Tag your oc who learned different languages so they had a better cursing vocabulary.

You know the one.

And another MFU blurb

Written for today’s short affair prompt at Section VII

Summary: In which Napoleon and Illya find their sleep disturbed by the spirits of their past lives.

Notes:
There are two versions of this piece. This is the light slash
version. There is a gen version on my
dreamwidth if you’d prefer reading that.
The two blurbs are around 95% similar.

Not cross-posting this as I’ll be expanding this in the future.

Napoleon frowned, annoyed at his sleep being
disturbed as he heard a knocking on the headboard of his bed.

“Illya, cut it out,” he mumbled.

“Zzz… Wha…?” Illya murmured, still mostly asleep.

Napoleon paused as it sunk in that Illya couldn’t
have been the one knocking on the headboard if he was still asleep. Cautiously, he opened his eyes, and froze as
he beheld the absolutely bizarre sight of a transparent spirit looking exactly
like him frantically striking the headboard of the bed with an umbrella that he
had found on the floor. Beside his
doppelganger spirit was another spirit—one that that perfectly resembled Illya.

Ordinarily, this sight would have frightened
the living daylights out of a man, but for Napoleon Solo, it was merely a great
annoyance. It hadn’t been the first time
they had seen these two spirits—spirits who claimed to have been them in a
former life—and though Napoleon had expected to see them again at some point,
he hadn’t expected the circumstances to be quite like this.

“Rise and shine, you city slickers,” his
doppelganger spoke in a Southern drawl. “We’ve
got us some work to do.”

“Since when did the two of you become
poltergeists?” Napoleon grumbled, grabbing the umbrella from his spirit double.

“Since we’ve got ourselves some new
developments in regards to us being stuck in this plane,” Illya’s spirit double
returned.

The sound of the conversation drew the
flesh-and-blood Illya to awareness. He looked
up, saw the two spirits hovering by their bed, and groaned, cursing in Russian.

“Okay, look,” Napoleon said. “I don’t know for how long you two guys have
been spirits for, but maybe you’ve forgotten that there’s this thing called ‘sleep’
that we mortals need, and Illya and I aren’t guaranteed this necessity in our
line of work…”

“This is our first leave in three weeks,”
Illya grumbled. “We are tired and need our sleep.”

“Sure didn’t stop you from wasting half the
night partaking in certain indulgences,” Napoleon’s doppelganger said, sounding
almost envious.

The two mortals stared at their spirit
counterparts.

“Exactly how long have you been here!?” Illya
demanded, now fully awake and indignant as Napoleon pulled the covers up around
them, blushing bright pink.

“Contrary to what your Napoleon thinks, we do
remember what it was like to be mortal,” the blond spirit smirked. “You’re us, after all. We don’t have to be here to know what you do.”

“That’s quite enough,” Napoleon said. “What do you want!?”

“You heard us mention about the ancient
medallion we smashed—it prevented the release of a mythical beast, at the price
of our being cursed, unable to cross over, unless our reincarnations met and
broke the curse,” his double said.

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” Napoleon
said. “You also said that since Illya
and I met, the curse should have broken.
But you still can’t cross over.”

“Yeah, and now we know why,” the blond spirit
said.

“Why?” Illya asked, hoping it was something
that they could resolve in the next five minutes.

“THRUSH is reassembling the broken pieces of
the medallion we smashed,” the brunet spirit said, flatly. “They’ve been attempting to collect the
pieces ever since we smashed the thing back in 1895.”

Both Napoleon and Illya stared.

“Enough of the pieces were reassembled to
prevent us from crossing over,” the blond spirit said. “We need to put a stop to this before it is
fully reassembled—or else the curse will pass to you, as well.”

“Well, then let’s prevent that,” Napoleon
said, grabbing his Special from the nightstand.
He looked to his partner. “Illya?”

Illya cringed at the thought of getting
involved in the supernatural again, but he sighed.

“Very well,” he said.

If nothing else, at least they could close
this chapter of their past lives and allow them the freedom they desired.

That would be the least they could do.

Sorta-daily NaNo check in: *BIG YES*

I did it–I hit the 50K word goal on November 22nd! I didn’t finish the story, but I had wanted to hit 50K by the 22nd–I was beginning to give up on that as I never seemed to catch up, but a sudden burst of inspiration got me the final push to win the NaNoWriMo challenge–and I’d like to dedicate this victory to the one who inspired this story in the first place, Robert Francis Vaughn.

There is a lot left of this story–I’d say another 10k-15k more, but I’m going to have to take a hiatus for a while before I can finish this story–family issues are going to put me on radio silence for the next few weeks; I’ll be on tumblr very sporadically, and some days, not at all (so I can’t guarantee that I’ll keep up with my weekly short affair fics, but I’ll try my best). But that’s life, I guess… And of course, I will return to this and my MFU fics once I’m able to.

So, with that, I leave you with one last excerpt, in which Kid still hasn’t forgotten about Lionheart being dramatic…

“Ahh, now the Requiem for a Glove makes
perfect sense,” Kid said. “Your glove
was a line of defense against the wretched plant.”

Lionheart paused, and then shook his
head.

“If you recall, our audience back at
the saloon and inn actually liked my
Requiem for a Glove.”

“They didn’t know what it was for,”
Kid reminded him. “It was just a song in
minor key for them; only I know the truth behind the song.”

Sorta daily NaNo check-in: SO. INSPIRATION HAPPENED TODAY.

Guess who just might actually hit the 50K goal on the 22nd like she wanted to do? THIS GIRL 😀

I’m not going to finish the story yet (there’s more plot still and I’ll have to take a hiatus due to family issues), but hitting the 50k goal on the 22nd is absolutely satisfactory given the unforeseen things that have happened in this challenge.

It helps a lot that my villain is in the picture again and is confronting Lionheart and Kid–but especially Lionheart–

Beauregard sighed.

“Well, I guess I can’t rightly blame
you, Boy,” he said. “The War wasn’t good
to me—current state of affairs aren’t any better. But you seem to have done well for yourself
since the War ended—living like a king in this inn, with fancy clothes and
money to spare…” Beauregard glanced at a
stack of money on the desk, and Lionheart quickly grabbed it and placed it in
his pocket, frowning.

“Half of this is Kid’s; don’t you be
getting any ideas,” Lionheart warned.
“And I didn’t make this money just like that; I got it after years of
being a decent human being. Maybe you
oughta try it sometime.”

Sorta-daily NaNo check-in: Getting ever closer, but, unfortunately, real life is poised to get in the way; a family emergency has come up, and will need to be dealt with very soon, so I’m going to hopefully hit the 50k NaNo goal before that and then take a break before continuing with completing the story.

Lionheart and Kid are enjoying a bit of peace right now, but trouble is looming, unbeknownst to them…

Lionheart shrugged and accepted the
piece of fudge that Kid gave him, and his eyebrows arched in surprise.

“Hey, it is good!”

“It’s milk and sugar—what do you
expect?” Kid mused. He let out a squawk
as Lionheart now reached into the box for more fudge. “Hey, this is supposed to be for the both of us!”

Sorta-daily NaNo check-in: nearing that goal, and the duo embark on more misadventures–and Lionheart indulges in bad puns–

The duo also found themselves doing
things they hadn’t really expected to do; missing animals were a reason why
they found themselves being hired. And
it was why they had found themselves trying to coax a freedom-bound cow back
home, braved the wrath of roosters that had been stolen and corralled, and even
parading a herd of goats through the town—which, by the end of that escapade,
had resulted in several bottles of fresh goat’s milk being sold at the saloon
and inn, and at least a dozen puns by Lionheart about “Kid wrangling the kids”
until he’d run out of them.

Sorta-daily NaNo check in: plot is progressing, and Lionheart and Kid embark on a big heist together! …And nearly botch said heist when the owner of the safe they’re breaking into unexpectedly comes back–

“Look, one of us needs to make it
back! And Evans knows you—go, Lionheart! I’ll be fine!
I’ll find a place to hide!”

But Lionheart didn’t budge.

“Leon, go!” Kid said, using his real
name to invoke the urgency of the situation.
“Your opportunity to get out is limited; if you don’t–”

Lionheart snapped out of his daze,
grabbed the rest of the papers on the floor and stuffed them into the safe; he
then grabbed the tools in one arm and Kid in the other, and dragged him under
Evans’s desk.

Sorta-daily NaNo update:

I’ve made peace with the fact that this isn’t going to be done on the 22nd. Just when I think I’ve narrowed down the plotlines, more stuff keeps happening. I knew the 22nd was a very ambitious goal, and it was more for myself than anything else–would have been nice to have finished it on my hero’s bday, but I know now the important thing is to focus on getting it done right, with the final product being something worthy of being dedicated to him.

That being said, the story itself is progressing beautifully! Lionheart and Kid are progressing with trying to solve the mystery at hand. They’re also trying to remain incognito since Lionheart’s father is after them, so they’re trying to pass themselves off as an entertainment duo rather than vigilantes and are trying to draw more customers to the Moonlit Gulch Saloon & Inn–

Kid couldn’t help but snark as
Lionheart made his way over, balancing a precarious stack of Shakespeare plays.

“Lionheart, we’re only going to be
entertaining during dinner hours,” Kid said, staring at the stack. “We’re not going to be doing an all-night
festival!”

“You know, I wonder how many we
could get to come to that if we did,” Lionheart wondered aloud.

Daily NaNo check-in: nearing the halfway point of the challenge! 😀

Plot-wise, the boys have a moment’s peace now that they’ve arrived in Moonlit Gulch, and find themselves with a mystery to solve.

Also, banter–

“I am not overly dramatic!” Lionheart scoffed.

“Really?” Kid asked. “Do I need to remind you how you reacted when
you got that cactus needle in your hand when you were chasing that rabbit last
week? ‘Right through my glove—it went right through my glove!’ It didn’t even break the skin, and you
practically held a wake for your glove!”

“First of all, they don’t make
gloves like these anymore,” Lionheart insisted, holding the wounded glove up. “And secondly, I did not hold a wake!”

“Then what do you call immediately playing
something on your harmonica in a minor key?”

“…Cultivating my raw talent.”

Daily NaNo check-in: as far as word count goes, I am on target. As far as the actual story… There are complications.

For one thing, at 20k out of 50k words, I’m only on chapter 7, my villain only just showed up out of flashback for the first time, and everything still seems so very rushed (namely the traveling–somehow, I pictured the duo having a lot of shenanigans as they go from place to place, but I ended up just summarizing the travels).

…It was at this moment that I realized that this thing is going to be more than 50k words.

So my new plan is now this: continue with what I’m doing in the rushed pace and get all the major events and plotlines of the book done and win the 50k NaNo challenge, hopefully by the 22nd.

And then, take the time to put in all the spacing and side-events as I edit so that it has the proper pacing.