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wtf_hollowDecided to split 1.5 across two entries, on the grounds that it seemed unreasonably long.
I also want to note that Prom is an Open Source Universe, fully open to collaboration. So if some enterprising individual wanted to dive in and contribute, play with the toys in the sandbox, explore previously uncharted realms, that would be super neato. I'd love to see someone have a go with the upperclassmen, or OMG the faculty!! hahahaha.
ok anyway, Friday Fic! I have no earthly idea how this arc resolves, yet (apart from one eventuality, a ways in the future)! Yay!
1.5B
Saturday, 8:37pm
Help? Arai thought, at whatever portion of the uncaring universe might be listening. I could really use some help, here.
He scrambled off the guy, slid off a bulky recycling bag, knees to the pavement, as the guy struggled to sit up.
Hair hanging in his face, round frightened eyes darting this way and that, breath coming quick and shallow, like a wild creature caught in a trap.
Up close, he wasn’t near so foreboding as his hallway lurking had made him out to be. True the guy was stacked with muscle, Arai had just encountered a lot of it firsthand. But right now, he also looked well on his way to full-on panic attack.
“Hey there,” he said, trying hard to at least act calm. “You okay?”
The guy flicked a rapid glance down the block, then rolled up in one smooth motion to get his feet under him. He crouched there, and fastened a desperate look on Arai.
“I wasn’t here. You didn’t see me. Please.”
Arai didn’t register the words at first, just the husky small voice, and the swelling of terrible dismay inside him, oh hell I was right, the ghost is totally friendless and very very sad.
Off down the street, around the corner, somebody called, “Yo Barnes, could we talk to you, man?”
In a rustle of bags and a rush of air, the guy was gone. Vanished into the shadows, with Arai blinking at the empty spot where he’d been.
**
Friday, 3:10pm
“You coming to hang out at the seminar tomorrow?” Kurogane asked him, on the way out of Home Ec.
“Nah,” Arai said. “Me and Natsume are meeting up Sunday, for History study. So I gotta get all my homework outta the way tonight and tomorrow.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
“Hey, could I ask a dumb question?” Arai said on the spur of the moment. “I mean, maybe you don’t know, but.”
“Shoot,” said Kurogane.
“Morinozuka-senpai’s going as the group captain, but it didn’t sound like he was competing or testing, or whatever. I didn’t know if there was some reason for that.”
“Ah,” Kurogane nodded. “Senpai’s internationally ranked. He travels overseas for seminars, in the summer. Kendo and Judo.”
“Wow,” said Arai, duly impressed. “So he’s really good, then.”
Kurogane looked amused. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Then at the hallway intersection where their paths split off, Kurogane paused. Hands in his pockets, eyeballing Arai seriously from under his fringe. “Hey, listen. Take care this weekend, yeah?”
“Uh, sure thing,” said Arai, puzzled. “You too.”
Back at his locker he started loading up all his books for the weekend. And found, predictably, a fourth note.
IN THE SHADOW
IN THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE
THE GHOST WAITS
Arai didn’t crush this one into a frustrated wad. He took care, and folded it twice, thinking of the invisible person behind the cryptic words. Then he tucked it into his pocket before Ed could spot it and pitch a fit. Ed had an important seminar tomorrow, after all. Arai didn’t want to be the reason he got distracted from that.
**
Saturday, 8:40pm
By the time the couple from earlier came jogging up, Arai was on his feet, dragging all the scattered bags and cardboard back into a pile on the sidewalk.
The redhead girl rolled up smooth as you please, eyeing him up and down. “Fancy meeting you again.”
As for the black guy, Arai automatically trusted him more, since he came up winded and slightly harassed looking. He leaned down, braced his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Hey kid, you okay?”
Arai tried his hardest to project casual obliviousness. Nothing to see here, just tidying up the neighborhood on a Friday night.
“Yeah. I just uh, tripped over this stuff. In the dark.”
The redhead looked like she wasn’t buying it, but found him amusing anyway. “You should be more careful where you’re walking.”
“I tell myself that every day,” he said sincerely.
“Okay look,” said the guy. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, back there.”
“Nice suicide run in front of the trolley, though,” the redhead grinned.
“Maybe we could try again,” the guy went on. “My name’s Sam, this is Natasha, and I swear we’re just trying to find a guy we hear goes to Hawthorne, make sure he’s doing okay. He fell off the radar about eight or nine months ago, got some people worried about him.”
“This guy a friend of yours?” said Arai.
The pair exchanged looks. Shifty, Arai thought.
“He’s a friend of a friend,” said Natasha.
Yeah and I’m president of the student council, thought Arai. “How come you asked about the basketball team, before?”
Sam looked honestly surprised by that. “I dunno, we heard Barnes played for a bit, at his last school. And he was always pretty athletic, we thought he might’ve joined up on the Hawthorne team.”
“And if we guessed wrong, somebody would probably correct us,” said Natasha. “Win-win.”
“Wow,” said Arai. “You guys are clueless.”
Sam looked mystified by that, but Natasha actually looked interested. In an uncomfortably intense way. “Okay, so you want to clue us in?”
Arai didn’t particularly, but he also didn’t want it on his conscience, if they went off and blundered into a hell of trouble on their own.
“If this guy is really your friend...’s friend—whatever, if you don’t hate his guts—then you definitely don’t want him anywhere near the basketball team. They’re a bunch of nasty bastards, they get off on ganging up on people, the whole school knows it.”
A momentary spike of vindictiveness made him add, “Also, they’re a shitty team.”
Sam and Natasha shared another look, this one less sketchy and more like they wanted to rethink their plans.
“I’m guessing you’re….not on that team, then,” Sam said.
“Well I’m alive and not a raging asshole, so no,” said Arai.
“You run track?” guessed Natasha.
She was fishing, he thought. Saying the wrong thing, so he’d correct her, and all at once, Arai was out of patience with this conversation. He didn’t know whether these two had good intentions or not. And after that jarringly close-up encounter with Barnes—if that really was the ghost’s name—Arai was honestly more inclined to side with him. Bizarre as it seemed.
He couldn’t believe that desperate plea had been faked. The guy needed some kind of help, that was abundantly clear. But if he didn’t want to deal with Sam and Natasha, Arai didn’t want any part of forcing them on him. At least not right now.
Then he had an idea. One which could potentially end in disaster, but at least it would give him a chance to get away, regroup, and maybe come up with some smarter way to deal with all this.
“Hey y’know what? You guys should talk to the school paper,” he said. “Hughes is the editor, he knows about everybody.”
“This Hughes a friend of yours?” said Natasha.
“Friend of a friend.”
Wilson snorted. “Okay, you know some way we could reach this guy?”
Arai figured Hughes’s number was in the school directory, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. Instead, he put on the dumbest face he could muster, and shrugged. “I dunno, maybe call the school?”
As he’d hoped, Sam and Natasha didn’t have time to waste on an idiot freshman, so he was free to scoot off for the grocery. Soon as he got inside, he said hi to his uncle, then went to grab the phone.
Before his nerves could get the better of him, he dialed the number he’d learned off by heart, sat jittering on the foot of his bed until the call was answered.
“Hi, um. Senpai? Sorry to call so late, but. You know that thing you said yesterday, about telling somebody if I need help?”
“No, no I’m fine, promise. It’s just, there’s somebody I want to help out. But things just got complicated, and I’m really worried I’m gonna screw it up….”
**
I also want to note that Prom is an Open Source Universe, fully open to collaboration. So if some enterprising individual wanted to dive in and contribute, play with the toys in the sandbox, explore previously uncharted realms, that would be super neato. I'd love to see someone have a go with the upperclassmen, or OMG the faculty!! hahahaha.
ok anyway, Friday Fic! I have no earthly idea how this arc resolves, yet (apart from one eventuality, a ways in the future)! Yay!
1.5B
Help? Arai thought, at whatever portion of the uncaring universe might be listening. I could really use some help, here.
He scrambled off the guy, slid off a bulky recycling bag, knees to the pavement, as the guy struggled to sit up.
Hair hanging in his face, round frightened eyes darting this way and that, breath coming quick and shallow, like a wild creature caught in a trap.
Up close, he wasn’t near so foreboding as his hallway lurking had made him out to be. True the guy was stacked with muscle, Arai had just encountered a lot of it firsthand. But right now, he also looked well on his way to full-on panic attack.
“Hey there,” he said, trying hard to at least act calm. “You okay?”
The guy flicked a rapid glance down the block, then rolled up in one smooth motion to get his feet under him. He crouched there, and fastened a desperate look on Arai.
“I wasn’t here. You didn’t see me. Please.”
Arai didn’t register the words at first, just the husky small voice, and the swelling of terrible dismay inside him, oh hell I was right, the ghost is totally friendless and very very sad.
Off down the street, around the corner, somebody called, “Yo Barnes, could we talk to you, man?”
In a rustle of bags and a rush of air, the guy was gone. Vanished into the shadows, with Arai blinking at the empty spot where he’d been.
**
“You coming to hang out at the seminar tomorrow?” Kurogane asked him, on the way out of Home Ec.
“Nah,” Arai said. “Me and Natsume are meeting up Sunday, for History study. So I gotta get all my homework outta the way tonight and tomorrow.”
“Ah. Gotcha.”
“Hey, could I ask a dumb question?” Arai said on the spur of the moment. “I mean, maybe you don’t know, but.”
“Shoot,” said Kurogane.
“Morinozuka-senpai’s going as the group captain, but it didn’t sound like he was competing or testing, or whatever. I didn’t know if there was some reason for that.”
“Ah,” Kurogane nodded. “Senpai’s internationally ranked. He travels overseas for seminars, in the summer. Kendo and Judo.”
“Wow,” said Arai, duly impressed. “So he’s really good, then.”
Kurogane looked amused. “Yeah, you could say that.”
Then at the hallway intersection where their paths split off, Kurogane paused. Hands in his pockets, eyeballing Arai seriously from under his fringe. “Hey, listen. Take care this weekend, yeah?”
“Uh, sure thing,” said Arai, puzzled. “You too.”
Back at his locker he started loading up all his books for the weekend. And found, predictably, a fourth note.
IN THE SHADOW
IN THE CORNER OF YOUR EYE
THE GHOST WAITS
Arai didn’t crush this one into a frustrated wad. He took care, and folded it twice, thinking of the invisible person behind the cryptic words. Then he tucked it into his pocket before Ed could spot it and pitch a fit. Ed had an important seminar tomorrow, after all. Arai didn’t want to be the reason he got distracted from that.
**
By the time the couple from earlier came jogging up, Arai was on his feet, dragging all the scattered bags and cardboard back into a pile on the sidewalk.
The redhead girl rolled up smooth as you please, eyeing him up and down. “Fancy meeting you again.”
As for the black guy, Arai automatically trusted him more, since he came up winded and slightly harassed looking. He leaned down, braced his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Hey kid, you okay?”
Arai tried his hardest to project casual obliviousness. Nothing to see here, just tidying up the neighborhood on a Friday night.
“Yeah. I just uh, tripped over this stuff. In the dark.”
The redhead looked like she wasn’t buying it, but found him amusing anyway. “You should be more careful where you’re walking.”
“I tell myself that every day,” he said sincerely.
“Okay look,” said the guy. “I think we got off on the wrong foot, back there.”
“Nice suicide run in front of the trolley, though,” the redhead grinned.
“Maybe we could try again,” the guy went on. “My name’s Sam, this is Natasha, and I swear we’re just trying to find a guy we hear goes to Hawthorne, make sure he’s doing okay. He fell off the radar about eight or nine months ago, got some people worried about him.”
“This guy a friend of yours?” said Arai.
The pair exchanged looks. Shifty, Arai thought.
“He’s a friend of a friend,” said Natasha.
Yeah and I’m president of the student council, thought Arai. “How come you asked about the basketball team, before?”
Sam looked honestly surprised by that. “I dunno, we heard Barnes played for a bit, at his last school. And he was always pretty athletic, we thought he might’ve joined up on the Hawthorne team.”
“And if we guessed wrong, somebody would probably correct us,” said Natasha. “Win-win.”
“Wow,” said Arai. “You guys are clueless.”
Sam looked mystified by that, but Natasha actually looked interested. In an uncomfortably intense way. “Okay, so you want to clue us in?”
Arai didn’t particularly, but he also didn’t want it on his conscience, if they went off and blundered into a hell of trouble on their own.
“If this guy is really your friend...’s friend—whatever, if you don’t hate his guts—then you definitely don’t want him anywhere near the basketball team. They’re a bunch of nasty bastards, they get off on ganging up on people, the whole school knows it.”
A momentary spike of vindictiveness made him add, “Also, they’re a shitty team.”
Sam and Natasha shared another look, this one less sketchy and more like they wanted to rethink their plans.
“I’m guessing you’re….not on that team, then,” Sam said.
“Well I’m alive and not a raging asshole, so no,” said Arai.
“You run track?” guessed Natasha.
She was fishing, he thought. Saying the wrong thing, so he’d correct her, and all at once, Arai was out of patience with this conversation. He didn’t know whether these two had good intentions or not. And after that jarringly close-up encounter with Barnes—if that really was the ghost’s name—Arai was honestly more inclined to side with him. Bizarre as it seemed.
He couldn’t believe that desperate plea had been faked. The guy needed some kind of help, that was abundantly clear. But if he didn’t want to deal with Sam and Natasha, Arai didn’t want any part of forcing them on him. At least not right now.
Then he had an idea. One which could potentially end in disaster, but at least it would give him a chance to get away, regroup, and maybe come up with some smarter way to deal with all this.
“Hey y’know what? You guys should talk to the school paper,” he said. “Hughes is the editor, he knows about everybody.”
“This Hughes a friend of yours?” said Natasha.
“Friend of a friend.”
Wilson snorted. “Okay, you know some way we could reach this guy?”
Arai figured Hughes’s number was in the school directory, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. Instead, he put on the dumbest face he could muster, and shrugged. “I dunno, maybe call the school?”
As he’d hoped, Sam and Natasha didn’t have time to waste on an idiot freshman, so he was free to scoot off for the grocery. Soon as he got inside, he said hi to his uncle, then went to grab the phone.
Before his nerves could get the better of him, he dialed the number he’d learned off by heart, sat jittering on the foot of his bed until the call was answered.
“Hi, um. Senpai? Sorry to call so late, but. You know that thing you said yesterday, about telling somebody if I need help?”
“No, no I’m fine, promise. It’s just, there’s somebody I want to help out. But things just got complicated, and I’m really worried I’m gonna screw it up….”
**
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-08 11:33 pm (UTC)But huh, Sam and Natasha's approach is very... cop-like. I don't blame Arai for being cautious, or for extricating himself at the first opportunity. But what brilliant misdirection, sending them off to Hughes! I have to wonder if he even realizes what a masterstroke it is. Also makes me wonder how well Hughes' goofy bluster fares against Natasha's penetrating insight. They're both kinda masters at what they do.
Eeee! Please tell me there's another dozen or so installments!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-08 11:35 pm (UTC)*WOE*
Sigh. Okay. I'll chew on this for now. Lots of chewing.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-09 12:31 am (UTC)And okay, so what happened with this, was I think I just had this urge to make a colossal mess with all kinds of threads to tug on, and then kinda ran out of steam in terms of actually taking the mess anywhere. Like there's some stuff I know about the scenario, the backstory of how Boo turned up here, but there's also plenty of space left blank in all that, because it's always more interesting to me to chuck people into a situation, and then let the story tell me how they got there, bit by bit, as the occasion calls for it.
So I know that Barnes and Steve were good friends in primary school & middle school. They were in some sport (maybe gymnastics?). Then by some unknown means, Barnes ended up inured & maybe in a coma his freshman year? And Steve went on to some other school in some other state, and possibly is now in the running for the Olympic team (in perhaps gymnastics, but I'm not totally married to that).
Where Natasha and Sam come in, is they're friends of Steve (who's wondering what became of his pal, but doesn't currently have time or opportunity to get out there and find him). And Natasha is that type of highly capable and nosy friend who likes to go awol and fix people's problems for them. Sam is the more responsible friend who comes along to keep Natasha out of trouble probably, and make sure she doesn't go around terrorizing innocent freshman who just want to get some ice cream on a Friday night. ahem.
Concurrently, I was trying to decide whether Pierce is the Coach/Faculty Advisor to the basketball team, who was trying real hard to recruit Barnes into his band of marauding thugs (which is why Barnes has been laying so low all this time). Or if maybe Pierce was his absentee legal guardian who told Barnes he could either keep his act together @ Hawthorne, or else get shipped off to military school (which gives him something in common with Arai, whose folks laid down the same stipulation).
All that aside, I had one more installment in progress when I finally hit a wall with this thing, being a rundown of What Happens When Arai asks Mori for help.
But now you bring up the notion of Natasha and Hughes interacting, and dude that is hilarious, I adore it. God, you put the two of them together, and it would just be the worst idea for everyone else's sake, in the most fantastically entertaining way.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-09 04:12 pm (UTC)I'm partway through writing it now, and I'm terrified because I have no idea what's happening and I haven't written anything worth reading in years, and omg what is even happening???
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-09 06:42 pm (UTC)And just remember, this is where we come to screw around with ridiculous things, and not write, yeah? So go forth, and go buck wild for the pure joy of it!
(and if Natasha ends up being secretly a huge dork alongside her general scariness, and the prospect of the two of them scheming toward the same ends terrifies everyone in their fallout radius, I will lose my mind with happiness)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-10 12:10 am (UTC)Hmm, as much fun as it would be to have Coach Pierce, I can see him working out better in some ways as Barnes' guardian. Pierce works his damage at particularly high levels; I'm not sure high school sports offers enough opportunities for chaos and destruction. And for characters I love the most, I always seem to seek out the avenues of maximum angst which would certainly be the case, setting him as Barnes' legal guardian. And who's to say he doesn't have another foster or two living with him? And who's to say they aren't stars on the basketball team? The greatest thing about not-writing this story, is that the rules for it are essentially the same as for Calvinball.
One thing I do have to ask myself, is what kind of help does Arai feel he needs from Mori in this situation? Assistance is luring The Ghost in so that they can hold a conversation? Assistance in devising any sort of plan forward? Is he turning Tactical Command of this operation over to Mori? Sometimes you can see the next move clearly; other times- like this- motives are more opaque.
Speaking of opaque motives, I'm having a hell of a time figuring out Natasha's angle, given I don't have a clue what her end game is. Sam's a little bit easier, but right now he seems to be communicating largely by exaggerated facial expressions, and I don't even know. Hughes is a damn riot though, and he and Nat are about to really get to brass tacks, I think. So motivations and intentions are really on my mind right now.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-10 05:15 am (UTC)Which, when I step back and look at it, is pretty amusing. Like my default reaction to things I don't like, is to simply omit them from my universe. But that being said, I also definitely think that Rumlow typifies a certain element in the basketball team, like he is certainly the class of ingredient that gives that particular pack of assholes its flavor.
Weird side note, I'm suddenly remembering that some of my earliest stewing on this whole episode, involved somebody on the team who desperately wanted to get out, to defect from the terrible regime, but couldn't.
You remember back when we were doing Prom Secrets? Honest to god it was one of those that lodged in my head on a re-read of the entire saga, and made me start plotting all this madness out. And at first I thought it might be Barnes, who was trying to get free of the team, by way of getting Morinozuka & Company on his side. He couldn't be too overt about it, bc if the team found out, they'd likely kill him, so he came up with this scheme to make contact via getting Arai's attention first.
I dunno, the whole idea was very Cold War/smuggling himself out of Soviet Russia in the 80s sorta thing. And way too ambitious for my feeble brain bandwidth to pull off.
Though I still think a whole cooperative plot to shut down the evil regime of the Basketball Team has some legs. And I've come to feel that Barnes is coming at the story from a place where like, he's already escaped something like that, and is now laying low, and wanting to exercise his newfound agency by attempting to do some good in the world.
(ooooh shit I just had this idea, like what if Pierce was the coach in his former school, who instituted this evil driven sportsmanship culture, but the team was also really high-ranked. And what if in the course of playing for this Cobra Kai sorta 'Win At All Costs' team, that's where Barnes got his traumatic brain injury--most likely at the hands of his teammates. Then he wakes up some weeks or months later, a whole different person, who's exceedingly wary of any sort of competitive team sports. Now he just wants to mind his own business, enjoy some plums once in awhile. But he's got a name in the sport, and knows this Hawthorne team will come gunning for him, if they find out who he used to be????)
Anyway, that could be a good cooperative goal for all these folks. Expose the Basketball Bully Regime in such a way that the school has to do something about it. Barnes suspects maybe it can be done, and it's definitely what his old pal Steve would want him do. Arai becomes convinced that if it's the right thing to do, they have at least try. Because it's not just that the team has it in for him personally, there's other students who've been essentially held hostage by the worst elements in there, and who probably want to get out but can't do it without help. Ed is liable to be skeptical, but he can be persuaded. Hughes is very intrigued at the idea of a covert rebellion, of course.
As to the new additions, Natasha is always happy to participate in planned mayhem. Maybe they get Sam on board when Barnes promises that if they help, he'll get in touch with Steve finally.
...sooo I dunno if any of that helps or if I just confused the whole thing horribly.
Oh but hey! I just found that entry with The Basketball Secret:
https://wtf-hollow.dreamwidth.org/7996.html#cutid1
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-10 11:39 am (UTC)Oooh, now Pierce as the head of a former, high-ranked team... I could kinda see that. It for sure gives him greater latitude for manipulating others, and extends his reach. Although that then leaves open just what Barnes' circumstances actually are; who is responsible for him? What is restraining him now? *Is* anything/anyone restraining him now, or is it only the shackles that exist in his mind?
Prom- where we ask the hard questions!
And dude, I remember the Basketball Secret! I liked that one, just a squeak from amid the ranks of stormtroopers. How do I keep ending up working on computers with no Photoshop? You know this is just going to end up with me spending gobs of money on the program, just to get over the aggravation.
Oh! But speaking of aggravation! Natasha is a damn pain to write! She's so damn slippery, you end up losing track of where she is in your head, and it's easy to start writing her as vapidly as she's projecting. Then you have to go back and revise, revise, revise, because one thing Natasha is *NOT* is vapid. Hughes is kinda the same, only with him he overblows everything, so it's actually easier to scale back. But Natasha's all subtle gestures and simpers, and it's so much harder to separate. I hope I didn't blow her characterization.
This is some excellent stuff to ruminate over, throughout the day. Especially the scene that will eventually be this group's war room. All those big personalities, in one place? Phhwww- that one is probably beyond my pay grade!!