referees: (Default)
SASO Referees ([personal profile] referees) wrote in [community profile] sportsanime2017-07-23 07:03 pm
Entry tags:

Bonus Round 5: Clue

Clue


SASO 2017 is over, but this round is perpetually open to new fills (no new prompts).


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)!

This round closes on 5 August @ 7PM EDT. (Countdown Timer.)


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)
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. Any way you format it is fine.
  • Copy/paste/fill out the following form into your comment box. Delete the guidance text that's in parentheses.

FILL: TEAM [YOUR SHIP], [RATING]
  • Replace [YOUR SHIP] with the name of the team you belong to. Any way you format it is fine.
  • Replace RATING with the rating of your fill (G - E)
  • Copy/paste/fill out the following form into your comment box. Delete the guidance text that's in parentheses. Make sure you use tags.

    Here is a BR Template Creator for your convenience if the textarea is confusing.

  • NSFW FILLS: Please cross-link these fills and tag them clearly. [community profile] saso_afterhours is open to all NSFW fills.
    • Written/text fills can be hosted on AO3 or [community profile] saso_afterhours ONLY.
    • Art/visual fills can be hosted anywhere; you may include a small safe-for-work thumbnail of the fill in your comment.
FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, [RATING]
  • Replace RATING with the rating of your fill (G - E)
  • Copy/paste/fill out the following form into your comment box. Delete the guidance text that's in parentheses. Make sure you use tags.

    Here is a BR Template Creator for your convenience if the textarea is confusing.

  • NSFW FILLS: Please cross-link these fills and tag them clearly. [community profile] saso_afterhours is open to all NSFW fills.
    • Written/text fills can be hosted on AO3 or [community profile] saso_afterhours ONLY.
    • Art/visual fills can be hosted anywhere; you may include a small safe-for-work thumbnail of the fill in your comment.


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!
stariceling: (Default)

FILL: TEAM GRANDSTAND, T

[personal profile] stariceling 2017-08-05 05:03 am (UTC)(link)
Ship: Manami Sangaku/Onoda Sakamichi
Fandom: Yowamushi Pedal
Major Tags: Graphic depictions of violence, injury
Other Tags: Pacific Rim AU,
Word Count: 1840

This took longer than expected, but finally done!

Hashima or Battleship Island is a small uninhabited island about 9 miles from Nagasaki. It once held a densely populated mining town, and the island is still dominated by abandoned buildings. Between this and dropping them on a volcanic scrap, it could at least serve as a distraction.

Alternate Manami+Onoda Jaeger name: Wonder Princess

***


“Kaiju is already approaching the ten-mile line. This one is fast.”

“Then it’s a good thing you sent us,” Manami answers. Thanks to their instincts, Wing Chaser is capable of powerful bursts of speed, even in stormy seas.

Why do they always attack in horrible weather? Manami doesn’t bother vocalizing the thought as it flicks towards his partner. At home people are still hiding from the storm, the ragged edge of a typhoon that unraveled farther down the coast.

Onoda responds with an image of their first solo victory. Manami’s attention goes at once from warm sun to warm skin. Onoda’s mind is nestled close enough to know he sincerely can’t help it.

Later, they agree. No distractions now.

“We’re calling this one Cyclops. You should have a visual any second,” Miyahara continues. Their exchange has taken place in the span of a breath.

There’s a dark shape ahead of them in the water. Kaiju? Ship? Battleship Island. Onoda identifies it for him, and Manami picks up the information like recall. The remains of buildings still stand, but no one is home.

The next thing he sees is a swell of water headed directly for them. They move to intercept it, and rather than meet them head-on it tries to slither around them.

It chose the wrong Jaeger to try to outmaneuver. Their ‘wings’ are meant to be an extendable armory, but Manami can read the push of ocean currents and deploys them so Wing Chaser whips around in the water faster than anything their size has a right to move. Everyone has told him he isn’t supposed to move limbs he doesn’t have, but Manami feels the pull and the power of their wings and Onoda feels it through him.

They haul Cyclops out of the water and swing it into the island, smashing part of the sea wall. The name is accurate. Its head is arranged around a central eye. Its too-long body is slippery, and Onoda locks his arm between the first and second sets of legs to hold it. Six powerful legs and massive webbed feet crush more of the wall as it tries to drag itself free and its long, elastic tail swings back into a dilapidated building, shattering the cement facade.

The tail is what they should be paying attention to. It whips against their side and a fat pad of barbs actually catches and tears though metal. Manami feels damage-pain through Onoda’s mind as the tail lodges in their side and works its way deeper and his priorities change. The tail has to go now.

It hurts Onoda again when he rips it free and Manami hold his anger like hot metal between clenched teeth. When Manami bears down on the tail, plasma claws slicing through and cauterizing flesh all at once, the tail wraps around their right knee joint and rips it open. The leg crumples and they fall. Seawater rushes through the gash that goes through armor and layers of shielding and drowns the electrical systems.

Wing Chaser abruptly loses power and Cyclops slithers out of their grip, sans tail.

For a second Onoda can’t put weight on his leg, even though he’s not physically injured. Manami gets him out of the rig and maps out Onoda’s knee with his hands, assessing damage that’s not there.

“We have to contact LOCCENT,” Onoda finally says. They have no way to do so. They have very little at their disposal, with no way to even remotely fire any of their weapons.

The only thing they do have is a flare gun, for emergencies. Manami decides this counts.

“Wait, what are you doing?” Onoda grabs for Manami’s arm as he starts up towards the emergency hatch. Manami can feel Onoda’s fear against his skin, like a pulse beating in his fingertips, but in Manami’s body ‘fear’ is the same as ‘adrenaline.’

“Something stupid,” Manami tells him cheerfully.

Onoda reluctantly follows him up to Wing Chaser’s shoulder. His hand rests on Manami’s back, silently saying he won’t leave his partner.

Lucky for them, Cyclops has wasted time plowing its way through the ruins of Battleship Island. It seems to have changed its mind, however. It’s heading right back towards them, and they are the last thing between it and mainland.

Manami waits for Cyclops to come abreast with Wing Chaser’s shoulder, for it to swing its head towards him so that he sees himself and Onoda reflected in that giant eye.

Then eight more eyes blink open, two lines on each side of its head, all focused on them.

“That’s just cheap,” Manami tells it, and pulls the trigger.

(Flares don’t fly very straight, but he has a very big target.)

Cyclops screams and charges them. It hits Wing Chaser hard enough to topple her over into the water. For an instant Manami is weightless and his mind moves curiously slowly, trying to fit itself around the thought, now where did it go?

Manami hits the water. Then he hits something hard, or something hits him. He loses track of which way is up and the world is only black water or possibly black sky.

He’s not aware of losing consciousness, but the next instant he’s laying on the rocky shore, well out of the water, and there is a gap in his memory. Blank spots ripped out of his memory terrify him more than almost anything, and the only thing worse is that he’s alone.

His chest does not want to expand enough to scream, but he forces himself upright and does it anyway.

“SAKAMICHI!” His voice is very small against the sound of the ocean. He coughs and his chest clenches agonizingly and when he screams again he can’t even hear himself.

He can see Wing Chaser’s back, not quite sunk in the shallow water, but there is no one standing on it. There is no sign of a small figure in the waves or among the dark rocks around him.

Manami tries to get to his feet. His leg won’t stay under him, and unfortunately it’s not a mental injury this time, but he doesn’t care if he has to crawl. He’ll rip the ocean apart like Moses to get to his partner.

“Sangaku! Wait, wait!”

The voice comes from further up on the island. Onoda reaches him almost before he can get himself turned around and supports him until they’re safely in the shadow of one of the few walls left standing, for what little shelter it offers.

Manami cups Onoda’s face in his hands and stares into his eyes for a few seconds before letting himself be reassured. Onoda’s glasses are missing, but he seems unhurt. Manami’s heart is still hammering. Shooting a Kaiju in the eye is one thing. The thought of losing his partner actually scares him.

Now that he has time to think about it, it would not have been an unreasonable assumption that Onoda was the one to drag him out of the water in the first place.

Manami rests his head in Onoda’s lap. His entire rib cage hates him right now, but he finds a position that will let him breathe and asks, “Cyclops?”

“Dancing Spider intercepted it. I could see the lights. It looks like they’re still well away from the shore,” Onoda answers. That explains where he went. Manami will forgive him.

“That’s fine then.”

Onoda sits up straight, and Manami wonders if he can actually see anything, maybe green lights through the dark. That’s Onoda’s mentor fighting out there. Manami’s too. Toudou is never going to forget that he fell off his Jaeger and broke his leg.

Toudou once told him to cherish the person who could match him and never let Onoda go. Manami needed to be told not to run away, but even Toudou doesn’t understand that it was never a matter of letting Onoda in. Onoda’s mind is sweet and fascinating the way a sundew is, and Manami will never escape him now.

Onoda still hasn’t unlearned what it feels like to be starved for acceptance, and love and loyalty root deep in the empty places. Onoda will never give up on him. It takes a certain kind of strength to be loved like that, one that Manami isn’t sure he has, but he won’t let that stop him.

The expression on Onoda’s face changes slightly. He’s squinting into the dark, frowning with useless worry. Manami guesses that he can’t see any sign of Dancing Spider now. Neither of them are even thinking of looking for signs of rescue until Cyclops is destroyed.

“I dropped the flare gun,” Manami says, and smiles when Onoda looks down at him. “Sorry.”

“They’ll find us. Soon. You’ll be okay.” Onoda’s voice sounds very small, but that doesn’t make it weak.

Manami hurts everywhere and he’s exhausted from what was probably thirty seconds of true terror and he’s freezing and if he catches a cold on top of broken ribs that’s going to suck in exciting new ways, but he smiles for Onoda anyway.

“I’m sorry for scaring you. I shouldn’t have gone to look before you woke up,” Onoda says, even though the next time they enter the Drift they will see this moment through each other’s eyes.

Onoda is funny that way. He likes to lie together and talk, even though Manami often can’t think of anything to say to him. Even if Onoda already knows, he likes to hear the words Manami chooses. He made Manami say out loud that he likes when Onoda calls him by his name. He makes himself say things like that too, tripping headlong over the words.

“I would do it again. I’d just be more careful of where I was standing.”

“I know.” That’s all Onoda needs to say.

Onoda strokes Manami’s cheek, repeating the soft touch over and over. Manami could swear he feels Onoda’s pulse fluttering in his fingertips. Worry and love beat against his unprotected skin. He often imagines he can feel Onoda’s heart in his hands after they Drift together.

Words are intimacy and touch is intimacy, as distinct from each other as they are from the Drift. Manami prefers touch. It’s easier for him to turn his face into Onoda’s hand, to find his other hand and take it, than to explain how he’s definitely not fine and yet he’s all right now.

Dancing Spider finds them before search and rescue does, and for a twenty-five story robot it gives Manami a striking impression of an overprotective mother hen. Toudou is livid and Miyahara is almost worse and Onoda is relentless in his care as he is in anything, and Manami feels very loved and only slightly smothered.

R&D is an angry beehive over Cyclops’s tail. Wing Chaser’s armor was the most lightweight of the Mark-4 series. That’s going to change. While they’re making modifications anyway, Manami wants a last-ditch weapon in the conn-pod.

Apparently this “would only encourage reckless behavior.” He really doesn’t see the problem with that.