write a reply

for pity’s sake, you’re such a pain

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aliasthomas, breezescodes
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bc
Summer '19 Bingo Completionist
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
bingo

01. Summertime
02. Bad Reputation
03. Ashes to Ashes
04. Years From Now
05. Red Roses
06. Too Good to be True
07. Rainy Night
08. Wild
09. Trilogy
10. Prophecy
11. Dreams
12. Who Cares?
13. On With the Show

14. Dawn/Dusk
15. Heart and Soul
16. Mirrors
17. Impressions
18. Welcome Home
19. Time Machine
20. Fireside
21. Electricity
22. Keep Trying
23. Robot
24. Shout It Out
25. Midnight
26. One More Time
27. Haunted
28. Prisoner
29. Power of Love

30. The World
last edit on May 20, 2021 4:25:24 GMT by bc
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this is my murder mittens ^-^

01. SUMMERTIME


it was the last day of summer, the bitter weather biting and bearing against the oxidized iron streak across the horizon. in the midst of it, kamanosuke leaned over the stone wall that outlined the lawn of the suburban house that his manager had purchased the lease for the year as a temporary stay. the wind brushed against his ears, moving bits of faded silver hair through his vision, softly settling upon his nose before he blew the strands away. he tasted the humidness of the season’s end, greeted by the host of coldness that poked his uncovered feet. the slippers were disregarded wherever his shoes got lost.

wherever his shoes got lost—

he drew a line on the ledge from in front of him to the potted cactus that he—quote from his manager—“would have to be absolutely horrendous to kill.” except his manager said it with a high rise glare where the artificial lighting of the rv-turned makeshift office hit the bottom rim of the ray-ban glasses. kamanosuke could practically see the trail of dead pets and potted plants within those glistening lenses.

he tried to bite away his resentment, but frankly, he was a taut line of anger that burned an imprint against his cheeks as he turned those dismissive looks ‘round. the rancor felt within the gaps of the evening stretched over the occasional scream of the lifeless blotches cars made. slowly, he churned. resentment, even. he grinned, chalking his teeth together. where even the wind fell apart to the corporate.

it was suffocating him.
last edit on Apr 30, 2021 0:45:07 GMT by bc
praise the cats!
aliasthomas, breezescodes
pronounshe/him
818written posts
bcearned bits
offlinecurrently
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Summer '19 Bingo Completionist
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
pls i wrote this long before whatever recent bs has been going up in the manga don’t @ me

02. ASHES TO ASHES


“You don’t get it, do you, Tōya?”

He internally winced at the casual way Keigo said it. Not judging, not unkind, just so simply, like there wasn’t so much—too much—in that name that made it a heavy weight to bear, so Dabi had cast it aside before it dragged him down and drowned him in a sea of tears of his own making.

In a tone that was light and danced on the ghost of a painful memory with a bare acknowledgment out of necessity, Keigo said, “It was never ours to decide who deserves to live and die.”

“You’d know that better than anyone, wouldn’t you?” Dabi retorted, if only to deflect the conversation away from him—we—like they were the same—they weren’t the same. Dabi never killed an innocent.

A weak smile graced Keigo’s lips. The “of course” went unsaid, but his gaze was still alarmingly present and pierced through Dabi with acuity that compelled trepidation.

Never was the fact more obvious in this moment with this person that Dabi had killed an innocent. He wondered who Keigo saw: the man who rose from the ashes with a vengeful intent or the boy who he murdered and put into the ground all those years ago?

The latter was a bitter pill of disappointment if Keigo called for a ghost and expected a person that could not answer.

...Oh.

Then, they were two peas in a pod, sides of the same coin, one like the other. Keigo died for Hawks to fly, and all this time, Dabi had been larking for a long gone dreamer. His first friend and first love was dead.

No, he wasn’t. His first friend and first love wasn’t dead. He was right in front of him, and his name was Hawks.

He uttered the name out loud, and it felt so natural even without any spite and agenda.

Oh, he was sick. Absolutely sick from his stomach to his head, down to the tips of his extremities.

But Hawks?

Hawks was alive and smiling.
last edit on Apr 30, 2021 0:46:19 GMT by bc
praise the cats!
aliasthomas, breezescodes
pronounshe/him
818written posts
bcearned bits
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bc
Summer '19 Bingo Completionist
bc Avatar
this is my murder mittens ^-^
this prompt singlehandedly dragged me back into ace attorney and i am replaying dual destinies as we speak jfc

some spoilers for the end of dual destinies i guess

03. YEARS FROM NOW


Simon Blackquill was not to be blamed for the result of his best friend shoving several bowls of apocalypse-ending salty noodles into her mouth at an increasingly desperate pace to compete with the champion of spirits and noodle-slurping contests, Maya Fey. Beads of soup dripped from Athena’s mouth as she guzzled down another chunk of noodles, nearly choking in the process and causing Wright to make a wheezing noise of concern.

He would have put his foot down already, but Athena had given him a withering look alongside her trusty Widget’s red, angry face that made him back off with some reluctance. Old habits died hard, but Athena was allowed to make her poor choices as an adult who didn’t need Simon to point them out. (Although as her best friend, he reserved the right to laugh at her when she had to down several glasses of water after consuming half her weight in salt and spend the rest of the day flatulent.)

“Hey, maybe slow down there, Athena,” the blue-suited lawyer said. He scratched his head, a nervous action that Simon often witnessed the defense do in court from both mentor and student.

Enthusiastic as ever Athena Cykes slammed her fist down on the table rattling the bowls as she tried to whip around, surely to chew her boss out—but she slammed her knee into the metal bearings of Eldoon’s noodle cart instead and yelped in pain. Her noodle bowl tipping dangerously close to spilling where she precariously held it in the air. She flailed in the air, one arm paddling in a desperate bid to keep her balance.

“Athena!” Phoenix exclaimed as she tipped to the side, just enough to lose her handle on her bowl. As it hurdled on a one-way path, she dove to catch it. Maya followed after her and just barely caught Athena by her arm before she face-planted into the ground, but her noodles were all but lost and splattered in the grass, certainly too gross to salvage.

Athena cried in distress and kneeled at the chipped bowl with a disappointed expression, her lips pursed and hands folded tightly.

“Man, those noodles were so good, too,” she lamented.

She grumbled a bit more over her unfortunate loss before picking herself off the ground and bounced towards Simon with a seemingly unaffected smile, having apparently swiftly recovered after what must have been a tragic loss for her.

“What are you doing here anyway, Simon? This is our lawyer hangout!”

Simon tilted his head at Athena’s implicit accusation that he was somehow not allowed to convene with the defense outside of court. He would have Athena know that he has met several of his opponents outside of work, and he quite enjoyed every interaction where he absolutely terrified them.

“Am I not technically a lawyer? But I suppose I’ll take that as you’re not happy to see an old friend. Really, Athena? I would have thought you’d been taught better manners.”

“Wh—” Athena covered her mouth with her hands, surprised by his words even though she had to be able to tell they were mostly in jest.

She folded her arms and said, “Well, sure, but I see you every day. We live together!”

She punctuated her words with a wide grin, the sort that she triumphantly used in court though it normally followed with dropping hair and sweating bullets. (A common trait of Wright’s juniors—their expressive hair that seemed almost psychically connected to their moods.)

“Hm, but I especially stopped by to congratulate the defense on their excellent show in court today. Am I to take it as untoward by the defense?”

Sure, they lived together; Athena had been especially insistent that she didn’t leave him on his own, despite his protests. Although you wouldn’t hear it from him, he appreciated that Athena cleared out her office-turned-storage room and made it into a slightly cramped space that was still better than his old cell in her apartment only afforded thanks to the combined efforts of the entire Wright law office. Though, with Simon pitching in his prosecutor’s pay, it was enough to cover Wright and Justice’s portion of the rent. Maybe there was an ulterior motive there, but Athena was sweet for worrying about her best friend, even if he would have somehow figured it out on his own all the same.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t as though they were distant roommates that rarely crossed paths outside of the shared apartment. Aside from the fact that they often crossed blades in court because of their shared lawyering profession, Simon’s paltry circle of friends mostly overlapped with Athena’s only slightly bigger circle made of former clients, Los Angeles’ eclectic law enforcement, and the occasional food vendor such as Guy Eldoon and Bucky Whet.

All that to say, he was mildly offended that Athena didn’t seem particularly excited to see him, but he understood that there was literally not a time she didn’t see him around, despite her best efforts to find him a friend group preferably a few kilometers away a year ago. And begrudgingly, he had to admit that Athena was absolutely warranted in desiring some time and space apart from him, especially after a year of dealing with him with more patience than ought to have been expected from a fresh-out-of law school nineteen-year-old girl. Adult. Technically.

Put in those terms, he was a little sheepish guilting Athena into putting up with his presence once more. Not that a little something called guilt usually stopped him, and in a rare expression of positive, good-will towards another human being, he did actually want to congratulate Athena for her victorious, solo performance in court today, but still—he could wince his words from some sense propriety as that funny, swept to the side bangs of hers scrunched up similarly to her utterly aghast, wide-mouthed expression.

“But I suppose I am to leave it to the defense’s friends to praise her well enough?” He rose an expectant brow at Wright, who stared back with an assuring nod. “For once I was not your opponent”—apparently there were more prosecutors than him, though it felt like he was taking most of the precinct’s cases as of late—“but were your still rather dull blade to have met mine today, such an elegant victory would not have been so simply won. Nonetheless, you did well, Cykes-dono. I look forward to your future successes.”

He grinned and swiftly bowed before turning away to hide the full, sentimental smile that chose to make itself known at the most inconvenient moment.

Naught a year ago, he wouldn’t have imagined bearing witness to the growth of green-horned Athena into a competent lawyer. His execution date had loomed all-omnipotent over the farce that some might call hope. He had expected to die, along with the last traces of his mentor’s murderer. But that man was behind bars and Simon could see the grass and trees of People’s Park extend beyond his eye, with no prickly fences crisscrossed in belligerent wire blocking his view.

He used to picture his future, all concrete blocks and artificially lit cells dimming and unreliable with age day after day, and tucked in his coat pocket, the slip of paper that was his only clue to Metis’s killer. Until a certain point—

Time, stopped.

He had seven years to accept this bleak fact as irrefutable and inevitable like the natural laws that bound the world in order, however unnatural his surroundings were. He still woke up some days convinced that he was breathing his last and felt like a dead man dragged into the courtroom all over again, forced to relive the worst moments of his life before it was abruptly cut. But—and though it couldn’t entirely measure, a year of Athena there for him when he felt pallid and ghostly, clasping his clammy, cold hands on the worst of days when the mind’s terror wouldn’t dissipate with simple mantras and practiced mindfulness, eventually made his heart a bit clearer and the future a little brighter, as terribly cliché as it was. He returned the gesture in equal measures, containing every mistake and fault that Athena revealed in the painful moments between the present and the reeking spirit of the past within a familiar, guilt-filled box that he shelved to never touch ever again for both of their sakes.

All the guilt shared between them, they promised each other that they would release for the bluer sky and a resonant mind. And credit where credit was due, Athena was right when she said a lighter world was colored different (though she didn’t need to know how exactly he chose to deal with his load; surely, she would reprimand his horrible coping mechanisms). He remembered passing by a few kids chasing past their parents and heading towards the lake at the entrance of the park, but Eldoon’s noodle stand was blessedly empty aside from them. It gave him a moment to appreciate the park’s fresh breeze that lapped against the lapels of his coat before brushing past him, ever uncaring and whimsy. Behind him, Athena had given up on him and had turned to her boss to complain about him, only for Wright to deflect by saying, “Uh, you are going to clean that up, Athena?”

“Oh! Of course I was. I didn’t forget! What do you take me to be, huh?” she said as she slapped her hands against her cheeks, having forgotten about the mess she had made.

The heavy sigh of wright chimed on by Mystic Maya’s assurance that wright would buy Athena another bowl was Simon’s cue to get out of there before Athena roped him into another ramen-eating contest that he would surely never put down his dignity for, but just in case, he left the defense team to their victory outing without him standing out like a sore, unwanted thumb. Besides, he and Athena could have their own celebration at home, where Taka was impatiently waiting for pets and the smuggled scraps that Simon absolutely noticed Athena conspicuously feeding his bird.

Honestly, there was something about two spoiled brats feeding off each other in the way that Athena and Taka seemed to get along just to spite his initial assumptions that Taka, not liking anyone much less energetic teenage girls would spend as little time around Athena as he could, and therefore would not possibly find someone else to cuddle with. The betrayal he felt when he found Taka curled up next to Athena one day after work. It was the last thing he expected to ever feel when he received his execution date written and signed all those years ago, but life was a funny one.

And years from now? It wasn’t always easy to visualize, but it was a physical future nonetheless.
last edit on May 10, 2021 20:12:49 GMT by bc
praise the cats!
aliasthomas, breezescodes
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818written posts
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
roses were sort of the main thing of this template post. really, anything kamanosuke would fit for red roses since roses are one of the flowers associated with him. (click image for link to codepen)

04. RED ROSES


last edit on May 10, 2021 20:14:11 GMT by bc
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aliasthomas, breezescodes
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
look i never said i wrote good shit that makes any whatsoever sense

05. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE


There are little pockets in time where a better god exists: benevolent and all-powerful, wrapping her children in a protective light infallible to human, demon, or astral machinations. Sentiment might tell him that he is ever so blessed to live in such a reality, where archdemons did not bereave the peace and other-worldly gods did not threaten the world. Mercedes smiles next to him, a bright glimmer with all the earth’s light to adorn her like a halo of everything good and pure in this world. And yet, Ras—the goddess’s Ras, promised heir of the covenant with a heart as pure as Diche’s lily gown—mourns for this beautiful, new world.

A fresh morning, everything yawns to the sunrise’s gentle rouse, shaking off the dew that had settled during the quiet chirps of the earliest awake. Within the burrows, rabbits stir with sleepy ears and bleary eyes to the rustle of the squirrel above, digging up acorns from last winter’s cache to munch on for the day. A pair of young deer pass by, their proud winter coats still thick as the ground was slick with frost, but they would soon shed their coats in preparation for the summer daze heat. He is reminded that life and humans find a way, adaptable and persistent beyond such breathless fleeting as the oxygen that sustains them.

He wishes he could move on with them, but everywhere he looks, he sees the messy, human, fallible efforts of the survivors, donned in the cloaks of celebration but haunted by the lives sacrificed in the interim that shadow the hems of their finest dresses. The ones we lost along the way wailed into the wastelands, but with a new order, such desolate, despairing places had been all but erased from the face of orbis. A new day, where we forget the losses of the past. Except him, Ras.

He suddenly remembers Vildred, his white robes with purple trim, and his hateful sword that spewed his rage from being forgotten and lost within the virtues of time. His final expression—the helplessness and hope within that Ras had reached for—seemed like a life time ago.

How could it have become so easy to slip away, these forever precious, twisted moments of the past?

There are little pockets in time where a better god exists, but he is not convinced this is one such world.

The goddess shines on.
praise the cats!
aliasthomas, breezescodes
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818written posts
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
i recently played ghost trick, and its opening scene pretty much stuck out to me with the whole dramatic detective noir spotlight on lynne while raining thing so:

06. RAINY NIGHT


last edit on May 13, 2021 10:33:09 GMT by bc
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
kinda like red roses, pretty much anything kama works for this prompt
[nospaces]

07. WILD



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asshat on a sunny day


fucking bitch, knows how darlin you are.

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god kamanosuke why are you such a MESS.




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a gangly recollection accompanied by the groans of a self realization. this is the wild child, the fighter, the dreamer. loving arms once known; now sits on a throne all alone. salute this wind prince.


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@tag
@tag
@tag




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last edit on May 11, 2021 4:36:20 GMT by bc
praise the cats!
aliasthomas, breezescodes
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818written posts
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bc
Summer '19 Bingo Completionist
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
the three prosecutors of the ace attorney trilogy: franziska von karma, godot, and miles edgeworth

08. TRILOGY



last edit on May 13, 2021 10:33:22 GMT by bc
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this is my murder mittens ^-^
line of thought here was essentially that apollo is the one that gives prophetic ability

09. PROPHECY


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last edit on May 14, 2021 6:24:01 GMT by bc
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11. DAWN/DUSK



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[attr="class","nsk-title"]dawn. dusk.


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The romance of the sea! Damned rubbish, he called it. The trade of seafaring was one way to earn a living. This was about all you could say for it. He had been lured into the merchant service as the aftermath of an enlistment in the Naval Reserve for the duration of the war. There was a great hurrah, as you will recall, over the mighty fleet of new cargo ships which were to restore the Stars and Stripes to blue water—Columbia’s return to the ocean, and all that—a splendid revival of the days of Yankee ships and sailors of long ago—a career for ambitious, adventurous American youth.


This was true enough until the bubble broke. The painful malady of deflation suddenly afflicted the world’s commerce. Much of Columbia’s mighty fleet rusted at its moorings. Ambitious American youth walked the streets in quest of jobs afloat or relinquished the sea to the Briton and the Scandinavian. It could not be said that the nation was deeply stirred by this calamity. In a manner of speaking, it had long since turned its back to the coast and could not be persuaded to face about.


This Richard Cary was one of the young men who had not been cast high and dry by the ebb tide of maritime affairs. No auspicious slant of fortune favored him. He earned what came to him in the way of employment and promotion. All he knew was the hard schooling of North Atlantic voyages in bull-nosed brutes of war-built freighters that would neither steam nor steer.


During the period of booming prosperity, the supply of competent officers fell far short of the demand. Any ancient mariner with a master’s license and fairly sound legs could get a ship. Foreign skippers were given “red ink tickets” and shoved aboard big American steamers.


The iron discipline and austere traditions of the sea were jeered at by motley crews, alien and native-born, who had easier work and better treatment than sailormen had ever known. Mutiny ceased to be sensational. Noisy Slavs preached Bolshevism in the forecastle. Every dirty loafer had a grievance. Ships limped into port with drunken stokers who refused to ply shovel and slice-bar unless they happened to feel like it. Wise gentlemen ashore diagnosed it as the poison of social unrest.


Amid these turbulent conditions, such an officer as Richard Cary was worth his weight in gold. For one thing, the Navy had hammered into his soul certain ideas which he declined to regard as obsolete. These pertained to order, fidelity, and obedience as essential to the conduct of a ship. He was a young man unvexed by complex emotions. Life consisted in doing the day’s work well, and the Lord help the subordinate who held opinions to the contrary.


It was a doctrine which had vouchsafed its own rewards. At twenty-five years of age he was chief officer of a ten-thousand-ton steamer of the Shipping Board fleet. There was something more to this rapid advancement than the old-fashioned virtues referred to. A natural aptitude for the sea was a large factor. Linked with this was a strong serenity of temper that few besetments could ruffle. Chief Officer Richard Cary moved on his appointed way with a certain ponderous momentum of mind and body.









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