Author's note(This is a gigantic one, so if you're not interested in me as a writer and just as a fic author for this specific fic, please skip ahead):
Maybe you've seen my main project's discontinuation, maybe you haven't, it doesn't really matter. But now that I'm free of that hot mess of an impromptu tale, I wanna write another one. While I was brainstorming for an idea, I didn't get one… I got three instead!
This means I have to choose between three really good(in my view anyway) story ideas. And choices means indecision, so I decided: why not have my audience vote!
That's right, you guys are going to be voting! How? Well, with your view. I will be posting the prologue and synopsis of my stories on the website I use to mainly write, which is RoyalRoad. I will be posting them around a month from now, and when I have everything prepared, I'll write another author's note to tell you when the voting will begin.
The time limit is one week, and there's no limit to how many times you vote. So you can vote for only one story or you can vote for all three, I can't really stop you either way…
Anyway! I'll be putting their title and a short description for them down below, and they'll be going under the same name on royalroad:
Hidden Railroad Under The Night Sky: Four people with pasts they want to forget, and a fifth with a past they want to remember, all meet at the Raeda-locomotive, a train that can fly in between dimensions. The five, seeking to escape the world where their tragedies took place in, naturally boards the train to leave for a newer, fresher start while the main character, a woman who only knows her name and nothing else, seeks the train out to find a way to remember her past.
Genre: Adventure, action and a dose of existential dread(cause travelling the cosmos and visiting literal universes separate from yours does that sometimes!)
POV: Third person
Infested: one billion people from 10,000 different universes have been abducted and put onto a planet 4 times bigger than earth. They are expected to kill each other until only ten are left, where the gods responsible for the abduction will then allow them to return to their own universe. The main character, a teenage girl, leaves the cave that had housed her for the past 15 years after the death of their adopted father and tormentor in search of a solution to cure one of their siblings from insanity.
Genre: Horror(I will feature tons of Lovecraftian monsters), choose your own adventure(Occasionally— maybe every 8 - 10 chapters or when I think something is important to the plot, I will put up a poll on the story where you can vote for the decision she should make. This will go on until the end of the story. Why did I add it? Because it goes well with horror, and so every choice has consequences, where the main character may actually end up losing a few allies due to your choice!)
POV: first person
In and Out of Focus: The main character, an upbeat friendship-is-number-one person, is killed after he saved his friend from a bully. God takes pity on him and transports him to another world where superpowers are a thing, and he is given an awesome power by said god:
He is given 35 card slots, and a giant catalogue of cards with a myriad of powers that range from a character that's just good with a gun to the literal manifestation of everything, the God who sends the Mc on this journey included. He, of course, picks all the really cool and powerful ones.
Problem is, after he's finished his deck, God gave him the caveat that if he wanted to use any of those cards, he has to solve or overcome a trial given by the card because those cards are sentient and require the character's consent to work.
(Note: Most of the MC's time is actually spent in the card's world where he solves their problems and only a small portion of it is shown in the real world because if I showed his time there and centred the plot around it, it would just be a Chinese xianxia novel without the shitty romantic subplot, racism, sexism, harem, fake stakes, predictability and would just be a hollow mess of wish-fulfilment. This is largely about the main character as a person and how he learns from the trials he has to face.)
Genre: Bildungsroman(google's your friend if you have no clue what that means), deliberate subversion of the typical shonen trope where the MC is just Goku and he makes friends with a ton of fighting, action.
POV: Third person
Currently, I've already finished two prologues. Now then, back to the story! Also, sorry this was late. I have tests to do!
In strawhat fashion, Luffy didn't particularly care he was on a ship— something I needn't remind you is traditionally used to keep sailors afloat— that was defying the nature of its very existence in the first place by sinking lower and lower into the terrifying depths of the ocean.
And in strawhat crew fashion, neither did his crewmates.
Except Naruto.
'Oh my god. Suspension of disbelief can only take me so far,' No, he was too busy huddling up in a corner of his room trying to internalize how anything in this awful, godforsaken world even made the littlest amount of scientific sense.
Why would he do such a thing instead of staring out into the deep ocean in wonder? The crew would say he's just weird that way.
"C'mon ninja guy! Get out of your room and watch the view! It's awesome!" Suddenly, banging on his door was the ever happy-go-lucky idiot that he was now forced to call a captain.
It was safe to say that Naruto didn't take the man-child's insistence too well: "How many times do I need to tell you that no! I will not! Go out and 'enjoy the view' like I'm not one-hundred thousand metres underwater!"
On the other hand, Naruto would explain that he's living out his life's worst nightmare in the form of a world where nothing makes sense and yet it still somehow all works out in the end. Regardless, he's stuck here now, so that makes it not my problem. Hey, I'm the narrator. I narrate things, not fix them.
In an effort to tune out his capt(or)ain and simultaneously ground himself, Naruto slightly lets up from his fetal position to study the room given to him.
It was a rather impersonalized room; no flair, no decor nor personality in sight. It looked just like a stock image of the typical guest room. Franky had gifted it to him with an apology in hand, saying it was the best he could do on such short notice considering he was separated from the Thousand Sunny for two years and thus wasn't able to work on any new features.
Personally, Naruto didn't have any sentiments towards how the room was formed artistically or intrinsically. Actually, its relatively simple nature attracted his inclinations more than any flashy designs could. I mean, he could've absolutely given himself a mansion while he was Hokage, but old habits die hard, and he preferred the more uncomplicated architecture of his old house over the lonely, empty and hollowed halls of the castles he'd seen so very often in ownership of business moguls like the Kaminarimon family.
Don't get him wrong, he loved a well-designed poster or a cute flower vase as much as the next guy, but there's just a sense of nostalgia in the room's inherent 'simpleness' that brought forth a surge of memories from his childhood. It felt a bit like home. Even if home still felt alien sometimes…
-Knock! Knock! Knock!-
The gentle rapping on his door broke Naruto out of his thoughts.
-Knock! Knock! Knock!-
Again, it went; the steady, even impacts to the deep brown wood rousing him from his seated position. He found it weird: from what he's seen, apart from a few notable exceptions nobody on the ship bothered to knock.
-Knock! Kno—-
"I'm coming! I'm coming! Can't you wait a minute?"
Still, if they were polite enough to knock, he was hospitable enough to open the door(even if all he was going to get was a request to go out more...). Turning the doorknob to the left, he opened the door with a slight creak. Despite this, it flowed easily enough, and in a second, he saw who was on the other side.
"Hello Naruto," A sickly sweet voice assaulted his eardrums, "Good afternoon,"
"R-Robin," He heralded the historian's visit with an uncertain nod and a raised eyebrow, "What are you doing here? I thought Luffy was raving for the crew to stay above deck,"
"That's new," She spoke while gazing into the room over Naruto's shoulder, "Are you claiming you're not a part of our crew? Even after explicitly saying so when we first met?"
He scratched the back of his head sheepishly, a light blush on his cheeks, "Shoot, you still remember that?"
"Like it was yesterday," She whispered wistfully…
It was cold.
She was cold.
Finger to shoulder; foot to waist, Robin was struggling even under the prodigious amounts of layers she had on(which were like… three. The other workers weren't too keen to share). Not to mention the constant blizzards in this neck of the woods, her inclination to the cold wasn't very high in the first place, couple that with long working hours, it was a stroke of good fortune she already had that ticket to the revolutionary headquarters booked.
"For now though, we work," Robin mumbled quietly to herself as she placed the gigantic grey brick onto a conveyor belt made of her hands.
"Cool ability! Is that supposed to be a devil fruit thing or a Haki thing? I can never differentiate the two,"
"!" Almost out of instinct, she crossed her arms together and activated her devil fruit, ensnaring the potential threat in the web of her hands.
"Woah Woah! Calm down! I-I mean no harm!" Robin frowned at how… young he sounded. Still, she kept her arms crossed anyway. One could never be too careful, after all.
Turning to face the newcomer, she was astounded to find a face she knew. A face she knew well.
"...False Sage," Her tone hardened at the realization of who it was that paid her a visit. She knew of his exploits at Marineford, and she knew of his terrifying abilities that held up even against the admirals. So the question arises: what would such a powerful man want with her?
She knew why. And she's willing to risk her life for it to follow her to the grave, "Even if you kill me, I'll never tell you the secrets of the Poneglyphs!"