Because it's not like I'm doing any actual work today...

[deathpixie]

Grabbed from [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com], a drabble meme. Slightly reworded.

Go here and write me a drabble/make an icon, based on whatever fortune you get, and I will love you forever.

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[dexfarkin.livejournal.com]

You are not one of the people who "goes places in life".

No cigarettes.

Considering everything else going on; the near invasion of Earth by psionic ghosts, the attempt to suck New York City into a demon hell powered by a thaumaturgic computer with Forge spiked inside it, ten days in a cell in Genosha waiting to be executed, the lack of cigarettes should not have registered high on the list of priorities.

But everything else was already finished, and she was craving one now. It was cheating, yes, but a little twist on her teleportation spell, and there was a pack dropped in front of her.

Abra-bloody-cadabra.

She lit the first one with a fire spell. Not much need for restraint, with the city so close to her these days. In her minds eye, she could see the duality for the first time; the images of the city spirits. A Ravenking brooded on the walls of the Tower. A man of fire played in Putney Lane. By the edge of the Thames, a man as great as a house, with octopus like tentecles of hair drifted past, just under the waterline.

A snap of her fingers, and she was in Paris, looking at a nightsky frozen with fireworks. In Berlin, the heavy mechanical sounds of tanks never truly faded, rumbling deeply in the background. In Cairo, the ancient city still dominated, mudbrick looming over seemingly fragile steel and glass. Finally, New York. Her kind of town.

Except, in one way, it wasn't. She couldn't ever live here again, any more than she could live in any city. She was in all of them, seeing more and with more control than ever before. But she couldn't live anywhere anymore, not after ducking left when she should have gone right and taking three bullets before even knowing someone was there. That was the upside of being dead. All of the control and power she'd dreamed of having, and stuck watching her former life from the outside looking in.

"If you do something right the first time, nobody will appreciate how difficult it was"

[indiana-j.livejournal.com]

When Doug hit the ground screaming, the sword embedded in his upper thigh and blood forming eddy's around his body, Amanda's answering cry wasn't one of pain or fear.

In fact, if Doug had been able to listen and think clearly, he would have realized the torrent of noise wasn't raw emotion. It wasn't an attempt to best Terry in loudest noise from the diaphragm. The noise was actually interlocking words -- old, ancient and powerful words.

And they were angry.

The effort forced reality to bend to the witch's magic and the demon that had been one step away from tearing Doug's heart out simply stopped. He not only stopped his actions but he simply stopped being.

~~

Later, Amanda stood in the shadows of the building and watched Doug being taken off to the hospital. Wanda had forced a mug of tea in her hand from...somewhere.

Remy and Pete had checked on her, in their own way, and questioned her.

They had congratulated her on a job well done and try as she might...

Amanda rubbed the middle of her chest with a wince. Try as she might, she could not get them to understand how difficult that had actually been. That spell had been buried in her subconscious and not one she had ever studied on her own.

It had ripped itself free and in doing so, opened her to forces she didn't quite understand as yet.

The last person she had ever seen work that spell had been Rack and the implications scared her to the bottom of her very soul.

And so her friends and coworkers congratulated her on a job well done as she stood in the shadow of the building, a hand pressed to her chest and feeling very alone and all of five years old again.

[erindubitably.livejournal.com]

"Idleness is the holiday of the wise."

Summer at the mansion was usually just as busy as the rest of the year - what it lacked in classes it made up for in all sorts of other things, like trainee exercises, Elpis research, and independent study. The two girls relaxing in their suite were currently avoiding all these things and instead staring at the mind-numbing escapades of Rodolfo and Juliette and their amnesiatic long-lost-cousin.

"I think I don't understand," Sooraya said, furrowing her brow and turning just her head to look over at Yvette. "Why does Chad's fortune go to Miranda if he dies?"

"Because they were married last year, and it was never annulled, even after she ran away with James," the blue-eyed girl explained, completely straightfaced.

"Oh. This show is confusing."

"Yes, it is. Do you want to go do something else?"

"...maybe later."

"Now is not the time to try something new."

[nute.livejournal.com]

"Merde!" Remy cursed as another round of submachine gun fire tattooed the concrete wall above his head, sending sharp slivers of shrapnel down where he huddled under his trenchcoat. The streets of Tokyo were no place to get yourself backed into a cul-de-sac with angry oni-possessed Yakuza gangsters hunting you down in some weird blood ritual.

"'Manda!" he barked, "Somet'ing new an' dangerous would be welcome right about now!"

Across the alleyway, from behind a bullet-dented dumpster, Amanda's hands twitched and her eyes opened, flashing neon and chrome into the alleyway. She spun out into the alleyway, glittering arcane energy spiraling around her, as words came instinctively to her in a shout:

"MAGICAL CHAV-TASTIC NICOTINE ARMAGEDDON!"

In a tornado of foul-smelling smoke and torn filters, a miasma of tobacco smoke blasted through the Tokyo streets. When it cleared, the once-possessed gangsters were all face-down in the gutters, coughing and vomiting. Twitching, Amanda turned to Remy with an embarrassed shrug.

"Maybe dat a little too new," Remy said quietly.

You have an untrustworthy smile and an indisious nature.

[frito-kal.livejournal.com]

"Mandy, you've got to hide me! She's after me again!" Joe Crockett ducked behind a book cart, peering up at Mandy MacDonald with a mortified look on his face.

"Oh, sure, Joe." Mandy gave Joe her brightest smile, and led him to the back of the library, where all those weird books about space aliens and time travel were. No one ever went back there, except a couple of guys in thick glasses, and they hadn't come in yet. Probably watching that new Twilight Zone show. "Stay there for a little while and I'll make sure nobody finds you, okay?"

As Joe sat down with a random book, she practically skipped around the corner. Ever since she and Mary-Ann had gotten stuck in that cooking class together, they'd become fast friends. Whoever thought the fast girl from the wrong side of the tracks and the sweet polite Mandy MacDonald would ever be friends? But they were. She absolutly understood why Mary-Ann would chase after Joe. He was smart, and cute and such a good dancer.

And ever since Anna dumped him for the captain of the football team, he'd been moping around doing just plain nothing whenever he came home on long weekends from school.

She giggled a little under her breath and practically bounced over to the front desk, where Mary-Ann Colby was waiting, practically all a-jitter. The redhead had quit smoking, and Mandy just -knew- that was nice Mrs. Simons influence. "He's hiding in the back. Remember what you promised me, Mary-Ann. Nothing that'll get you kicked out!"

"A friend is a present you can buy yourself."

[technophobia.livejournal.com]

Amanda had been increasingly cranky and surly for a solid week, snapping at everyone in the office. The rest of X-Force had given her an increasingly wider berth, but her mood had not improved at all.

The July afternoon was thick with humidity, and an afternoon rain shower mixed with the tears that Amanda scrubbed angrily away from her eyes. She weaved, a bit unsteady on her feet, clutching a sodden paper sack in one hand, the outline of a bottle visible under the wet paper.

"Yer fuckin' plonker," she cursed at a headstone, her London accent thicker than it had been for a long time. "It's been two years, an' I'm still so bloody pissed at yer I can't see straight." She hurled the bottle at the grey marble, a muffled shattering sound coming forth as the bag slid down to rest on the freshly mowed grass.

Just when it seemed like she was about to fall over, the rain stopped pouring down over her head and someone stopped behind her, standing close enough to prop her up. She looked up at a wide black umbrella, then looked over her shoulder through bedraggled blonde bangs at Marie-Ange, who stared down at the headstone with an indescribably haunted expression before putting her arm awkwardly around her former roommate's shoulders and turning her away from the grave and toward a waiting car.