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sportsanime2017-07-23 07:03 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2017-07-23 07:03 pm
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Bonus Round 5: Clue
Sometimes, all you need are a few little details to imagine something bigger. This round is inspired by a classic board game with a cast of colorful characters, but for SASO your only limits on "who", "where", and "with what" are what you can imagine (and the SASO fandom list, of course)!
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 the format of a Clue mystery - "[character] in the [location] with [item]", along with any ship/ot3/etc. from one of our nominated fandoms.
- Example: Sawamura Daichi in the teachers' lounge with the Hello Kitty! lunchbox
- The person in your prompt MAY be a member of your ship, but is not REQUIRED to be part of your ship. They must still be a named character from a SASO-nominated fandom.
- Your place must be a physical location, not a state of being or a state of being. However, this location is not required to be real, nor must it be from the same setting as the characters.
- The "item" used must be a physical object that the character can hold or manipulate.
- Unlike the board game, your prompt is NOT required to imply murder. The scenario implied can be anything at all! (As always, please tag properly!)
- Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Natsuo & Yuzuko). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Natsuo/Yuzuko). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
- Fill prompts by replying to the prompt with your Clue-inspired fanwork.
- Remember to follow the general bonus round rules, outlined here.
- Here is a prompt/fill index for your convenience.
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!
PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND
Fandom: yowamushi pedal
Major Tags: none
Other Tags: could be magical or not
Prompt:
miyahara in the back-alley stationery store with vials of invisible ink.
FILL: Team The Prince of Tennis, T
Fandom: Yowamushi Pedal
Major Tags: tags omitted
Other Tags: tags omitted
Word Count: 550 words
HP AU time! What a great prompt. <3
***
Flourish & Blotts was the dominant shop in Diagon Alley but there were other places that witches and wizards with a lust for stationary would go to when they wanted something more special than school books and standard parchment scrolls.
Miyahara’s store, Paper Perfect, was known to stationary connoisseurs as the place to go for rare papers from around the world and special inks. She imported rice paper from Japan, flaxen weaves from Egypt and had a number of hand-mold artisans who sold only to her. The papers had varying widths and thickness; for no extra charge, Miyahara would even cut the papers into the desired lengths for the customers. Large board sheets lay stacked on shelves while other, more expensive papers, were displayed in a glass-fronted cabinet which Miyahara would open by request for customers who wanted to feel the paper before purchasing.
Next to the front door was a sink with three types of soap (standard, strong and sensitive skin) and if anyone failed to wash their hands immediately upon entering the shop, the shop ghost would immediately fly down and float in front of them, telling them with a smile, “You must wash your hands else Madam Miyahara will be cross.”
Overall, Manami was quite a helpful entity. He’d drift around the shop, chatting to customers a little dreamily and scaring off shoplifters! When asked about Manami, Miyahara would say simply that he was a childhood friend who was now helping her.
Most people left it at that, aware that only grand old families had ghosts in their buildings and thinking Miyahara had brought a ghost from home with her.
That was why it was such a surprise for Miyahara to emerge from the stock room, carrying a tray of invisible inks, and find Manami talking excitedly to a new customer. The girl had short hair and her facial features mirrored Miyahara’s own, making Miyahara smile briefly.
“Hello,” she called out and both the ghost and human turned to her. “Is there something you need help with?”
“Oh- I was just talking to Manami about cycling! I’m a huge bikes fan and he said that he’d been racing in the Tour de France when his heart gave out so I asked him what it was like before he died and--” The girl fluttered her hands, then gave Miyahara an engaging grin.
Miyahara couldn’t help but smile back as she pushed her glasses up a little. “I’ll leave you two to talk then. Please come ask me if you need any help with anything.”
Miyahara got to work on sorting out the inks, relying on the colored cork tops to tell them apart. Occasionally, a drift of laughter would flow her way and Miyahara found her cheeks pinking at how nice it was to have someone laughing and lively in her shop.
And Manami liked her too!
...Would it be the most terrible thing in the world to make up a loyalty club so she could get the girl’s name and number? She’d been thinking of starting one anyway. This girl could be her first member.
It was a sound business decision, really, and had nothing to do with how she’d stopped paying attention to the inks and was now just eavesdropping shamelessly.
FILL: Team Grandstand, G
Fandom: Yowamushi Pedal
Major Tags: None
Other Tags: Modern magic, anxiety
Word Count: 1600
***
Miyahara was starting to worry that having too many secrets could be addictive. Her entire life she had been the Good Example. It wasn’t that she was under constant scrutiny, but people expected to find her behaving in a certain way any time they turned to her. Even alone she had come to feel that she could never relax.
That was until the girl at the stationary store (not the one in front of the station where she had always gone for her school things, but the one that was somehow hidden under a shabby art gallery) had given her a phoenix feather quill. It was just a test quill, she said, and it didn’t match the new shipment so they couldn’t keep using it. Consider it a gift for a first-time customer.
When Miyahara wrote with it the paper burned soundlessly to ash and made itself anew while the ink, her words, vaporized into nothing. She had stopped keeping a diary in third grade, but no one could read words that went up in smoke. She wrote complaints, even tirades, and the smoke would smell bitter or metallic for an instant but then every trace was gone. She could say absolutely anything and leave no trace but the faint scent of her thoughts.
She had already gone back twice for more ink and once for charm paper that she didn’t need. If she timed things right Miki would stop and talk to her for a little while, which made her heart flutter more than any written confession so far.
Miki was energetic and kind, and when Miyahara wrote her name the smoke smelled like summer wild flowers and sun-burnt grass and caught in the back of her throat like a secret that wanted out.
The shop itself was a kind of secret. Besides being hidden from the street, with a sign that only seemed to appear when you came at it from the right direction, it was built in a sort of elastic space. If she was silent and moved very carefully she could feel the shop unfolding in front of her. Sometimes the bottles of ink clinked together if another customer had moved one out of its place, and she straightened out the rows so they were silent again. There was a slight claustrophobic feeling in the back of her mind, knowing the space was smaller that it seemed, but it smelled like a library and the stillness was restful.
Miyahara walked slowly up and down the aisles while she waited for Miki to be free at the counter. They did have a very nice selection, beautiful fountain pens and stationary that would read itself aloud in the sender’s voice, or wouldn’t show its message without a password. There was ink of almost every kind, including bottles in a cold case behind the counter with a sign reading: You must have at least a class B cursed materials handling license to purchase products containing blood of the following species.
There didn’t seem to be anything she could pretend she was here for today and put off her errand. She braced herself and finally went up to ask if they sold invisible ink.
“Sure! Do you want it for paper or for you?”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yeah. The really strong ones aren’t safe for skin. Let me see,” Miki disappeared briefly behind the counter and came back with a tiny brown bottle. “You want something like this.”
“Thank you,” said Miyahara, who couldn’t meet Miki’s smile and found she wanted to disappear more than she had when she stepped into the shop.
“Should I show you how to use it?”
Miyahara would have liked to say no thank you, she knew just fine, but she ended up nodding.
“The easiest way,” Miki paused to rummage and came up with a brush with a sharp white tip, “Hold out your hands. You just write in two places on your body.”
“It’s not invisible!” Miyahara had expected the ink itself to be clear, but it was a pale, shimmering green.
“It’s really diluted,” Miki explained. She drew a small spiral on one palm and then the other. It felt sticky on her skin.
The ink didn’t fade, but Miyahara’s hand under it did. The invisibility spread up her body and through her clothes until she couldn’t see herself at all. Last to disappear from view was the green ink on her hands.
“That should last for about ten minutes. Watch out for crowds. People won’t make room for you if they don’t see you.”
Miki wrapped up the bottle of ink, and when Miyahara accepted it, it disappeared from sight as well.
“Thank you,” she said again.
Back on the street the animated statue in front of the art gallery was threatening to fight the Colonel Sanders statue next door. She quickly got out of the way, and found Miki had been right about the difficulty of not colliding with anyone while invisible.
There wasn’t even a minute when she regretted it. Miyahara could feel all the muscles between her shoulders that she hadn’t known were tense releasing. Even if there wasn’t anyone around who could possibly care if she was polite or how she held herself, even the possibility of being judged was gone.
Ten minutes passed easily. She kept checking her hands, a little worried about suddenly becoming visible in public. She found a spot in one of the shops by the station where she didn’t think one more person would be noticeable.
Ten more minutes passed, at least, although it was hard to keep track when her watch was as invisible as the rest of her. By the time the clock over the station chimed she was definitely worried.
She made it back to the shop just as Miki was putting up the closed sign and nearly fell into her. Any other time she would have come back tomorrow, too late, her own fault, but she was panicking.
“It didn’t wear off!”
It took Miki two tries to find and grab her arm, but then she was being pulled though the shop and behind the counter into the back room. It should have been more than three shallow steps up to reach a room with large windows looking out at the sidewalk, but the thought was too small to worry about right then.
Scrubbing her hands didn’t help. Miki pressed a cup of tea into her hands, saying if the heat didn’t melt the ink a least she would feel calmer, and Miyahara ended up sitting across from her. She was a little glad Miki couldn’t see that she was shaking, and at the same time felt like maybe she already knew.
“Sometimes people are more sensitive, like if they’re used to feeling invisible. Should I have asked why you would want to be invisible?”
“I’m not planning on doing anything bad. I wouldn’t act any differently if no one can see me. I just want them not to look.” Miyahara had to put the tea down so she could put her face in her hands. Even invisible, she didn’t want to cry in front of Miki and she felt dangerously close to doing just that.
She was tired of her mother constantly checking up on her when she had never once shirked her chores or homework, tired of teachers noticing if she slipped from her usual place by a few points, and more than anything tired of classmates thinking she must have something to hide.
“It is conceited to think other people are looking at you,” she said. It felt like a slap in the face. She would have been horrified if she’d taken that tone with anyone but herself.
“I don’t know. I wish I was looking at you right now,” Miki said. She came around the edge of the table and somehow found Miyahara’s arm to lay a comforting hand on.
“I’m scared,” she admitted, after biting down one little sob. “If I make a mistake it’ll be when someone is watching, and they’ll never trust me again.”
Miki’s hands curled around hers and pulled gently, and Miyahara resisted until she realized she could see her hands.
“You’re back!” Miki hugged her, much to her shock, and hung on her for several seconds before helping her clean thin ink from her face. Miyahara didn’t understand why a few tears had cut through the ink when all that soap had done nothing, but that was a question for later.
“I’m going to ask you to return that ink. You’re too pretty to disappear, okay?”
Miyahara nodded, barely registering what she said. She already felt like she’d messed up enough, and then confessing something like that to someone who had not offered to be her confidant.
“Promise me you’ll keep coming back after this.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to disappear. Or do you hate me because I made a mistake selling you that ink?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you can come here next time you need somewhere to disappear to, okay?”
Miyahara looked down at Miki’s hands holding hers and nodded shyly. The way Miki looked at her didn’t make her want to disappear at all.
She traded the bottle of ink for a promise and went home feeling lightheaded. People looked at her on the sidewalk, just another body to maneuver around, and it was oddly comforting.
The first thing she did when she got home was open a window and write a promise to herself, followed by a name that smelled like summer.
Re: FILL: Team Grandstand, G