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sportsanime2016-06-09 08:58 pm
referees) wrote in sportsanime2016-06-09 08:58 pm
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Bonus Round 2: Images
Please read the rules carefully before posting!
This round is CLOSED as of 7PM on June 23 EDT. Late fills may be posted, but they will not receive points.
RULES
- Submit prompts in the form of a canon screencap from one of our nominated fandoms along with a ship. Screencaps can be from the anime or manga, as well as any other kind of offshoot media, e.g. official art, drama CD covers, light novel illustrations, magazine covers, photos from stage plays, and/or caps from games.
- Doujinshi, fan-made games or any other fan-created work should not be prompted, even if you receive permission. Only prompt official, canon artwork.
- Keep your prompt concise. Don't prompt a whole manga chapter, for example.
- Your prompt MUST include some kind of relationship. Platonic relationships are indicated by an "&" between the names (e.g., Abe & Tajima). Non-platonic relationships use "/" (e.g., Abe/Tajima). Please don't say "Any pairing," either!
- Upload the cap somewhere (imgur works well) and post here with the images themselves or a link to them. Including a text-only summary of the image is encouraged.
- Fill prompts by leaving a responding comment to the prompt with your newly-created work inspired by the cap.
- Fills can be directly connected to the cap, e.g. panel redraws or writing fic that fleshes out the moment that was capped or that fleshes out what happened directly before/after, but fills can also be more indirectly linked. As long as the work is somehow inspired by the cap, it counts.
- Fills that are too long to fit in a single comment should have the rest of the fill placed as replies to the original fill comment. The subjects of these extra comments should be something like "part 2 of X" or "continued."
- 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)
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!
Re: FILL: Team Grandstand 3 of 3
If this was supposed to trick her into doubting which was the real Manami it didn’t work for a second. Everything about the boy she knew was there in Manami’s words and actions, while the ghost still lurking outside was blank. She tried to explain this observation.
“I don’t think it’s smart enough to trick you.”
Maybe not smart enough to trick her, but apparently smart enough to sneak up on them. Miyahara didn’t see or hear anything, but it was suddenly back on the balcony, one hand on the door as if asking to be let in.
Manami shot to his feet and it retreated again. It moved like something under a strobe light, back from the door in one blink, then to the railing, then gone.
“What does it even want?” Miyahara demanded, to cover her nerves.
Manami was still staring out into the night, wings bristled as if waiting for a threat to launch himself at. His feathers were already growing back and the jagged mess looked particularly dangerous when he did that.
“Sangaku,” she pushed. “You can at least tell me what it does, right?”
When Manami looked back he was angry in a way she had never seen him before. She didn’t doubt if he was able to get his hands on the shadow he would do something violent, even though it had never occurred to her that Manami would do anything violent to anyone outside of a video game.
“Iinchou, if you’re lucky you’d just be dead,” he said, voice too flat and too hard.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Why?” Manami’s face opened up with concern, returning him to the mellow, slightly clueless boy she knew.
“I shouldn’t have asked about your death.”
“I was lucky,”Manami explained. Whatever counted for unlucky, he wasn’t telling. He only gave her a warning: “Don’t let it touch you.”
A shiver went through her. She picked her feet up and tucked them under her, even knowing it was irrational.
“Couldn’t it come through the house?” She asked, struck by a sudden, horrible, thought. “Will it hurt my family if it gets in?”
“It doesn’t look like it’s figured that out.”
“Even if you could chase it off, wouldn’t it just go after someone else?”
This didn’t seem to have occurred to Manami yet, and he didn’t have an answer for her. No matter who it went after they still didn’t have a way to stop it.
There was no way she could sleep knowing something skulking around outside (she hoped) wanted to kill her (or worse) or her family or the neighbors. When she tried to talk to Manami about anything but the shadow their conversation lagged in awkward stops and starts, both of them keeping a paranoid eye on the window. His company was a comfort.
Shortly after midnight they heard a bloodcurdling yowl from the hall. She moved before she could think, throwing open the door.
Tora had every hair on end, growling up and down a vocal register Miyahara hadn’t known she had. The thing that looked like Manami had stopped at the top of the stairs, turned towards the angry cat.
She must have blinked because it wasn’t looking at Tora, it was looking at her with that unnaturally expressionless face.
Manami’s voice was in her ear and she wanted to run and hide behind him, but she couldn’t move. She had tried not to really think about what could happen but her little sister was in the next room and there was nothing she could do if it decided to go five steps down the hall in search of a victim.
It came for her instead, moving so abruptly it was disorienting. Manami managed to jump in front of her just as abruptly, pushing her back against her desk. It touched his arm before they both jerked back from each other, Manami with a sound of pain.
Miyahara expected it would run from Manami the way it had before. She was only worried about where. Instead it seemed to consider Manami for several long seconds.
It sunk one hand into Manami’s chest, and he doubled over and struggled for breath as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. The fight was shockingly one-sided, and Manami was not doing well. It flinched and flickered out of the way when he nearly smacked it with one wing, but he couldn’t force it away from him.
Miyahara hit a breaking point seeing Manami in pain. She grabbed her school bag from her desk and swung as hard as she could, hitting the shadow hard enough to knock it away from Manami.
It was like hitting something made of paper, so light she nearly overbalanced.
“Leave him alone! You’re not welcome here!”
Manami was on his hands and knees gasping in pain, and she crouched next to him, still holding her bag. She had never hit anyone in her life, but she was pretty sure she could do that again if she had to. She had a somewhat irrational urge to cry.
She kept an eye on the shadow, but the way it moved was too difficult to track. One moment it was what she thought was a safe distance away and then with no warning there was a hand sinking into her arm.
It was agonizingly cold. The feeling went deep into her arm, until it seemed to wrap icy fingers around the bone. When she tried to jerk away it simply moved with her.
Something sharp was digging into her side. She remembered it flinching away from Manami’s wing and had a thought that even this thing was wary of broken glass.
Later she would feel very guilty about pulling out one of Manami’s feathers. She swiped at her attacker with it without thinking. She didn’t think she even connected but the hand left her arm.
“Go away!”
She knew on some level it wasn’t listening to her. She thought it was assessing how much of a threat she was. It darted to one side, away from whatever threat Manami or his feathers posed, and reached for her again.
Miyahara wasn’t consciously aware of stabbing it. He mind skipped over that part. There was simply a jagged feather sticking out of its middle and a distant thought that she had probably put it there and a more pressing thought that she just wanted this thing away from her and Manami and her family.
Its expression never changed. It never so much as twitched to indicate that it had been stabbed. It only flickered around the edges, like a candle burned down to the last scrap, and shrunk in on itself. Miyahara watched until there was nothing left but a faint shadow on the floor, cast by nothing.
She scooted back, dragging Manami with her until there was a safe band of light on the floor, and their shadows were no longer touching it. That was all the energy she had left.
Manami was still breathing. His breath rattled strangely, but he was breathing. She hoped that was a good sign. He couldn’t die again.
It seemed like hours later that he whispered her name. He gingerly made his way upright.
“Still alive?”
“I think so. Are you okay?”
He laughed, then started to cough up smoke and couldn’t stop for a few minutes.
“Did it touch you?”
She pulled up her sleeve to show him her arm, which looked perfectly fine. It seemed like there should have a visible bruise at the very least. Pain throbbed deep inside when he touched it. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“What do we do now?”
He didn’t know. She hadn’t really expected him to, but thought she needed to ask. They sat together on the edge of her bed, deliberately avoiding the shadow and both insisting to the other they were more or less okay.
They had one more visitor before the night was over.
Miyahara flinched in fear when the dark shape landed on her balcony, but Manami was quick to reassure her. This was the person who had told him about the shadow.
She was half bird. Her wings were made up of shards glossy obsidian, and the same sharp feathers covered her body. They rang together as she moved in faint, sweet tones. Her eyes were set too far apart on her face and her lips had hardened into something like a beak.
When Miyahara politely introduced herself the bird woman returned the favor, only with a bird’s squawk as a name. Miyahara hadn’t taken Manami seriously when he said he couldn’t make that noise, but he was right.
“It touched her,” Manami was saying. “What do we do?”
She gestured for Miyahara to hold out her arm, then cocked her head to inspect the place where the shadow had touched with one eye.
“This will hurt,” she said, very slowly and deliberately.
It didn’t. She plucked one of her own feathers and dug it into Miyahara’s arm and it stung, but that was nothing compared to what she was currently feeling. The feeling of cold unwinding from around the bone and being fished out of her arm like scraps of smoke was sickening, but she felt better when it was over.
The wound was very small. Manami found her handkerchief to staunch the blood, and it closed in the time the bird woman spent massaging warmth back into her arm.
“What about Sangaku?” Miyahara wanted to know. “It hurt him a lot more than me.” And how dare he be putting on a brave face and not saying anything? He must be in agony.
“Hollow bones,” she said. “Yours are heavy.” The language difficulties went both ways. Even when she made a point to enunciate, the consonants came out garbled by her beak. Still, she took the time to pat Miyahara’s arm comfortingly and say, “That is not a bad thing.”
She yanked Manami away by his jersey and showed him how to remove what was left of the shadow. They left scars in the wood floor, but when they were done there was no shadow in the room that didn’t belong there.
There was an instant where Miyahara felt it was easier to breathe and then Manami said, “I have to go.”
He was smiling. That impish, are-you-really-mad-at-me smile that came out when she had to resort to physically cornering him about his homework. It made her wish she could summon the energy to be mad.
She instinctively grabbed his sleeve, making him pause.
“You’re safe now. I can’t do anything else, so. . .”
Miyahara nodded because she understood that was what he had come back for and she understood the bird woman had to come just to pick him up and he had to go.
And then she threw her arms around his neck, because it still hurt.
“Iinchou!” Manami yelped in surprise.
“I miss you already.” She hadn’t realized until he was about to leave that she had been taking him for granted all over again. She had thought he would be there for as long as she needed him. And he had been, but it wasn’t enough.
Manami hesitantly reached up to pat her back. “I’ll see you again in eighty years or so, okay?”
She almost snapped that she would be dead of old age by then before realizing that was what he meant.
He wouldn’t be coming back again.
She nodded against his shoulder. “You have to promise you won’t forget.”
“I promise I won’t forget.” For a moment it felt like they were eight and he was promising not to forget her birthday again, not vowing to find her in the afterlife. Then he hugged her awkwardly and added, “It’s okay if you’re late. You can make me wait a hundred years. It’s only fair.”
Miyahara nodded again and let go. Manami stepped back, eyes silently searching her face for a moment, and then stepped out onto the balcony.
The bird woman was perched on the railing, waiting for him.
“What about your wings? You said you would stay until they healed,” Miyahara suddenly remembered. They were in better shape than when she had found him crashed in the yard, but not by much. They were still jagged with broken feathers, and she was afraid the minute he tried to fly they would shatter once again.
Manami hopped up to balance on the railing as if he hadn’t heard.
“You’ll fall again.”
“That’s fine. Flying is worth falling.” When Manami smiled at her it didn’t look so much like saying goodbye as pure excitement for what lay ahead. “You’ll see.”
When they launched themselves upward Miyahara instinctively threw up one arm because of Manami’s dangerous wings. When she could look up again they were already gone.
Miyahara stared up into the sky until she stared to shiver, and then stepped back inside and closed the door behind her.
She cleaned her arms and hands, grateful to have no more than a few scratches to show for everything that had happened that night. She shook out the sheets and re-made her bed just to be safe. There didn’t seem to be anything else left to do. She didn’t expect to sleep that night, right up until exhaustion took over.
The next morning was hazy sunlight through the clouds and he was still gone.
There were still too many things she wanted to know and nowhere to go for answers. She thought of the woman who was halfway to being a bird, who might have explained some things if Miyahara had known what to ask. Maybe Manami would become more like her. Maybe his wings would harden into obsidian and become strong enough to carry him without breaking. Maybe his new name would be some bird’s cry she could never say to call him back.
He would probably be happy as a bird, maybe happier than he had been when he was alive.
Miyahara leaned into her pillow and waited for tears, and when they didn’t come she pulled herself out of bed.
She gathered the bits of glass Manami had left in the corners of her room and put them in a jar. When she tilted it they scattered the light into sharp fragments of rainbows.
It would have to be enough that he had come back at all. If nothing else she knew he was happy with his brittle, impossible wings.