[Writing] Muffin Scenes

[Whatevr89532]

Just a little place to keep some disconnected scenes from muffinville involving characters of mine. I haven't decided how to organize this, so the first one's just in this post for now.


Secret Weakness

Whyte found a quiet alley a short ways from the stadium to sit down in, wipe off her eyes, take a few deep breaths. The mixture of rage, frustration and leftover panic made her feel sick, and it needed to go away before she could be around people again.

Her ears twitched at the sound of someone coming behind her and she turned around to ask them to go away, expecting some fan vigilant enough to track down where she'd run off to. Instead it was ...

"Swift? What are you..?" Whyte paused again, realizing that Swift didn't have a habit of wearing sunglasses while in humanoid form, especially when it was dark out. She turned pointedly forward again before flatly saying, "...What do you want."

"Hey..who says I want anything?" The apparent umbreon-girl sat down cross-legged next to her.
"Where did you even get that form?"
"Maybe the same event where I learned your secret weakness?" said the ditto with a playful grin. The Eevee-girl punched her square in the teeth, and she fell back only to bounce back up again. "Ow."

"Well it's not a secret anymore, is it?!"
"Hey hey," D gave an arms-up gesture, "I didn't know it was that big a deal, okay?"
"If you did know it wouldn't have changed anything. I know how you are."
"You know I gotta beat everyone, and Ark doesn't care if I fight fair or not. The good news is I only play to win once. Anyway, that I even had to resort to that means you were doing really well."
"Hmph. Fat lot of good that does me."

"What's the problem anyway? It's over now, right?"
Whyte glared at the image of her friend, wishing D would take on almost any other form for a bit. "Did you consider maybe there was a reason I was keeping it a secret? Now it's out, and anyone capable of casting illusions can just exploit my stupid PTSD."
"You can't just learn to get over it? Seems like a weakness this big was bound to come out sooner or later. I mean, Giratinas're already pretty scary-looking sooo.."
"Ughhh." Whyte held her forehead in her hands. "A person doesn't 'just get over' the s#%* I've been through, okay? You have no idea what it's like, I've had years go by without seeing a Giratina and then it just all comes right back."

"Hmm." D flicked her own ear a couple of times in thought. "Maybe you should just learn to tell when it's a fake, then? You're scared of the real thing, right, not an image that looks like it? I mean, what if you saw a picture of one on a TV or something?"
"That's different."
"Well then, someone making an illusion of one should be different to you too. Tell you what, I'll volunteer myself to help you out with this," she said, pointing a thumb at her own chest.

Whyte fixed the ditto with a confused, slightly insulted look for several seconds. D never did anything for anybody, least of all helping them train or get better. D was only ever interested in the excitement of the fight itself. Eventually it occurred to her that this was the closest the ditto was willing to get to an actual apology. "..fine. We'll figure out when and where later though, I need to go really punch something. Unless you're volunteering."
"Nope nope, why do you think I picked someone I know you're sweet on?" said D, popping up again before offering the eevee-girl a hand to get up.

"I oughta deck you for that, too," she said with a frown, but accepted the help anyway. "We'll talk later."

[AmbushCat]

Don't think I got to mention this before, but I kind of like D's character.

[Whatevr89532]

Home

Muffinville is a sufficiently strange place to have entire chunks of the city or surrounding areas simply abandoned, devoid of people, for various reasons, such as declarations by imagined dieties or explosions of color energy or nasty monster infestations. One such area, an originally quiet suburb divested of its population by a particular virulent strain of tomapple which had since moved on to other places, had proven convenient a few months back. One of the houses near the edge had some sort of magically-operated generator that didn't seem to require any sort of fuel, nor did it have any clear way to open it, and similarly curious devices handling its water systems instead of the long-since-cut-off water company's pipes.

It must have been a few hours after midnight by now. A tall, white-haired werewolf girl in shorts and a barely-extant top strode up to the house's front door in high spirits, happier than she'd ever thought possible in fact. Her ears twitched while she dug out a key from one of her pockets, and she opened the door carefully, fighting against its efforts to creak and a temptation to just kick it open.

There wasn't much in the way of furniture, but the living room had a couch someone had replaced with something sturdier after turning into a catgirl and repeatedly giving in to the urge to claw it and an old CRT that was still working somehow. On the couch now was a golden-haired woman with a lion's tail and mane-like hair, curled up on top facing a screen quietly playing white noise. Her head popped up when the door clicked closed. "Mnn..Gene?"
A nod. "Yeah, 'ts me. Uhh..someone get you too?" Both of them could confirm the other's identity, if in no other way, from some subtle nuances in their respective scents that no transformation to date had managed to alter.
"Mhm. A c-crazy doctor lady injected me with something before I could object." The other girl came to sit on the unoccupied part of the couch, near its original occupant's head. "I think she thought it'd make me more, uh..c-confident or something. What about you?"

She put a hand on the back of her head, trying to think. "Uh, gee...I dunno, really. One minute I was hittin' on a cute girl and the next thing I know I get turned inta' this."
"You know that's just asking for trouble. 'Specially in this town."
"Yeah, yeah, sometimes I can't help it though, y'know. But, hey, I actually got a date with her! After the uh, this," she added with a vague gesture to her body. "She's this famous singer named Natsuki, and uh, like we really hit it off man. I think--I really like her, bro, like, it's kinda serious." She blushed. "It's, uh, kinda scary how serious it is.

She turned toward her sibling, ears drooping a bit. "So that's uh..that's where I been all night. Yeah. I'm really sorry I'm so late."
"'S fine. I'm happy for you." After a moment's pause: "So, she l-likes you as a girl?"
"Uuuhh, yeeeaaah..." The werewolf looked up and away for a few seconds. "I'm not sure she'd be as interested if I turned back. Um...you might have to call me 'Gina' for a while, y'know?" Snapping her face back toward the other girl, she abruptly added: "I ain't any weaker or anything, though! You can still count on me to protect ya! Any punk messes with you--you want me to hunt down that so-called 'doctor' for ya?!"
"I-it's probably better you don't. I wasn't worried anyway."
"Oh, uh, ok. Cool." Gina gave a wide grin and thumbs-up that looked a lot more confident than its audience knew it to be.

The other girl quietly uncurled herself and leaned on Gina's shoulder. "You planning to introduce me to your new girlfriend?" she said quietly.
"Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah! A' course! If she don't like you the whole thing's off, bro. Or, uh.."
"I know."
"It's just, y'know, really late at night. I didn't wanna drag her all the way out here, or wake you up..guess I screwed that up anyway, though."
"'S fine. I'm just glad you're home."
"Yeah...yeah, me too." Gina nodded. "You, wanna get all that fixed tomorrow morning?"
"Mhm. This is...not really me. We should sleep for now."
"Yeah. 'Night Ebon."
"'Night, Gina."

Gina turned slightly and slumped back over toward the armrest, carefully putting her arms around the girl still leaning on her. The only other sound for the rest of the night was their quiet breathing and the soft crackle of static at very low volume from the TV.

[Whatevr89532]

A Brief History of Crimson

(Not exactly a story, but I dunno where else to put this)

On a particular version of Earth there was a group of magically-endowed beings known as the Crimson Race. Every member of the race was male, and possessed a natural, strange power, a transformative power which manifested as crimson fire. To their own kind it did nothing, but to normal humans--in fact, nearly any other race not packing some serious magic to deflect it--it transformed men into women, women into more beautiful women, and in either case created an artificial layer of devotion and subservience felt toward the owner of the magic. The majority of this race were rather terrible people, abusing their power to build "harems" of slave-concubines, but typically this was also their downfall. That layer on top of the people's original minds couldn't block all of the original person's thoughts and desires, after all, and though they were immortals as far as age was concerned, and they had typically greater physical attributes than your average human, the Crimson Race were still quite killable. Once the harem grew large enough, there was always someone, or some group, not enthralled quite enough to prevent them from finding a way to kill their "master" and free themselves and the others in one stroke.

One member of this race, and one only, was different. His name was Wolf. Raised by normal humans, he had a sense of morals, and seeing what other members of his race were doing, sought to avoid becoming that kind of monster and meeting that kind of end. He pursued magic, and became an incredibly powerful mage in his own right. Fast forward several centuries, and Wolf was confident enough in his abilities to poke around other universes, and eventually stumbled upon Muffinville.

Through a series of interactions with Muffinville, the unique magic of the Crimson Race somehow became entwined with that world's idea of "color magic". In its original manifestation, it was a bit like Aquamarine, existing natively in members of the Crimson Race (really, just Wolf, the de facto avatar as the only member of said race to come to that world) alongside a capability to use its power to alter others, usually into animal-like women with extraordinary physical ability and a predisposition toward violence and chaos, as well as a strong attraction to the person who made them so. An alternate-reality version of Wolf named Feral, who was equally wise and survived equally as long, but without any such morals, eventually stumbled upon Muffinville and used his powers as seemingly another avatar of the color to "have a little fun". Shortly after this, some unknown event occurred which removed both such avatars seemingly entirely from existence, leaving a kind of void.

I'm less clear on the details here, but somewhere along the way, by someone else, a later form of Crimson was invented. This form's color fruit is the wolfsuckle; it seems to generally produce animal girls without much regard to the original behavior of Crimson at all. I'm inclined to call this "weak Crimson", a kind of duller, mitigated form that's more generic than the highly specific behavior the color had before. It's not bad, but it is different from "pure" or "original" Crimson as described above.

Some time later, a more "pure" version of Crimson was rediscovered or invented. This kind manifests, instead of a fruit at all, in mushrooms known as the Crimsonshroom. (Actually I'm not entirely sure that's what their name originally was, but it's good enough.) These unique fungi can transform people in two distinct, separate ways: Inhaling the spores transforms the victim, with a burning, painful sensation, into animal-girls with highly enhanced physical capabilities and intense levels of both general aggression and attraction toward males produced by the other effect, similar to how people were once affected by Feral's power; eating one of these mushrooms purges the effects of the spores and, in a more pleasant sort of warmth, gives one a male animal-man form with abilities enhanced beyond those of the spore-caused women, and with an equal amount of attraction towards those created by the spores, along with a certain sense of dominance and aggression. The females might be able to get along, but two Crimson males would almost certainly be drawn to fight each other.

As of now, the event which made the avatars of "original Crimson" disappear is still in effect, so that's not likely to see much use. When not coming from the fruit or fungus, the color energy can exist anywhere on a spectrum between weak Crimson and strong Crimson (might as well call it that), and there's no particular reason any point on that spectrum would favor one gender over the other given the Crimsonshroom's dual nature. But given Muffinville's nature, it's likely going to skew female anyway.

[Whatevr89532]

Intrusion Report

A perfectly white expanse of nothing. A white chair rising up from it. A man in a white suit sitting in the chair, legs partially crossed, calmly reading a book with a blank white cover.

Sheesh, what a dull dream. Back when Anna first gained control over her own dreams--granted she was maybe five or seven back then--she had much more exciting ones. Most people with the kind of powers that made all dreams lucid found all kinds of interesting things to do in them. But this guy? This guy. He was reading an imaginary book in an imaginary field of nothing. Well, she could get back to interacting with non-boring people after the message was delivered. With a small sigh to herself, she appeared standing in front of him.

He did not appear to notice her for a long moment. "Uh, hi. Hello?"
Ark flipped a page in his book. "Anna Naifeh. What can I do for you?"
Ohh, this was the 'know it all' kind of powerful entity. That explained a lot, probably. "Like, I have a message from the higher-ups." If he really did know it all he'd know which higher ups she meant. "They said an Arceus broke theee, rules or, whatever?"
"Does this report come with details?"
"Yeah. It showed up disguised as a Giratina in some of our guarded dreams from worlds you're supposed to be in charge of. Seemed like it was trying to get some kind of information out of people, but it still wasn't too hard for us to kick out. Seems like it got the hint not to mess with us after a while, and now it's bolting anytime it notices our protection."

"You are aware that dreams are not the specialty of an Arceus," he stated calmly.
"Yeah, well, no other pokemon we've seen carries a deity-level power signature. So the only other way this could happen is some non-mon deity pretending to be an Arceus pretending to be Giratina to troll, or some other dumb reason."
He finally turned his head up to look at her. "As with anything powerful, there are ways to drain a pokemon's power and use it as one's own. I will look into this, tell them that."
"I, guess they'll be happy to hear it." She turned her head sideways slightly, trying to see the pages of the book. "What are you even reading in a dream, anyway?"
"Psionic copy of the book I was reading before I went to bed." He willed the title to appear on the cover so she could read it; it was some kind of technical manual on the finer points of pokeball design.
"Laaame."
"If you're through? I was getting to the good part."
"Yeah, yeah. See ya." She left the dream.

Ark sighed to himself. "Teenagers..."

[AmbushCat]

Ark sighed to himself. "Teenagers..."

'Teenagers' indeed... man, don't even get me started.

"Yeah, well, no other pokemon we've seen carries a diety-level power signature.

The 'i' and 'e' in 'deity' are switched around. Thought I'd pass that on.

[Whatevr89532]

I wrote it all in kind of one singular rush and caught a few other typos. Thanks for letting me know, edited.

Anyway, fooooreshadowiiiiiing.