These drabbles depict an AU based on Shelter the Animation, starring Neo and Roman. It does nod toward canon post-V3.
content advisory: anything depicted in Shelter (2016) is fair game here. that may include claustrophobia, body horror involving wires, backstory/implied character death. also, a drabble-sized depiction of a panic attack. please read responsibly.
Painting the Town
The Grimm attack the instant she begins. Peeved, Neo whips a solitary finger up to her lips.
Shh.
Cowed, the Beowolves hunch their crooked shoulders; the Nevermore hides behind its wings a beak twice Neo's size. Neo glares at them a moment more before returning to her colors. Combat she can craft in her sleep, but a whole world requires concentration.
With artful Hush strokes she massages slate and pearl and soot into distinct shapes with lines like cut diamond. Concrete, asphalt, steel. The city groans as it rises from sleep.
When Neo's done, the only sound is her heartbeat.
A Most Industrious Production of Bowler Hats
Hush twitches the bowler hat's final threads into place. Grimm-ash black with a rose-colored band.
Neo picks it up, frowns. Flips it by the brim to put it on. Too small. Shouldn't it fall over her eyebrows?
Shrugging, she flings the hat into the valley below. She follows her failure as the wind pulls it this way and that — like a feather, or like a stray thought she can't catch. When gravity finally drags it down, it lands in a sea of tight dark weaves crested with varied shades of red.
She's already weaving another. This one will be right.
A Past That Wasn't
Multiflavored snowflakes screen the forest. Neo sticks her tongue out to catch one; its needle-tap prickles her tongue before diffusing into a dull strawberry-and-chocolate aftertaste.
Beyond the gate, the farmhouse's second-story windows stare at her, into her, behind her —
Neo spins, thrusting Hush with the motion, and stabs behind her into empty air. She brandishes it, blinking away the snow even as it escapes her control. Her alarm at the loss tears the miasmic blanket on her heart.
Shivering, she flexes her Aura. Her wintry surroundings fall to pieces with a ceramic clatter, and Neo steps into her next illusion.
"Arson" - directed by Neopolitan and starring the Stranger
She's recording her project for later viewing pleasure, but the camera hooked to her third coat button shifts with every breath, and besides Neo's had great difficulty retaining exogenous images across her created worlds.
Schnee decorated his estate with the affected carelessness of all men who hoard more than they could ever spend. Lethal opulence built on stolen lives.
Two flicks, and the lighter fluid ignites.
This is new:
White coat, tailored and cut like hers. Orange bangs veiling one eye.
The man's other eye winks.
His cane knocks the lighter from Neo's fingers. He's gone before the curtains catch.
Bad Scroll Reception
She hits the Refresh icon again. Her scroll blinks, letters white on navy, as a jaunty thief's-grin voice informs her
You Have
No
New Messages
Neo huffs, frustrated.
On her right, the bank crumbling into the street looks like the remnants of last night's campfire. Across the pavement from the flame-crisped ruin sits a Dust shop, its windows blown out and its skeletal shelves picked clean.
What did she expect? It's not like anyone else lives in Mantle. Or back in Vale. Or in any of the other worlds she's built.
You Have
No
New Messages
She pushes Refresh again.
I Do Believe This is Just Right
She leaps, torques over the swinging scythe. The massive blade splits the air beneath her and misses her hip by a hair. Twisting the dodge into a somersault, Neo lands on her toes. Pirouetting she ducks beneath the backswing and thrusts neatly into the face sprouting from a high-collared blouse.
Hit.
Glass shatters into crimson petals, petals that spray around Neo in a sharded simulacrum of blood.
The next opponent, all silly long locks and burnished gold, cries out in delicious agony at the sight of her dead sister.
Neo curtsies, elegant and mocking, before twirling Hush into another kill.
Packet Loss
Nylon restraints clasp her arms and legs. She's escaped from tougher bonds, but no matter how Neo strains her muscles won't respond. Atrophy, she'll realize afterward, when numbness replaces her terror.
She pries open stuck eyelids.
Around her, clutching her, imprisoning her limbs, malnourished and grey: thin wires and thick tubes.
Seven inches in front of her, glass.
Ten inches in front of her, a star-pricked curtain of nothing.
Silent screams tear ragged strips from her throat —
Eventually, Remnant rebuilds itself. Rising buildings crack first the earth, then the sky. Grey rain rolls over the black curtain, smothering the stars.
System Failure
In Forever Fall, the trees lack definition. Trunks without roots flutter like paper streamers.
Likewise the docks: blurry blocks that should be cargo shipments. Vale glistens as if covered in saran.
Her worlds have lost their luster.
Could be they've always been false, cheap paint and glitter smeared across apartment walls to conceal the mold and crumbling brick, and she's lived blissfully ignorant while her home decayed around her. Or, witnessing her claustrophobic reality has ripped out truth from them. Her Aura powers these worlds. She's not actually here.
Neither is he.
This is new, too:
She's never cried before.
The Thief, He Kindly Spoke
Neo walks right on past the man in the storefront. The second and third times, too. This scoundrel —
Is a reflection. Light, not absorbed but thrust back, refusing to fall into the abyss past memory. Flared white coat over black pants. A bowler hat she's woven a million times. That knowing smirk.
He's not here in the way she wants him, but she breathes illusions. She knows he's not one.
The man in the mirror signs to her, rapid and sloppy and joyfully familiar.
Ready to remember, Neo?
Speechless has never meant wordless. Biting down her smile, Neo answers yes.
The Show Must Go On
Two chimes signal her entry.
Gracefully she dances from aisle to aisle. Each footfall lands with soft intent, chips a little more at her despair.
First, a white vest-top cropped to leave her midriff and shoulders bare — the same with her chocolate trench jacket. Both with pink trim, faded compared to her hair's strawberry blush. Too rich and it would leave her light skin looking washed out.
Torchwick blows through the mess of his ember-smolder bangs.
Now that, my dear Neo, is style.
Hand on her hip, smugness tugging at her lips, Neo rolls her eyes back at him.
Comments and critique are always appreciated!