The First Tuesday Rewrite Thread

[Dullahan]

tfw when you start playing red light green light in your own mind

is this some 'street' thing

goddamn kids today

[SeiKeo]

It's like riding a bike, they told me.

Bullshit.

When you ride a bike your hands don't start fighting each other to turn in opposite directions, and you don't suddenly lose sight of the road ahead of you, and you definitely don't start feeling sick whenever you look back to see where you started from.

Oh, it's just me?

[Laith]

Okay this is Dullahan's thing. This could be better if I knew something about archery. And if I wrote constantly =V

----

Naoshige barely acknowledged the last shots from Yakeda in his search. He wasn't worried about this late entrant but curious as to why he wasn't there yet. Even when the score was being counted, Noshige continued his fruitless search for someone who may be the last contestant. Perhaps he had abandoned the competition; a rare occurrence to be sure, any worthy samurai would not even begin to fathom the idea, but it was certainly possible.


“Rest!” The referee voice announced, letting Yakeda Shukugan return to his teacher side. Both teacher and student were soon deep in discussion. By the look of their faces and the student's score, which had been respectable but still no match to Naoshige's own, it was not to be a good one.


“Next!” The referee announced again. Everyone, samurai within the pavilion and the commoners from the sides of the range, looked expectantly as if hoping the next contestant would appear from thin air. Naoshige thought his theory to been correct when someone moved from beneath the pavilion. The crowd shifted and from there, perhaps having been there from the start, the final entry appeared. He seemed to been waiting in the shade and there was no Master at his side. The crowd began to whisper in hushed tones as he walked to the shooting line.


“Who is that?”


“Isn't he the son of... you know, that...”


“No, it's someone else.”


“An outsider, perhaps?”


“I daresay you're right?”


“My word.”


The public truly thought of him as someone not worth mentioning. And his appearance gave him no favour either. He was shorter than the others. He also seemed to be the youngest at sixteen. His hair was messy and wild. His robes were plain with a dull sand color. The clothes were unraveled at places too. In short, he was a ridiculous lower samurai with nothing to his name. The competitors were no better, some even offended that he had bothered to show up, thinking it a personal offense. Not only were they being watched by commoners, who had no appreciation toward their art, to think a someone with no noble blood could participate alongside them. Even those who didn't mind the audience, those who came to show off, either by choice or, more commonly, orders from their teachers, looked at him in disdain.


“There's no need to worry. He looks like someone who has lost a bet.” The Master said interrupting Naoshige's thoughts.


“Master...”


“Your feelings are not different, boy. No school given and nobody has heard about him. He even arrived empty handed; that's one of mine he's borrowed.


Naoshige nodded. The last archer laid out his arrows in between the disinterest and whispers of the crowd, who discussed among themselves what they would do in the afternoon when the major festivities would start. Even some of the commoners had walked away. Only the referees and scorekeepers kept their attention on the last archer and they were being paid to do so.


The Master snorted. “Look at his posture. He's rushing his set-up. Doesn't bode at all well. Not at all.” Naoshige glanced at his Master wryly smiling. “I don't envy the poor boy, I must say.”


“Who is he?” Naoshige asked. There was something inside him that wished to know. “What's his name?


“Name..., what was it?” The Master's furrowed his brow. “If I recall, I think it was-”


The noise of the crowd interrupted his musing. The remaining commoners were cheering. Naoshige turned to look at the range to see the cause.


The archer had released his arrow and it had found its mark.


Right on the center of the target.


“...Ryougi.” The Master continued, his voice losing some of the confidence he had a moment ago. “Ryougi Matsu.”

[Xamusel]

Okay, so I did a bit more work on the snippet I thought I had prepared, and I figured I'd just share it with you guys to make sure I could get it fully critiqued or something.

#

Inside the Grail…

Bare and silver and iron.

Stone for foundation and the Grand Duke of Contracts.

My great master Schweinorg for the ancestor.

‘Ah… the sounds of some idiot thinking that they have a chance of gaining a clean wish from my home,’ a rather youth-like entity thought. It was a young man garbed in black wrappings around his hands, forearms, feet, and shins, wearing a red bandanna around his head and tattered red clothes wrapped around his waist, and he was sitting in a chair of sorts, one that he willed into existence here within the Greater Grail. While this might seem to be extremely noteworthy, it actually wasn’t, all things considered. ‘While I wouldn’t mind granting someone a clean wish, I’m certain that it would be intercepted and mislabeled, thus forcing my home to be destroyed. All things considered, all I really wanted was to live a normal life for once, but the Grail couldn’t get that wish granted yet… was it due to the Avesta erasing my name?’

The entity let out a long sigh, before he got up from his chair. Walking up to a bookshelf he willed into existence, he took a book off of a shelf and opened it. ‘60 years… it’s been too long since I’ve been stuck here, without finally getting a wish granted in the process. At the rate I’m aware of, the next war won’t be for until 2054, unless something happens to start it early by some years.’

Skimming through the table of contents of the book he had in his hands, he groaned for a bit, before he decided to replace the book in its spot. ‘I don’t know how to best get out of this mess as is,’ he thought, internally groaning this time. ‘If only I wasn’t stuck here since near the beginning… or that—’

A cold female laugh brought him momentarily out of his thoughts. “My my, Angra Mainyu, you seem to be thinking deeper than is considered healthy for you,” the female mocked the first entity. “Could it be that you’re trying to circumvent the fact that you’re stuck here for what amounts to the life of the world?”

‘—I wasn’t given such an awful bunk mate,’ the male youth finished in his head, turning to face his fellow ‘prisoner’.

The woman was garbed in black robes, had pale green skin, a staff with a dark green orb on the top, and two long horns that were vaguely reminiscent of a dragon’s horns, sticking up the top. This woman was, quite clearly, a dangerous person by looks alone. The looks about her easily identified her as—

“Dammit, Caster! That’s not my name!” the young man snapped at the woman, Caster. “The only name I have right now is Avenger, which you keep on ignoring for whatever reason!”

A wall for the descending winds.

The four gates shall close and come out the crown.

Let the three-forked road to the kingdom cycle.

Caster merely shrugged off Avenger’s anger. “But we’re the only ones here, and we have evil flowing through our legends,” she said simply, “so I don’t see why you think you can disregard your name so easily. If you were summoned as anything but Avenger, you would still be Angra Mainyu, the Persian God of—”

“Correction, Caster,” Avenger quipped. “I was born a simple village kid somewhere in the mountains of the Middle Eastern region. My only claim to fame is being labeled the one responsible for the evils of the world by my village for all my long life and beyond. There’s absolutely no way I could’ve been a part of the Pantheon of the Zoroastrian deities before being born a regular human. If I was, I wouldn’t have been allowed to participate, anyway!”

Caster waved off the correction, before turning towards a wall in the metaphysical room. “Either way, I have a prediction of the day when this world will end, Angra,” she said. “My prediction is April 1st, 2004, when the Heart of the world will be found.”

Avenger growled when he heard that. “You thought I would like to know that… why?” he questioned.

Caster turned her face over to Avenger. “Don’t you want to be free?” she asked, a tempting smirk on her face. “Just imagine the pure Darkness that will empower you to break free of this prison. I have done some research on the subject of this matter… Darkness is what will get you out, since it is in your very essence, not the pitiful Light.” That said, she restored her original position and walked over to the wall, a portal of energy appearing in front of her.

“Where are you headed?” Avenger questioned, seeing her about to leave. “Don’t tell me you’re headed back to your legend, Caster.”

Enclose. Enclose. Enclose. Enclose. Enclose.

Five times for each repetition.

Just destroy the enclosed time.

Caster stopped a few steps away from the portal, turning to face Avenger again. “My legend isn’t quite finished yet, as it would appear,” she said to him. “I still need to make sure that I have all the pieces in place for the end of this world… it would be such a pity if you tried to break free without my help. I will be back in time for the beginning of the ten year countdown.” With that, she resumed walking through the portal, vanishing from the Grail for the time being.

#

Same notes as the last time I shared a snippet in this thread, with one added note. The timeframe of this particular conversation is the time when Kirei Kotomine summons Assassin, which is a part of canon's arrangement.

- - - Updated - - -

...and I had to edit the post because I failed at a double-spacing check. My bad.

[Gl❀w]

Fuck me up again, fam.

Only note here is that it is, as with the first snippet I posted up, using Waver-voice for the 3rd person POV.

I think we all know by now the bride is Luvia because I am bizarre trash that way.

Spoiler:

It suddenly occurred to him—and shocked him how he’d never realized it before, or rather, that he’d never registered it on a scale ratio before—how tiny she was. She typically came off as larger than life, a personality too big for the constraints of laughable things like physical size. Something like a force of nature in her ability to instill both dread and wonder. Yet truthfully, as she stood before him, he estimated she could only be a little over five feet, give or take a couple inches. Had she really always been this petite?

Rider’s voice telling him he should change his wish in order to be taller echoed in his ears… or maybe it was something making fun of him for an assumption he wanted it for that. If only his old friend could see this comical sight, mismatched bride and groom in equally mismatched proportions. He’d probably congratulate him on gaining a foot and ignore anything actually relevant about the situation. And then, probably, he’d ask if there would be wine. A rueful smile tugged at the left corner of his mouth.

No, old friend, there won’t be wine. It’s not that kind of affair.

It was too bad, actually. He could use some wine right about now, and he’d hazard a guess that she could, too. His eyes had met hers upon entering the room, nervously anticipating a glare of challenge; instead, he had met only a sense of personal resolve with a faint undercurrent of resignation. Wine would at least make this ten minutes go by faster. Maybe Rider would’ve had a point about that one.

Tick. Tock.

Her dress seemed remarkably plain. It stood in stark contrast to her usual abundance of frills and ribbons, adorned with nothing save for an intriguing pattern of guipure lace. Something about it seemed familiar. Why did he know those symbols? Where had he seen—he suppressed a groan. He knew where he’d seen those symbols.

Affixed to accursed stuff at the border of her veil was a thin half-crown of lilies that was crafted out of… was it really just made of hair? …which transitioned into a braid tucked at the junction of hairline and ear. He noticed, too, that her hands clutched tightly to a matching bouquet of lilies. So it was to be lilies today, hm? It certainly fit that damn dress.

Greek mythos described the origin of the lily as a flower that sprang from the breast milk of Hera. Waver had unfortunately noted over the years that the old guard greatly enjoyed injecting sex and fertility symbolism into every spare crevice of their social structures. He’d concluded long ago that they were either all great perverts, or entirely too committed to their roles in the cycle of life. It didn’t hurt that it coincided neatly to their obsession with building upwards and forwards through the future generations.

Then again, lilies also tended to be the flower of funerals, so maybe she was playing it from that angle. He’d have to agree with her on that front.

[Gl❀w]

I could just dump one of my old writings here and let you (anyone) have free reign with it, if it helps get the juices flowing. Re-write it, continue it as your own, whatever...

i swear i suggested something exactly like this months ago

but yes good idea

reviving this thread to remind people it exists

[Historia]

I forgot it existed.

[ItsaRandomUsername]

Since this can do more good if it can be accessed anytime guilt-free I decided to do what I should've done long aeons ago and stick this bad boy.

[Draconic]

Huh. This thread is a good idea.
And Avenger sitting around with Maleficent. Nice job Xamusel. Though I feel the need to ask: Is she supposed to sound like she's just stepped out of Kingdom Hearts?
Well, actually, you are a Grail Works participant. Kingdom Hearts is your kind of game.

[Xamusel]

...oops. I forgot that this was here for some reason.

Anyway, Draconic, with all the relevant information coming out from the Kingdom Hearts sector, I feel like it's possible for Maleficent to pull off what I had her do, especially given the Book of Prophecies deal going on.

[Draconic]

Oh right… yeah, she's up to something and we have no way of knowing what…

[Xamusel]

Not unless Nomura decides to tell us, or the reveal happens in a game, anyway...

[Draconic]

Might happen in the X Unchained Back Cover.

[Xamusel]

Good point on that... although I'm certain now that Braig is up to something evil and more ridiculous than Xehanort.

[Draconic]

Wait… how do you figure that, exactly?

[Gl❀w]

not to be a buzzkill or anything but maybe this'd be better in vm's

[Xamusel]

Oops... perhaps I should've kept my lip buttoned.

...for those of you who don't get the reference, it's from the original Looney Toons show, where there was a mobster who told his subordinate to "button his lip".

[SeiKeo]

Oops... perhaps I should've kept my lip buttoned.

...for those of you who don't get the reference, it's from the original Looney Toons show, where there was a mobster who told his subordinate to "button his lip".

you complete dingus, it's not a reference, it's an idiom

[Xamusel]

Is it actually an idiom? How was I supposed to know that when I was only familiar with the Looney Toons version of that phrase?

[Frostyvale]

Idiom:

a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., rain cats and dogs, see the light ).