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

PROMPT: TEAM OIKAWA TOORU/USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

[controlscircus]

oikawa/bokuto/kuroo (haikyuu!!)

oibokukuro attempting to survive zombie apocalypse

Re: PROMPT: TEAM OIKAWA TOORU/USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

[vashiane]

SAVES THIS ONE

PROMPT: TEAM MANAMI SANGAKU/TESHIMA JUNTA

[sylphofkarkat]

Ashikiba Takuto/Teshima Junta

Show by Rock!! AU.... Ashikiba as Shuuzo and Teshima as Rom (please I love tears)

PROMPT: TEAM OIKAWA TOORU/USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

[controlscircus]

peco/smile (ping pong)

convenience store au where they meet at the same convenience store they work at and realize they both happen to also play ping pong

Prompt: Team Haikyuu!!

[bisharp]

Oikawa/Iwaizumi (hq)

Mulan AU...

Re: Prompt: Team Haikyuu!!

[capsoumako]

DANG, SHOULD IWA-CHAN BE THE DRAGON MUSHU OR SHANG WHO IS HAVING A (SLIGHT -snorts-) SEXUALITY CRISIS.

PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND

[uwu_anon]

Naruko/Kinjou, yowamushi pedal

Tudor Era AU. I just want naruko in those dresses man

PROMPT: TEAM HAZUKI NAGISA/RYUUGAZAKI REI

[jeilovesyou]

Hinata Shouyou &/ Kozume Kenma, Haikyuu!! (Feel free to throw in others, too, like... the more the merrier)

Street urchins AU

PROMPT: TEAM FUKUTOMI JUICHI/KINJOU SHINGO

[catlarks]

Chihaya/Shinobu (chihayafuru)

AU where Shinobu is the literal queen of a kingdom and Chihaya is a thief come to steal a particular treasure.

PROMPT: TEAM OIKAWA TOORU/USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

[controlscircus]

matsukawa/oikawa (haikyuu!!)

bartender mattsun + chef oikawa

FILL : TEAM Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru, G

[vellaude]

No major content warnings



In which Mattsun and Oikawa work at the same restaurant & bar

Bonus:

PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND

[alphahelix]

Hanamaki Takahiro/Kyoutani Kentaro or Iwaizumi Hajime/Kyoutani Kentaro

Flower delivery boy AU! (I just really want grumpy kyoutani with flowers ;;)

Re: PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND

[reffieisred]

L E T ' S G E T R E A D Y T O R U M B L E

[puts on my boxing gloves

PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND

[uwu_anon]

Tadokoro & Naruko

These two in a kickboxing AU would fit perfectly tbh

PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU

[araakita]

Fukutomi/Arakita

Pacific Rim AU (please consider that this is everything I want and need in my life)

Re: PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU

[hapaxlegomenon]

This is screaming my name holy shit

PROMPT: TEAM NANASE HARUKA/YAMAZAKI SOUSUKE

[vashiane]

Nanase Haruka/Matsuoka Rin (Rinharu), Free!

AU in which Haruka and Rin switch places; where Haruka is the one who returns to Iwatobi from Australia and Rin is the one he left behind.

FILL: TEAM MATSUOKA RIN/NANASE HARUKA, G

[fullofjoy]

No content warnings apply, 662 words

Some other stuff had to be switched around as well but yeah. There were non-angsty ways to cover this and what do I do? Make it still as angsty as possible. Why. I'm very sorry. This is basically an alternative setup to season 1 with all the angst and division still in place.

Obligatory I'm Not A Writer disclaimer.


Life in Australia was exhausting in every sense. He didn't care for the Western food that his host family liked so much, missing the food he ate in his seaside home. Good thing that his homestay parents were generous enough to buy seafood and seasonings more familiar to Haru, and let him cook his own meals.

That was one upside to living in Syndey, a much too loud and busy city and a stark change from Iwami. This was all so much for a kid who only just learned before leaving his home town that it wasn't the actual capital of Australia (that would be Canberra). One of the biological children of Haru's homestay parents, a high schooler, often led Haru around to get used to the city, so Haru could have some form of that independence he once had in elementary school.

But English probably gave Haru the most trouble.

His complete inability to speak the language made it all the more difficult. He couldn't connect with his peers at all, and more than once he got the feeling they were laughing at him. Haru couldn’t really care, though. They all respected him in the water as he consistently ranked in the first three places. And he didn't care if any of them were jealous or hurt by just how good he was. Not anymore.

Haru never was one for being sentimental - or so he tells himself - but he did write letters back to his friends at home. Most of the time that Haru spent outside of training was filled with writing letters, much more detailed and long-winded than was like him.

Written... but never sent.

He had never felt so lonely before. As if the language barrier wasn't hard enough to overcome, without Makoto he had no one to understand him. No one else looked up to him like Nagisa did, with how put off they were by his heavy accent on top of how aloof he was. And Rin... no one here could change him like he did. But Haru let the ice around him form, keeping his distance from everyone. He hoped they would all find good friends in middle school and forget about him. Maybe it was better this way.

He still remembered the day that he broke the news to everyone, keeping it a secret until after the relay. This was all some idea that his parents pushed him into once they heard of his swimming talent (not that they were ever around to see). But he knew that Rin wanted this so badly-- just to be rejected. It wasn't fair, he felt that as much as Rin did.

Rin faced him with tears in his eyes, unable to hide the devastation as he tried to plaster on a smile. But any attempt at that happy façade failed as he turned to run. Haru could only remember the bright smile, the boy who radiated light, and how that light had blinked out all in an instant.

"What's the point of trying anymore?!"

And it was all Haru's fault.

Haru wanted to quit so badly. He couldn't bear to continue swimming with the memory of Rin's tears. But even though they were never there, he found himself doing whatever his parents said. So Haru repressed all of his guilt until he almost felt normal, and let the water fill up his mind so he thought of nothing but swimming. Until the day he transferred back to Japan. Haru never got used to Australia, but he still feared coming back, grateful for the elite swimming school Samezuka having some distance from Iwatobi.

Would his old friends remember him, still care about him? Did Haru still want them to?

And... what kind of face would Rin have if they saw each other again?

PROMPT: TEAM AKASHI SEIJUUROU/NIJIMURA SHUUZOU

[illegiblesigns]

Oikawa/Iwaizumi (Haikyuu!)

harry potter au!

Re: PROMPT: TEAM AKASHI SEIJUUROU/NIJIMURA SHUUZOU

[ennoshita]

ohhh amanda.... u called for me...

PROMPT: TEAM AOYAGI HAJIME/IZUMIDA TOUICHIROU

[luckycricket33]

Miyahara & Ashikiba (or / knock yourselves out) (Yowamushi Pedal)

Homestuck Crossover - Miyahara as Jane and shikiba as Roxy

FILL: TEAM FUKUTOMI JUICHI/KINJOU SHINGO, G

[krankran]

Rating: G
Warnings: Flashing lights, Blood, Posession

--> IN THE PAST

--> ??
--> ??
--> ??

I'M SO SORRY IT'S SO SHORT COMPARED TO MY OTHERS, RL WAS KICKING ME ASS ;A;/

PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU

[oikawas]

hinata shouyou/kozume kenma (haikyuu!!)

rentaneko au

are you feeling lonely?
kenma will lend you a cat!

PROMPT: TEAM AKAASHI KEIJI/BOKUTO KOUTARO

[reffieisred]

Pairing: Kunimi Akira/Hanamaki Takahiro

AU: greaser au. you know. 50s stuff, the movie Grease. give me hte

PROMPT: TEAM OIKAWA TOORU/USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

[controlscircus]

kenma/nitori (free!, haikyuu!!)

the one where nitori's secretly a fantastic video game player and kenma meets his match

Re: PROMPT: TEAM OIKAWA TOORU/USHIJIMA WAKATOSHI

[kayable]

okay but they play bl games together too right

PROMPT: TEAM FUKUTOMI JUICHI/KINJOU SHINGO

[catlarks]

Ogata & Akira (hikaru no go)

AU where Akira takes a position at the law firm headed by (Ogata) a particular friend of his father's.

(I'm also 200% down with throwing in Hikaru or akihika I just really want lawyer Ogata.)

PROMPT: TEAM IMAIZUMI SHUNSUKE/NARUKO SHOUKICHI

[dynamite]

Toudou Jinpachi / Makishima Yuusuke, Yowapeda

Instead of bikes, it's Model UN.

Re: PROMPT: TEAM IMAIZUMI SHUNSUKE/NARUKO SHOUKICHI

[luckycricket33]

LOOORD i can't think of how to fill this right now but i sure do want to see it done

PROMPT: TEAM MANAMI SANGAKU/TESHIMA JUNTA

[sylphofkarkat]

Manami Sangaku & Doubashi Masakiyo, Yowamushi Pedal

(Manga spoilers)

AU where Doubashi finds Manami's hat cool and not lame like he does currently

Re: PROMPT: TEAM MANAMI SANGAKU/TESHIMA JUNTA

[nobetterpicture]

lbr, he's totally just jealous that he doesn't have one

PROMPT: TEAM FUKUTOMI JUICHI/KINJOU SHINGO

[catlarks]

Hiruma & Musashi (eyeshield 21)

Fight Club (-esque) AU. Hiruma is totally Tyler Durden.

FILL: TEAM ARAKITA YASUTOMO/FUKUTOMI JUICHI, E

[daichiis]

spoilers for fight club
warnings for: physical abuse, blood, violence/gore, language, guns, etc.
I'm probably missing some because it's Fight Club but those are the main ones I can think of.
wordcount: 1741

a/c: I also apologize I kind of....took the au thing a bit more literally. whoops.

Hiruma gets me a job as a waiter, after that Hiruma’s pushing a gun into my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. For a long time, Hiruma and I were best friends. People are always asking, did I know about Hiruma Yoichi.

The barrel of the gun pressed against the back of my throat, Hiruma says “We really won’t die.”

Up on top of the Deimon company tower with Hiruma’s gun in my mouth. While desks and filing cabinets and computers meteor down on the crowd and smoke funnels up the broken windows and three blocks down the street the demolition team watches the clock, I know all of this: the gun, the anarchy, the explosion is really about Mamori Anezaki.

Six minutes.

We have sort of a triangle thing going here. I want Hiruma. Hiruma wants Mamori. Mamori wants me.

I don’t want Mamori, and Hiruma doesn’t want me around, not anymore. This isn’t about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.

Without Mamori, Hiruma would have nothing.

Five minutes.

Maybe we would become a legend, maybe not. No, I say, but wait.

Where would the Derrel Royal be without his letters?

Four minutes.

I tongue the gun barrel into my cheek and say, you want to be a legend, Hiruma, man, I’ll make you a legend. I’ve been here from the beginning.

I remember everything.

Three minutes.

——————

I’ve been coming here for two years now, and every week Kurita wraps his big, beefy arms around me and cries. Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.

Anything you’re ever proud of will be thrown away.

I am wrapped up in Kurita’s big beefy arms and I am listening to his big beefy tears and there is a calm in that helplessness. A peace in the vacant understanding that nothing you have ever created is worth more than dirt under a trash heap.

This is when I’m supposed to cry because right now, your life comes down to nothing, and not even nothing, oblivion. Kurita cries, because at one time he had something worth fighting for. Because at one time, finding something worth your weight and size and excruciating crunch of testosterone and blood is worth your life.

At one time, I also had that. But at another, I lost it. Now? Now I am lost inside.

Kurita cries, and in the cold, and around us is the damp basement under the Deimon company building. There are maybe twenty men and one woman, collected for the very reason Kurita cries and holds me right now. I do not cry, do not attempt as much, but the crushing weight of his arms and his tears and his failures bare down like weights on my shoulders.

This is as close as I’ve been to sleeping in almost a week.

This is how I met Mamori Anezaki.

——————

Hiruma worked part-time as a movie projectionist. Because of his nature, Hiruma could only work night jobs. Some people were night people, some people were day. I only worked day jobs, pushing paper and staples and the careless monotony of casual existences in office buildings and cubicles.

Cubes, packed like staples, pushed up against walls and barriers and made to do bitch work for bitch bosses.

Hiruma is a projectionist, and he’s tired and angry, but mostly he’s bored so he starts by cutting single frames from the pornography stash you found in your bosses’ office and overlay it in animated films. Just the family-kind. The ones filled with kids and parents and neighborhood nobodies who sneak into movies for the air conditioning and darkness.

Moments after the talking bat corners a knight on horseback, an erection. A dinosaur and cowboy face off, breasts. Hiruma does this, and for less than a third of a second, forces it on unsuspecting eyes.

This is your life, and it’s ending one second at a time.

When Hiruma and I would meet, we drink a lot of beer. But it was there, drunk in a bar where no one was watching and no one would care, that I asked Hiruma what he wanted me to do.

“I want you to hit me as hard as you can.”

——————

You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick

I know this, because Hiruma knows this, his fist cracking into the lines of my jaw, as he repeats. Over and over. “The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

So the next day at work, I tell my boss I fell, my mouth glistening with blood, swallowing back anything that threatens to trickle down my chin. My boss asked what I have gotten into, why I come to work like this, and I tell him I don’t want to die without any scars.

The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.”

There have been talks about loading up. About bringing helmets and shoulder pads and shoes. Things that will make it official, things that will prolong its shelf life. Except fight club only exists between the hours that it starts and it ends, and Hiruma doesn’t care for equipment. Only two guys to a fight, no shirts or shoes, the fight goes on as long as it has to.

Those are the other rules.

But it works. After fight club, the whole world becomes muted, its volume turned down. Nothing can piss you off, your word is law, and sleep comes easy for the first time in lifetimes. You wonder, for a moment, why this doesn’t exist elsewhere - and then realize it does.

The Colosseum, the Wild West, American Football.

It is a test of strength as much as a test of stamina. Of how much of a beating you can take before you fall and don’t get back up again. The first fight club was just Hiruma and I beating into each other.

Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer.

“If this is your first time at fight club, you have to fight.”

Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

What happens in the fights doesn’t happen in words. Some guys need a fight every week, some every month. I fought a guy once and called in the work the next week, unable to open my eyes. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw, and when I tell Hiruma, he says, “Cool.”

I have been living with Hiruma for a month.

In the kitchen, there are stacks of magazine, advertisements using human organs calling out to their bodies. “I am Sena’s hamstring. I am Monta’s right lung.”

I am Agon’s Heartbeat, beating beating beating, knuckles into bone into marrow into muscle. Hiruma comes into the kitchen in a thin pair of boxers, covered in hickies and scratches and no shirt and says, blah blah blah he met Mamori Anezaki last night and they had sex.

I am Agon’s Raging Bile Duct. The things Mamori said to him last night, Hiruma says. No girl’s ever talked to him that way. Mamori is some twisted bitch, he says, but he likes that a lot.

I am Agon’s Grinding Teeth. I am Agon’s Inflamed Flaring Nostril.

I tell Hiruma, Mamori Anezaki doesn’t need a lover.

Hiruma says, “Don’t call this love.”

——————

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”

Hiruma is building a bomb, rattling off to the blank wall above his head. He once said there was a dog, he owned a dog, but the dog died.

I asked about the dog. Hiruma just smiles.

He is building a bomb, deconstructing the process of making soap, saying soap and human destruction go hand in hand. The mechanic today told me that the last rule of Project Mayhem was that you don’t ask questions and when I ask Hiruma about this, there is only that grin. I tell him, “The mechanic was talking. It was all Hiruma Yoichi.” And Hiruma is only his grin.

You are not your name. You are not your bank account. You are God’s middle child, forgotten.

I want to quit my job.

My office explodes on Monday, a hole in the side of the Deimon Company Building. There is gasoline on my hands, smoke in the air, and a computer tube can hold a lot more gasoline than a lightbulb. I know this, because Hiruma knows this, and if you’re male, and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And sometimes you find your father in your career.

I kind of liked my boss. Hiruma did not.

——————

You call Mamori’s hotel, the clerk says “Right away Mr. Yoichi.”

You meet her in the basement, and she slaps you across the face. “You killed someone!” She screams, and yeah, yeah, you did. Your boss. You killed him. I know, everyone is after me, but you know too.

She says, “I know?”

“Hiruma.”

It was Hiruma who killed my boss. Hiruma who set the bomb. Hiruma, who has my fingertips, and no one can understand.

Mamori stares, questions, wonders. I wait and watch as everything that hadn’t been there once, before, starts to fall away again. Mamori tells me to go to bed, that tomorrow, maybe tomorrow this will be worked out. Maybe tomorrow, Hiruma will be gone. “Maybe tomorrow…”

I am standing on the edge of the world’s tallest building, the world in which extends in each direction for a hundred feet. In five minutes, the world won’t exist any more. I know this, because Hiruma knows this.

Kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me.

Hiruma says, “We won’t really die.”

Mamori is coming. I know this. She is climbing the stairs and will get caught in the blast. I tell Hiruma this, explain how it will all go down, and he smiles.

“Take some responsibility.”

He presses the barrel to the back of my throat, and I wonder, how clean is this gun.

“Only after disaster, can we be resurrected.”

Two minutes.

I pull the trigger.

PROMPT: TEAM AOYAGI HAJIME/IZUMIDA TOUICHIROU

[luckycricket33]

Teshima/Aoyagi and Imaizumi (Yowamushi Pedal)

AU where Aoyagi is a pop star and Teshima and Imaizumi are backup dancers sharks

(prompt in honor of Vector)

Re: PROMPT: TEAM AOYAGI HAJIME/IZUMIDA TOUICHIROU

[doxian]

sjkldf i really hope someone fills this.

PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND

[uwu_anon]

Haruna/Abe/Mihashi, oofuri

Les Miserables AU

Re: PROMPT: TEAM GRANDSTAND

[dokuhan]

Is Abe Marius?

PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU

[iwaizumis]

matsukawa/hanamaki

what if... “i need a date so i’m hiring you off criags list, please don’t be a serial killer”...

Re: PROMPT: TEAM IWAIZUMI HAJIME/OIKAWA TOORU

[putsch]

oh my sweet lord

PROMPT: TEAM AOYAGI HAJIME/TESHIMA JUNTA

[hapaxlegomenon]

Nekoma VC team members; Haikyuu!!