Irony is the Shackles of Youth

Part 1: Where Derek walks in the woods a whole lot

Preview:

The call for a Special Forces alphapack had come in from a small city on the edge of a wilderness preserve sometime just after dawn on a Thursday. Derek hadn’t been at HQ when the call came in. He’d been in bed at his apartment, trying to recover from a previous mission that had gone wrong in a truly spectacular fashion. All he wanted to do was sleep for a week, but when the videoscreen beeped he got up out of bed.

“Hale.” Which was all the greeting Derek ever gave. He only activated sound, leaving the screen blank. The last thing he needed was someone from HQ to see his naked ass as he stumbled around in his dark bedroom, trying to find clothing.

“We have a situation of some sort just south of the western preserve.” Lydia was a red witch, a very powerful red witch, that could make even the toughest alphas jump when she gave the order. Derek was simultaneously impressed and annoyed by her ability even as he pulled on pants and mentally rearranged his planned schedule for his day off. “They’re calling for an alphapack.”

“I’m on leave,” Derek reminded her. If they were calling in alphas on leave, it had to be bad. He found a shirt, sniffed it, and decided that it wasn’t too bad. Laundry hadn’t been high on his list of things to do for the last week.

“I know.” Derek snorted at the lack of apologies from Lydia. Typical when she was determined to get her way. “We’ve already got one alphapack deployed dealing with a few rogue omegas, three on guard rotation at the detention centers since there was a full moon last night, and two others in districts too far to get here in a reasonable amount of time. We’re pulling in the second string now.”

A lack of apologies and insults? Must be big. “What’s going on?” Derek pulled on a pair of socks. His wallet and keys went into his pocket.

“There’s a missing established pack. Nine werewolves. The local law enforcement found the alpha in pieces in the woods. They’re refusing to go back out to look for the rest of the pack and we need to find out what happened.”

“Wait. They found the alpha in pieces and eight missing betas?” Omegas were often found torn to pieces if they turned vicious and strayed into an established family pack’s territory. Occasionally, it happened to betas if for some reason their alpha went crazy on them. Usually by the time the alpha went after the second beta, the others in the pack banded together to take the alpha out. Sometimes they even succeeded.

But an entire pack? Even the alphapack would have problems taking down a pack even with weapons and back-up. It just didn’t happen.

“There’s already rumors spreading about this. Law enforcement wants to keep in low key, but...” Lydia signed over the line. She sounded tired and Derek wondered if they’d pulled her in before her shift to coordinate this. “An alpha is dead and its presumed the rest of the pack is too. We need you out there yesterday to figure out what is going on.”

His day off could wait. Derek pushed his feet into shoes and began to do up the laces. “I’ll be there in less than an hour.”

Read the whole thing on AO3

Things I did on my final business trip of the year:

- Met the awesome skylark97, got lost, and ate radioactive green cake
- Finally got an explanation as to what a flashing red light
- Have decided that Upper Peninsula, Michigan has some of the most beautiful forests I have seen
- Realized that deer in Michigan are suicidal in the morning
- Wrote 12 pages of Young Avengers Therapy Vampire AU. This means I have finished the second part, finished the third part, and started the fourth part. After that I switch from Teddy's POV to Billy's. That will be fun.

What is up with my subconscious? Last night I had a dream that a third person was staying with miome and I. I think it was supposed to be someone on my friend's list, but I can't remember who. This woman had a book wrapped in shrink wrap so you couldn't see the picture on the cover. There were lots of joke about exactly what kind of book it was. Finally, I got tired of it lying around unread. I took off the shrink wrap to see a picture of two guys making out. Oh no! Surely something to save the masses from. There was something odd about the way one of the guy's looked, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Time to start reading.

I was about three pages in when I realize that it was a massive Young Avengers AU in that "Surely these are not Billy and Teddy for the serial numbers have been filed off" kind of way. This of course made me want to read it even more. So I did.

( Cut for the squeamish, because I really have no control over my cracktastic dreams )

Background: Miome and I do a lot of world-building by bouncing ideas off of each other. Then I take these ideas and apply them to stories. In this case, we were discussing the background to the Young Avengers Therapy Vampire AU.

Tsaiko: The only thing Teddy doesn't like about being a therapy vampire is the hours. He has to get up before sunset.
Miome: I take it vampires don't turn to ash in the sun in this universe?
Tsaiko: No. But they are not day people. And of course, people who are in therapy for being traumatized by vampire bites are not going to want their therapy sessions in the middle of the night.
Miome: Makes sense.
Tsaiko: So Teddy have to get up early. For a vampire. This takes a lot of effort on his part.
Miome: What does he do? Drink caffeinated blood?
Tsaiko: Sure! Why not? I mean ThinkGeek makes caffeinated everything else.
Miome: True. I wonder if it comes in little cans like energy drinks?
Tsaiko: *sly* Of course. They call it 'Red Bat.'
Miome: *groans*
Tsaiko: It gives you wings!
Miome: I hate you.
Tsaiko: You love me. :D

tanarill requested in the AU request post "Eztilinhuica is a notoriously moody and difficult to please mage-prince. Ilhuiti is his newly-assigned political-prisoner-cum-servant (don't ask what happened to the last one.) Orgasms occur." Alas, no orgasms in this story. But I did get everything else in there.

( Dragon of Blood and Fire, AU, yaoi, PG for vague implications )

I'm going to start working on the next one tonight. I already know which one I want to do. XD

IIt really is much more romantic in Skrullos. XD

( Young Avengers, PG for mentions of not nice death, weird sense of humor, AU )

Why does my mind keep giving me these cracktastic AUs?

Also, I have the worse time with quotation marks when typing this up. I have no idea. If you see quotation marks missing or appearing where they shouldn't, let me know so I can fix it.

( Young Avengers, Therapy Vampire, AU, PG-13 )

Note to self: at some point you'll need to work into the story why it's so important for Billy get over his fear of being bitten. If you can't work it into the next part, then definitely the part after that. Maybe in a short scene with Tommy?

I can't believe that after spending all afternoon writing my thesis I come home... and write. Something is obviously wrong with me. I'm typing this directly into my LJ, so I imagine it's going to be full of errors.

( Dragon threesome drabble, PG )

( Young Avengers drabble, House of M AU, PG )

Okay, I a little better now.

My urge to write has pretty much rolled over and died. I've been working on other projects until it resurrects itself. I did manage to get part of a House of M AU written before it croaked. I just like this part because I think Tommy's frustration is funny.

( Tommy found out very quickly that being arrested produced short bursts of activity followed quickly by a long stretches of boredom. )

It has no place in the story, but I kind of want to write the cops reaction when he calls that number and gets put through to Eric Magnus, ruler of Genosha. There's a cop that just about craps his pants. XD

This is the rough outline of the dream I had this morning when I slept. Yes, I do dream in complete storylines. Most times they even makes sense.

( I don't even know where my mind comes up with this stuff. )

Started poking through my files and finally got around to cleaning up this bit of story. I still think the idea of a support group specifically for vampirism is hilarious. Not finished. Don't know if I'll ever get around to writing more.

( Fragment, Coping with B.A.V, PG )

Holy cow, this is getting written fast. I have the third part mostly done and then all I have to do is add the scene where Yolei beats the crap out of Davis to the first part. Then the third part will be done. And since I have a good chunk of the fourth and fifth part already hand written, I expect those to get polished rather quickly. Wow. I don't think I've ever churned out so much on one fanfic this quickly before. Usually it takes me months to years (and I'm not exaggerating there) to get this much written.

Here's hoping it continues.

And the vaguely steamy memories at the end of this scene are all Davis's fault. He wanted to wax poetic about Ken's answering machine message. I refused to let him. Hence, the memories. Little horn dog. And now, the fic.

( AU Digimon, Part 3b, PG-13 for implications )

WTF? I fixed this entry once. It showed up as fixed, and then reset itself back to unfixed. Sigh. It should be behind an LJ-cut tag now. Stupid LJ...