Ten-Request Meme

[persephone_kore]

Snagged from labellementeuse

The first 10 people to comment on this post get to request a drabble (or ficlet, if I feel like it) on a subject/character of their choosing from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal (not that I'd enforce it if I could, but that's how it supposedly goes). Post all fandoms you're willing to write(/draw) for.

Fandoms:
X-Men (and satellites) (may include X-Project)
Harry Potter
Young Wizards
Neopets
Abhorsen (warning: I don't have the books with me)
Star Wars (warning: limited knowledge of EU and obscure movie details)
Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Winnie the Pooh
Vor (...maybe?)
write-ins may be considered, especially since I suspect I'm forgetting something

Special Rules: If I'm not able or willing to do your request in good faith due to cluelessness, differences in interpretation, or sheer defeat (such as discovering I can't do a decent Miles-voice; I have no idea), I will ask if you want something else or reinterpret wildly. Though I suppose I could probably do a hundred words of almost anything; whether they'd be any good or just embarrass us both is another question.

Edit: First ten people to comment requesting a ficlet! There are considerably more comments than requests, as I've filled the first few in the comments and some people have responded further. I'm currently at 6 requests, 6 completed. (Maybe I should give them their own posts?)

Comments

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! Mememememe!

Er. How about a Young Wizards drabble? On Ronan.

I can write Star Wars, Young Wizards, Harry Potter, and X-men Movieverse.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

When he first took the Oath, he felt no different, but as he walked down toward the beach that day, the air changed.

Looking back, he would never be able to pinpoint exactly when he had walked through time. It felt like no more than a change in the weather, the storm coming in swift out of nowhere; the taste of the air changed, and salt-stinging wind lashed him. He hunched his shoulders against its force and then realized he was perfectly comfortable, and it was whispering to him in words he didn't know but could understand perfectly.

And the boats struggling on the sea were like nothing on the water these days.

There they are, he heard, in friendly tones. The invaders. Go get 'em.

"Go get them?" he asked aloud. The waves should have drowned it out, but he thought he heard a man scream. "What, save Ireland from them?"

Do you think so?

"Well, what else would it be?"

You already know the answer.

"You can't mean what I think you do."

Why can't I?

"They're the enemy!"

Are they?

"Of course." He glowered out as one pitched over and time, with the waves and wind, slowed to a crawl.

Ronan. The quiet voice on the wind boomed in his ears now. What did you vow?

He stared. Not this. Not this.

The wizard acknowledged one Enemy and Its minions.

Surely these were among them.

No more than you.

Not this....

This. It was not the wind speaking.

He could feel them dying. He could feel the crack of wood as though it were his own bones.

It was almost too late.

"How?"

Like this.

He trusted, spoke the words he was given, and then he was no longer human. He was the rock and the sand and the wave, the salt and current and spray, the wind and the boats themselves. He could dash these men to pieces with no more thought or effort than cutting his nails, and save his home from them.

He swayed and lifted and cradled and soothed them to shore and welcomed the spearthrust to his heart.

He lay on his back, almost a boy again, the waves moving over his face without wetting him.

The water ran off him and out of him, and he walked back, and was human again for a while.

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. That was a very neat view of his ordeal, and what it must have felt like to become one with an element.

The wizard acknowledged one Enemy and Its minions.

Surely these were among them.

Heh. Looks like he developed his nationalist leanings early.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

*grin* I wonder if I can get you to write something Carmela-centric? Failing that, or to give you an out... something with Dairine and the mobiles.

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Carmela rolled her eyes at Kit, called him "El Nino" for good measure, and headed upstairs with her package. Honestly, the way he talked, anybody would think she didn't know how to calculate currency exchange rates. Or anything, really. Even with shipping, it was a remarkably good price for a hair-curler.

Silly little brothers, wanting to protect her from the big bad world out there. Nita had a little more sense, maybe because she was a girl.

Carmela flopped on her bed and unwrapped the box, double-checking the bill and the packing invoice. This was a good company, trustworthy, and provided plenty of information so the customer could be sure what she was getting. She'd done her homework.

The operating manual was thicker than she'd expected, though. Maybe it had been printed in multiple languages. Nope, the same all the way through. She shook her head, laughing, and flipped through it. How much instruction did they think she needed to operate a hair curler?

Then her eyes fell on the bold heading VAPORIZE, and she looked again.

This really was a good deal.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

YOU ARE THE AWESOMENESS. This is honestly the best thing I've read all month, THANK YOU! :D Vaporize indeed! Perfect 'Mela.

[sprite6.livejournal.com]

Ooo, drabbles! HP for me, please, any character or pairing you choose. The prompt is "phoenix."

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

There was a soft trill and a feathery-hot weight on her chest. Helga felt energy returning to her body before her mind caught up to where she was and what had happened.

She was lying on her back in watery mud, and she felt bruised all over. She remembered their foe falling, screaming, after Salazar had stripped out the spells that had protected him from his own fouler workings.

Even Salazar had looked a little green, between when the screaming started and when the shockwave had knocked them all over.

Something pricked the skin over her heart. Helga pried her sticky eyes open and looked up into the fiery face of the enormous bird sitting on her chest.

It peered down at her, opened its beak wide, and sang.

She caught her breath and offered it her arm. It regarded her muddy sleeve until her cheeks went hot, then stepped over, still far too lightly for its size, as if it were made of flame instead of flesh.

Helga braced herself squelchily with her other hand and struggled up to sit, blinking through hair that had come loose and straggled across her face. She was tempted to wipe her eyes, but looked at the mud on her hand and thought better of it.

"I would offer you a fairer perch, handsome bird, were we at my home," she said. "If it please you, though, I welcome your company while I seek my friends."

It closed its bright eye and turned its head to show her the other still open. It had winked at her.

Helga laughed in delight, suddenly feeling that everything -- everyone -- would be all right.

[murasaki99.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, so many fun things to pick from! Alas, looks like I'm comment #11, but if you have the spare time, I'd love to see anything with Magneto (I'm an old X-men fan). Or HP, or Pooh, or SW... not picky, as you probably can tell.

Also, may I friend you? :)

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

You're actually only the fourth request. The rest is minificlets and chatter. ;) And I would be honored to be friended; I'll issue a cordial warning that our politics don't mesh well, but I'm used to that on my friendlist and it's not one of my more frequent topics.

Magneto, huh? *pokes at neglected X-bunnies*

Okay, got it. I'm afraid it's a little strange, as I was seized by the impulse to try a crossover.

*****

"You may wish to be alert, my Master. I've recently had a most peculiar guest, and I believe him to be on his way toward the Galactic Core."

"Peculiar in what way?" Darth Sidious eyed his apprentice sourly. "Are you trying to take up suborning Jedi yourself?"

Dooku bowed his head. "As it happens, I don't believe him to be Force-sensitive at all. Which only makes it all the more curious that he appears to be capable of manipulating both metal and energy fields at a distance."

"Lightsaber blades?"

"There was no convenient occasion for a test." Dooku looked the hologram in the eye. "That is not, however, the strangest thing about him. He asked me whether the war had started yet."

Silence.

"Have you an explanation for this?" Sidious asked at last.

"I have been trying to formulate one that is more reasonable than his claim to be from another universe where we are fictional characters."

"Interesting. Well, I shall look forward to his arrival." Sidious looked off to the side. "A further question."

"Yes, my Master?"

"What is that thing on your desk?"

Dooku looked down. The man calling himself Magneto was enough of a challenge to explain, but fairly urgent; he had really hoped to avoid discussing his second unusual visitor. "I believe it's intended to be a depiction of an infant Gamorrean," he said truthfully, "although not a very accurate one."

He also clamped down on it carefully in the Force so that the creature of fabric and fluff would not announce to the Sith Master, with as much courage as it could muster, that its name was P-p-p-piglet.

*****

[dreagoddess.livejournal.com]

*dies*

*rereads and dies again*

*rerereads and just gigglefits hysterically*

[murasaki99.livejournal.com]

Wa-ha-ha!!! Hee-hee! Poor Piglet! He's going to need a rescue from Pooh (and Tigger!). Someone left the dimensional gate open, I see. *grin*

Sorry I missed this till now, my LJ isn't reliably sending me email notifications of people's replies. -_-

And Magneto meets Sidious?? Which Maggie is it? Erik Lensherr who is 'mostly well', or 1980's "I'm going to rule the world!" Magneto? (I like 'em both, actually...)

Thanks so much!

[polgarawolf.livejournal.com]

*Falls off chair, laughing. Dies, just dies!*

[charmisjess.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of choking on my soda in laughter at the pppiglet one.

Kind of a lot. Oh my gosh. :D

Only *you* could have pulled that off so well! *shakes head* *still laughing* "Do you have an explanation for this?"

...but now that you've done a Star Wars one, can I not request a Dook one? Or, I guess I'm still first ten! Mwah! Okay, so Star Wars, I choose you. :D As far as subject, if you dont want to write Dooku again, you can write anyone you'd like.

But Dooku is the best. ^^

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Glad to have made you laugh. Please don't drown. *g*

And of course you can request Dooku.

*****

This had been intended as a simple, if uncomfortable, mission.

Dooku had spent much of his life as a Jedi, had become a renowned Jedi Master, had left the Order at a late age to take up his hereditary title as Count of Serenno and become even more renowned in that guise as a political agitator and the leader of the CIS, and had caused a considerable stir by returning to the Jedi. Despite being a Sith in the interim, he had been reinstated, even entrusted with the training of a Padawan.

So, naturally, a few years later, he was periodically sent on missions where the main purpose to be goggled at.

This had been one of them right up until the lovely underground building he and Scout had been about to enter suffered a malfunction of all its doors.

The first order of business had been for their hosts to run around panicking. The second had been to try remote access. The third had been to hand Dooku a set of blueprints and stand around looking hopeful while he deciphered them and found out whether he could trigger remote access using the Force. (He was fairly sure he'd hit the switch, but to no effect. He flatly refused to attempt any more complicated repairs.)

The fourth was for the Jedi to carve their way in with lightsabers and release everyone who'd been trapped inside before they were overcome by panic. This was delicate work, particularly since people kept mobbing the doors.

Dooku sighed, banged on one of the last doors in the possibly futile hope of getting everyone out of the way, and made a triangular opening with two smooth strokes. The metal fell away.

"Agh!" There was a dual yelp, and Dooku took a step back, his blade coming up to guard in one hand, the other putting Scout behind him.

Dooku did not yelp often, and wasn't very happy about having done it now. But then, he didn't often run into someone he distinctly remembered skewering with a lightsaber some years back, either. "Lorian Nod," he said flatly. "Aren't you dead?"

"Dooku," Lorian returned in a similar tone. His dress sense evidently hadn't improved since his stint as a space pirate; he was wearing a colorful shirt with no fastenings, which he pulled open in the front to display a neat round scar over his stomach. "Didn't you do this with a red blade? But you were a little too neat about it. And you missed my spine."

"Too bad. You were one of the few kills from my Sith years that I hadn't come to regret." Dooku grimaced and flicked on his commlink. "Excuse me. Do you have a Lorian Nod on your guest-list? --On purpose? --Oh, very well. Thank you." He flicked it off. "Evidently you're supposed to be here."

Lorian shrugged. "I could have told you that."

"Yes, but I wouldn't have believed you. Scout--" Dooku looked around at her and broke off to look back at Lorian, unnerved. Like his own, Lorian's hair had faded to gray in the intervening years -- considerably earlier than Dooku's, actually. But the eyes were the same. And green eyes weren't that rare, but the exact shade, and the shape.... He thought suddenly of asking if Lorian had ever been to Vorzyd V, but decided that he didn't want to know. "Stay here and keep an eye on this man," he finished. "He was in training to be a Jedi once but has since had a very erratic and frequently criminal career. I'm not sure what he's plotting now."

Scout moved forward, hiding nerves, as Dooku stalked past her. He wasn't worried about the nervousness. She'd be fine in action.

Lorian raised his eyebrows. "Why, Dooku. You'd leave your impressionable young padawan alone here with me?"

Dooku turned. "I would leave you in her charge, yes," he said coolly. "She is capable of taking care of herself in a fight and of thinking sideways around you if necessary, although I warn you that I will find out if you try anything."

"I could tell her stories," Lorian said pleasantly. "To pass the time."

Dooku's back was to them again. "Do that, if you like," he said, without pausing in his stride. "If the truth she knows hasn't set her against me, your lies aren't likely to manage it." And he kept going, around the next corner, for doorways without dead men behind them.

[polgarawolf.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that's interesting. I rather like his parting response.

[dreagoddess.livejournal.com]

You have 15 comments but not 15 challenges yet, so I'll throw another one out there.

*thinks*

*blinks and sporks away the Star Wars/Brady Bunch crossover that appeared for no reason*

Okay...Christopher Lee. As many movie incarnations as you can pile together. *grins wickedly*

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

I don't know anything about the Brady Bunch! Well, not much.

---

"Where are we?"

Dooku looked around the curiously flat, silvery landscape and the blowing snow, then pulled up the hood of his cloak and returned his gaze to his padawan. "I haven't the faintest idea."

"I'm sure this isn't what the planet looked like when we landed the ship."

"So am I." Dooku looked back to check that their scanner was still getting a signal from the beacon on their ship, then squinted ahead at a brown shadow with corners. "That may be a building up ahead."

It was. At least, it was part of a building. The edges of the walls looked as if it had been detached from the middle of a much longer one and plonked down in the middle of this odd plain. There was a small sign on the door in an alphabet Qui-Gon wasn't familiar with. Dooku said it was an obscure rendition of Basic, and read that the occupant was a healer, specializing in teeth and named Wonka. He knocked.

Silence.

Dooku knocked again more insistently.

There were footsteps, and then, to Qui-Gon's surprise, the door swung open a crack instead of sliding. A white-bearded man with Dooku's nose peered sternly at them over a pair of lenses. "Do you have an appointment?"

"Yes," Dooku said, "but not here. We were hoping for coordinates and directions--"

"I have several patients here who do have appointments." Wonka looked even more disapproving. "You may come in, but you'll have to wait."

They followed him in. Qui-Gon fumbled with the strange door mechanism, but got it to close. At least it was warm inside, though it smelled strange. Chemicals, smoke... blood.

Wonka left them in a sitting room; through the next door, Qui-Gon glimpsed a man who looked even more like Dooku reclining with his mouth wide open to display elongated canines. He heard Wonka saying, "I don't care if you only drink one thing, you must still--" before the door shut.

He looked around the small sitting room, filled with other people who must be the rest of Healer Wonka's appointments. He decided to avoid the sinister-looking individual examining a tube of lipcolor and wandered over to a man with long, sleek white hair and beard, white robes, a long staff, and a strained expression.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Qui-Gon Jinn." He paused expectantly.

...Except for the hair, this person looked an awful lot like Wonka. He turned a level gaze on Qui-Gon that at first seemed disconcertingly familiar and then grew just plain disconcerting as the weight of centuries descended on it. "Saruman the White." With the staff, the old man gestured to his companion. "This is the Mouth of Sauron."

Qui-Gon had been trying not to look. It wasn't that he was unfamiliar with the being's form; he was too young to have met most of the galaxy's species, and unfamiliar shapes were just new. But injury and infection were a different matter, and the Mouth looked as if Sauron had avoided all forms of dental hygiene for some decades. The rows of teeth were yellow, the breath that emanated from it was foul, and long raw cracks extended from the lips. "I see," Qui-Gon said bravely. "Pleased to meet you."

"If you think this is bad," Saruman said darkly, "you should see his Eye."

Qui-Gon thought Saruman seemed unhappy, but for once in his life he slipped away after as little small talk as he could manage and ended up talking to a detective named Sherlock until Dooku -- who was never, never clumsy and had therefore clearly done it on purpose -- brushed against a door standing slightly ajar and caused it to swing further open.

Something that looked rather like a stick-model of a droideka leaped from an upper shelf to attack him.

Qui-Gon jumped to his feet, reaching for his lightsaber, but there was no blaster-fire. Dooku had already plucked the thing off his shoulders and was holding it by one gangling limb at arm's length. "What is this?" he asked of no one in particular.

Wonka appeared in the other doorway again, looming with fury. "That," he said ominously, "is an orthodontic appliance."

Dooku looked at Wonka, then at the orthodontic appliance, then up at their host again. "Ah," he said politely. "For what species?"

Qui-Gon had no idea why this got them thrown out, but he didn't mind.

[dreagoddess.livejournal.com]

Aiiiiiieeee!!!!!! You even used Fu Manchu! *gigglefits hysterically* Wonderful!!! *wild applause*

[polgarawolf.livejournal.com]

*Can't breathe for laughing!!!*

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

How did I miss this one?

*glee*

May I request YW, with something Carl and Tom as they are most days?

And please feel free to request something back, drabble request always open!

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

Carl looked up from the latest development in claudications as Tom came in the back door. "There you are. Did the koi have anything interesting to say?"

"Plenty." Tom sat down at the table and picked up his pen, twiddling it against a notebook. Today was a longhand day. "I don't know how most of it applies yet, but I did pass along a koan that seemed applicable to the macroflagellates' problems."

"Good." Carl indicated the kitchen counter without looking. "I made you a sandwich."

"Thanks."

After a moment, Carl added helpfully, "You should eat it. You could always think of digestion as an editing process, if that helps."

Tom barked a laugh and retrieved the sandwich. After swallowing the first half, he dived back into the process of making fiction from his life.

[sevenall.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! This is brilliant and the last line is perfection.

[tinyangl.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. I'm interested in requesting something. Any chance you can write something from YW. I don't know why, but I want to see something about Dairine and Kit. (Not romance wise though. Just, kinda friend like? *shrugs* I can go for anything.)

And thanks in advance! ^_^

[persephone-kore.livejournal.com]

"Where exactly do you think you're going?"

Dairine jumped slightly, but slipped her food supply -- better thought out than when she'd been a brand-new wizard and ended up spreading mustard with her fingers -- into her personal claudication without fumbling it. "Kit. Didn't realize you'd come in. Are you waiting for Nita?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets and lounged against the kitchen doorway. "Yeah. I was here when you came down," he said, looking very faintly amused, but also tired. The amusement vanished, replaced by thoughtfulness. "You're going to look for Roshaun, aren't you?"

Dairine touched the sunstone around her neck. "I can't find him in Timeheart," she said, "and he's not forgotten." What's loved, lives. And Roshaun had his family, and his world even if she wasn't sure it appreciated him... and her. Her smile was a little wobbly. "Anyway he's..." she hated it when her voice gave out "...too obnoxious to die."

Kit stepped forward and hugged her. "Be careful." He didn't let go, and after a moment Dairine leaned her forehead against him and hugged back.

"You're getting tall," she mumbled. "I'll come back okay, you know. ...You're not going to let me leave without talking to Nita first, are you?"

"Not on your life."