SASO Referees (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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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 IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU
NGE AU...
Suga is such an angel pls make him oneRe: PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU
Re: PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU
FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, T
1874 words
when tobio meets sugawara-kun for the first time, he smiles at him like he’s known tobio for years.
“pleased to meet you. i’ve heard a lot about you, kageyama-kun.” tobio stares at the hand he offers and shakes it hesitantly, unsure and surprised at the sensation of his palm against someone else’s skin. “the famed third child.”
tobio doesn’t like touching people. he’s just not used to it, he’s not good at it. hinata is annoying because he’s so touchy-feely. tobio holds his hand for one, two, three beats and lets go immediately. stop smiling at me like that, he thinks, and doesn’t say anything at all.
sugawara is weird about personal space. he’d approached it like it was a totally foreign concept to him from the start, pale hair and pale eyes tracking him across the base. tobio could take a walk through the maze of corridors before ever reaching the geofront and sugawara would be around; he’d take meals in his room and sugawara would find an excuse to knock on his door. it’s weird, and scary, because tobio can’t run away from the fifth child--not when he’s so easily replaceable and his father still won’t look him in the eye.
“what are you listening to?” he points at the music player in tobio’s hands, earbuds softening his voice. “can i try?”
tobio stares at him--this fearless boy from out of nowhere, he hears, who doesn’t need tobio at all but still bothers him with questions--and offers him an earbud. sugawara lights up at the gesture, and when he takes it from him it’s a brief, sharp shock of touch before he tucks it into his ear, pushes his grey hair out of his face. “i want,” he grins, “to hear what kageyama-kun hears, and see the world you see. wouldn’t that be nice?”
it used to play bach, tobio thinks. it really did play bach before he stopped doing music at all, bach and beethoven and handel, all joyous triumphant themes that tobio can never unhear from his nightmares.
sugawara looks curious and impatient, and so happy to be sitting next to tobio, that tobio just shrugs and presses play. waits for sugawara to listen.
“oh,” he says, and the smile on his face is softer, sadder. “kageyama-kun, you should have told me it was broken.”
nobody is willing to let tobio leave the base again--unless he’s strapped into his unit, battery cords streaming out of its body, chained to the earth--so tobio stays in his room until another angel alert happens. it will come. they always do.
but they don’t attack, not for days on end, and it’s putting takeda on edge while he does his math. tobio doesn’t care; if the angels leave them alone, the human race will survive, won’t it? grabbing for life with clawing fingers, worn to the bone. but he’ll be alone again, without a reason be alive--without something to fight. tobio shuts off his shower and towels himself dry, wrapping it around his waist and leaving the stall with eyes cast downward.
“kageyama!” sugawara’s eyes light up, hazel and gold like liquid sunshine, “i’ve been waiting for you!” he’s perched on his bed, shirt and pants still crisp as ever, and pats at the space next to him invitingly. “how was your day?” he bubbles, and tobio is trapped.
“okay,” he manages, and grabs his clothes from the dresser, flees back to the bathroom.
“can i shower, too?” his hands shake while they pull the t-shirt over his head. go away, tobio prays, frowning. sugawara stays obstinately there in his room, still waiting for tobio like nobody’s ever done in his life.
“whatever.” tobio emerges from the bathroom again, this time fully-clothed. sugawara hasn’t budged. “i’m going to bed.”
“with me?” and sugawara quirks up his mouth while tobio tries to collect himself. it takes the space of months, years, compressed into the flow of seconds.
the cicadas scream all day and well into the night, shrill enough to warrant earplugs before sleep. tobio leaves them on his desk and listens to the nothing from his music player, glares at the dark until he falls asleep, body suffused with heat.
--the most beautiful piece of music he’s ever heard before in his life, soaring strings and crashing cymbals, a thunderous heartbeat marked by trumpet fanfare--and the sound of hinata screaming, screaming, until his throat shreds and he is dying out there, dying and tobio cannot save him. he doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to die, doesn’t want to die--so tobio pulls at the controls, begs his machine to move and it remains still and impassive as stone. hinata’s confidence and hinata’s firm belief in his own abilities: they made the second child exceptional, a cheerfully loud presence on the base. he doesn’t want to die. kageyama, where are you?
tobio listens to hinata scream for his life while his unit is torn to pieces, synchronization rate so high that he’ll probably lose a limb, an eye. at least the fourth child was already dead when the angels ate his machine. hinata had thrown up when the victory screams came across the tactical band, but gone out there to retrieve yamaguchi’s body anyway.
tobio wakes up, gasping for air, and sugawara’s hair gleams in the moonlight.
“kageyama, wake up! wake up--tobio, you’re having a nightmare--” it’s broken tactical transmission and the grinding noise of static in tobio’s ears, as if he’d broken through to geofront and the raw, bare heat of the sun. it hurts to be touched--but sugawara shakes him awake, insistent and sure. “tobio, wake up!”
“... i’m awake,” he finally says, and blinks through the film of blood over his eyes. it falls away from him in pieces. “you don’t have to touch me.”
“i don’t have to be here at all,” sugawara replies, eyes searching for some sign of injury. tobio falls back on his own pillow, and remembers now: sure, before pushing the second pillow on his bed toward sugawara and closing his eyes, hoping for peace. “but you’re worth my empathy, tobio.”
tobio has more questions than he’d like. he’s not hurt in any way that sugawara can see, he knows, just probably looks tired and angry. “worth your empathy?” he echoes, and burrows underneath the covers. brushes elbows and knees against sugawara’s.
“yes.” tobio makes the mistake of looking sugawara in the eye, where hazel and gold sparks with a fierce, protective joy. he closes his eyes immediately and pretends to be asleep. “... tobio, i’m saying i love you.”
and sugawara doesn’t say anything else that night, just leaves tobio to wrestle with his words, alone.
tobio is swallowed by a shadow so thick it looks like night. it probes at his head--total invasion of privacy, no sense of self--and tobio is screaming back at it to stop. nobody understands me.
(YOU NEVER UNDERSTOOD ANYTHING.) it uses kei’s voice to respond to him, alien and cruel. tobio rears back from it, from the image of kei--broken glasses and stitched-up face, mouth twisted in a smile.
you betrayed me! you betrayed my feelings!
(YOU MISUNDERSTOOD FROM THE VERY BEGINNING. YOU JUST BELIEVED WHAT YOU WANTED TO BELIEVE.) tobio’s unit takes a critical hit when the angel delivers a punishing strike to its abdomen. it rattles his own cocoon--where yamaguchi had died, s2 engines failing him at the last when unit 04 deployed on its last mission. where hinata had begged for mercy while tobio couldn’t stop hearing a joyful chorus.
nobody wants me. even the light from the progressive knife is swallowed up by the alien’s dark, somehow. tobio grits his teeth while he cuts through it, the world outside just a terrifying as the one here--but central dogma will retrieve his body and put the fifth child in his place.
(THEN WHAT IS THIS HEART FOR?) kei bleeds from his mouth while he smiles at tobio, the image shattering and reforming while tobio slashes at the dark, at the angel’s insides. he puts on bursts of speed and launches unit 01 at kei’s face, knife edging toward his throat. he doesn’t mean to do it, doesn’t mean to shatter kei so thoroughly--but the angel is weak right where his glasses are, the prospect of breaking tobio’s mind more appealing, perhaps, than success in its mission.
they should all die. nobody cares whether or not i exist. the angel switches images while tobio cuts through tsukishima, through to the outside world, fueled by sheer terror. it makes kei scream, enraged and so incongruent to the dry, sarcastic bastard tobio knows. he shakes off the ropes of shadow it attaches to unit 01’s limbs in its haste to stay alive, disconnecting from its nightmare haze while it bleeds out on the earth, gallons of angel blood that look like a small ocean on the ground.
the angel throws him a parting shot of yamaguchi’s mangled body and the sinews of unit 04. (THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE?) tobio sheathes the progressive knife and trembles when the angel leaves him, utterly alone in the entry plug.
he asks unit 01, partly out of whim and mostly out of desperate hope, is it okay for me to be here?
unit 01 is silent while central dogma gets him back to headquarters. tobio can hear the chutes moving, mechanical pathways interlocking to give his machine space. someone will have to clean all that blood up there and scrub the gore from unit 01’s hands. he can see takeda’s worried face at the docking bay already, prepares himself for another interrogation as technicians manually pry open the entry hatch.
the artificial light of the hangar stings his eyes.
“kageyama-kun,” takeda fusses, “what happened in there? our readings are completely off the charts--”
“sensei,” sugawara interrupts, appearing behind him and putting a friendly hand on his shoulder. “i think tobio’s just exhausted from his mission.” tobio unstraps himself from the pilot’s seat while sugawara bargains for a few hours of sleep. “i’ll have him back to you when he gets some rest. please.”
sugawara’s body is warm against tobio’s. he’s got his arm slung over one shoulder while they take stuttering steps toward tobio's room, sugawara humming beethoven. he doesn’t ask him any questions, doesn’t make a single joke, just looks ahead toward tobio’s door.
“here you go,” he says gently, and finally deposits him on his bed, where he’d been mere hours ago. the world crackles at the edge of tobio’s vision. sugawara rearranges disturbed blankets over tobio’s body and looks over him once, satisfied with whatever he sees.
when he turns to go, tobio catches him by the shirtsleeve. (i’m saying ‘i love you’.) “hey--” and sugawara turns toward him immediately. really looks at him, waiting. exhaustion fogs his eyes and weighs down his lungs. “is it okay for me to be here?”
sugawara always looks at him like he’s someone important. addresses the words tobio doesn’t quite manage to say. “tobio,” sugawara smiles, and tobio can breathe easier for it, “do you know? i think i was born just to meet you.”
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, T
TOBIO PLEASE ;____; OF COURSE IT'S OKAY FOR YOU TO BE HERE. WHY IS NGE EVERYTHING SUCH PAIN. WHY
(This was really good, I'm so Emotional about Yamaguchi though akjdhakjsdh)
Re: FILL: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTAROU/KUROO TETSUROU, T
;A; i love everything about shinji and kaworu's first exchange LOL it's 2015 and i am still kawoshin trash tbh TT___TT
((i thought about yachi as the pilot and im sorry i was too weak i couldn't do it ... im sorry yamaguchi ... i love you too ... )) thank you for saying such nice words about this ... horrifying ... au ... of tears