Everytime I'm on vacations...

[Grandy]

I have these wonderful ideas and plotlines for RPGs that I will end up never making.

[Prpl_Mage]

That's great, make sure you write them down. Bad thing is when you have a great idea but no creativity to make something of it. But worse is being filled with the motivation to do something and lacking the ideas and then end up not doing anything

[Grandy]

I tried to write them down. In book format, even. Twice.


 It's just my writing style changes with my mood, and in the end I re-read what I wrote and it seems like a mess of conflicting point of views.

[Moosetroop11]

Write short stories.  At least the creativity's going somewhere then.

[Grandy]

Write short stories.  At least the creativity's going somewhere then.

Eh, could be...

[SaiKar]

Pft, I take my laptop on vacations for downtime in hotels or airports specifically because of this reason.

[Grandy]

*Sheng, Charles, Devon and Grandy are sitting around a campfire, being their turn to watch out for enemies. Other members of the Chat Noir are sleeping*
Sheng is a skinny devout military man who was raised by a priest. Charles is a fat british gentleman who just happens to be a samurai (his backstory is complicated, just go with it for now) he was a believer until a gruesome accident killed one of his friends. Grandy is a highborn man who at age ten ran away from home after finding out how exactly his father acquired his money. Devon is a poor bastard who during war was tortured until the brink of insanity, giving him a taste for pyromania and inverting his reactions to his own feelings (when he is sad he laughs, when he is happy he cries. At all times he is in neutral mood maintains a demented grin.)
Sheng is polishing his weapons, sitting in a sheet he opened in the ground. Charles is eating a cookie from his seemingly bottomless bag of cookies while sitting in a fallen tree. Grandy is laying with his back to the grass watching the stars, or would be if his eyes weren’t closed. Devon stares the fire.

Eventually, Charles takes a glimpse to Sheng’s crucifix hanging from his neck.
“So, you believe in the Creator, do you?” he practically spat the words. Charles, as a gentleman, never cursed, but he had a way to say the words that may as well be cursing. In the past, during battle, the other members of Chat noir were sure to hear him saying the f-word. And the s-word. And the d-word, the p-word, the b-word, the n-word and Sheng was mostly sure once even the q-word. Charles denied. In the next battle, his companions brought hidden a tape recorder to prove it to him. To their surprise, every major curse he yelled in battle came out in record as “You demon! Foolish creature!” they eventually formed a theory that no matter what he said, he said with so much spirit, the human brain of those nearby always heard what REALLY wanted to say.
Sheng stopped polishing his guns and looked up, confused.
“Me?” Sheng was a skinny man. Despite his name , Sheng Tzu was not asian. For that matter, he didn’t know where he was from. His name was asian, his skin was Caucasian, his hair carefully gelled up short hair was orange on top, but somehow naturally became blacker as it neared his scalp, and he had an accent that could be from anywhere in the world. To make things worse, he was born with a rare disease that those in the North Kingdom called “catseye”. They made his eyes like those of a cat.*He possessed amazing night vision, but terrible, blurry vision anywhere with a light source. It was near midnight, and around the campfire, Sheng wore sunglasses.
“Do you see anyone else here with a piece of jewelry representing devotion to any entity? Of course you!”
“Well, yes.”
And the conversation died there. For about two minutes.
“How come?”
“Excuse me?”
“How come you believe in the Creator?”
Sheng carefully put his guns down in the blanket he had extended in the ground. ‘It’s going to be a conversation’ he thought to himself.
“Well…” he thought a little “I see the trees. I see the sky. I see birds. I specifically see Grandy’s pet bird right there in that tree with the sky behind it, in fact.” He patted his body in search of a cigarette. “It occurs to me these must have come from somewhere, someone must have Created them, thus the Creator.”
“I see.” Charles thought for a while, then unstrapped the katana he kept around his large, round waist, and put it on the ground. Sheng recognized it as one of those weird ways Charles had of being honourable; he saw Sheng put his guns down before starting the discussion, and as such would also put his weapons down to show his good faith before proceeding. Of course he would never admit to it, he was far too proud.   
“But I don’t buy it,” Charles proceeded “It is all fine and dandy that you can point at things and say they must have been made, but all that pointing at them proves is that things are.” He munched a cookie for a few seconds, thinking. “in the end, you just think they were made because the Book says they were made” again, he almost spat the word “Book”**. Nobody in Chat Noir had ever dared to ask Charles just what why he hated religion so much, but it was obvious that there was something more to him than just your normal skepticism. “Can you show me definitive proof that there is such a thing as a Creator, that these things aren’t just spontaneous?”
“Do you really believe a world as complex as ours can just pop into existence without a Maker?”
Charles shook his head “That was merely you repeating the same thing again. You say thing exist, and therefore must have been created. I asked if you cannot remove the ‘must’ or if. Something that says ‘it exists, and therefore it was definitely created’!”
While Charles spoke, Sheng had found his cigarette, and lit it up on the campfire. Devon’s eyes flickered a little, but he did not break his gaze over the flames.
Sheng put it in his mouth and held the smoke for a while.
“No” he shook his head. “I can’t.”
“So you say you believe in something that has no proof of existing, merely because people before you told you you should believe it.”
“If you want to put in so many words, yes.”
“People who certainly would benefit from you believing that they say, I might add, even if they themselves never believed.”
“Certainly.”
“Don’t you find that a little… well, naïve?”
There was a few seconds of silence. Again Charles demonstrated his amazing ability to say one thing, but still mean other. He was trying to be polite, and they were friends, but Sheng could just see the word “stupid” floating behind “naïve”.
“Perhaps.”
Silence.
“Well, I don’t like it.” Charles eventually said. “You can’t simply believe into things without proof. It’s irrational. Silly. You must try and find an answer for the questions, not simply accept that some… Creator made things the way the are!”
Silence. Sheng closed his eyes.
“So… ” He started “You say you don’t believe in things without proof?”
“Certainly not.”
“Tell me then, where do diseases come from?”
Charles raised an eyebrow. He knew Sheng was devout, but even so he couldn’t be devout enough to ignore basic medicine in favor of “the Creator did it”
“Viruses” Charles said. “Allergies. And so on.”
“You believe in that?”
“Certainly I do. It is a scientific fact; there is proof about it.”
“When was the last time you checked it?”
Silence.
“I’m sorry?”
“When was the last time you checked if there actually are viruses in the air?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I just happened to last week be browsing a medicine journal that described quite a few of them.”
“Ah” Sheng opened his eyes, from under his nightlky sunglasses, his cat-like eyes shone a yellow light “You mean you believe in the words of a Book?”
Charles was not amused, he got up from the fallen three he was sitting at.
“These are nothing alike!” he said “Viruses are proven to exist! If I had a microscope right now, I could see them right now!”
“But when was the last time you did so? When was the last time you really went through the trouble of really taking a microscope and looking at these viruses they say exist?”
“I-Well  I-… Never.” He sat back down.
Silence.
“Are you saying you don’t believe in viruses and modern medicine?”
Sheng laughed.
“What? No, that’d be stupid. I’m merely illustrating a point.”
“Which is?”
“That in the end, your knowledge is as based on faith as mine, just as much as… naïve.”
“Well, what if I had seen viruses through a microscope before? What then?”
“I’d have asked you if you had already traveled to the center of the planet and seen that its core is really molten, or if you had gone to space and really felt its lack of oxygen.”
Silence.
“Well, what do you believe in, Charles?”
“Me? In nothing.”
“How come? You never wonder where we come from, where we go, what’s the point of all this?”
“No. We are. There is no point in all this. We are. There is nothing after we go. We are, then we cease to be.”
“Don’t you find that line of thought… depressing?”
“I find it realistic. It is not a happy thought, but denying harsh truths don’t makes them any less truthful.”
“That is, of course, assuming you are correct about them.”
“I am.”
“Can you prove it to me?”
Charles stared at Sheng, then let out a chuckle.
“No.”
Sheng also chuckled. After a while, he turned to Grandy, still lying on the grass.
“What about you, Thief? What do you believe in?”
Grandy opened his eyes. He had been absentmindedly listening to the conversation.
“I believe… that no matter what I believe in, that which is, is, and will still be, regardless of my belief or disbelief in it being, making what I believe in rather pointless in my personal belief.”
Sheng muttered to himself trying to understand it for a little bit.
“So, then, you believe that things are as they are?”
“Yeah… I think so.”
“Well, it’s certainly one way to escape philosophical debates.”
Sheng then turned to Devon, who was still staring the fire.
“What about you, Devon, what do you believe in?”
Devon glanced at him, then back to the fire, always smiling his slightly off smile. He extended his arm and put his hand above the flames, a bit too close to the heat to be healthy.
“I believe in fire. It burns my skin, and I can feel its heat. Thus, it is real.”
“Very… pragmatic. If a bit unhealthy.”
Shortly after, the other members of the group woke up to take up the watch, and the four went to sleep.
The last think one of them thought as he drifted into his dreams was a mental note. “Next town we stop in, I’m buying a bloody microscope.”
With that, Charles slept.

*Them northern people weren’t very creative with names.
**Along with crumbles of cookie

[TyDrace]

Way too much dialogue.

[Prpl_Mage]

Pretty interesting if I may say so.

[Grandy]

Everytime I post anything at 3 AM I end up regretting a lot when I wake up and think cleary.

[Grandy]

Midnight.
In a dark room, two silhouetted figures are having a discussion. Their silhouettes are uncanny, so uncanny in fact that if we knew who they were, they would be instantly recognizable. But we do not know who they are.
There is a body in the ground.
“Dead… he’s dead, damn it!”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down?! We just did it! We shot him – YOU shot him!”
“He had it coming! You heard him, his – his comments. Who exactly did he think he is? We are the ones who got us here. If not for me, if not for you, none of them would still walk in two legs. And all for what? For this… TWIT to steal all the credit!”
The other man seemed to have calmed down a bit.
“…you weren’t like this when we started.”
The killer stared the ceiling for a second.
“Neither were you.”
“What now?”
“Now… we need a plan.”
“…got it.”

-----

I started this about a month ago... I have the whole plot laid out in my head. The. Whole. Plot. This is one of the few things I might even finish one day. So, with no further ado

Grandy proudly presents...

TURNABOUT FORTRESS

-----

Wright Co. Office
Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, is slouching in his sofa with his necktie unfastened, surfing the channels.
(One more case-less week.)
 Sometimes he wonders how he is not world-wide famous after every world-wide famous prosecutor he’s defeated. His partner, and medium in training, Maya looked at him for a few seconds, before letting out a sight.
“Sometimes, I wonder why you won’t get a real job.”
Wright found amazing how someone can call herself a medium and make this particular comment.
“Being a lawyer is a real job!”
Now Maya had a smug smile in her face.
“Yeah, right! Whenever I come by, you’re slouched on the sofa watching TV or cleaning the toilet!”
(I-is it that really how people see me?)
“It certainly is!” – Phoenix sometimes had the feeling people could read his thoughts. – “I mean, don’t you ever wonder why someone who defeated three major prosecutors gets almost no cases at all? I bet people arrive here with high hopes then walk away ashamed when they see you scrubbing the floor!”
Her face suddenly brightened up with an idea.
“You really should hire an assistant to do those things for you! It would really improve your image!”
“YOU are my assistant!”
There were a few seconds of silence. Maya eventually laughed it off.
“Well, who needs so many cases at all, right? I mean, no news is good news!”
”So goes the saying… but I need bad news to make a living!”
“Then ye’re gonna love these news, mate.”
Both lawyer and assistant jumped at the newcomer’s voice.
“Whoa!”
“Aah!”
“Holy dooley!”
For a few seconds, all three stood there with a surprised look in their faces. The man eventually broke the silence.
“Everyone calm down yet?”
Phoenix quickly fastened his tie while mumbling “Oh, I-I’m sorry. Wright, Phoenix Wright, attorney at law. And you are?”
The man thought for a few seconds before answering, time in which Wright stopped to give him a proper look. The newcomer was tall, slim, and probably subject to too many ‘why the long face’ jokes. He was dressed in a red shirt under a sleeveless brown hunter jacket. Other than that, he wore a brown slouch hat, brown pants, one pair of aviator glasses, and one expensive-looking wristwatch. There was some sort of metal tube strapped to the man’s back. Phoenix couldn’t see what it was, but he had a bad feeling.
He eventually got around to answering the question, but it was not the answer Wright expected.
“’fraid that’s classified information, mate.”
“Classified?”
“I’m part of a retired mercenary group. We blokes all have codenames and all. Wouldn’t wanna someone to hunt us down on our free time.”
Wright swallowed.
“M-mercenary? Like… the bad guys in movies?”
“I’d like to be able to say “nah”, but that’s the gist of it, mate.”
A thought occurred to Phoenix. He glanced at Maya for a second.
“Like… ShellydeKiller?”
“That assassin bloke? Never met him personally, but I’d say so.”
Phoenix felt a thug on his wrist. Maya whispered on his ear.
 “N-Nick, I’m not sure if we should associate with them.”
“Y-Yeah.”
Not a month had gone after the Matt Engarde incident. Phoenix really didn’t want to expose his friend to any more mercenaries for a while. The man in front of him, while probably unable to hear Maya, understood where this was going. It always went there.
“What’s that, mate? Don’t go thinking we’d hurt ye fer fun. We’re professionals. I wouldn’t hurt a fly if a spider didn’t pay me to do the deal.”
Faintly, Wright heard Maya mutter “No, just kidnap and starve people to save the spider’s hide if needed.”
Unable to decide what to do next, Wright proceeded to do what he always did when in this kind of situation: present evidence.
Or at least he would if he had evidence. He went with what he had.
“Here, take a look at my lawyer badge.”
The man took the non-sequitur better than Phoenix expected. He seemed used to people presenting him random assortment of items without apparent reason. Having said that, he also seemed unimpressed.
“A service medal? Please, mate, everyone’s got those. If you want something from me at least make it a hat.”
Maya looked at Phoenix, slightly confused.
“I’m not sure we have hats, though.”
“Those things in holding your hair would do.”
“Those are for women!”
“And?”
Wright considered the man’s request…
(Likes woman hats… possibly homosexual? Must investigate further.)
He decided to start a line of interrogation, even if only to find an excuse to make the man leave. Something was bothering him about the man’s accent.
“Where are you from, Mr…?”
“Classified.”
The man crossed his arms and kept a poker face. Maya decided to join in again.
“Is your name classified or your birthplace?”
“Yes.”
She stared the floor sadly.
“I walked right into that one. Didn’t I, Nick?”
“His accent sounds vaguely British, I think.”
“Don’t go associating me with those tea-sippers now, mate! Australia is where all my hats are at!”
(Didn’t you just tell me it was classified information?!)
“A-and why would a mercenary such as yourself require a lawyer, Mr….?”
“Classified.”
Crossed arms, poker face. Wright was starting to lose his patience.
“If I’m going to defend you I need to call you something!”
 Not that he was going to defend him even if he knew his name.
A few seconds of silence followed, then…
“Snoipah.”
Maya looked at Nick.
“Snooker?”
Nigh scratched his head.
“Is no pah?”
This time it was the man who looked annoyed.
“Snoipah. My codename. I snoipe blokes, hence, I am the snoipah. Here.” With that said, he showed them the cylinder which was strapped on his back and which Nick had noticed before. It was a rifle. Maya covered behind Nick at the same time Nick tried to cover behind Maya.
“Watch out, he’s got a gun!” Maya looked terrified.
“I’ve also got a license fer this, mate.”
The gears in Wright’s head locked into place.
“So… sniper?”
“Right mate, snoipah.”
(Why me?)
“Why do you need a lawyer, Mr… Sniper?”
“Oh, not me, mate, there’s a mate of mine. He’s at the detention center.”
 “Detention center? I think I see where this is going.” Maya was still covering behind Phoenix when she said this. Phoenix agreed. It seemed no matter what happened, he always got the exact same kind of case to defend.
“It’s a murder, isn’t it?”
The Sniper nodded.
“Sharp as a alligator teeth, aren’t ye? Yes, it was a nasty deal, alright.”
Wright swallowed. Still, he had made the resolution during his last case.
“Sorry, Mr…Sniper, but I’m afraid I can’t help your friends out of their mercenary deals.”
There was silence. Wright wondered briefly if the man would just shoot them there.
“I-I mean, you choose a path in life and now you must deal with the consequences.”
More silence. Would he take in consideration the noise? There was a famous hotel just across the street, surely he wouldn’t kill them and risk witnesses?
“I-if you… I mean, I...”
He started to lose his voice. Behind him, he felt Maya nudge his back.
“Nick, should you really be talking back to the armed killer?” It was barely a whisper.
Wright swallowed again. More silence followed for a few seconds.
“I like you, mate.”
Wright considered the situation.
“You… do?”
The man uncrossed his arms.
“You’re right, us professionals have to deal with out problems.”
“S-so you mean- ?”
“But my friend, mate, he didn’t do it.”
He looked serious. Behind Phoenix came Maya’s distrustful voice.
“But aren’t you mercenaries? The ones that kill people for money?”
“For money, yes. We are tools, mate. Professionals, not crazed gunmen. If, at the end of the day, someone wants someone else dead, he would do it with or without our help.”
It was… a point of view. One that Wright disagreed with, but he could see where it came from.
“…a death is a death. You can’t hide the fact your gun is what took a life.”
“Naïve thinking, mate. But even if so, my mate’s weapon did not take the life, not in this case.”
This time it was Wright who held the conversation for a few seconds. The man in front of him didn’t seem as dangerous right now, or at least not in the immediate situation.
“I’m not sure I can help you, Mr. Sniper.”
The Sniper seemed satisfied.
“I wouldn’t accept yer help if ye offered right away, mate. I want professionals, not crazed lawmen. Go to the detention center and talk to my mate. After that ye’re free to make up yer mind if ye’ll help him or not.”
Wright didn’t feel like doing so, but still… the thought of someone being punished by a crime unjustly…
“Now if ye excuse me, the trial will start with or without ye, mate, and I’ll need to arrange a few things. Mate, missy.” Having said that, the Sniper tipped his hat to each of them and left.
After his footsteps had died away, Maya relaxed. She let herself fall on the sofa. Eventually, she looked at Phoenix. He was staring at the ceiling. A thought crossed her mind
“…you’re not taking his offer… are you, Nick?”
“I’m… not sure.”
She looked hurt.
“He did say he was a professional killer, right? Like that certain someone during Engarde’s case…”
Wright knew where she was getting at. He knew it was selfish to ask her to comprehend, after what she had went thought. But…
“I know how you feel about that, Maya, but in the end even that case couldn’t be won without his help.”
“Yeah, his help in kidnapping me!” Tears were starting to form on her eyes.
“Maya…” Wright couldn’t remember the last time he felt so much hate against himself. Maya was his best friend. But…
“Do you have any idea of what I’ve been through?! How are you even considering helping this kind of people!”
Her voice was shaking. She was right. Phoenix knew she was right. It was stupid to think otherwise. But…
But…
“…but what if he is innocent?”
Maya looked as if he had punched her
“Innocent? Nick, he kills people for money!”
 “Maya, I know you went through a lot, but…”
(I am the worst person in the world for doing this…)
Maya looked as if she could explode of anger. Then suddenly that emotion went away, and now it was worst, because now instead of angry, she just looked sadder than Phoenix had ever seen before.
“I… I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you of all people, Nick…”
“Maya…”
“I-I thought you- you’d understand…” She was sobbing now.
He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she slapped his hand away. Suddenly all her fury came back in a last wave.
“Fine! Go and help them, see if I care!” With that, she stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind her.
Wright was going to hell for this. He knew he was. Maya had just gone through a lot in the hands of a gun-for-hire. Things no teenager should ever go through. Phoenix had no right to surface those memories, what he should do right now, for the sake of his friend, is drop the case, apologize, and hope for the best from her heart.
But then another thought surfaced. A man being unjustly punished. A man who could certainly deserve punishment, but perhaps did not in this case. A man who no one else would try to help.
Phoenix thought about Maya. And thought about the mercenary in the prison. And as much as he wanted to do the right thing, he found himself walking to the prison. He really hoped Maya would forgive him, but he had to at least give the benefit of doubt.