[Legend of Sun Knight] fic: Dishonest Honesty Part 1 (discarded version)
Ugggghhhh writer's block! I've been posting stuff, but nothing for my older WIPs. I actually had a burst of inspiration for The Time of Ten Suns, opened the document, wrote 100 words, and now I'm stuck again. XD;; I'm around 1k into a random Invincible chapter, but it doesn't seem very interesting. A Vice-Captain's Tale and Follow the Sign are both stuck too. My way of battling writer's block is to flit around and work on different fics, but when I already have 11 WIPs and most aren't speaking to me, what do I doooooo. (Please come chat with me, ahhhh. That might help. It's why My Very Own Creature of Darkness is progressing much quicker than my other fics at the moment. XD;;) *head bursts* Maybe the problem is that I'm trying to work on too many fics, ahaha. I'm not a good multi-tasker. (How do people even keep track of my fics... I can't even keep track of them.)
But yeah. To make myself feel better, I'll just... toss up old stuff I wrote. Yup yup. (That's basically what I've been doing with Death by Sea. This might be another addition to the collection. =x Here's the discarded version of Dishonest Honesty. I had planned to write a fic featuring Storm and Earth switching bodies but decided to drop the fic. Here was part of what I had. I'll probably put up around... 4 chapters? Yeah. Enjoy the incompleteness. :'D;;;
In this version, Storm and everyone else don't find out during Bittersweet Sweetness that Judgment and Sun switched. I began writing it before I had finished writing Bittersweet Sweetness. When I decided to drop the fic, I changed the ending to the fic to wrap everything up more conclusively!
(Summary: The whole continent knows that the Earth Knight is honest and terribly bad with women while the Storm Knight is just the opposite; however, that perception couldn't be further from the truth. When Earth and Storm end up accidentally switching bodies, it should have solved all of their problems. It really doesn't. Georgo Earth and Ceo Storm end up learning more than they ever wanted to know about each other and themselves, as well as other people's perceptions of them.)
Dishonest Honesty - Part 1: Storm
There was a female cleric in my room.
More specifically... on my bed.
Wait.
WHAT.
It was safe to say that I’d never thought I would end up in this situation. The need to know seriously did me in this time. It wasn’t like I’d never wondered if we wouldn’t all be better off if I wasn’t the Storm Knight, seeing how my personality was as far from the personality of the Storm Knight’s as we could possibly get, but the position was mine. If I had to learn how to wink and how to deal with constantly being out of my comfort zone to keep my position, then so be it.
I’d never wanted to give my place up.
In hindsight, the source of what caused my displacement could be traced back to when I noticed how Sun was acting strange, that was, even stranger than usual. His behavior wasn’t noticeably off, not enough for the general public to think anything was wrong, but there was something about his mannerisms that plagued my thoughts.
I just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Sun’s smile was one I knew well. He always smiled whenever we passed by each other in the corridors, and his smile nearly always came accompanied by paperwork. I’d come to know that smile as a smug one where he took delight in tormenting me. Other times, Sun’s smile hid his displeasure or even his fury. Regardless of what he felt, a wide smile was never far from his face, and I learned to tell how his smiles differed, be it anger or embarrassment or exhaustion he was truly feeling with each smile. Rarely did his smiles express pure happiness, though there were countless cases where he reveled in other people’s demises.
When Sun and I left the palace after our audience with the king over the death knight, I’d talked to Sun like usual and hadn’t suspected anything, only that perhaps he was a little easier to understand than normal. He had been scheming like expected, dragging Ed into playing the role of the missing death knight whom Sun had somehow known was a royal knight prior to his death. However, after we parted ways, I was suddenly struck by how different his smile had been.
There was one smile of his that had struck me particularly hard. I couldn’t forget that smile no matter how hard I tried, and it made me question all of his previous smiles as well. Hadn’t they been more genuine than usual? Even the grim ones?
Over and over, that smile of his that confused me for some reason would replay in my mind, the corners of his mouth lifting up minutely as if he were afraid to let himself smile. It was a smile that was much too small and much too hesitant to be the smiles that Sun normally plastered on his face to hide his emotions. This smile, if I had to put it in words, was an honest one, if only he would let it happen. I’d never known Sun to smile that way.
Recalling the smile only made me realize that the way Sun had held himself had been somewhat different from usual as well. His posture had always been good, but his back had been even straighter than usual, which meant he cut quite an impressive figure, and he’d stared straight at me. I was slightly taller than Sun, so he normally had to flick his eyes upward, but with my slouch and the way he’d held himself, I’d felt like we were seeing eye-to-eye. For once, that was.
With his mannerisms bugging me, I couldn't help but investigate. It was like an itch I could never get rid of, this desire to figure out the ongoings around me. If there was one thing I liked best about my position as the Storm Knight, it was that I could easily find out about everything that was going on, from the number of diplomats that would be visiting from our neighboring kingdoms down to what type of underwear each of the Twelve Holy Knights wore. I would say things and invite people to chatter away, and they would all find it a given… Not that I went out of my way to ask the servants what type of underwear people wore. They had only been too happy to ramble off about the laundry for the week that I had come across that piece of gossip without much help... but that wasn’t the matter at hand.
I investigated.
Even though my goal was investigating Sun, I also overheard curious anecdotes about the cruel ways Judgment had punished the latest criminals, how his paperwork had smelled strangely of lavender… And then in Sun's case, he had become a master swordsmen, which I never believed could happen without the world ending. Blaze, like me, had thought Sun's speech to be easier to understand than normal. If that wasn’t odd, then I didn’t know what would be odd.
Something definitely hadn't added up. I was determined to find out what was off about Sun, and I’d also thought that maybe I had to add Judgment to my investigation as well.
In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t decided to investigate because now, I was personally experiencing what had caused the strangeness I had felt from Sun.
However, I wouldn’t put things together until after I freaked out a bit. After all, there was a female cleric. In my room. On my bed.
Let me repeat. She was on my bed.
That just couldn't be right. I hadn't invited anyone into my room. If I had, I would have remembered doing so, and I wouldn't have invited her to sit on my bed.
I mean, why was I even in my room? Hadn't I been outside in the corridors just now? I had just exited Sun's room with a pile of paperwork. Inside that pile of paperwork, I had hidden a strange trinket that I had found on Sun's table next to the paperwork. His smile had been strange when I asked about the trinket, so I thought it worth investigating. I recalled that after I left Sun's room, I placed the trinket inside my shirt so that I could balance my paperwork more easily. Then, a group of clerics had swarmed me, I panicked and thought that surely Earth would have appreciated being swarmed by women much more than me, my chest grew warm, and then...
"Is something the matter?" asked the cleric hesitantly.
And then after my chest warmed, I found myself next to a female cleric in the blink of an eye.
On my bed. That bears repeating.
Still, I couldn't let my image be destroyed by freezing up like this. My teacher would be super disappointed. He’d tried so hard to teach me how to uphold the Storm Knight’s image that I would hate to let him down, to become the person who messed up the Storm Knight’s reputation that was built upon thirty-seven generations of Storm Knights preceding me. It was too long a tradition for me to disrupt, and it was that very reputation that helped me in my investigations.
I needed my reputation.
I forced my head up. I smiled, about to reassure the cleric that nothing was wrong when she placed her hand on my forehead. Soft fingers brushed against my skin, right underneath my bangs.
Immediately, my face warmed. I was probably bright red now, a reaction I had hoped I’d trained out of myself, but I had never been able to completely lock it away.
As if burned, I jerked out of her hold and immediately cursed myself for doing so.
The Storm Knight was supposed to be suave, cool, and collected. I was anything but that at the moment. That was completely unacceptable.
However, instead of becoming appalled by my actions, the cleric giggled and ruffled my hair. "You are truly such a darling."
W-What? I’m a what?
After speaking, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down, burying my face right into her ample and very soft bosom.
I couldn’t breathe.
W-W-What in the world is going on?????
I think I must have squeaked out loud. Scratch that. I definitely squeaked out loud. It was an unbecoming noise, not at all a noise the Storm Knight should make.
That was the least of my worries though. Before I could make sense of what was happening, my eyes started rolling backwards. I was close to blacking out.
I was definitely about to black out.
The last thing I heard was the cleric calling out my name.
No, it wasn’t my name.
“Earth Knight?” the cleric asked.
Earth Knight…?
That was my last thought before darkness claimed me.
tbc!
I guess I could've tweaked this to make it work with Bittersweet Sweetness's actual ending, but... too much work for a fic I've dropped. :3;; Anyway, I actually quite liked this part because I got to show some of what I think about Ceo and how he regards his position!
Next part
But yeah. To make myself feel better, I'll just... toss up old stuff I wrote. Yup yup. (That's basically what I've been doing with Death by Sea. This might be another addition to the collection. =x Here's the discarded version of Dishonest Honesty. I had planned to write a fic featuring Storm and Earth switching bodies but decided to drop the fic. Here was part of what I had. I'll probably put up around... 4 chapters? Yeah. Enjoy the incompleteness. :'D;;;
In this version, Storm and everyone else don't find out during Bittersweet Sweetness that Judgment and Sun switched. I began writing it before I had finished writing Bittersweet Sweetness. When I decided to drop the fic, I changed the ending to the fic to wrap everything up more conclusively!
(Summary: The whole continent knows that the Earth Knight is honest and terribly bad with women while the Storm Knight is just the opposite; however, that perception couldn't be further from the truth. When Earth and Storm end up accidentally switching bodies, it should have solved all of their problems. It really doesn't. Georgo Earth and Ceo Storm end up learning more than they ever wanted to know about each other and themselves, as well as other people's perceptions of them.)
Dishonest Honesty - Part 1: Storm
There was a female cleric in my room.
More specifically... on my bed.
Wait.
WHAT.
It was safe to say that I’d never thought I would end up in this situation. The need to know seriously did me in this time. It wasn’t like I’d never wondered if we wouldn’t all be better off if I wasn’t the Storm Knight, seeing how my personality was as far from the personality of the Storm Knight’s as we could possibly get, but the position was mine. If I had to learn how to wink and how to deal with constantly being out of my comfort zone to keep my position, then so be it.
I’d never wanted to give my place up.
In hindsight, the source of what caused my displacement could be traced back to when I noticed how Sun was acting strange, that was, even stranger than usual. His behavior wasn’t noticeably off, not enough for the general public to think anything was wrong, but there was something about his mannerisms that plagued my thoughts.
I just couldn’t leave well enough alone.
Sun’s smile was one I knew well. He always smiled whenever we passed by each other in the corridors, and his smile nearly always came accompanied by paperwork. I’d come to know that smile as a smug one where he took delight in tormenting me. Other times, Sun’s smile hid his displeasure or even his fury. Regardless of what he felt, a wide smile was never far from his face, and I learned to tell how his smiles differed, be it anger or embarrassment or exhaustion he was truly feeling with each smile. Rarely did his smiles express pure happiness, though there were countless cases where he reveled in other people’s demises.
When Sun and I left the palace after our audience with the king over the death knight, I’d talked to Sun like usual and hadn’t suspected anything, only that perhaps he was a little easier to understand than normal. He had been scheming like expected, dragging Ed into playing the role of the missing death knight whom Sun had somehow known was a royal knight prior to his death. However, after we parted ways, I was suddenly struck by how different his smile had been.
There was one smile of his that had struck me particularly hard. I couldn’t forget that smile no matter how hard I tried, and it made me question all of his previous smiles as well. Hadn’t they been more genuine than usual? Even the grim ones?
Over and over, that smile of his that confused me for some reason would replay in my mind, the corners of his mouth lifting up minutely as if he were afraid to let himself smile. It was a smile that was much too small and much too hesitant to be the smiles that Sun normally plastered on his face to hide his emotions. This smile, if I had to put it in words, was an honest one, if only he would let it happen. I’d never known Sun to smile that way.
Recalling the smile only made me realize that the way Sun had held himself had been somewhat different from usual as well. His posture had always been good, but his back had been even straighter than usual, which meant he cut quite an impressive figure, and he’d stared straight at me. I was slightly taller than Sun, so he normally had to flick his eyes upward, but with my slouch and the way he’d held himself, I’d felt like we were seeing eye-to-eye. For once, that was.
With his mannerisms bugging me, I couldn't help but investigate. It was like an itch I could never get rid of, this desire to figure out the ongoings around me. If there was one thing I liked best about my position as the Storm Knight, it was that I could easily find out about everything that was going on, from the number of diplomats that would be visiting from our neighboring kingdoms down to what type of underwear each of the Twelve Holy Knights wore. I would say things and invite people to chatter away, and they would all find it a given… Not that I went out of my way to ask the servants what type of underwear people wore. They had only been too happy to ramble off about the laundry for the week that I had come across that piece of gossip without much help... but that wasn’t the matter at hand.
I investigated.
Even though my goal was investigating Sun, I also overheard curious anecdotes about the cruel ways Judgment had punished the latest criminals, how his paperwork had smelled strangely of lavender… And then in Sun's case, he had become a master swordsmen, which I never believed could happen without the world ending. Blaze, like me, had thought Sun's speech to be easier to understand than normal. If that wasn’t odd, then I didn’t know what would be odd.
Something definitely hadn't added up. I was determined to find out what was off about Sun, and I’d also thought that maybe I had to add Judgment to my investigation as well.
In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t decided to investigate because now, I was personally experiencing what had caused the strangeness I had felt from Sun.
However, I wouldn’t put things together until after I freaked out a bit. After all, there was a female cleric. In my room. On my bed.
Let me repeat. She was on my bed.
That just couldn't be right. I hadn't invited anyone into my room. If I had, I would have remembered doing so, and I wouldn't have invited her to sit on my bed.
I mean, why was I even in my room? Hadn't I been outside in the corridors just now? I had just exited Sun's room with a pile of paperwork. Inside that pile of paperwork, I had hidden a strange trinket that I had found on Sun's table next to the paperwork. His smile had been strange when I asked about the trinket, so I thought it worth investigating. I recalled that after I left Sun's room, I placed the trinket inside my shirt so that I could balance my paperwork more easily. Then, a group of clerics had swarmed me, I panicked and thought that surely Earth would have appreciated being swarmed by women much more than me, my chest grew warm, and then...
"Is something the matter?" asked the cleric hesitantly.
And then after my chest warmed, I found myself next to a female cleric in the blink of an eye.
On my bed. That bears repeating.
Still, I couldn't let my image be destroyed by freezing up like this. My teacher would be super disappointed. He’d tried so hard to teach me how to uphold the Storm Knight’s image that I would hate to let him down, to become the person who messed up the Storm Knight’s reputation that was built upon thirty-seven generations of Storm Knights preceding me. It was too long a tradition for me to disrupt, and it was that very reputation that helped me in my investigations.
I needed my reputation.
I forced my head up. I smiled, about to reassure the cleric that nothing was wrong when she placed her hand on my forehead. Soft fingers brushed against my skin, right underneath my bangs.
Immediately, my face warmed. I was probably bright red now, a reaction I had hoped I’d trained out of myself, but I had never been able to completely lock it away.
As if burned, I jerked out of her hold and immediately cursed myself for doing so.
The Storm Knight was supposed to be suave, cool, and collected. I was anything but that at the moment. That was completely unacceptable.
However, instead of becoming appalled by my actions, the cleric giggled and ruffled my hair. "You are truly such a darling."
W-What? I’m a what?
After speaking, she wrapped her arms around me and pulled me down, burying my face right into her ample and very soft bosom.
I couldn’t breathe.
W-W-What in the world is going on?????
I think I must have squeaked out loud. Scratch that. I definitely squeaked out loud. It was an unbecoming noise, not at all a noise the Storm Knight should make.
That was the least of my worries though. Before I could make sense of what was happening, my eyes started rolling backwards. I was close to blacking out.
I was definitely about to black out.
The last thing I heard was the cleric calling out my name.
No, it wasn’t my name.
“Earth Knight?” the cleric asked.
Earth Knight…?
That was my last thought before darkness claimed me.
tbc!
I guess I could've tweaked this to make it work with Bittersweet Sweetness's actual ending, but... too much work for a fic I've dropped. :3;; Anyway, I actually quite liked this part because I got to show some of what I think about Ceo and how he regards his position!
Next part