Awakens from a red haze of demon blood and guts.
Whuzza? Wha? Oh right.
Yo! Good saturday to y'alls.
No chapter today. Work was killer on the last two weeks. Urgh.
Not complaining, at least I still have work. That's something a lot of people can't say.
Now don't any of you start hoping I lose my job so I'd have more time to write, cause when jobless I spend just about all of my day looking for work. Which means literally no writing. =c=
Anyways on to the important stuff. An announcement! I'm puttin' this story on a brief hiatus because there's a writing contest happening soonish and I want to write up an entry for it. So my creative efforts will be bent toward that which will not leave me a lot of leftover brainpower for this here story.
That don't mean I'm abandoning the story, I quite like it and I still have the storyboard. It just means that my very limited writing time will be bent toward something else which might make me a bit of pocket money and give me some bragging rights.
No this isn't some dumb late April Fools prank. I really do just need/want to write up a thing for a writing contest.
Another thing. I've started posting this story on Space Battles, under the same name. If any of y'alls would prefer to read it there, feel free! Just, you know, try and leave me a comment and please don't spoil stuff for people over there. The story over there is also getting an overhaul, with better word choice and fixed punctuation.
I'm also planning to update the story here, so a chunk of you lot will get false update emails. If you click it and it takes you to the story and don't see a new chapter? That means that I updated one of the current chapters to have better formatting. So yeah, now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Have a short story I've been feeling like writing for a while but couldn't find a place to fit it into the narrative! 8D
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It was a beautiful spring day in Anima, the sun's rays illuminated the forest, birds of all sizes and colors frolicked and sang. A warm breeze lazily drove a few clouds before it and carried with it the faintest hint of hyacinth and jasmine. It was the type of day that demanded one enjoy it with a picnic, or perhaps a nap under the shade cast by a tree.
Raven stood in a clearing and glared at the beautifully crafted sword she gripped with the disgust one usually reserved for child molesters and mutineers.
Those went to the special hell, the one reserved for people who talk at the theater.
"You're doing it wrong," Shirou called out, he looked quite comfortable sitting cross legged on top of a big flat rock. "Being all tense like that will just make it more difficult."
Raven brandished the sword and pointed it at him. "Easy for you to say mister Swords for Brains! 'Infuse it with your Aura' well I am and it's still not glowing!"
Shirou tilted his head and squinted at the weapon. "That's because you're just covering it with your Aura, you're not infusing it. You have to get it in there, really deep, imagine the weapon, everything about it, down to the smallest detail, clear your mind of all else and imagine your Aura sinking into it."
Raven glowered and glared at the sword, the oiled steel of its blade, the black leather of its handle, the faintly shimmering gem in its pommel. She imagined each of its components as best she could and tried to run her Aura through them.
The sword flashed red as it was covered by her Aura. She turned to Shirou as he stared intently at her. "And now?"
He squinted at the sword. "Better, but still too shallow."
Raven screamed and swung the sword at the nearest tree, the blade passed through the trunk with the same ease it parted air. As she began to wonder if the sword had done anything at all, a line as thin as a hair became visible as the top of the tree slid away from the bottom and fell noisily to the ground.
Raven blinked and ran her hand over the surface of the cut in the trunk, other than the sticky sap that the wound was starting to secrete, the surface was smooth. Damn but her bundle of stupid had some nice swords.
"Raven, what did that tree ever do to you?" he called out, and she felt her left eye twitch.
"Shirou," she growled.
"I mean," he continued heedlessly, "have you any idea how hard that tree worked to make the air you breathe? And that's how you repay it?"
"You are on thin ice, Shirou," she warned.
"Not to mention," he said past a yawn, "if you don't control your temper, you'll never really get to the whole 'clarity of mind' you need t—"
"Shi-ro-u."
His mouth shut with a satisfying click. Seriously, ever since he hit his teens he had started to get more and more uppity. So he thought himself all that just because he had made most of the Branwen's weapons? And maintained them? And he did salvage that one abandoned armored vehicle a while back…
Okay yes, the kid was pretty essential, and he had managed to get a solid hit on her in a spar for the first time a couple weeks back, but he didn't have to be so smug about it.
Sure, she had been trying to encourage him to acknowledge his strength, and show the proper attitude for a warrior of his standing, but that did not give him the right to turn his jack-bootery on her!
"So how godsdamned detailed do I have to imagine this damn sword anyway!?" she demanded as she swung it about, enjoying the whistle it made as it cut through the air.
Shirou crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back. "Eeeeh…I guess you just need to picture your aura going through the grains of the blade? Try holding all of those in your mind at the same time and sink your Aura through the spaces between them, that should do it."
Raven stared at him in open shock. "That's bloody impossible! I don't exactly have a damn microscope do I!?"
He shrugged, stupid Shirou with his stupid swords and his stupid weird Aura. So her stupid kid was a savant when it came to swords, what else is new?
"Fuck it!" she groused, "What's the step after this?"
He blinked. "But…but you haven't even managed step one yet."
"Don't care!" she said as she lined up a swing at another tree. "Teach me the next step!"
"Well okay, you just sympathize with the experience of its growth and let it guide your Aura through the actualization of the effect," he rattled off nonchalantly.
Raven stared, the twitch in her left eye brought friends. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "In Valeish, Shirou."
He blinked. "Which part confused you?"
"All of it!" she growled. "How exactly am I supposed to 'sympathize' with a sword? It's a sharp piece of metal!"
"Well…it's what you do! You sympathize with it and then the rest of it just sort of does itself!"
Raven walked over to his boulder and loomed him. "Are you making this up just to make a fool out of me?"
His face paled and brought his hands up in a conciliatory gesture, "No! I swear! It's what you do! M-Maybe sympathize is the wrong word?"
"Well," she said and leaned further forward, causing him to press himself all the more tightly against his boulder. "I'm waiting."
"U-Um…y-you could try synchronizing with it?" he asked tremulously as she stood back up straight.
"Shirou," she said in a perfectly calm and reasonable tone, causing him to pale even further, which for some reason caused her to reach into a previously untapped well of irritation. "You have two seconds to start making sense."
He started to babble. Judge concept of this, hypothesize that, imitate something else, manufacture something or other. All the usual crap he spewed when he tried to explain his Semblance to people. Still, he seemed to be telling the truth, Shirou was many things but a good liar certainly wasn't one of them.
She sighed and plopped her hand down on top of his head, causing him to flinch. Her lips turned down in a grimace; she hadn't laid a hand on him in anger for six years and yet he still flinched.
Well, she hadn't hit him in anger for six years, basically the same thing.
She did her best at tossing his head gently about. "Don't get your panties in a bunch, come on, let's head home. I'm getting hungry and you usually take some time to get lunch made right."
She turned her back on him and began to walk in the direction of the camp. Resting the sword on her shoulder, she briefly pondered making a portal to Vernal, but the day was nice enough that she felt like taking a stroll.
She heard Shirou sigh behind her before he spoke grumpily, "Well, guess it can't be helped. Seriously, how come I have to do all the cooking at camp?"
Raven smirked and turned around to look at him. "You know, I think you're right."
He froze.
"It is kind of unfair that we lay so much work down on you." She grinned cruelly. "You've been teaching Vernal to cook right? We'll let her take care of cooking for a few days."
"N-No, wait, Raven—" he began tremulously.
"In fact," she continued as she tapped her chin in thought. "You've been working so diligently for so long that you clearly deserve a long break."
"W-Wait, Raven I really didn't mean it!" he implored as he walked up to her. "I'm sorry, I was joking! I won't do it again!"
"I'm thinking a month," she continued. Raven could have sworn she heard a mirror shatter. "Actually let's make that two. You deserve it as the second best warrior in the tribe."
He clutched feebly at her dress. "I already said I'm sorry! Please Raven!"
Raven sighed melodramatically. "Okay fine, I'll reconsider on one condition."
The hopeful light in his eyes turned to confusion as she picked him bodily up, spun him around twice and threw him a few dozen feet away.
"You beat me to the camp!" she yelled after him, turned around and sprinted away, trying and failing to hold her laughter in.
Shirou did, in fact, win that race by a hair's breadth. He stood in the camp, hunched over, covered in broken sticks, sap, leaves, and bleeding from a hundred little cuts and scratches, but he won.
He then proceeded to collapse and couldn't get up again, and had to spend the rest of the day in bed to recover.
