IS's (short) fanfic topic.

[Heat Sonata]

Well, I intended this to be a Legends drabble, but it strayed from the foot race thing too much by the time I finished and was so ridiculously huge that I decided it probably was more suitable as a short fanfiction. Anyway.
I suppose I'll post any other short fictions I make here too.

I Saw it First!

Tron went spiraling to the ground, blackened and smoking as usual. Her latest robot, the Uberbrucker, had been armed with an impressive (and expensive) hover system, a full (and expensive) artillery, the finest (and most expensive) armor available, and even a cockpit with a decent furniture layout (arranged by an expensive consultant). But it only had room for Tron, and Tron had been slightly distracted for the entire fight. As Teisel watched in dismay from a nearby Drauche and began to direct a recovery operation, Tron lied in the ruined remains of her once mighty design and thought of what she had to look forward to in the day.

Megaman returned to his ship and searched for Roll. He was ecstatic at the abundance of money he had earned on his latest dig, and without the Bonnes even showing up until the last minute. With it, Roll could probably make all kinds of amazing weaponry.
“Check it out, Roll! Who would have known we’d missed this much zenny and this huge of a refractor on our first visit here?!” he exclaimed cheerfully.
“That’s great, Megaman! What on earth will we do with it all?” she said, with a sigh to herself and a forced calm expression.
“Hm… we could make that Powered Arm we have the schematics for…”
“Ah, I’m just so tired of digging all the time… maybe we could take time off to go shopping or something, with all this money…” she remarked casually.
“And I imagine I could probably afford tons of upgrades. The Active Buster hasn’t been running up to par lately, and the Shining Laser hasn’t exactly shined…” Megaman rambled on obliviously.
“Maybe we could go to that one market in Hambrab City and shop around…”
Megaman wasn’t catching her drift.
“You know, maybe we can see a movie, or… buy something… you know, like a new outfit…” Roll hinted, attempting to appease to a romantic side. The attempt failed miserably as Megaman envisioned an evening of pushing a shopping cart selecting red outfits he knew he’d never wear.
“Uh… Roll… say what, I’m kinda busy, and I think I left my delicious Picnic Lunch in the ruin and you know how I’d hate to miss out on that, so… how bout I just leave you the money for whatever you’re planning to do and you just run out and-”
In a flash, Roll and the money she needed were out the door.

“I hope Megaman doesn’t get offended… but I’ve got to get that dress today!” Roll thought to herself, dashing to the mall (the trip to Hambrab City she had indicated would simply have been to the city the ruins were located right beside). She was running as fast as she could, politely extending an apology to anyone she ran into in the process. It wasn’t long before she ran into someone moving as fast as she was, and fell to the ground right outside the door of her shop. It was Tron!
“Excuse me! It’s my fault, I’m really in a hurry- Oh, it’s you!” Roll exclaimed in surprise.
“Well, fancy meeting you here Ms. Blondie,” Tron said, brushing herself off as she stood an attempt to brush off the soot still left over from her battle earlier that day. She had been so anxious to leave that she hadn’t showered first. “I suppose you and your breadwinner are enjoying yourselves. Where is he today, anyway?”
“Why do you care?” Roll asked snappily. Correcting herself, she added, “He had to take care of some business, so he wasn’t able to join me.”
“Sounds like a brush-off if I’ve ever seen one.” Tron retorted smarmily. “I suppose you’re REALLY here to spend all that extra cash he makes you.”
“Well, I try to look nice,” Roll said, smiling. Tron smiled back and shakily attempted to brush the remaining dirt off. Each of them grinned at each other, each knowing that she was about to pick up the most amazingly beautiful, green-eye matching dress that anyone had ever seen, and that the respective other would be put to shame.
“Well, I have something more important to be doing,” Tron replied hastily. “so if you’ll excuse me…”
“Certainly. I actually have a good reason for being here too, you see…” Roll stopped. As she and Tron both stood gawking, another girl left the outfitter wearing their exact dress. Neither of the two could hide her immense disappointment, and forgetting each other immediately ran into the store and inquired when the dress would be back in. Tomorrow, they were told.
“Alright, I’ll just have to be here first tomorrow,” Roll said in relief. “Then I can pick up my dress.”
Tron’s head turned slowly towards her. “Umm… I don’t know which dress you’re talking about… was there a second one out of stock? Because I’ve been planning to by that one for days-”
“Weeks!” Roll replied.
“Months!” they shouted together.
“Well, then, I suppose you’re going to have to get up pretty early, because nobody beats the infamous Tron Bonne at a fair foot race! Our ship is parked a little ways from here… I think I saw your yellow and red disaster nearby, right? At 10:00, when the mall opens, we’re going to have a fair race to see who can get here first, and we’ll see if you get any exercise with Megaman around to do everything for you!”
“And we’ll see if you can run with that ridiculous hair weighing you down!” Roll replied. Each girl turned on her heel and walked back to her respective ship, determined to beat the other in tomorrow’s race.

Tron was up late that night working on a device to make sure she won. Forget fairness! She was a pirate, and she wasn’t going to stop at anything to shame Ms. Blondie, win that race, get the dress of her dreams, and maybe even… She paused for a minute, wound up in her future plans, but then got a grip on herself and got back to work.

The next day, much to Teisel’s surprise after Tron’s long work on a “surprise robot,” Tron was out at 8:00. Well, out of the door, anyway.
“Teisel, what did you do?! We’re nowhere NEAR Hambrab city!” she exclaimed.
“Hambrab City? What would we be doing there? I got the ship moving a while ago, we’re on to our next stop,” he explained, rubbing sleep from his glassy red eyes. “And besides,” he added gleefully, “I’ve heard rumors that a blue digger got lost in those ruins near the city! If that was Blue Boy, we could make it to the next island and finally get the treasure before-”
“NO!” Tron exploded. “I mean… I need to pick up some more parts for the secret weapon… and I can only get them in Hambrab!”
“Huh? W-Well, if it means that much to you…” Teisel headed to the control room. If his sister had set her mind to building such an amazing machine that she had kept it hidden from him, it must be worth it.

As soon as the ship was at the island, Tron opened its deployment hatch and set out. The hover system of the Uberbrucker was all she needed to salvage to give her an advantage over her competition. “If she expects me to play fair, she’s got another thing coming!” Tron thought to herself. Teisel watched in confusion as his sister rushed frantically to the city in the remains of one of their former robots, a supposed “secret weapon.”

Tron felt she was in a comfortable lead now. “Hehe, that dumb blonde probably can’t run at all, the way she sits at the spotter’s chair shouting at Megaman all the time…” As she said it, for a second it occurred to her that Megaman may be in serious danger in the ruins. “I wonder if…” she began, when suddenly a red blur sped past her robot.
“What the-” she began, checking her monitors. It was Roll! “Why that little…”
“Hey Tron,” Roll appeared on the communications monitor, talking on her headset. “It looks like we had the same idea!”
“Don’t you dare compare your… stupid surfboard to my amazing robot!”
“As I recall, Tron, your ‘amazing robot’ is made of scraps from your last disaster, right? My Ruby Stormboard, however, is a brand new design. I was going to give it to Megaman when I finished putting the safety on it, but I decided I needed the speed now!”
“Curse you!” Tron said, for lack of a reply. Roll’s annoying piece of junk was already far ahead of her salvage attempt. She would have to use the amazing (and wildly expensive) one-time turbo boost if she planned to come in the lead. She had intended to stop Megaman using it, but she had been too absent-minded in her last fight to remember.
“FFWWSSSHH!” the Uberbrucker whizzed past the Topaz Stormbringer, or whatever Roll had called it, putting Roll out of sight. “Hohohohahaha!” Tron laughed maniacally. “Eat that! No way I can lose now! I’m moving at light speed. All of the people in the city will hear me coming and bolt to their houses after the last pirate attack, leaving nothing to stop me-”
BAM! Tron ran smack into a police barricade at the front of town, instantly crippling her machine.
“Tron Bonne of the Bonne Pirates! You are under arrest!” the police shouted. After a few minutes, Tron was hand-cuffed and baffled, being led to the station. Listening she could overhear a policeman talking about how the pirate had shouted her name and the position of the ship out at the top of her lungs earlier and what amazing luck they had to have had the ship return the very next day to the exact same spot.
“Teisel can bust me out of here, no problem,” Tron sulked to herself. “But I bet Ms. Blondie’s already showing off her new dress to her precious Megaman…”

“Surprise, Megaman! What do you think?” Roll said, walking into the flutter in her dazzling new dress. She didn’t care that she’d had to ride at high speeds all the way back in it with the wind against her or that she‘d used up all the experimental fuel for the Ruby Storm that she‘d planned to let Megaman use. It was time for her to shine in triumph!
Megaman came in behind her, dragging right past her and plopping down face first on the couch wearily.
“Ugh…. I had such a hard time… I was in the ruins all night without a spotter before I found my way out the next morning… I fought off even more reavers than I did earlier, and all of them exploded for one zenny each…” he announced, dropping the zenny plinking pathetically to the floor. “There, Roll… why don’t you go out and buy something for yourself?”

[Bureaucratic Model 1-3]

Grew into a fic, eh? It happens to the best of us. And you're certianly not

There's a very mean hearted joke I could have said, but I think I'll save it for later; for somebody I actually know and dislike.

A very intersting fanfic, let me tell you, good plot, good conversation, responsibly plausable, and Roll comes off on top, a perfect end to any story.

(Note: Don't think too long or hard about that one, you sicko you)

Where was I? Oh yes, the problem. The problem with this is that you take nigh unto two thousand words to relate what could have come to pass in two hundred. Well... that's stretching it, but five or six hundred. The story is good but the technique is not. Keep writing, and more importantly at your level, edit it yourself. Don't let the computer do it for you. If the words aren't spelled right, thats one thing, but the computer can't tell you if there are plot holes, the computer can't tell you if you're getting out of character or being boring, and the computer definitly can't tell you what to cut and what to keep. Sometimes it'll try, but if you listen you'll be sooorry.

(If you have MSWord then just right click on the underlined word and it'll come up with a list of correctly spelled words to choose from. That way you can spell check while editing and not bring up the spell checker which can really screw you up if you're not careful.)

So, good fanfic, if you re-write then try to cut it down, the start-up and slow-down especially, but otherwise it wasn't a true pain to read or anything like that. You could work on your format a little, but my computer made all the " look like ? so I'm not equipped to comment on that right now, a little @.@, if you know what I mean.

BTW, if would probably be more funny if one of them got there first, but they had spent so much money making a robot for the race they didn't have enough for the dress left. Instead of Tron getting arrested because she had such a big mouth. Tron getting arrested = fan fic of it's own, don't you think?

[Heat Sonata]

If you've got your own idea then write your own fanfiction, slacker! XP J/k

Wordiness is my friend. Seriously, I can't figure out how to make a good idea without typing for a while... say what, could you find a particular example and size it up for me? That might really help.

When I spell check, I always look at the case I'm using it in. So I wouldn't think it would be a problem.

I noticed that the indention I had in Microsoft Word Processor doesn't carry over when I cut and paste, that might be part of the format problem you mentioned.

[Bureaucratic Model 1-3]

Do yourself a favor and take a look at the Drabbles. I was one of the regulars there, in it's heyday. Ahh, the good old days. And if you're looking for more, then I'll have to get back to you. ^{Okay, I'm back, and let me tell you since not everybody reads this I think, but I wrote a rather lenghty Fanfic about Glyde kidnapping Tron, and I was going to put it up until I heard that AaronD had already done that. Then I heard that somebody else had already done that. Then somebody else. Then somebody else. It wasn't a good feeling, so I withdrew it. And it was funney too. eh.}

Wordiness is your friend? Is wordiness even a word? Nevermind... iness... Just writing until something interesting pops out is actually a good way of doing business, assuming you actually go back and hammer out the parts that don't make sense. You say you take the case into consideration when you spell check, so it wouldn't be a problem, but really I didn't tell you to spell check I told you to edit. There's a difference. People think writing is easy until they try it seriously and realize they have to read the same piece of paper over and over again until other people can read it and they're not embarassed. Spell check is important, but I was telling you how to get around it so when you went back and read everything you wouldn't have to use it.

For example: brushing herself off as she stood an attempt to brush off the soot still left over from her battle earlier

Go over that with a spell checker all you want, it's not going to fix anything. However somebody as sensable as you could easely amend the texts to make sense. Sure it takes time, but if it isn't interesting enough to read twice then I usually don't post it, but that's just me. Here's a hint, save your file under some other name, then, when you start cutting things away, you'll have an origional to refrence everything by. That way you'll feel better about cutting something out, since you have an unedited version to look at. And more often than not it won't be needed, but don't worry about that.

[Fire Griffin]

Wow, BM, if more people were to critique like you. Seriously. I like getting critiques and criticisms and that. It helps refine and improve things, but I'm sure we're both aware of that benefit there.

Anyway, I think the Legends fandom is in dire need of some coherent writers and MMLS, as far as I know, is one of the few, if not only, places were you can find them, so adding another number to the ranks is always welcome. My advice is the same as BM's: Just write, then edit the hell out of it after and refine. You have a tendency to go redundant in a few places. When in doubt, try to pick up a beta writer. I'm sure if you advertise yourself here, someone will be willing to try their hand. I'd be happy to, really.

I think you have a lot of potential!

Neil Gaiman is actually a good example of a writer who uses plain language but can convey a powerful point without winding around the reader with words. RPing is a good, ongoing, on-your-toes writing exercise, I might add. Comparing my older RPs to my more recent ones, I notice that I am less wordy and more to the point. You will learn how to express yourself in a more concise manner over time, sir.

Finally, story flow. If you feel your writing is too "cumbersome," read it aloud to yourself very slowly. You will hear your mistakes and whatnot much easier. It really helps when you write.

[Heat Sonata]

jacko said:

For example: brushing herself off as she stood an attempt to brush off the soot still left over from her battle earlier

Ah, like that! I can't believe I didn't catch that while I looked over it with Aim. Huh. I'll be more careful on my next work. ^^;

What you told me to do makes more sense now, from your first comment I thought you were telling me TO go over it with a spell checker.
Anyways, thanks for the comments people!

[bola]

Hehehe, nice one... still brings a to my face as I read it!

When I was reading the part about Tron and Roll's race, a funny little piece of theme music popped into my head as I read it.

In all, despite the few spelling errors, very nice.