Usually I'm pretty good at keeping myself to one major WIP per fandom at a time. In the last six months, however, I've fallen headlong into the trap of starting half a dozen different things at once but never getting very far with any of them, leaving me with a folder full of beginnings and very little to show for it, and all the while getting increasingly despondent about how miserably little fic I've posted this year. This is all by way of saying that this is not the next chapter of my vampire-fic (which is mostly complete but is still in need of betaing etc) – it is in fact the prologue to that would-be-epic idea I mentioned way back when and have had sitting around ever since. The rest of this story is still very much on my to-do list (at this point it's not even to the stage where the summary really applies to it), but in the meantime, the prologue stands alone well enough that it felt like past time to share it.

(To the one or two of you with whom I've discussed the concept behind this one before, I did just want to ask you not to mention it in the comments, as it's going to be a pretty major spoiler for later in the fic.)


Title: Skin and Bone
Summary: Ky's about to find out just how deceptively human Gears can be.
Chapter: Prologue
Characters/Pairing: (eventual) Sol/Ky
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1200

( Sol was in the way. )

Oh don't look at me like that, I know I've even covered this one already, but I have a good excuse, honest!

The degree to which this one is velithya's fault is slightly debatable - she's responsible for putting the idea in my head (it did originate from what was probably an innocent case of mishearing, but she is completely guilty of egging me on well after the mistake was cleared up), but I have no-one but myself to blame for the horrible realisation later that the parallels between Gears and Vampires work just a little too well for comfort. I mean, not only are both particularly nasty monsters that can generally pass for humans when not out hunting them (though they may also be capable of sprouting some various assortment of fangs/claws/maybe even batwings when the opportunity arises), both have their own convoluted way of converting humans into their own kind, not to mention a solid history of producing a member or two willing and capable of controlling the animalistic bloodlust within well enough to want to side with the humans. And what's that organisation dedicated to eradicating the Gears called again? Oh yeah, the Holy Order. They probably hand all their soldiers their own crucifix along with the uniform - they're all set for hunting vampires and I haven't even had to change more than a couple of nouns on the charter.

(I would start constructing elaborate conspiracy theories about whether Ishiwatari really meant to create a race of evil vampires rather than Gears in his very first draft, but that would be me getting way too carried away.)

Anyway, having given in to the inevitable, I resigned myself to turning out at least a smutty little one-parter based on the above, mixed with every vampire-related cliche I could think of in a hurry (look, if you're going to write fic based on an idea as cliched as a vampire!AU, you have to do it properly). Naturally, this turned into two scenes plus a morning-after-bit, and then the intro wasn't working so well so that turned into an extra bit as well, bringing the total up to a full four parter when I wasn't looking. I'm not even surprised when this happens anymore.

FTR, the added irony of writing a vampire AU when one of the playable characters in the source material was a vampire to being with is not lost on me. And if you think you've caught a whole lot of gratuitous references to every piece of popular vampire-related fiction to emerge in recent years in the writing to follow, it's probably not just you.


Title: Sign of the Cross (a.k.a. the Completely Gratuitous Guilty Gear Vampire AU)
Summary: Gears or vampires, it's all just another day's work for the Holy Order. But they never do quite manage to screen some of their more unusual recruits as carefully as they ought to either.
Characters/Pairing: Sol/Ky
Chapter: 1 of 4
Rating: Eventually NC-17, but only PG for this part
Word Count: 2760

( Having Ky show up in his room like that when Sol was half-asleep and hungry made him want to do all sorts of things that could get him thrown out of the Order, and punching Ky was only the least of them. )

Here I am, innocently trying to make headway with the WIP list from hell, and what happens? The Wolverine movie throws me headfirst into my annual Marvel-binge, and a week or two of inhaling comics at a dangerous rate later, I'm posting Cable/Deadpool fic instead.

Er. Oops?

Actually, considering how many times this year I've been derailed by stuff a whole lot less enjoyable, I'm not really complaining. The whole Cable&Deadpool series was awesome fun, after all. =3 And I'm, like, this close to being able to whittle a couple of things of that WIP list now, honest! Just don't ask about the Life on Mars/Dr Who crossover taking up twenty pages of my notebook.

The Marvel-binge thing actually does look like it's becoming a bit of an annual tradition, which is to say the same thing happened to me last year after Iron Man came out (only focused around the Iron Man/Avengers/Captain America titles that time, rather than 'anything with Deadpool'. And just as much velithya's fault, if not more so). Not much precedent from before that, unless you count my DC fling from back in '04 (Young Justice! <3), but given the number of movies Marvel's supposed to have in the works right now... yeah, if the standard keeps up, plenty of time for this to make tradition-status yet.

They're a funny old medium, Western Comics - as good a practical example of Sturgeon's Law as you could ask for, but the 10% (or 5%, or however you cast it) out there that is worth reading can be a damn good way to waste a few afternoons.

Some weeks you would swear the world sees you coming: case in point, I was this close to having this fic posted last week - right up until I got hit with a stomach bug you do not want the details of, and which left me still feeling out of it for the best part of a week. On the upside, my new laptop arrived! But had the choice there been one of those either-or-both things, I would have happily just waited another week or two for the laptop. -_-

Title: The Lost Boys
Summary: Order Commander Sol, Jellyfish Captain May, and the harsher realities of a world without much left to lose.
Characters: Sol, May, Potemkin
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3200
Notes: Not only have I gone and written Guilty Gear fic which isn't all about Sol and Ky, it's Side Red/Side Black AU fic which isn't all about Sol pining after and Ky. Y'know, just for a change (and 'cause there really is a lot to explore in that AU as soon as you start thinking about it). This started way back when that 'what else do you ship' post went up at the comm last year, I got into this interesting little conversation that... actually wasn't about ships at all in the end, and the idea went on nagging me until I finally did something with it.

Did I warn for angst? It's Side Red/Side Black AU fic, and despite the best efforts of a certain cheerful pirate girl, this is pretty much what angst is made for.

( It was a nice way of sugar-coating the fact the Order was now effectively recruiting kids so young they couldn’t lift a crossbow, let alone anything heavier. )

Bit of light relief between all those big projects: here's a drabble written as gift-fic for velithya (though also because wordiness is one of my worst habits and some practice with a form that forces you to be concise is always a good exercise - not to mention an attempt to exorcise one of those cheesier ideas that nags at me from time to time in some kind of safe and controlled manner. velithya is now conspiring to make sure that one backfires at me as badly as possible x_x)

Title: Normal Continuity Will Be Restored Shortly
Word count: 100 (we are very traditional about drabbles around here)
Characters/Pairing: Well, it's like this - I'm posting it to solxky, but, technically speaking...

( Ky offers the man a hand up, only to find he's not slumped against the wall but slouched, watching with naked appreciation, face so impossibly familiar it stops Ky cold. )

Title: Casualties of War
Summary: Communication has never been one of Sol’s better talents, but ‘complicating Ky’s life’ probably ranks somewhere on the list.
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 5100
Notes/tags/warnings: *deep breath* War-era, topping!Ky*, some dom/sub-ish themes, explicit sex between persons of a masculine persuasion, misdirected attempts at writing a character study, *hums "The Internet Is For Porn" for good measure*

*Though certainly not bottoming!Sol. Sol comes with two basic modes: "on top" is one, and "topping-from-the-bottom" is the other. ;)

( “Four out of twenty five casualties today,” the Commander supplied curtly, “being the only four lost to friendly fire…” )

( Story notes )

Title: Visitor Etiquette
Rating: NC-17
Summary: There are many more pleasant reasons why Sol might have found himself waking up in Ky's bed than this one.
Word Count: 3870

( Visitor Etiquette )

Normally this would be a bit much shear fangirl geekiness even for me, but what the hey. A Happy Birthday to Ky Kiske!

And because clearly wrapping some ribbon around a tea-cup wasn't going to be enough to mark the occasion, and a couple of people made a point of requesting it specifically when that 50 Sentences Challenge fic first went up (a certain one of whom would not stop 'helpfully reminding' me how appropriate it was to the date), here's a 1600 word expansion on that not-even-drabble-length ficlet we will call only Number 11. Unbetaed, unfinished, and, to be honest, taking some quite considerable liberties with the original scenario. Also without a doubt the single sappiest thing I have ever written, and despite all promise, still woefully PG.

( But I couldn't really argue it was appropriate for today, if still technically about 200 years too early. )

By weird coincidence, to follow that spur-of-the-moment ficlet about Sol getting the Fuuenken from last week, next on my actual WIP queue was one about Ky getting the Fuuraiken, and they're not even remotely connected. ^^; I actually wrote the beginning of this one way back around this time last year, but left it unfinished at the time because I wasn't confident I could do the fight scene justice. Then much later I came back and wrote the ending in a random fit of inspiration - and from then on obviously I was going to have to fill in the middle one way or another. It's very satisfying to finally have this one done.

Title: Electricity
Summary: Sol watches a newly-promoted Ky trying out the Fuuraiken for the first time, and makes an unusual proposition. Or, fighting is not much of a substitute for certain other activities, but occasionally it comes close.
Characters/Pairing: Implied Sol/Ky
Rating: PG
Word count: 3633

( The best thing Sol could have said about the ceremony was that at least they’d had the sense to keep it short. )

A short fic that got written in an hour or so coming out of a conversation with aphelion_orion about the unbelievable stubbornness of a couple of certain characters, and possible ways particular plot points might otherwise have played out. I could give further context, but the result should speak for itself~

Title: Wait and See
Summary: Sol was expecting the argument. He wasn't expecting what Ky did later. (Late war-era, going rapidly into AU territory as of the very first line.)
Rating: PG, pushing R for Sol's language.
Word Count: 828
Pairing: Just the usual implications.

I spent a moment or two when writing this wondering when Ky started channeling Watanuki, then I realised, no, no, that's just Ky, and that probably says more about my taste in fictional guys than I should be drawing attention to. *cough*

( The wooden crate landed in front of Sol with a soft thump, the look on Ky’s face over it suggesting it would have been dropped or, better yet, thrown at him had the weight and contents not demanded a more delicate approach. )