife, noting the pleasing sound the blade makes. “He hunts monsters, and I don’t go-” Ringi digs the tip right into the monsters cheek, sneering. “-just cuz my dad does.”
It’s win-win, she thinks. If it really is a monster, then she’ll kill it. She’ll prove to her dad that she isn’t just messing around, shut up all those idiots at the school who think she’s some sort of joke. And if she really is just some weird snot-nosed brat, she’ll just cry and beg Ringi to stop. Maybe the cut on her face will teach her some damn manners.
Ringi brings the knife to the edge of the monster-girl’s cheek, carving a neat little line through the flesh, and her eyes go up to meet its gaze
and Ringi stops.
It feels like the ground under her knees has disappeared.
She jerks back, brings her knife back, and somehow she falls. Her skin is clammy in the cool evening air, and she’s so focused on trying to bring her breathing back to normal she doesn’t hear the words that come out of the monster’s throat. She doesn’t look up until it’s too late. Until a shadow falls over her. Until that awful hand is back in her face.
Ringi’s throat goes tight. “St-”
Those awful, awful eyes. “Hey, are you alr-”
A knife, an advantage, an oblivious opponent. And the only thing Ringi can bring herself to do is punch it in the face.
“Stay away from me!!!” She screams over her shoulder, running back towards the wonderful, wonderful light of the school. She reaches the back door, and turns back one more time. “A-and stay away from my dad too!!!”
In the hall, behind the shut door, Ringi catches her breath. She wipes down her dad’s knife, carefully puts it back where she found it, and waits the few minutes it takes to catch her dad between his most diligent students.
“I saw it again when I was taking out the trash.”
Ringi watches her dad and several other men examine the area around the dumpsters from the safe halo of light from the school. There’s nothing out there.
Ringi grits her teeth, watching the last couple of men leave. “I saw it, Dad, I swear I-”
He drops a thick hand on her head. “I know.”
“Dad, I’m serious!!!”
He gives her a stern look from the edge of his eye. “So am I.”
She stops.
“We found tracks out there in the dirt. And blood.” Against the faint light his profile looks like a sculpture. “Black blood.”
Ringi’s heart lifts as her stomach goes cold. “So it IS a monster.” She had been so out of it when washing the knife she hadn’t even noticed the color.
A rough laugh. “Well, it certainly isn’t human.” His eyes don’t match his chuckle, and his hand feels a bit more solid on her head. “Ringi, you need to be more careful. The footprints we found looked like a child’s, but putting on another creature’s skin is as easy for some monsters as it is for you to put on your gloves. Don’t trust this thing, no matter how friendly it might seem.”
Ringi remembers the monster’s bright, curious eyes as she sliced its cheek, and thinks there’s no chance of mistaking this thing for a human.
“Hey again!”
“Hey-” Ringi sputters on air as she jerks back, her bag of trash spilling its paper guts all over the ground as she drops it.
It’s only sunset- she thought it was safe! But there it is- still beaming, still girl-shaped, completely the same as she was a few nights ago, apart from the plain white bandage on her cheek.
“So it’s Ringi, right? That’s what your dad called you.”
“Stop spying on us- I’m gonna kill you!” But Ringi’s hand gropes for empty air at her hip. All she has between her and the monster is her own fists. She puts them up shakily, bending her legs in a fighting stance.
“Woah, hey,” the monster puts its own hands up, open and placating. “I’m really sorry if I offended you the other night! I just wanted to ask if I could learn to fight at your sch-”
“I’m not inviting you into our school!”
The monster looks crestfallen for a moment, before suddenly perking up again. “Well, we can practice out here, right? You can teach me some of the stuff you did on me, or that knife stuff!”
I didn’t do ‘knife stuff,’ I just shoved a knife in your face. Stop being so easily impressed. Something deep in Ringi wants to comeback with that, but instead she plasters a fake smile on her face. “Fine,” she chirps. “Wait out here, and I’ll bring my dad’s hunting knife, and I’ll show you more knife stuff.”
“Would you??” If the monster hears the threat, it doesn’t show it. “That’d be so cool! It was kinda scary, and it hurt last time, but…”
Her eyes sparkle, and Ringi’s plastic smile crumbles in an instant.
“It was really exciting!!!”
Ringi socks the monster so hard she hears its head hit the dumpster with a metallic thud. This time she doesn’t look back once as she bolts.
Of course. She didn’t just find a monster. She found the monster who was a goddamn freak.
Dead birds keep appearing on the school’s doorstep. No, “dead” doesn’t cover it. They’ve been opened, like presents, insides leaving gruesome stains that don’t leave no matter how hard Ringi’s dad hoses them.
“It’s insulting us,” Ringi spits, the fifth time they find a decapitated pigeon festering in the doorway.
“Hmmph,” says Ringi’s dad.
“It is!” If Ringi feels angry, she doesn’t have room to feel scared. “It’s like it’s saying, ‘haha I’m gonna do this to you too’!”
“Ringi… remind me, we’ve never had a cat right?”
“Huh? Of course not. What’s that have to do with anything?”
“Right. You wouldn’t know, then.”
“Know what??”
He’s silent for a long moment, looking at the bird’s corpse with an expression that is too complicated for Ringi to place. But somehow…
...it’s almost fond?
“...Dad?”
He shakes his head softly. “It’s nothing. Go grab the hose.”
FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, T (Part 2 of 2)
“Go away,” she chokes out, face still buried behind her knees. Her words are watery and with none of the bite she wants them to have.
“But you’re crying.”
“I’m not going to invite you to the school!”
“Okay.” And the monster plops down in the dirt, bathed in the shadow of the dumpster. “Do you wanna talk?”
“No.” But a fresh bout of tears makes it past her swollen eyelids. She scrubs at them with the bottoms of her palms. “It’s stupid.”
The monster just sits there, like a dog.
“... it’s so stupid,” she snarls. She tells herself it’s not talking to the monster if she’s mostly talking to herself. “It’s bad enough when the older students make jokes about me. But those new boys, they’re only a bit older than me, and I th… thought I could finally spar with someone seriously. But… they just t-treat me like a joke. Because I’m their teacher’s daughter. Because I’m a girl.”
“Eh? What’s that have to do with it?”
She glares at the monster through red, dripping eyes. “You don’t get it at all, do you?”
“But you’re so strong!”
“Of course I’m strong! My dad doesn’t go easy on me because I’m his daughter, he’s tough on me BECAUSE I’M HIS DAUGHTER!” Ringi balls her hands into fists at her sides. “And I told them that, a-and one laughed! He laughed and told me to ‘take my best shot’ and acted like…” She sniffs again.
“What did you do?”
Ringi swallows, but she manages a small smile. “I beat the crap out of him, of course. He was crying by the time my dad pulled me off.” Her face goes dark again. “But… he dropped out. Him and most of the younger boys.”
“Ehhh??? That’s so silly though!” The monster tilts her head so much Ringi fears it’ll topple into the dirt. “Just cause he got beaten up once! He should have tried getting stronger!”
“Right, that’s what I said! My dad says all the time, you can’t get stronger without losing a few times, and I thought he’d say that, but…”
Ringi shuts her eyes, trying to fight back another awful wave of tears.
“He yelled at me. And made me apologize to the boy’s parents. A-and then he yelled at me AGAIN because he lost customers…”
The monster watches curiously as she move her glasses to her head, wiping at her eyes.
“He’s supposed to be the one on my side…”
“I’m on your side too!”
The monster’s crawled forward on her hands, just barely avoiding breaching the shadow that divides the two of them.
“...you...”
“All those guys are doofuses. You’re the strongest person I know! You’re definitely the strongest hunter I know.”
And Ringi feels the dried mucus on her face crack as she, somehow, against all odds, manages to smile at the monster.
“I’m the only hunter you know, dummy.”
She lets her head fall back, gently hitting the dumpster. She looks at the stars peppering the night sky. To her side, the monster rolls around, facing up alongside her.
“... Geez, it stinks out here.”
“Yeah, it kinda does.”
The next time Ringi meets the monster, she’s prepared with the best weapon she knows.
She holds out the bowl of açaí right in front of the monster’s eyes. “You hungry?”
Ringi sits with her, watching her scarf it down like a cat. She brings her knees up to her chin.
“Mawatari.”
She freezes mid-chew, turning to Ringi with wide eyes.
“... that’s what you said your name was, right? Mawatari Yuzuko?”
Mawatari beams, not caring that her teeth are stained dark with berry juice, and nods rapidly. “Yuh cnn cll mhh Ysuhko!!!!”
Ringi sighs. “Okay. Yuzuko.” And she gives her a grin like a knife. “How would you like to come practice at our school?”
The half-chewed mouthful of açaí falls from Yuzuko’s open mouth.
Mawatari Yuzuko is officially enrolled in The Mario Cordeiro Academy a week later. Some of the more perceptive hunters are already staring at her with wide eyes as she greets the class with a bow. It’s only half an hour later that Ringi gets her in the face with a well-placed uppercut, and everyone can see her black blood splattered all over the mat.
Understandably, some people are a little put off by her presence. But Ringi is surprised by how open-minded her father is. He questions her in front of several other men, down on his knee so he’s roughly eye-level with her. To some it might have looked like a gesture to ease a child’s nerves. Ringi knows it’s so Yuzuko can see how hard his eyes are.
“You know what this school is for, yes?”
“Yup!”
“We hunt… people like you. You’re okay with that?”
“Well, I have to get better at fighting before I try any hunting! And this is the place Ringi trains at!” She aims a beaming smile at Ringi’s direction. “I have to get stronger if I want to spar with her! She’s the only person who’s ever beaten me in a fight!”
The other men gape. Mario Cordeiro’s dark eyes glitter. And Ringi can’t fight the wide smirk that splits her face.
“Hhhhey, Natsuo!”
Natsuo Ishido sits in the back of her half-empty classroom, sharing lunch with some girl with a plain, shocked face and dark hair pulled in twintails.
“Oh.” Natsuo doesn’t smile, but she barely looks bothered either. “It’s you again.”
“It’s me again!” Ringi places her hands on the open windowsill, leaning forward so her glasses slide down her nose. You’re going to come up to practice after school, right?”
“No?” Natsuo arches a thin eyebrow. “I told you, I’m going to a gym now.”
Ringi blows a dramatic sigh. “At this rate I’m NEVER gonna have the chance to spar with you, Natsuo.”
“Yeah, really tragic.”
She folds her arms, letting her chin rest on them as she shuts her eyes. “And you’re the first one I’ve met since Yuzuko!”
“First what. What are you talking about.”
Ringi opens her eyes.“Well, the first monster!”
From behind her crooked glasses, Ringi can only make out half of Natsuo’s face. But she can definitely see the corner of her mouth twitch.
“H-hey!” The twin-tailed girl looks flustered. “Come on, I know Natsuo can be kinda rude, but don’t you think ‘monster’ is a little harsh-?”
“You’re the same kind as Yuzuko, right?” Ringi leans further in. “What are you guys? You come from Japan right?”
Ringi straightens her glasses just in time to catch the sight of Natsuo’s pupils going narrow. Just like Yuzuko’s, all those years ago. Her lips are tight. Something about her face looks… sharper.
“N… Nacchan?”
At the sound of the other girl’s voice, Natsuo returns to normal.
“Back off.” She finally says. “I’m trying to eat.”
Ringi grins, leaping back from the window and clapping her hands. “We’re gonna fight someday, okay Natsuo?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“I’m gonna ask Yuzuko about the next competitions coming up!” She whips around, taking off. “You better be in some of them!”
A voice floats after her. Ringi vaguely registers it as the twin-tailed girl. “What was THAT all about?”
“Dunno.” In Ringi’s mind, she can easily see the dull look in Natsuo’s eyes with the last traces of her voice. “I guess she’s just some sorta freak.”
Re: FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, T (Part 2 of 2)
Thank you!
Re: FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, T (Part 2 of 2)