Bonus Round 2: AUs

[referees]

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)

There is no max work cap.

Format your comment in one of the following ways:

If PROMPTING:	If FILLING:	If FILLING as a TEAM GRANDSTAND participant:
PROMPT: TEAM [YOUR SHIP] Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to, including Grandstand or Sports Teams Write it exactly as it appears on the team roster or your team will not receive points Place the prompt's relationship in the first bolded line of the comment. Including the canon isn't required, but it's nice. Visual example	FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING] Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to Write it exactly as it appears on the team roster or your team will not receive points Replace RATING with the rating of your fill (G - E) Place applicable major content tags and word count before your fill (when applicable) NSFW FILLS: Post written/text fills directly to the round with clear tags. Please link to art/visual fills. You can include a small safe-for-work preview if you'd like. To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" /> Visual example	FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING] Replace RATING with the rating of your fill, G - E, as explained in the rules Place applicable major content tags and word count before the fill, where applicable NSFW FILLS: Post written/text fills directly to the round with clear tags. Please link to art/visual fills. You can include a small safe-for-work preview if you'd like. To place an image in your comment, use this code: <img src="LINK TO YOUR IMAGE" /> Visual example

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!

Comments

FILL: TEAM Aoyagi Hajime/Izumida Touichirou, G

[luckycricket33]

warnings for: some light injury/scrapes, and sadness
word count: 1322

Damn, it stings.

Literally, Aya’s elbow stings. She runs it under the cold water of the outdoor tap, gingerly rinsing dust and gravel out of another shallow scrape. Aya is careful not to get her other band-aids wet, because then she’d have to reapply them, and she’s already gone through a box and a half of those big ones. Her arms and legs are covered in bruises and blisters and her muscles are sore as hell, and she marvels that the thing that aches the most isn’t a scrape at all, but this heated knot in her chest. She hates the cycling club, she hates her traitorous road racer, and in this moment, she totally despises Sugimoto Terufumi.

Cycling club manager Sugimoto had been bugging her ever since day one. When Aya was trapped on the rollers, her back wheel held static in a stand, Sugimoto sat on the low brick wall of the nearby flowerbed and shouted tips at her. He read aloud to her from a beginner’s guide to road racing, and when he finished that last Friday, he started reading her articles from cycling magazines. A couple times, he had tried to push race footage DVDs into her hands so she could take them home and study them. “It’s fine, I’ve got plenty of other videos at home! My family- big into races- little sibling has a road racer too, you know, and my father- I know all about this already, you could still pick up a thing or two from it!”

Sugimoto had found in Aya a captive audience. The fact that she was stuck learning the fundamentals of road racing was enough of an invitation for him to barge in and prattle on about everything he knew. Every second she spent with him was a reminder that she was new to this, and she had signed up for something she wasn’t good at, and that until she could keep up with the team she was going to be deprived of the entire reason she joined in the first place – spending time with Miki.

Aya had dropped tennis upon entering high school because Miki, sweet as flowers and hard as steel, who dreamed of reminding people that road racing was a co-ed sport, practically begged her to join the cycling team. Aya could ride a bike, of course, but the road racer was a different beast. She kept falling off the triple rollers. And while she hadn’t pulled in dead last in the welcome race, she might as well have; Onoda only dropped out of the race because she’d pushed herself into winning the mountain title, and Kawada, the soccer player, had dropped the club.

The worst part of Sugimoto Terufumi was that deep down, Aya thought, she deserved this plague. If she were only better at biking, she could be free of him; and if she continued allowing him to inflict his presence on her, she hoped, maybe the punishment would motivate her into some kind of athletic epiphany. And so fittingly today, when they were supposed to be doing exercise to gauge everyone’s riding styles, Captain Kinjou wouldn’t even spare an upperclassman for her. No, Aya had to ride with the manager.

It was a good thing they headed out last, and that the previous pair of Imaizumi and Teshima was far along enough to not see or hear them, because Aya and Sugimoto hadn’t even made it down two turns in the hill at the front of the school without getting hurt.

“Now, this exercise must be… so that you can see what proper form looks like! I know the captain said overtaking was allowed, but that probably doesn’t apply to us as much. Just stay near and watch me. I have pretty good stamina, so we can just keep this up until you need to take a break,okay? You haven’t seen me on my darling Colnago-chan yet, have you? The brand is Italian, it’s very well-known… You could take a look at it later, if you like! Ah, but there’s no rush. You and I are going to have the whole afternoon…”

The whole afternoon! Trapped, with this horrible stuck-up- he was her age! Miki could tell her all about bike brands and form, if Miki weren’t out at the front of the pack going head-to-head with Kinjou right now, in a real race, because Miki, unlike Aya, could prove her worth. Well, Aya wasn’t going to have any more of it. She pedaled past Sugimoto still on the downhill, trying to escape the torrent of useless bragging that spewed constantly from his mouth.

“Tachibana, hey- stay behind and watch m-”

“No!” Aya finally snapped at him. Oh god, it felt so good to be vicious after two weeks of holding back. She turned her head to the side to make sure he could hear, over her shoulder, when she yelled “who do you think you are?” The action cost Aya her balance, and right at the second bend in the slope, she hurtled off the path and skittered into the gravel at the side of the road.

Sugimoto pulled up short and leaned Colnago-chan carefully on a nearby wall. “Woah! I told you to let me lead,” he sputtered as Aya untangled herself from her road bike. Blood began to dot her newest scrapes. “It looks like you’re hurt, we can get you back to the clubroom, good thing you didn’t get too far.”

“Ugh!” Aya spat, as she slowly lifted herself to both feet. “I’ve had it with you! You never shut up! And stop! Stop- bragging all the time! Miki knows more than you do! And if- if you’re so good at this, why don’t you even compete!? Huh?” It felt amazing to have an external target for her frustration. Sugimoto looked stunned.

His mouth opened and closed a few times before he managed to stutter out, “Tachibana… I, um… we, we need to get you first aid…”

“I’ll show you who needs first aid!”

Aya grabbed the front of his jersey – stupid, expensive clothes to match his stupid expensive bike – and swung him around, pivoting on one foot habitually like when she had swung a racquet, past where she’d fallen, throwing him into a spiny little shrub. And for good measure, she yanked the Colnago off the wall and shoved it down on top of him, before stalking bitterly back up the hill – on foot.

That left Aya in the present, washing dirt out of another scrape. She didn’t want to think about what Miki would say when she made the full lap back to the school and found out what happened.

“T… Tachibana.”

Aya just whipped her head up; a wide-eyed glare was already in place, waiting for him.
So, Sugimoto had the nerve to come back so soon.

“I brought the… the antibacterial ointment, and stuff, you know. I mean we, we’ve done th, just like… like the last couple times, um… you fell off…”

The manager had been in charge of the first-aid kit. Aya glanced past him; Sugimoto had walked both of their bikes up the slope – one in each hand? – and slotted them neatly into the rack before approaching her.

“I… um, look, I just… you’re right… that I don’t… compete, it’s just… hahhh,” Sugimoto was still struggling for words. “I’m only, just alright, even though I know… the theory… and I was excited to meet you because you were new, and maybe you could use my help… You’re a good athlete, really. You just don’t have experience. Yet, I mean, with, with bikes.”

Aya furrowed her brow and held out one hand for the ointment and band-aids. She noticed Sugimoto hadn’t touched any of his own scratches before coming to meet her – but none of them were really bleeding, just red.

Aya spread the cream on her arm and it stung a little less.