《A Tale of Two - Beeduo》First Friend
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Tubbo's POV:
I thought touring would be super boring, but I was completely wrong. Ranboo was so silent and comforting to be around.
I was happy to have him as my first friend at my new school. I knew school would be amazing as long as he was with me.
One thing that I really liked about him was his laugh. It was high pitched compared to his voice and I loved it. I purposly kept making aweful jokes because they seemed funny to him.
I also noticed he was wearing a mask and I wanted to know why.
"I have a question if you don't mind me asking." I spoke quietly and nervously looked up at him.
"Hm? I don't mind." He looked down and I could tell that he was smiling.
"Uhm.. Why do you wear a mask?" I really didn't want to make him uncomfterable. We still had only just met.
"Oh-" his eyes widened a bit. "I- uhm.. I guess you could say I'm a little insecure. It's really not a big deal, though٫ I've accepted it already."
"Accepted what?" I stared at him, wondering if he was referring to the way he looked.
"Uh.." he paused and looked down. "That I'm not perfect, I guess." He looked disappointed. It made me sad, to be honest.
"I'm not one to judge. People have insecurities. I may not see your face٫ but I know you're not ugly."
I became more serious, then. I didn't want to make a bad impression.
He already seemed sad. I probably shouldn't have even said anything.
"Thanks.." He finally spoke up.
There was a pause that felt like ten minutes in between our conversation. I decided to break the silence to apologize.
"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. Now you probably just feel even worse." I muttered, regretting my words.
"What? No, don't be sorry! I'm not upset at all." He tried to reassure me, but I wasn't convinced.
"No٫ I'm being serious. You need to tell me when I say too much. Sometimes I say things without thinking."
"Tubbo٫ I'm being just as serious as you are. You haven't messed up anything, I promise. In my opinion٫ you've made a great impression." I could see his smile through the mask at this point. I wondered why he kept it hidden.
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"..Really?" I stopped and looked up at him. He stopped beside me.
"Mhm." He was smiling big enough that his eyes were closed. He sounded so joyful and calm. I didn't know why٫ but my face started to feel quite warm. I looked down in embarrassment. He giggled quietly٫ and we continued walking.
**Lunch Time**
Some kids ate inside٫ some outside. Ranboo agreed to eating outside with me. He said he never did it often٫ because that's where most of the students eat.
He looked nervous as we approached the outside doors. I stood in front of the door and turned around to face him.
"Why are you afraid of people? I'm right here if anything happens٫ I swear."
He seemed to feel a lot better after that. He opened the door for me to walk out and quickly followed close behind me.
We decided to sit in an open area by a cute water fountain surrounded by pretty flowers.
We both pulled out our lunch and began eating. He kept looking around nervously as we were munching. I honestly felt bad. I didn't know people were this big of an issue.
I heard footsteps behind me٫ so I turned around to see a fellow student walking towards me.
He was tall٫ not as tall as Ranboo٫ though. He was quite attractive, too. Not that I was interested.
"Hey! You're the new kid, right?" He spoke loud and clear. He even caught some other students' attention, too.
"Uhm, yes, that would be me." I smiled a bit.
"Why don't come have lunch with me and a few of my other friends?" He pointed towards his friends and a few waved.
At this point, everyone was looking at us. I didn't want this attention on my first day. It felt strange.
It offended me that they asked me to sit by them when I was clearly accompanied by someone. They didn't even invite Ranboo to come.
"O-Only if Ranboo can come٫ too." I moved my head slightly so that they could see him better.
"Why would anyone want to hang out with that loser?"
My eyes went wide. How could he say that so carelessly? He sounded so blunt about it. I was mad, so I stood up.
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"You wanna say that again?" I became serious. I wasn't going to let people talk about Ranboo that way.
"He's a loser! And look at him٫ he doesn't even look good."
I became infuriated by the fact that they would lie about the tall man's face like that. I hadn't seen Ranboo's face yet, but he was gorgeous to me either way.
I shoved him and he almost tripped.
"Are you sure you wanna fight me?" I laughed.
"You're feisty for how small you are." He smirked at me. "It's kinda cute." I looked at Ranboo from the corner of my eye and he looked scared.
The boy spoke up again. "Aweee. Is someone scared? Should I go call your mommy?"
I punched him in the mouth٫ and his lip began bleeding. He slowly wiped the blood off of his face and glared at me.
He threw a punch but before he could hit me٫ I kicked him in the shin. He fell to the ground panting.
"Are you seriously already tired? That's weak." I laughed and rolled my eyes.
He limped trying to stand up٫ but he managed. Just as he was getting ready to hit me٫ the bell rang.
Everyone turned their attention away from the fight and started walking towards the inside doors٫ except for Ranboo.
"What's your name?" The boy in pain looked down at me.
"Tubbo."
"Listen here, Tubbo." He pointed a finger. "I'm Oscar, and everyone in this school fears me. You will, too. I will make your life Hell, if it's the last thing I do. Same goes for that tall loser."
"Yeah, good luck with that." I waved at Oscar, annoyed, and he walked away, limping.
I reached out my hand to help Ranboo up. He looked terrified. He grabbed my hand but he was shaking. I could feel it as I touched him.
"Ranboo٫ I am so sorry. You should not have to deal with people like that. He's clearly jealous or hasn't seen your full face because I already know you're gorgeous." I tried to smile.
"Thanks, Tubbo, but it's not that.. I-I..." He stuttered, clearly having trouble getting his words out."I'm sorry for being the reason you got into a fight on your first day.."
I froze solid. There was no way, after all that, he felt bad for me.
"Wha- Ranboo, what? You can't feel bad for me٫ I'm perfectly fine! He was saying aweful things about you٫ of course I hit him! I told you, I'm not gonna let anyone bother you." I looked straight up at him٫ in his beautiful eyes.
"But if I weren't such a loser, you wouldn't of had to fight at all! I'm used to this. You don't need to h-help.. I'll be ok.." He got quiet at that last part٫ and looked down.
I was ashamed of him for acting like that. He knew he shouldn't have been picked on for so long.
"Look at me, Ranboo!" I continued to stare up at him. He slowly looked lifted his head up to look at me. I could see the handsome top half of his face as the sunlight reflected off of him. "I don't want to you go ever say that again. Do you hear me? I don't care how long it takes for those jerks to leave you alone. I'm gonna help, and we'll deal with it together. You can't change my mind."
He paused and looked back down٫ then slowly nodded.
There was another short pause before he reached out his arms and pulled me into a hug.
My eyes opened wide as I felt the warmth of his breath on my shoulder. I think my face got a little warm, too.
I put my arms around his waist and hugged him back. I also layed my head down on his shoulder. This was one of٫ if not the best feeling I've ever felt. I didn't want to move.
"Shouldn't we head to class, now?" He said٫ muffled in my shoulder.
"Probably.." I lifted my head٫ and the hug ended. I felt upset that our grip on each other left so soon.
We smiled at each other for a second before walking to class.
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Sword System Academia
2/17 NOTICE: I'm putting this on hiatus, possibly permanently. I didn't want to spam with an "update chapter", so hopefully here and in the story blurb will get enough eyeballs. There are a couple reasons for ending SSA for now. 1) I wrote the next chapter but wasn't happy with it. I've been less and less satisfied with SSA's quality the more I thought about it. Part of the reason is... 2) I am seriously thinking about trying to publish some novels to help pay the bills, since I don't have my other source of income anymore. I have never asked for anything from SSA readers, no money, not even a review or rating. SSA is written for fun to amuse myself, primarily, and I would kind of feel bad actually charging someone money for something as unserious as that. I don't think it is good enough to ask anything in return. To use an analogy from music, SSA is more like a jam session with a bunch of friends. You're just chiling and having fun playing some music. I mean, if you are Mozart or even Eminem, your jam session is good enough to sell, but for an amateur beginner like myself, haha, no. If I want to publish something, I feel like I need to go the proper route of practice and rehearsals, which might be more similar to a classical concert performance. With SSA, I work from worldbuilding notes and a loose outline, but what you are essentially getting is the first draft with lots of so-called pantsing. Pushing out a web novel like this also means it is very difficult to go back and improve things without breaking everything else downstream. I wanted to try this "jamming" approach, as it was a good way to teach me about another aspect of writing, but to move forward, I think I need to hone my "classical" techniques, which emphasize rewriting, or at least, revising outlines. 3) While I intend to try to make $$$, my actual current goal is to "get gud". I've spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the self-publishing industry, and I'm pretty sure I can make some money by using short-term strategies with my current amateur skill level. But I've seen too many authors come and go/burnout, and really, the only way that I think I can enjoy writing and still make money on a long-term basis is to become a better writer. And the next step for me, which I haven't done much before, is to spend more time on rewriting and outlines. That is pretty much antithetical to the way SSA is developing. I've always been kind of 20/80 plotting/pantsing, but I want to spend a lot more time outlining before I even start writing. SSA jam sessions don't really fit my goal anymore. If you're curious about what's next, read on... Among other regrets, I regret not finishing SSA. It's the first story I've dropped, but then again, it's the first web novel I've attempted, so I suppose that's not a surprise. I don't think traditional web novel formats suit me that well. The whole SSA story I had loosely planned (beyond a first book or major arc) is way too large as well. Big story = good for neverending webnovel with Patreons, bad for penniless and fickle writer like me. I am currently outlining a complete trilogy to another story in great detail. I want the story to end concisely, and I also want the chance to really spend a lot of time on the full outline to spot pacing problems, character issues, lost themes, and so on. I'll still share this story on RR. What I intend to do is finish book 1, flash-publish the whole thing here for a few weeks, then publish on the big Zon. Repeat for books 2 and 3. The upcoming story will be about crafting heroes. The backdrop is an isekai-like setting, where elves will summon humans to their world as heroes, but the whole hero crafting business is still in its infancy. The elven mage researchers are figuring out how to imbue heroes with power, while the heroes are trying to figure out how to use the powers that they gain. Humans are the best hero templates because they are blank and have no intrinsic magic. Or at least that what the elves thought. The human MC has his own secrets... There will be some similarities with litrpgs, but I would call it more a progression fantasy or gamelit story. For example, the stats are very low, at least initially. Say we have a stat called Str. Going from Str = 1 to Str = 2 is a huge deal. Also, going from Dex = 0 to Dex = 1 is an even bigger deal. I guess you could call it a "low-stat litrpg", haha. Also, the heroes won't be gaining stats simply by killing things or leveling up. You can't increase stats arbitrarily, either. There will be rules to how stats can increase, and how they work with each other. The elven mages will be figuring out these rules in order to craft stronger and stronger heroes. Some inspiration will be from cultivation magic systems, but there won't be overt cultivation, at least for now. A theme I really want to explore is the idea of interactions. That includes things like hero crafter vs hero, tactics vs strategy, skill synergies, racial interactions (dwarves, elves, etc), and son. Yeah, so hero crafting. I'm super excited about this project and venturing into publishing. If you want to check out the upcoming story, you can follow my RR author profile to see when it drops here. Finally... THANK YOU TO EVERYONE! I'm very sorry that SSA is stopping, but I hope at least some of you will find the next story at least as enjoyable, if not more. Thanks to all the readers who gave SSA a shot. Big hug or solid fistbump to all of you, whichever you prefer! I hope this message is not a downer but an upper, because I am psyched!! -purlcray -------------- BLURB: Talen, youngest Master of the Koroi, makes his way to the Empire's capital to salvage his clan's fate. But the bustling city has few opportunities for the traditionalist. For the old sword clans are fading. With the rise of alchemy, gold can purchase strength that ordinarily took years of training to cultivate. Sword artists, once rare and accomplished, are quickly growing in number, especially among the wealthy noble class. Even with such alchemy, though, no one has advanced to the rank of Grandmaster in countless years. Talen's true dream is to walk the path of a sword artist to the very end while fulfilling his clan duties. And then the Swordgeists return, fabled founders of all sword arts, gods who had touched the world long ago and vanished. These myths turned into reality warn of a coming threat. Alongside this warning, they issue an invitation to the Sword System Academy, a path to power beyond the mortal realm. But first, they will hold an entrance exam... Story notes:Sword System Academia blends elements of western and asian fantasy such as xianxia and litrpg. I took parts from different genres I enjoyed and twisted them into my own creation. There will be an explicit system, both of the litrpg kind and the hard(ish) magic kind, but it is embedded within an academic structure that will develop over the course of the story. This is my attempt to design a unique type of system, the System Academia.
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Becoming a stripper or taking part in what most people would term as 'prostitution' was never my dream. Becoming a hooked drug addict was never part of my future plans either. I had always been another normal ambitious teenager with a dream to have a top class job with a huge office on the 30th floor, but all that dream faded and life became a nightmare when I was sold to a drug dealer by my drug addict stepfather, months after mom's illness. The money my stepfather got supposedly kept him high but for me it became more than just being high. My life consisted of abuse, alcohol, drugs,poles and men. I wasn't given a choice to do otherwise, well not until I was rescued or more like pitied and not being killed when my boss and his men were taken out by one of the guy I was sent to seduced that same night. Who is this guy? Well I'm about to find out when I regain consciousness.This is the third book in the mafia trilogy.1.Daddy's Little Assassin2.Caught In The Middle3.Rescued&Risen**
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