*gasp* Writing? Writing pieces that are greater than 100 words in length, even? Witchcraft!

Against all odds I did manage to write a few scenes and snippets of some potential/very early WIP fanfics, and because they're (hopefully) not too bad I thought I'd put them up here. Knock some of the dust off the site, as it were. I've settled for calling them both "ficbits" for now even though one of them is an entire scene unto itself (and will probably be relabeled a one-shot should I decide against going all the way with the full story).

The first excerpt (the full scene) is from a possible shortish chapterfic tentatively titled The Best at Second-Best, which is looking like some kind of journeyfic-esque character study of Blue/the FRLG rival. The second is from a one-shot of currently unknown length that is going to be called something like Storm the Tower. I actually don't want to talk much about the latter for reasons, but I like this part and figured I'd post it anyway.

(EDIT: The first "ficbit" has since been relabled a full one-shot and has been moved to its own page in the fanfiction section. You can now read it here.)

Of course, the simple fact that I've even mentioned my fic projects in a publicly visible space has probably just jinxed them square into the "nope never gonna go anywhere" pile, but ah, well. At least it's something. Writing practice is writing practice, and I'll take what I can get.

Storm the Tower

"This is just fantastic," Roz sniffed as Camera 68 zoomed in on yet another huddled group of trainers and the audio caught snatches of their whispering—was she serious? were there really people watching them, dozens of eyes trained on their every move? "If you had let Sankai take care of those girls from the outset we wouldn't have the entirety of Area 7 muttering about our confidential experiment instead of proceeding as normal. None of this is valid data at all! At this rate we'll have to deal with everyone on the upper floors, if not all of Black Tower, before we can resume standard observation. I do hope you're happy, Director."

"Quite happy," said the Director, watching the flickering screens over tented fingers. Roz followed her superior's gaze as it jumped to a different monitor on the far wall. Camera 73's feed panned lazily across what looked like nothing—the trainer currently assigned to that station must have stepped out for some reason or other. Roz blinked and looked closer, not sure why an empty room had garnered so much interest... until a scrabbling and rustling halfway up one of the walls caught her eye and her own fingers balled into a fist.

"Oh, what is she doing now?"

—

That poor waitress girl never had a chance. Most people wouldn't, I guess, not if a big, wiry absol made of pointy and rage literally fell off the ceiling and landed right next to them mid–oblivious whistle. Not even kidding, man, she was legit whistling, just like in the cartoons—some 70's ninja song or something—and then it starts raining Marisol's murderbeast and I think I could see the heart attack actually happening. She barely had enough sense left to send out a pokémon, let alone give it any coherent orders, so of course all Marisol had to do was shout a few commands down to end the battle pretty much before it started. Yes, of course she was on the ceiling. Are you seriously surprised at this point? The waitress said she wasn't the boss trainer and didn't know where he was but that she thought a doctor was somewhere to the southwest. Well, Marisol said that's what she said. I couldn't really understand her through all the broken sobbing and the hiccups.

I shouldn't have been surprised either, but she was on the effing ceiling and as a concerned friend I figured I had a right to know. "How the hell did you and Absol even get up there?"

Marisol let go of the beam she was clinging to and dropped, landing on all fours and managing to pull it off more gracefully than her pokémon. "A magician never reveals her secrets," she said. "But maybe if you weren't dragging your feet and flirting with that guy back there, you'd have seen while I was doing it!"

"I'll try the question I should've asked in the first place, then: why?"

"Seemed like it'd be fun!"

"Fun?" I shouted. "Fun for who? Your homicidal absol? Maybe she—" I pointed at the waitress, who had scooted herself into a corner to continue hyperventilating as far away from the murderbeast as possible "—thought it was fun to have ten years scared off her life? The psychologist who's going to make a million dollars off her therapy sessions might think that's fun, I dunno. Except you should be the one going to a psychologist because you tackled a child and trapped a janitor in an elevator and you were on the ceiling and I just don't even know anymore, Marisol."