a question of time - Archive of Dec prompts

[fay_e]

This is the Dec edition of prompts from #TimeTravelAuthors on bsky, where my answers are about my crossover fic, a question of time (AO3 link). The numbers are the days in Dec.



Dec 1: Story introduction

"a question of time" is the result when I decided my fave time traveller, Akemi Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, should meet my other fave time traveller, Dave Strider from Homestuck.

Dec 3: First time travel on purpose or accident?

For Dave Strider from Homestuck, and Akemi Homura from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, it's neither.

I'll start with Dave, where his first time travel is pre-determined.

When the Dave we have been following encounters a time traveller, it's a Dave from a future that Future Dave immediately invalidates by giving our Dave time travel gear. Our Dave now has time travel abilities he has yet to use.

The next time our Dave encounters time travel, he's discouraged from actually time travelling since a Future Dave returns dead.

Dave finally time travels (off-screen) cos he meets an alive Future Dave. By then, his time travel is pre-determined since his Future self is the reason Dave time travels.

As for Homura, her first time travel is both on purpose and an accident. She purposefully made a wish to meet someone again, but that wish accidentally triggers her time travel right away.


Dec 5 prompt: Something sparkly

Magic doesn't have to sparkle, but Dave Strider still jokes about it when talking time travel devices in the excerpts below.

First excerpt on Homura's shield...

“Tomoe’s played right into his grand plan of talking all of you out of using your weapons, since all of them require sparkle power to function.”

“Your time tables tap on your power, too,” was Homura’s off-hand comment. That was at odds with how tentatively she asked, “Are – are you avoiding sharing about your weapon because its similarities to my shield would affect your brother’s plan?”

Continued excerpts on Dave's timetables:

He’d never grouped his time tables with her shield – to him, that was like mistaking one of Bro’s rickety FM radios for his equally ancient cassette tape players. Both played music, but the mechanics involved in bringing the tunes were entirely different. Not that any of this had to do with Bro’s plans that Homura seemed hung up on. “My time tables aren’t legendary pieces of shit with all the baggage of expectations and a price tag in the zilliums. Which is all you really need to know about legendary weapons.”

Dec 7: Saturday excerpt (optional word: joy)

In the process of fumbling with both joysticks at the same times Homura figured out how to jump - a combination of the red button and the left joystick. Now that she was a little more mobile she relied more on guns and fell back into the joy of dual wielding.

After learning to aim and fire whatever weapon she liked, she got rid of the enemy characters easily and finished the mission. Strider leaned into her view of the victory sequence. "Do you need another shot at the game? Are you down from the high of buildings yet?"

He was still speaking in English, so she did the same. "I don't need an arcade game to get to the top of buildings."

"Right." He made the same gesture he had when he last referred to her wings as an angelic light show. "What about guns huh? What's your excuse for that?"

"I need to aim my bow and arrows."

"Uh huh. You're talking to an American from the land that put the West in Wild West, so I know aim doesn't tell you what type of gun to use when. Do you have a secret magic lair filled with guns?"

"Not in this timeline."

Dec 9: Celebrations

While I have written a few birthday celebrations in my main fic "a question of time", I like Christmas so much I wrote a Christmas side story set in the same verse, Orange Crush in a Japanese Xmas set (AO3 link).

Here's a snippet from the side story that refers to Christmas and time manipulation.

“Merry Christmas!” she chirruped, reintroducing English and an overdose of the Christmas spirit to the scene, then planted a big wet kiss on his cheek.

He suppressed his first instinct to squeak and made sure he found his voice before saying in English, “Pretty sure those under the mistletoe are supposed to get kisses, not give kisses.”

“I didn’t know that! They don’t seem to know that, too!”

Despite seeing Dave getting kissed, Sakura let Jade plant a kiss on her cheek, too. Sakura came away with a black kiss mark and a drumstick that she’d sneaked out of the KFC bucket that was tucked in Jade’s arm.

He switched back to Japanese to remind Sakura, “I said I’d give you some, can’t you wait?”

Sakura took a huge bite of her drumstick and wiped at the crumbs and the lipstick mark on her cheek. “Chicken is best when it’s hot. And you should fix your face too.”

He was about to do just that when Homura brought on the black, grey and white Christmas of her time stop. He turned to her with a smirk. “That eager to clean – are you trying to one up Sakura in her chicken heist?”

The monochrome didn’t extend to Homura, which was why he could see the red in her cheeks as she tried to pry the bucket of chicken free without bringing Jade into her time stop. “Having an object to shield with would be – easier than trying to dissuade Harley-san.”

Dec 11 prompt: Snippet with the word device

Since Dave Strider and Akemi Homura both use devices to time travel, here's a snippet where they wonder about each other's devices.

Perhaps Homura could figure things out by asking about the other things that were out of time instead. “But sometimes you manipulate time with your bare hands, like with the can and with your sword. Sometimes you use a device."

Dave drummed his fingers on his crossed arms. "My timetables work like your transformations. Without transforming, you and Sakura can summon energy forms of your weapons and tap on some of your powers, but you get the full power up when you transform. My timetables let me dial my Knight of Time powers up to 11 and use them on as many things as I like."

"Can I see your time tables?" She tripped over the English word for his devices, since she kept thinking about multiplication when she knew it was a name like time clones and time turning.

"Did you get me all alone out here just to get me to whip out my magic weapon?"

"You're the one who followed me," she pointed out. "But no, not now, Sakura-san will be wondering where we are. There's a place we can go after school."

Dec 13: Bad timing

Dave Strider would like to get to know Akemi Homura better, if Sakura Kyouko can stop cock blocking. Case in point:

That finally earned him the tiniest of frustrated sighs, but his resolve was hanging on by a thread anyway. He leaned in for a proper kiss, with the firm press of lips that was giving way to the warmth of her mouth and a tinge of orange soda and cake –

“Shouldn’t the two of you be the best at telling the time? Maybe pick the best time not to get walked in on.”

He jumped – to preserve Homura’s reputation, obviously, not in shock. Of fucking course it was Sakura. She’d gone into Homura’s kitchen in search of karaage, why wouldn’t she go into her own kitchen in search of cake.

Dec 15: Year of story
Timeline-wise, my crossover fanfic happens in the year SBURB ended and one year after Episode 12 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, so about 2012. But PMMM is ahead of its time (see, Kyousuke's CD player) so expect references from as far as 2016 to sneak in.


Dec 17: A sentence I love from my story.

Cheating a little with two sentences that are needed for a "meet cute":

"I'm the Knight of Time," Dave said, staring at Homura down the length of his blade. "What the HELL did you try to do to me?"


Dec 19: Happiest character

Everyone in "a question of time" is miserable, but Jade Harley hides her misery behind a ton of smiley faces. Sample of her chat (she's GG, Dave is TG):



Dec 21: Excerpt with the word "appeared"

Here's one where the context is time travel.

There was still so much that bothered Homura, especially another of her questions that it seemed only Dave could answer. “Is death the only thing that can end a timeline? Does a timeline still continue when a universe ends?”

The pride that Dave’d allowed himself to show smoothed out until it left only his usual expression, though after that open display of emotion that expression felt like a mask. “Figures that that’s a question the both of us can ask AND answer, how about that? D’you think your timeline continued when you entered this universe?”

Given all the memories in Homura's head, it was hard to put together a straight timeline. It was simpler to follow the timeline of her ribbons, which had appeared when she'd started to remember other universes. If that was the answer... "Yes... I think so. What - what's your answer?"

He struck a studied pose of looking at the sky while allowing the wind to sweep his hair back. She'd almost thought he'd abandoned his answer in favor of posing when he finally said, "All my time loops were between universes."

Dec 23: Writing time

My preferred writing time is first thing in the morning, but there are way too many things demanding my attention then. The next best time is when I have writing company - usually knowing someone else is also writing at the same time helps.


Dec 25: Post with words "bed"

There's a few, but I wanted to give myself the gift of alien pest removal this Xmas.

Dave had made good on his promise to make the bed after breakfast. While his hands were busy folding blankets and fluffing pillows, that left his mind too free to run away with thoughts. Like the thought that he hadn't meant it to be a promise, but Bro apparently had held up his end of the deal of not making Dave go get more grief cubes. Somehow that had involved leaving out the exact details of why Homura had requested a splinter of her best friend.

He'd try again this morning, but he was stuck with the two most reserved people who'd squashed their feelings so far down that they'd created a new form of fossil fuel. In Homura's case, Bro had hit a vein, and Dave hadn't yet built the refinery that let him turn all those spurting feelings into a multimillion industry or something useful he could make sense of. As for Bro, he'd sunk somewhere past the Homura vein, and Dave kept getting too distracted by the mess to dig further.

So that left Dave punching pillows on the pretext of fluffing them. He wondered when Bro would be done washing up in the kitchen and Homura would be done washing up in the bathroom. He would try again with whoever finished first.

He didn't expect that he would see Incubator try to sneak into his hallway.

His first instinct was to throw what he had on hand. Unfortunately, that was the pillow. Even though being a Strider meant he'd scored a direct hit, the pillow stopped this from being an instant K.O or crushing Incubator as hard as he'd like. He did feel savage glee that the hit sent it rolling.

Dec 27: Time that MC would travel to

Akemi Homura's time loops already all centre around the only moment in time she wants to return to - her first meeting with Madoka.

Dave Strider won't admit to it, but he would like to time travel to his time on the meteor, when things were in limbo and he hadn't fucked up the final showdown with the big bad yet.


Dec 29: Silence in story

Silence comes up 30 times in my story, since Homura and Bro are the quiet types to consider silence as its own response. Dave is too happy to use up their word quota with his yapping.