027. DropChar: Caith (4) and Jovan (14)
Word Count: 560
Caith was on a mission.
A mission of utmost sneakiness.
He had slipped away from the Evil Sister and now he was free, free to do whatever he'd like without anyone telling him otherwise.
Were he not sneaking he might have been inclined to indulge in a victory swagger but he (unfortunately) remembered Evil Sister's 'lessons' and knew that swaggering was not conductive to sneaking. In fact, swaggering most often lead to getting kicked by Evil Sister so he tried to never do so while sneaking (especially when sneaking away from her). All the way from the private chambers and down into the public kitchen, Caith tried to make himself as tiny and quiet and ultimately unnoticeable as possible.
This worked so well that not only did he manage to escape Evil Sister but he even managed to make it into the kitchen without being noticed by anyone at all. Of course, it was also a slow hour and the kitchen staff was mostly off for the time being but it was still a wonderful success.
Caith had the kitchen all to himself and all he needed to do was get to the cookies. He knew where the cook kept her fresh batches and it took no time at all in the abandoned kitchen to hop on a stool and then onto the counter and, at last, reach the cookie jar at the top. Except that cookie jars were not meant for clumsy kitten paws. All of his awesome Ninja Skillz that got him this far meant nothing as his cookie jar wobbled right out of his grip and went flying off the edge.
"No!"Though he scampered to catch the jar, he was too late. It went off and over the edge just like that, poof!, and… silence? Caith was not the brightest kitten in the box but he knew the sound a cookie jar made when it hit the floor and this had far too little glass-like explosion behind it. Slowly he scooted to the edge and peered down to find that his jar was held firmly in midair by a pair of tentacles which attached, a bit further down, to an older boy that he had never seen before.
"Err?" Came Caith's eloquent question, to which the boy with the tentacles responded with a smile.
"You should really be more careful. Or ask if you want a cookie."Caith's little black-tipped ears flattened back against this velvet-furred skull as he peered awkwardly down at the boy who had, essentially, saved his ass. Still, he wasn't quite in the clear. Though the stranger was definitely still a Kid he wasn't exactly Caith's age, they were bound by no little kid rule. This was probably one of those Big Kids that knew everything and liked to suck up to adults. Would he snitch?
The tentacled boy just smiled and shook his head, using one of the many tentacles on his back he extracted a cookie and set the jar back on the table.
"Come on down, you can have one."Instantly Caith's ears sprung back up and he hopped down from the table, tail swaying. Definitely still in the clear.
"Thanks! My name's Caith, by the way." The kitten purred happily as he munched on his cookie.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Caith. I'm Jovan."========================================
028. ComplainChar: Trix
Word Count: 142
Warning: Some foul language. Trix is a potty mouth. XD
Whine, bitch, moan. That's all they ever did.
Trix was sick of it, sick of everything. Couldn't they stop bickering and groaning for just a couple minutes and just be damned useful!? Day after day she found herself asking this and every day she got the same answer: "No."
And yet Zeus put up with them, the ragamuffin team of idiots, and all she was left with was the option to join them in their stupidity, in their bitching, moaning... complaining.
Fuck that.
So she kept her mouth shut and her eyes narrowed, waiting until Zeus turned his back to loose her silver serpent's tongue, to find an excuse to turn the boys on one another without ever leaking anything back to herself.
At least it passed her time and made everyone's complaining, even her own, just a little easier to bear.
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029. InjectChar: Mephitisia
Word Count: 347
Mephitisia could barely contain her growing pleasure as she strapped one of her prisoners to the wall for the last time. He'd outlived his usefulness and she had a new toxin to try out. It was supposed to foster a sort of forced out of body experience that was simultaneously useful for her torture and would, hopefully, explain some of what bound the soul to flesh.
Her prisoner fluttered uselessly, black and neon yellow-striped wings fluttered uselessly with fear. He begged for his life a couple times, but his begging was weak by now. He'd spent enough time as her lab rat to have given up true hope but struggling seemed ingrained in his nature. Mephit stood in plain sight, watching his hope drain as she filled the syringe with the orange concoction.
"You've really out lived your usefulness," she hissed
"but I have a few tests left for you. Know that this will be excruciating, and you will live through every moment of it." The finch shook terribly when she said these things, but he didn't actually say anything anymore.
"Don't worry," Mephit's cold voice was mocking,
"there's nothing to fear: pain is the only true reason to be alive."This reassurance didn't seem to help her frightened prisoner, so she pushed forward and plunged the syringe into his vein. Immediately the taint of the venom in his blood was obvious. The sickening orange substance tainted his blood as it circulated, within two pumps it hit his heart and he began to scream. The sound filled Mephitisia with delightful chills.
Soon convulsions were wracking the finch's entire body over and over again as he screamed and jerked against his chains. Useless. His fighting soon turned into mindless seizures as his screams became more and more piercing, rattling away into a death groan as all of his veins turned pure orange and promptly burst. Orange blood gushed from his mouth, eyes, and nose as he fell forward in his chains, limp and unmoving.
"Oops." Not the expected result, but Mephit couldn't say she was disappointed either.
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Also, because I found the fics weren't really getting the point I was aiming for across, here are some rewrites. Woo~
016. A Close ShaveChar: Vesper [just after her wish was granted]
Word Count: 243
Swing and miss.
That somehow seemed to be the appropriate description of her life.
Right from the beginning her life was on a collision course and yet, against all odds, she was still alive. After every close shave she somehow managed to get back up and keep on going.
The pattern just kept on repeating itself. Swing - Miss. Swing - Miss. And then, out of the blue, she not only hit the ball but knocked it straight out of the park.
In one simple, childish gesture to a silly, fairy tale well she had changed everyone. It was just a shot in the dark and suddenly she had everything she had ever wanted. It was the answer to her prayers, to every drunken, pleading cry to the greater beings in her life… and yet, somehow, she wasn't satisfied.
She'd look in the mirror morning after morning and the face that looked back at her, while no longer a Lowlander, was still not happy.
All her life she'd blamed her outsides for the way she was. It was so convenient. She was born this way, right? She couldn't change the way she'd been made, the curse she'd come into her life with, so of course she was angry, bitter, vile. Yet, when push came to shove, that wasn't it at all. Everything in the mirror had changed… everything except for her. She could replace her outsides, cure her curse, and inside she was still the same bitter, angry child.
All these years she'd thought she'd be gaining a new life in this change but she'd only lost an excuse.
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023. MistyChar: Neil
Word Count: 269
There was an old adage that Neil had heard once that said something along the lines of "old habits die hard". He'd never thought much of it until he was finally scooped off the streets.
Every morning, long before the sun rose, he would lay in his soft, new bed and just stare at the ceiling while a silent, intangible anxiety pressed at the back of his mind. At first he was so troubled by this that he would climb out of bed, regardless of how tired he was, and just walk until the sun rose at last. The cool misty mornings were a relief to him, almost freeing although he had no clue as to why he'd been feeling trapped at all.
He was more free than he'd ever been in all his days of living on the street. He was getting an education and a job. He even had a family, a home, and people who loved him. There was nothing better, no greater or more freeing position in the world. Right?
Still, here he was. Long before any of the vendors opened their market stalls, before his classes started, before his family woke… in the darkness of predawn with mist clinging to his fur, he wandered the quiet streets and back alleys. Sometimes he remembered the days gone by when he'd snuck through these streets, stealing to survive, but most of the time he just remembered those rare moments between the night and the day when the thugs had gone to bed and just before the crowds woke when he had the whole world to himself.
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Total Word Count for this post: 1049 (+512 in rewrites) = 1561
