Ten years after the end of the Maverick War, X—unarmed, unarmored, disabled, and retired from the Maverick Hunters—takes on a missing person case in what used to be downtown Abel City, until it was destroyed and walled off from the rest of the world. It should have been a simple enough task, but nothing has ever been simple for X. He soon finds himself drawn into a conflict between two groups of Mavericks living in the Abel City quarantine zone, making friends he desperately needs but isn't so sure he wants, pretending to be a version of himself he doesn't hate, and confronting the fact that he has spent so long sacrificing all of himself for a world that gives him nothing in return that he doesn't even know who he is anymore or what he wants out of life.
A nap, mostly, but that missing human isn't going to find himself.
I did it. \o/
3½ months, 164,906 words, approximately a bajillion hours of lost sleep, and quite a lot of ADHD medication taken as directed. Entirely finished and posted so you don't have to wait around for updates. I'm proud of me. I think it's a pretty alright story, hopefully.
It actually doesn't require a ton of series knowledge to read and I tried to write it such that most of what you do need you can infer readily enough, so if you don't really even go here, meh! It might still be at least a little entertaining.
I feel like my summary was actually really good, so I'll just steal some of my tags for the rest:
X is old as balls and disabled as hell
found family but it's a bunch of Mavericks?
Don't Worry About It
based on a dream at least originally
X is basically the world's most burnt-out gifted kid ever
everyone repeatedly fails the Stop Picking Grandpa Up 2211 Challenge and X is so over it
the world needs more disabled characters who stay disabled so I made some
also contains a metric ton of aroace relationships
SO many original reploid characters. too many. put some of those back.
contains an absolutely excessive amount of worldbuilding
because Capcom couldn't be bothered and I have to do everything around here myself
featuring reploids as a metaphor for minorities and outcasts
and going Maverick as a rational reaction to an irrational world
no gods no masters no alphas no betas no editors we die like Mavericks
isn't X tired of being nice? doesn't he just want to go ape shitt?
Gods tho I was so nervous actually hitting post on this. I will love you forever and ever and ever amen if you assuage my nerves and leave kudos or comments or even just hits. 🙏 I am super not used to anybody reading my writing and usually in the past it's been a guarantee that I can't continue doing it so I'm really stepping out of my comfy zone here.
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will you write something vampire themed for spooky season?
The coffin was luxurious, as far as coffins went. The protagonist had half-expected just a plain wood box, scratchy and full of splinters. They supposed, if they had to die, they could at least do so in style.
It didn't really make them feel better.
And it didn't make the coffin fit two people any better either.
"Stop squirming," the secret love of their life snapped. "You're just going to get us more stuck."
"I don't think it's possible to get more stuck." Their voice was only a little, reasonably, hysterical. "We're buried alive in a bloody coffin!"
The secret love of their life looked awful beneath them. Pallid, even in the crowded gloom of their shared grave. They felt clammy and cold beneath the protagonist's limbs.
The protagonist swallowed. They tried to stop squirming. There were no comfortable positions.
The love of their life hissed between their teeth with irritation, and if the protagonist could see properly, they were sure that a terrifying and wrathful and gorgeous glare would be pointed in their direction.
"I'm sorry," the protagonist said. For the squirming, sure, but mostly for everything else. For somehow getting them into this mess. For being the last idiot that the love of their short life would ever see. For not knowing how to save either of them.
"You should stop talking and conserve your air."
"You should stop talking and conserve your air," the protagonist mumbled. They closed their eyes. They tried not to panic. The panic closed in on them on every side, just like the too close suffocating padded walls, and the steady weight of six or so feet of packed soil crushing them on all sides.
"Someone's going to rescue us," the love of their life said. "Your friends - someone - will figure out where we are."
"Coffin. My first guess too."
"They'll get us out." The growl in their friend's voice was almost inhuman. Quite impressive.
The protagonist bit down hard on their lip, and the rather unhelpful response of 'before or after we die from the lack of oxygen? Because, you know, I read that people can survive five hours locked in a coffin. Tops. If they're not hyperventilating. But who's hyperventilating! I'm not hyperventilating! Are you?'
Their friend drew a sharp breath. Then they squirmed, hypocritically, before managing to place cool hands on either side of the protagonist's whirling brain.
"Easy," they murmured, abruptly far more gentle. "You're okay. You're going to be okay. I'm not - I won't let anything bad happen to you."
The protagonist felt tears prick the corners of their eyes. Absurd.
One of their friend’s thumbs grazed over their lip, wiping away the bead of blood there.
"Match your breathing to mine," their friend murmured, voice a little hoarse and trying-to-keep-it-together. "Concentrate on me."
The protagonist did their best. Their friend breathed very slowly, admirably calm really, given the circumstances.
"I won't hurt you," their friend said. "I love you. I won't."
"It's not you I'm worried about. Wait - you love me?"
It was impossible to see the love of their life's face, and really, a coffin was the worst place for a confession. Because the protagonist would very much have liked to have seen their face. At least if they were hanging over a lava pit, the protagonist would have been able to see their face, and make a judgment on if they meant that platonically or romantically.
God. They hated their brain.
Their friend didn't say anything and the silence was surely almost as agonising as dying. Almost. They brushed a tear away from the protagonist's cheek, feather-light.
"More than anything," their friend said. "Now shut. up. Please. And please, please, stop moving."
The protagonist shut up. Somehow. They rested their head against their friend's chest, letting the knowledge of that confession fill them with warmth, or try to.
At least they were dying in a coffin with someone they loved. Who loved them back. Someone's whose heart was so...
The protagonist stopped. It was a trick. A mistake. Something. But it felt, beneath their ear, like their friend's heart wasn't beating. Actually, when the protagonist really thought about it, now that their breathing was more or less steady, even in the squashed space they couldn't hear their friend's breathing at all. They couldn't feel it against their cheek and...
They didn't think the love of their life had always been so cold.
"Why." The protagonist resisted the urge to shift again. "Why do you think you're going to hurt me? Worst you're going to do is elbow me in the face?"
Their friend was silent a second time.
"Right?" The protagonist pressed.
"Someone will find us. They'll get us out. It's not a problem. It won't be a problem."
"What...what won't be a problem?" But the protagonist, with a dreadful twist in their stomach, knew. It should have been obvious, maybe, in the last twenty four hours.
The stomach bug. The dark glasses. The cringing from the sunlight.
"I won't hurt you." A mantra. Not a reassurance; a mantra, a plea. "I love you. I won't hurt you. You're going to be fine."
Five hours, suddenly, seemed like a lifetime.
The coffin was luxurious, as far as coffins went. Excellent quality. Top notch.
Nothing else, after all, would keep in a newly turned and starving vampire locked up.
"Shit," the protagonist whispered.
And that about summed up their current predicament.
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