40fandoms: Fandoms 8-10
Mar. 17th, 2014 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgsIn which three confident players try not to think too hard about what they're up against.
[Title] Long Fall
[Fandom] Portal/Malory Towers
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Alicia escaped the fire pit. She doesn't intend to let anything else catch her out.
Alicia can still taste the smoke, still feel the heat shiny on her arms and face.
“Well,” she murmurs, pretending that she's just saying, “That wasn't entirely unexpected.”
She's definitely not speaking just to prove she's still alive. And if her dry throat and croaky voice underline that what just occurred really did happen – well, that's good, isn't it? Because the one thing she's never been is someone who disbelieves the evidence in front of their eyes.
This place is trying to kill her.
The dead voice from the walls has gone silent now, and she's sat huddled on cold and grimy concrete for long enough. She gets to her feet, and if her legs tremble then she can blame that on the strange boots. (A lot of people would have commented on how fitting it was that she has something giving her the ability to fall hundreds of feet and walk away without a scratch. Nothing hurts you, Alicia, does it?)
(She wishes there were a lot of people here right now.)
No. No, she doesn't, that's ridiculous. All these thoughts are ridiculous. Wasn't she thinking, before, how satisfying it was to move through these puzzle rooms so quickly? Wasn't she at least a little bit proud of how easy it was to figure out the solutions and how little out of breath she was when she'd done it? This is practically tailor-made for someone like her.
(Someone who never lets anyone see them fall. Did anyone see what just happened? Silence, everywhere. She almost wishes the voice would come back. Threats and sarcasm she can handle. But if she's alone here, that means -)
“I wonder how many others didn't manage to jump out in time?” she hears herself say, a smile in her voice as if it really is just something to be idly curious about.
(She's embarrassed, that's what it is. It isn't as if she didn't notice the things shooting at you or trying to crush you. It isn't as if she didn't hear the warnings. And yet when she'd seen the fire pit widening out in front of her and felt the platform hum as it continued to roll towards it and that voice had just said, Goodbye, she – oh, she had looked around for an escape, she'd known there was no way she was going to lose, but she thinks that under the cover of the crackling flames, she might have screamed.)
No time to sit around thinking about what's just happened. Everything is very clear. She remains unscratched, and she intends to stay that way.
[Title] Terminal
[Fandom] Portal/Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Shinji has given up on hacking or flirting, but that doesn't mean he's out of ideas.
When, after spending hours crawling through tunnels and industrial delivery bays and sewers, you find yourself in a regular tech support room with desks and computers and swivelly chairs, it seems only reasonable to stop and catch your breath. Particularly as there's only gonna be more lasers or spiked platforms or pits of goo or fire waiting for you. Shinji thinks he's starting to get the hang of this place.
He sprawls on the chair – which is wobbly, upholstered in earwax-coloured cloth – kicks off from the desk, spins round. Any cameras in here? HAL 9000's girlfriend on the intercom'd be rolling her eyes at the test subject goofing off like this.
If that is what he's doing. Keep it among yourselves, but his hands are shaking a little, and what he wouldn't give for a Coke and a shower and... okay, not being in what's basically a building full of death traps. Or at the very least a workplace that missed out on the whole Health and Safety thing a while back.
He reaches for the edge of the desk, pulls himself close. Plastic white surface, makes him think of computer rooms at school. The computers themselves are just your regular white-plastic worn-keyboard, pretty much exactly the same kind of machines he did school projects on and prodded the firewalls of. (He stopped pretty quick when Uncle pointed out he didn't want to draw attention to himself as someone who was into that kind of thing.) (Uncle may've had a point considering this place looks a great way to eliminate dissidents.)
(He's getting tired. The last lot of turrets nearly got him.)
Breathe out.
“Stay frosty.”
The point is, s'weird to see a place that can shoot holes through the laws of physics using rattly white keyboards. He hits Enter, and then Ctrl-Alt-Del, but the glitchy orange code on the screen doesn't react. Makes sense. Any computer sentient enough to tell you that you have no friends isn't going to be dumb enough to let you hack into her from a conveniently placed terminal.
He wonders if anyone tried. Someone has to have set this whole place up. There've been radios and toolkits and pens and mugs, along the way. Doors with combination locks someone has to've set a code for. Posters put up for humans to read. Hell, those dens he's found with all the writing and the empty tins, that suggests someone was here pretty recently, after it all went south. This is not an entirely computer-based problem.
(If it was, he'd have more of a hope of solving it. The Greater East Asian Republic really helps show you that going up against just people is actually difficult enough. And Shinji has always found people a pain in the ass, when you come down to it.)
“Chill, m'man.” Talking to yourself. First sign of madness. But who the hell else is he meant to talk to, the crazy AI? Somehow he thinks she'd be wise to any attempts at flirting just like her defences would shut down any hope of crashing her systems. “We can set up home in the walls like the other guy. A few madness mantras and tins of beans, we'll be set.”
Somehow that doesn't seem as funny as it did before he said it.
Well. R&R is over and no doubt there's another amusing death trap round the corner. He stands up, grabs the gun. No need to keep it waiting.
[Title] Mapping
[Fandom] Portal/Harry Potter
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Sirius knows there might be no one left to follow the signs, but he leaves them anyway.
At first, Sirius had thought I wonder if this is what being a Squib feels like? This constant I could just use a Charm to – oh, wait, no - and the feeling like all of you was shut up in a box and couldn't move. He'd thought If – no, when – when I get out I'll be nicer to them – I get it now -
But that had been a very, very long time ago. And now? Now the things he does have – a wand that only performs one spell, a couple of small tins of paint, and faint memories that he wasn't always here, that once he was outside and there was sun and friends and voices from people he could actually see -
The other thing he still has is, weirdly enough, his Animagus powers. He prowls as a dog through tunnels that are too small for a human to crawl through, slides under fences, presses himself flat against cold floors out of the sight line of the turrets and their child-voices. There are two of him, in his mind, now, human-him and dog-him, and he can leave human-him behind and search for new routes, new places to hide, and come back dragging the information behind him.
He's searching for other things, too. Other people. He thinks they must be dead by now but he hunts for them anyway, alert for scents he can barely remember. Which isn't to say human-him does nothing. Human-him writes stuff down, smears arrows on the wall to point out the paths through the maze. His fingers are red and black and he leaves prints on the white surface of the wand-thing. Sometimes he looks at them and at his paint-stained hands and wonders who they belong to.
There is human-him and dog-him and sometimes he tries to make there be other people. He chats to James and Remus and Lily, tells them and himself how he's making another Marauders' Map, that this place is almost as confusing as Hogwarts was in their first year, that he swears the rooms move when he isn't looking, that there's always another trap round the next corner. He makes it into an adventure for them. He wants to convince them he's gone on ahead, he's figured it all out and so when they have to fight their way through all they'll need to do is follow the arrows. Human-him thinks, knows, that they probably all started off at the same time, that if the others had survived what he has then he would have found them by now, that he is the only one left. When he thinks that too much then he lets dog-him take the strain, curl up with paws over his nose and howl and the thoughts are fuzzier in that skull so he can pretend he's forgotten why he's sad.
There's a chance, right? If there's even the smallest chance that the arrows and scribbled warnings could help, he's got to keep making them.
He's got to keep making something.
There could be others.
He's never needed anyone, but he wishes there could be others. One of the many things he can't do is hear other people's voices in his mouth. Only his own speech, or growls, and the silence. Even that woman's voice is gone now. Even she has forgotten about him. Well. It doesn't matter. Another arrow. The map unfolds around him.
[Title] Long Fall
[Fandom] Portal/Malory Towers
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Alicia escaped the fire pit. She doesn't intend to let anything else catch her out.
Alicia can still taste the smoke, still feel the heat shiny on her arms and face.
“Well,” she murmurs, pretending that she's just saying, “That wasn't entirely unexpected.”
She's definitely not speaking just to prove she's still alive. And if her dry throat and croaky voice underline that what just occurred really did happen – well, that's good, isn't it? Because the one thing she's never been is someone who disbelieves the evidence in front of their eyes.
This place is trying to kill her.
The dead voice from the walls has gone silent now, and she's sat huddled on cold and grimy concrete for long enough. She gets to her feet, and if her legs tremble then she can blame that on the strange boots. (A lot of people would have commented on how fitting it was that she has something giving her the ability to fall hundreds of feet and walk away without a scratch. Nothing hurts you, Alicia, does it?)
(She wishes there were a lot of people here right now.)
No. No, she doesn't, that's ridiculous. All these thoughts are ridiculous. Wasn't she thinking, before, how satisfying it was to move through these puzzle rooms so quickly? Wasn't she at least a little bit proud of how easy it was to figure out the solutions and how little out of breath she was when she'd done it? This is practically tailor-made for someone like her.
(Someone who never lets anyone see them fall. Did anyone see what just happened? Silence, everywhere. She almost wishes the voice would come back. Threats and sarcasm she can handle. But if she's alone here, that means -)
“I wonder how many others didn't manage to jump out in time?” she hears herself say, a smile in her voice as if it really is just something to be idly curious about.
(She's embarrassed, that's what it is. It isn't as if she didn't notice the things shooting at you or trying to crush you. It isn't as if she didn't hear the warnings. And yet when she'd seen the fire pit widening out in front of her and felt the platform hum as it continued to roll towards it and that voice had just said, Goodbye, she – oh, she had looked around for an escape, she'd known there was no way she was going to lose, but she thinks that under the cover of the crackling flames, she might have screamed.)
No time to sit around thinking about what's just happened. Everything is very clear. She remains unscratched, and she intends to stay that way.
[Title] Terminal
[Fandom] Portal/Battle Royale
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Shinji has given up on hacking or flirting, but that doesn't mean he's out of ideas.
When, after spending hours crawling through tunnels and industrial delivery bays and sewers, you find yourself in a regular tech support room with desks and computers and swivelly chairs, it seems only reasonable to stop and catch your breath. Particularly as there's only gonna be more lasers or spiked platforms or pits of goo or fire waiting for you. Shinji thinks he's starting to get the hang of this place.
He sprawls on the chair – which is wobbly, upholstered in earwax-coloured cloth – kicks off from the desk, spins round. Any cameras in here? HAL 9000's girlfriend on the intercom'd be rolling her eyes at the test subject goofing off like this.
If that is what he's doing. Keep it among yourselves, but his hands are shaking a little, and what he wouldn't give for a Coke and a shower and... okay, not being in what's basically a building full of death traps. Or at the very least a workplace that missed out on the whole Health and Safety thing a while back.
He reaches for the edge of the desk, pulls himself close. Plastic white surface, makes him think of computer rooms at school. The computers themselves are just your regular white-plastic worn-keyboard, pretty much exactly the same kind of machines he did school projects on and prodded the firewalls of. (He stopped pretty quick when Uncle pointed out he didn't want to draw attention to himself as someone who was into that kind of thing.) (Uncle may've had a point considering this place looks a great way to eliminate dissidents.)
(He's getting tired. The last lot of turrets nearly got him.)
Breathe out.
“Stay frosty.”
The point is, s'weird to see a place that can shoot holes through the laws of physics using rattly white keyboards. He hits Enter, and then Ctrl-Alt-Del, but the glitchy orange code on the screen doesn't react. Makes sense. Any computer sentient enough to tell you that you have no friends isn't going to be dumb enough to let you hack into her from a conveniently placed terminal.
He wonders if anyone tried. Someone has to have set this whole place up. There've been radios and toolkits and pens and mugs, along the way. Doors with combination locks someone has to've set a code for. Posters put up for humans to read. Hell, those dens he's found with all the writing and the empty tins, that suggests someone was here pretty recently, after it all went south. This is not an entirely computer-based problem.
(If it was, he'd have more of a hope of solving it. The Greater East Asian Republic really helps show you that going up against just people is actually difficult enough. And Shinji has always found people a pain in the ass, when you come down to it.)
“Chill, m'man.” Talking to yourself. First sign of madness. But who the hell else is he meant to talk to, the crazy AI? Somehow he thinks she'd be wise to any attempts at flirting just like her defences would shut down any hope of crashing her systems. “We can set up home in the walls like the other guy. A few madness mantras and tins of beans, we'll be set.”
Somehow that doesn't seem as funny as it did before he said it.
Well. R&R is over and no doubt there's another amusing death trap round the corner. He stands up, grabs the gun. No need to keep it waiting.
[Title] Mapping
[Fandom] Portal/Harry Potter
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Sirius knows there might be no one left to follow the signs, but he leaves them anyway.
At first, Sirius had thought I wonder if this is what being a Squib feels like? This constant I could just use a Charm to – oh, wait, no - and the feeling like all of you was shut up in a box and couldn't move. He'd thought If – no, when – when I get out I'll be nicer to them – I get it now -
But that had been a very, very long time ago. And now? Now the things he does have – a wand that only performs one spell, a couple of small tins of paint, and faint memories that he wasn't always here, that once he was outside and there was sun and friends and voices from people he could actually see -
The other thing he still has is, weirdly enough, his Animagus powers. He prowls as a dog through tunnels that are too small for a human to crawl through, slides under fences, presses himself flat against cold floors out of the sight line of the turrets and their child-voices. There are two of him, in his mind, now, human-him and dog-him, and he can leave human-him behind and search for new routes, new places to hide, and come back dragging the information behind him.
He's searching for other things, too. Other people. He thinks they must be dead by now but he hunts for them anyway, alert for scents he can barely remember. Which isn't to say human-him does nothing. Human-him writes stuff down, smears arrows on the wall to point out the paths through the maze. His fingers are red and black and he leaves prints on the white surface of the wand-thing. Sometimes he looks at them and at his paint-stained hands and wonders who they belong to.
There is human-him and dog-him and sometimes he tries to make there be other people. He chats to James and Remus and Lily, tells them and himself how he's making another Marauders' Map, that this place is almost as confusing as Hogwarts was in their first year, that he swears the rooms move when he isn't looking, that there's always another trap round the next corner. He makes it into an adventure for them. He wants to convince them he's gone on ahead, he's figured it all out and so when they have to fight their way through all they'll need to do is follow the arrows. Human-him thinks, knows, that they probably all started off at the same time, that if the others had survived what he has then he would have found them by now, that he is the only one left. When he thinks that too much then he lets dog-him take the strain, curl up with paws over his nose and howl and the thoughts are fuzzier in that skull so he can pretend he's forgotten why he's sad.
There's a chance, right? If there's even the smallest chance that the arrows and scribbled warnings could help, he's got to keep making them.
He's got to keep making something.
There could be others.
He's never needed anyone, but he wishes there could be others. One of the many things he can't do is hear other people's voices in his mouth. Only his own speech, or growls, and the silence. Even that woman's voice is gone now. Even she has forgotten about him. Well. It doesn't matter. Another arrow. The map unfolds around him.
