P4: Something Simple

Here's a Persona 4 piece that I did when I was still trying to decide how to write a story about them. Ultimately, it turned out that the characters were not where I wanted them to be (in life or in personality), so I scrapped it. The origin of the idea was to try and follow the progression of thought for someone creating. For Kanji, it was sewing; for Yukiko it may have been cooking; Yousuke, writing music; Chie, practicing a kata... that sort of thing. The problem was that the two characters I started with (Kanji and Rise) just didn't feel right. They sounded, as we say in the fan fiction realm, "OOC," or "out of character."

And, to be honest, they weren't the characters I wanted to write about, deep down.

But there are still little parts to this piece that I enjoy. You can judge for yourself.

It started with something simple: an idea. Then came stencil paper, tailoring chalk, fabric, and shears. Next, the right needles and thread, matched for stitch size and color. Then the proper diligence, to see the project through. And finally cotton stuffing, to bring a little life to it.

Kanji Tatsumi sat back in his chair and regarded his clever handiwork with no small sense of pride. Only a few years ago, he had considered his talent for sewing and design something for which he should be ashamed, about which he should keep quiet. It did not exactly fit everyone's image of a streetwise punk, to be sitting in his mother's textiles shop making stuffed dolls for the children in town. But time and experience had tempered the wild youth within him, and he now took great satisfaction in being able to create toys so unique.

Of course, the fledgling business endeavor had not been the only thing to ease his temperament.

“Aww, what a cute little guy!”

Kanji turned at the sound of the female voice. He smiled, wagging the stuffed animal in the air. “You talkin' about me, or the bear?”

The newcomer smirked at him. “The bear, you silly,” she said. She waved her hand out at him, swiping playfully at his head. “I'd never call you a 'little guy,'” she told him, hooking her arms around his neck and swinging into his lap with the inborn grace of a dancer.

He snickered. “You're happy,” he observed.

Rise Kujikawa grinned at him, showing her perfect, idol-worthy smile. “Work day's over! I wanna go someplace.”

Kanji shrugged. “Where d'you wanna go?”

She returned the gesture. “I dunno. Okina, maybe?” Her eyes lit up. “Oo! I heard from Ai-chan that Croco-Fur got some new fashions in this week!”

“Okina?” He scoffed. “That's over an hour by train! It's already almost six.”

She shrugged her shoulders back at him, then leaned toward him and whispered, like a conspirator. “We could get a room. Stay the night.”

He chuckled. “And they called me a bad influence!” He settled back in his chair, bouncing her a bit with his knees. “”How about we just go out, here? Aiya's always good.”

Rise made a face. “That's boring! I wanna go someplace different.”

He shrugged.

Stoll and Lel

Another Stoll and Lelie piece, this one trying to capture some of the awkwardness between the two older stowaways.

Lelie pulled at the strings of the makeshift instrument, creating a gentle, rhythmic reverberation in the hollowed shell. She smiled and plucked again, experimenting with force and tempo. Then she hummed, matching the tonality of her voice to that of the ululating strings. Her mentor had taught her how to play many instruments, and how to sing many songs, but there was only one – an ancient one – that she remembered at this moment:

“Sing I must, whether will or no.
Such pain over him, whose friend am I.
Grace and poetry avail me not
Nor beauty, virtue, wit.
Brought low, betrayed am I,
As if no charms at all.”

“Lel?”

Lelie looked up, startled by the intrusion. She was accustomed to being alone; outside of her lessons, few within the compound associated themselves with the Cressidene.

She smiled when she saw the young man standing at her door. “Oh, Stoll. Hello.” She set her instrument on the table and stood up.

He smiled back at her from the doorway. “I heard you singing. It was pretty.”

She chuckled, feeling self-conscious. Stoll had always been sweet to her, but as one of the fledgling Comitatenses, he was definitely lacking in the finer graces. But the bio-engineered soldiers were trained merely to be proficient fighters, not to have the more subtle skills of the social classes. “Thank you,” she said, bowing her head.

He took a step inside, then another. Very shortly, he had crossed to the table, where he laid one hand. “You don't have to stop,” he muttered. “I like listening to you sing.”

Lelie hid a smile behind her hand, playing demure the way she had been taught to do. She moved around the table to him. “That's very sweet of you to say.”

He offered her a slightly lopsided smile. “I wish I could do things like that.”

“Sing?” She asked, and he gave a little nod of his head. She chuckled again and took him by the hand, leading him over to her cot. “It's easy,” she told him, and reached over to the instrument on the table. This she handed to him, placing it in the crook of one of his arms. “I'll show you.”

She sat down beside him and reached across to his other hand. She laid his fingers over the strings in much the same way that she had done, except that he looked significantly more awkward.

She giggled. “Just pluck at the strings,” she said, and she showed him how.

Stoll pushed the instrument back at her. “I don't want to play. I just want to listen to you.”

Lelie made a cooing noise. “Oh, it's really not that difficult. Just give it a try.”

He shook his head. “No, I- I can't.” He raised his hands, as if in surrender. “I can't do this sort of thing. I'm not built for it.”

She smiled again, more softly now. “Stoll, don't be ridiculous. You can do whatever you want to do.”

His eyes darted up to hers, and then suddenly, he leaned forward and kissed her. His arms closed around her, and he pressed against her, his grip tight on her arms. He pushed her down toward the flat of her cot, his strength and weight overpowering her.

Lelie felt an alarmed noise escape from her throat, though muffled by his kiss. She shoved both palms against his chest, succeeding in pushing him away enough to shimmy out from beneath him. “Stoll-!” She sat back from him, clutching at her tunic. “Wh-What are you doing?”

He glanced away, mouth agape, and then stood up quickly. “I'm sorry,” he muttered. “I'm sorry, I don't know-” He backed away toward the door and bit at his bottom lip. “I'm sorry!” He said again, and bolted from her room.

1 More Chance!

Here's one that is actually a dump. I wrote this originally to take place after the protagonists spend their first night together, but I decided that it took them in a direction I didn't want to go, and too quickly. So, it got set aside.

Junes was oddly quiet, a fact for which Chie was actually grateful. She and Yousuke walked through the store together, sometimes stopping to look at this or that trinket or amenity, during which time he would step close to her and peer over her shoulder in a surreptitious embrace, or she would unobtrusively hold his hand. She was careful not to be too obvious, taking delight in even these simple acts of affection. There were still boundaries that neither of them had quite dared to cross, yet.

Their first night spent together – last night – had been without sex, mostly because neither one of them had been prepared with any protection. Yousuke had told her that he hadn't wanted her to think he was assuming they would get busy, and Chie had told him that she hadn't wanted him to think that she was easy. So instead they had stayed up late watching random television, that really just served the purpose of background noise while they kissed and cuddled and humped and ground. Eventually, they had fallen to sleep (Yousuke in just his shorts and Chie in a tee-shirt and panties) on her hastily-made futon, her back pressed to his front in a spooning position. And when she had woken up that morning, she had felt nothing less than sheer joy to know that he was beside her.

She had had precious little in her kitchen that was suitable for breakfast (Yousuke pointed this out as more evidence that she wasn't really living in her apartment so much as just sleeping and showering there, an observation that rankled her), so they had decided to get dressed and find something to forage in town. The obvious place to start was Junes, because he knew its ins and outs like the back of his hand...and because he always kept a set of extra clothes in his desk.

Chie followed him up a flight of stairs and then down a blank hallway to the Junes management offices, passing by empty cubicles and closed doors. It felt very much like any other office, except that it was noticeably quiet.

“It's like a tomb in here,” she muttered.

Yousuke shrugged as he unlocked one of the office doors. “It's Sunday. Tsubaru-san's here today, but he never gets in this early.” He opened the door and ushered her inside. “Come on in.”

She looked around the large office space, silently impressed by the state-of-the-art technology on each of the four shared desks. At the police station, they had to share computers between officers (detectives like Dojima had their own), and there were more or less communal printers and copy machines. But here, each station had its own computer (sometimes more than one), its own printer, some sort of photo scanner-thing, as well as the more common items like phones and drafting areas.

“Wow,” she said softly.

He reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out a clean red-and-white tee-shirt. “What's that?”

She trailed her fingers along the top of one of the other desks. “There's a lot of expensive stuff in here.”

“If we don't promote, people don't buy,” he said, his voice muffled while he slipped out of his old shirt and into the new one. He shook his head free of the collar, and she was reminded of the way he used to do that same move after a fight. He had had a singular way of moving back then, a kind of preoccupied, don't-bother-me stance, tapping his foot to the music in his ears even while facing down Shadowy monsters.

She chuckled at the memory of those bygone days.

He tossed the old shirt into the drawer and closed it with his foot, then looked up at her. “What's so funny?”

She shrugged. “For a minute, I felt like we were back in Mayonaka.” At his puzzled look, she explained: “You used to shake your head like that, whenever you'd take your headphones off.” She noticed with no little interest that he wasn't at this moment wearing his headphones. Now that she thought about it, he hadn't been wearing them since the last time they had gone into Okina.

He smirked when she asked him about it. “I still use 'em, but....” He shrugged, noncommittal. “I've got other things to think about lately.”

Stowaways

Lelie curled her fingers around the edge of the cargo hold door and gently swung it open.

“What do you see?” Tyc whispered from behind her.

Lelie craned her head around and shushed him. As she turned back to the hold, she held her breath.

It was a wide, open room, about as big as the old galley at the Institute. Metal hold containers lined all four walls, and with the exception of a few emergency lights along the stairs and floor, the hold was completely dark, a thankful allowance given their predicament.

She crept out of the container and, with one finger pressed to her lips to remind them to be quiet, she beckoned her companions forward.

Short, compact Tyc came out first, peering around from behind those over-sized goggles that helped pilots focus in Darkspace. The eyewear was usually connected to a navigation computer, projecting a heads-up display of vehicle location and statistics to the wearer, but without a precious computer (or ship, for that matter), the goggles were essentially just a trapping. Tyc still wore them, though. Bred as a long-haul pilot, he would have felt naked without them.

Lithe Imien was next, her fingers stretched out before her, the subtle electro-receptors along her skin glowing faintly in the dim light. She stepped lightly, her bare feet noiseless against the metal floor. She cocked her head to the side. “I can feel the engine – it's about two levels below us. I'll need a map for anything more.” She turned to Lelie and blinked, uselessly. The cipher had been blind since birth: all the better to open her peripheral senses to the programming of being a sensitive.

Stoll was last from the container, cracking his neck as he stood to his full height. Bio-engineered to be a soldier, he was both tallest and broadest among them. Even at the end of adolescence, he was all sinewy muscle, without hint of the age or paunch of the guards at the Institute. He was also the most capable in a fight, should things come to that.

“Just find me a gun,” he muttered to Imien.

Lelie shook her head. “No. No guns.” She took a step toward Stoll. “You promised.”

Stoll leaned toward her, dropping his voice further. “Lel, I can't protect us without something to use as a weapon.”

“No guns,” Lelie repeated, emphatic. She raised both of her smooth, slender hands in a warding-off gesture. She straightened. She was not as tall as he was, but she had presence; all concubines did. “I want to be a Substantive as much as you do,” she murmured. “But the only thing guns will get us is killed.” She looked beneath the dark hair in front of his eyes. “I didn't risk everything to get out of the Institute just to be shot on a nameless cargo freighter, did you?”

Stoll glanced away, unable or unwilling to hold her gaze. He might have been able to snap her neck with a single quick motion, but there were still some ways that she was stronger than him, and they both knew it.

Welcome!

Welcome to the BonusParts fiction dump!

This is just a place that I've set up where I can plop all of the unfinished or otherwise "dumped" fics that I've worked on. Most of them will just be the straight text from my archives, and lots of times I don't have the original ideas thought through, so there may not even be an explanation as to characters or locations or even plot.

...But it will offer a glance into the mind of a want-to-be writer.