SASO Referees (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
referees) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
sportsanime2015-06-13 07:58 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2015-06-13 07:58 pm
Entry tags:
Bonus Round 2: AUs
Bonus Round 2: AUs
SASO 2015 is over, but this round is perpetually open to new fills (no new prompts).
This round is made for exploration of all those "what-if?" scenarios, like "what if my favorite sports anime was actually a spaghetti western?" or "what if everything was the same except everyone was actually a car?"
This round ends at 7PM on June 27 EDT. Countdown Timer.
RULES
- Submit prompts by commenting to this post with an alternate universe idea, along with a ship from one of our nominated fandoms.
- An AU could be a canon divergence, e.g. "what if [team] didn't win the Inter High in season 1, but [other team] did instead?", or a completely different setting altogether, e.g.s 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.
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 3 fills by any member of your team: 20 points each
Fills 4-10: 10 points each
Fills 11-20: 5 points each
Fills 21+: 2 points 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.Have a question? Check The FAQ first. If you still need help, feel free to contact the mods. Happy fanworking!
PROMPT: TEAM AKASHI SEIJUUROU/NIJIMURA SHUUZOU
GUNDAM AU
waggles eyebrows
Re: PROMPT: TEAM AKASHI SEIJUUROU/NIJIMURA SHUUZOU
FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
2188 words
“Romeo-1, you are clear for launch. Repeat: Romeo-1, clear for launch.”
“Copy that, Control. Tell the bridge I’ll be back soon. Don’t miss me too much.”
“Roger, Romeo-1. Happy hunting.”
Space is huge.
Tooru prefers to see the universe through the eyes of a pilot. His seat rattles under him while the launchpad flings him toward the stars, engines humming in his ears. His helmet remains unsealed, visor left open while he takes it all in: he’s surrounded by starlight.
It’s quiet, too, when he’s all by himself outside in space. Granted, with several thousand miles of special alloys welded to a mainframe meant to be a one-man war machine; Tooru was at the top of his Academy class for a reason. He pushes down on the accelerators gently, listens to the mobile suit’s limbs shift into gear as he passes by colonies and moons.
When nobody is fighting a war here, it is very peaceful. “Iwa-chan,” Tooru says aloud, the dashboard sensors transcribing his words, “It’s really nice out here.”
It’s only a routine patrol, a full two-hour sweep of a wide perimeter from HQ--hopefully nobody spots them at all, otherwise Tooru will have to find out exactly what Ushijima had meant by ‘peacekeeping force’. He could get another hour in space alone, maybe, before he’s called back and made to look at space with only the thrum of the ship’s engines for propulsion.
Maybe, in a time before war, the word “pilot” had meant something else. Now it was different: it meant more than the mobile suit and the shiny stripes on his sleeves. Pilots were people born to navigate the stars--born among them, dying among them.
Tooru never sees the hostile coming.
(And when HQ salvages the remains of his mobile suit, metal wreckage twisted and left to drift in space, they can barely put together the center in one piece. The retrieval crew return the logs of his final patrol to the bridge.
Iwa-chan, it’s really nice out here.)
Tooru wakes up without knowing where he is and, for a disorienting moment, who he is.
Space is dizzying. It’s very cold.
Shit, it’s cold. Tooru recognizes nothing and looks around, left to right, without understanding north and south. Everything looks the same outside of his mobile suit, blurring together in streaks of white-blue and warm orange. Missing in Action, probably presumed dead in a few days. With honors.
He can see Mattsun’s face already, jokingly disapproving when he says, “Lost a mobile suit? I don’t know how that’d happen, Oikawa, you tell me.” He carefully does not think about Iwa-chan’s face at all (is lost in the memory of it, suddenly drowning with the need to go back to HQ and see him again).
Tooru fumbles with his transmission signal--a small machine’s heartbeat that Tooru himself could never hear--and hopes that someone picks it up. Hopes until he thinks he might die with hoping. He’s almost sleepy, the chill of outer space slowly chipping into his bones, and thinks he can hear a familiar engine and see a broad, metallic chest painted parade colors in his darkening sights. (Iwa-chan would be happy to see him home.)
“The bogey is an unknown class,” Matsukawa says, and Iwaizumi makes that face he makes when he sees something he doesn’t like. “It’s high-spec, brand new, and of a like I’ve never seen before.” He crosses his arms and Hanamaki does the same, but it’s hard to intimidate Hajime, of all people. Pilots don’t scare easily.
But when the bridge commands him up there Hajime snaps off a salute surprisingly crisp for a man in mourning. Hanamaki watches him go with a thoughtful face and asks, “D’you think he’s mad because he never said goodbye?”
“Nah,” Matsukawa shrugs. “I think they always say goodbye before one of them goes.”
When Tooru was still in the Academy, top of his class and eager to prove his worth in the field, he was unaware of something he knows now: war is in the blood. It gets to a man’s head, little by little, until he can’t stand the silence in his head and has to get out, has to see the stars and understand the distance between them and himself.
Pilots aren’t people meant to be bound by gravity. He says this to Hajime, once, just once, and he’d smacked him for it. But not disagreed.
“Do you remember? Stupid, you sounded so. Far away, back then.”
Slowly, Tooru comes back to to present (pulls away from the memory and lets his mind swim up to the noise of beeping machines and the sharp clean smell of the clinic, follows his voice home). “Iwa-chan,” he manages, breathing in his first conscious lungful of sweet oxygen. He doesn’t even crack open his eyes. “You look terrible.”
It takes Tooru a month to recover from his little subzero space adventure. “Your codename is no longer Romeo-1,” Hanamaki informs him, with a smile on his face. Tooru knows that face: it promises shame for him in the near future.
“Do I get to hear it now?” Tooru asks innocently, and Hanamaki’s smile grows just a bit sweeter. “No, I guess not.” He twists his fingers in his bunk’s duvet, fabric soft against his hands. “Are you here just to make fun of me?” Mournful, Tooru makes the ‘big sad eyes’ expression at him until he laughs.
“No, I didn’t. Although I certainly could have.” Hanamaki digs out a sheet of paper from his pocket--an actual piece of paper that Tooru takes with curiosity. “Secret stuff,” he grins. “Scribbled down what I could remember before I got caught.”
“Ooooooo--” Tooru holds up the thing, fascinated at the grease pencil marks on the paper. He squints at Hanamaki’s handwriting. “Newtype?”
“Figures you wouldn’t know,” and Tooru perks up, because that is Hajime’s voice at the door. Exasperated Iwa-chan, his third favorite. “You never did pay attention in Intergalactic History.”
(When Iwa-chan has finished explaining what a “Newtype” is, someone who’s supposed to signal a new stage of human evolution. A Spacenoid with highly developed senses, he’d looked in awe of the idea.
“Iwa-chan,” Tooru had said lightly, “I thought you were just a meathead jock! No wonder you were always single, you were always hitting the books at school!”
“Shut up.” His punch had gone for the shoulder, too, ow. “You didn’t seem to mind at the time. And I thought it was cool. Kind of like describing the perfect pilot.”
Tooru’s shaking hands had stilled completely then, paper crumpled in his fists. His words thrummed in his veins like energy, like electrical power. The perfect pilot, a fluke of time and genetics. Luck.)
“Prodigal Son, you are clear for launch. Repeat: Prodigal Son, clear for takeoff. And try to bring the suit back in one piece this time. We’re loaning out an entire hangar’s worth of suits just to make sure you do.”
It’s not quite the same as before.
“Copy that, Control. And tell Matsukawa at the bridge to shut up. It was just the one time.”
“Course.” And Hanamaki had sounded like he was laughing, too. “Prodigal Son, happy hunting.”
It is, Tooru learns, to great personal loss of blood and comrades, a Gundam.
The hostile had streaked in and collapsed their grouped patrol formation like bowling pins. It was armed with something Tooru had never seen before: a sword made of light, crackling energy in a broad beam carried with a distinguishable hilt and handle. It cut apart mobile suits like soft bread with that sword in one hand and a high-powered rifle in the other. Its engines were whisper-quiet and its eyes--it had eyes--were like something from a nightmare dimension. It struck like nothing else Tooru had never seen before, gave performance outputs that Tooru could have sworn would never happen, even with military-grade special alloys.
It is a Gundam, piloted by a kid whose moves Tooru would know from the grave--and would never be put there by the likes of such a child, an amateur. How Tooru is even alive, he doesn’t know. He’d never taught Tobio-chan to miss.
(And Tooru is so good about it, he keeps it a secret until after he finishes letting Iwa-chan know happy he is that they’re both alive.)
“What do you mean, you know him?” He’d had jerked away from Tooru, like the electricity in his blood had finally boiled to the surface.
“Exactly that.” Tooru stares out at the black curtain of space outside, Hajime body warm next to his. “What,” he sighs, and tries not to look Hajime in the eye.
“Are you sure?” And he loves Iwa-chan so much for moments like these, as if Tooru wasn’t capable of constructing his own escape routes. “Are you sure it’s the same kid?” Iwa-chan would offer to check, go through the incident’s records and see if--maybe, just maybe it was someone else. Maybe not the kid who was so eager to follow in their footsteps as children, watching them practice in the Academy gymnasium with wide eyes and a visitor pass. Asking Tooru to teach him how to shoot, how he’d gotten that astounding pinpoint accuracy.
“Maybe it’s not.” Tooru lets the lie loose from his mouth so Iwa-chan can sleep. “Maybe it is someone else.” He closes his eyes--dark, like outer space and the dimming view from his own helmet--and lets Hajime’s even breathing remind him of safety.
(Tooru dreams about zero-grav kisses, when they were young and didn’t know war could get you from the blood, from the inside out. And when he wakes up, gasping for breath, it’s hard to say why it was a nightmare.)
They sortie within sight of Luna II, the Earth a blue polluted marble under their feet. “Tobio-chan!” Tooru’s speakers roar with static, Minovsky particles thick in the combat space. “Kageyama Tobio-chan! Answer me!”
“Oikawa-san,” and there goes the last of Iwa-chan’s little hope. “I have my orders.” He draws his sword, that beam saber flickering on without hesitation. “The people who try to kill me, and the people who fight against me--they are my enemies.”
“You talk like you’re a better pilot, Tobio-chan.” War boils in his veins. “Are you a Newtype?” The particles make it hard for them to hear each other, but somehow Tooru can see Tobio-chan’s face as clear as day. He wants to punch it.
Tobio-chan fights with the intent to win. Tooru blocks him, his rifle clashing against metal hands, and relies on his skillset, his accuracy. “That’s what they say.” And he almost sounds like that kid Tooru used to know, the one Iwa-chan prefers to think about. “I don’t really know what that means.”
“It means--” his words are torn from his mouth, truth bubbling up from under his tongue, “You’ll be the perfect pilot.” The stares are just smears of light in the corner of his eye. “One day, you’ll be the strongest, and nobody will ever be able to beat you! But today, I’m the smarter one, the faster one. Right now I’m the better pilot, Tobio-chan. Have fun catching up to me.”
Tooru puts the main thrusters at full power, verniers roaring as he maxes out his engines--pushes Tobio-chan far away enough, quickly enough to dodge that beam saber and heave up his rifle to make just one shot. He’ll salvage what he can from his original group, report back to HQ; he’ll come back to Iwa-chan today. He pulls the trigger and twists the torso of his mobile suit to full speed, arcing back to the direction of the main ship with the camera still on the Gundam.
It is yanked back by the blue marble far away from Tooru’s sights, sucked in by its gravity. It is the third time Tobio-chan has somehow let Tooru live--but the controllers of his mobile suit are not as easily crushed as paper.
“He fell to Earth.” Tooru carefully meets Hajime’s gaze and repeats, “I saw him. Earth pulled him down.” Iwa-chan had gone to meet him in the hangar, techs immediately cocooning Tooru’s mobile suit once he’d docked. “I have to debrief.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.” And Hajime looks distracted for a second, as if discerning whether or not Tooru were really in front of him or not. “C’mere for a sec.”
The techs--and Matsukawa, used to this since their Academy days--give them a measure of privacy by pretending they don’t see them kissing at all. Tooru’s hands shake when they fist in Hajime’s flight suit. He can taste salt on his mouth, feel rain on his cheeks. “Debrief,” Hajime says, and Tooru makes a soft groaning noise from his throat, doesn’t quite let go of him yet. (I’m so glad I’m alive. I’m so glad you’re here.)
“Debrief,” Tooru agrees, moments later, voice steady again.
Hajime waits for him, just off the bridge, pilot’s eyes staring out at the stars.
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
and trash in space should be recycledbut i think he would really love !! space !!! and being a pilot !! being dangerous !! skilled !! a hero !! ahaha sweats nervously the zero grav kisses are only a perk of the job .... .
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
the way you just absolutely caught the "pilot's eyes" concept and war eating a person from the inside out, and the iwaoi salt and rain, and all the other words about blood boiling and electricity and jUST EVERYTHING WAS SO PERFECT IC AN'T ARTICULATE IT /SCREAMS INTO THE SUN
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, G
ushiwaka would be such a wEIRD PERSON IN SPACE lmao he would probably be very "..." about being in space. not like it and be enthralled by it like iwaoi uwu his soul is weighed down by the earth's gravity !!
thank you for saying such nice things Q____Q i LOVE IWAOI SO MUCH and i feel like space is an appropriately dramatic backdrop for oikawa's drama, at least lmao u___u
no subject
no subject
are they deep O u O
do they pull you down to earth, like its gravity O U O
im sry i just love gundam a lot and wanted to make this spacenoid joke, forgive me