Challenge #02799-G242: Wombmates For Life

Hey! Aww, you’re so cute I can’t stay mad at you. Please don’t do that again. – Anon Guest

[AN: How to Encourage Bad Behaviour Amongst the Telegenic 101. Step one, above]

Tieflings have to fight their entire lives just to be recognised as living things with feelings. Aasimar… don’t. If devils can interfere with the affairs of normal folk, then the gods can, have, and will do the same[1]. If Tieflings evoke one reaction from everyone around them, then Aasimar provoke the opposite.

To see them is to love them. To know them is to adore them. They provoke devotion. They’re instantly likeable, even when they’re being blatantly rude. Understandably, it takes someone with iron will to discipline them, because Aasimar tears provoke rage in almost everyone who sees them.

Most Tieflings, it might be noted, hate Aasimar on sight. It’s mostly jealousy. It’s hard to discipline a child with a literal halo and soft, feathery wings for a deliberate act of malice, whilst it’s easy to discipline a child with horns and cloven hooves for breathing incorrectly.

[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit peakd (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]

Challenge #02799-G242: Wombmates For Life | PeakD

Challenge #02095-E271: A Morning of Intense Regret — Steemit

Marvin winced at the light making its way through his eyelids. It was too sharp for him to open his eyes, just yet. The booming thud shook him and stabbed his brain, and the whimper in his throat sounded like a roar and felt like knives on fire were coming out of him.

“Have we learned something?” Wraithvine murmured.

Marvin summoned his voice, a mere phantom of its former self. “Nev'r drink a tankard ‘f somethin’ served in tiny glasses?”

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Angus knew that look. That was the tired, cranky expression of someone who’d been working on one problem for way too long and had found way too many dead ends. He knew it well, having stayed up late through many nights, gnawing away at his own unsolvable mysteries. Taako had taught him the most valuable lesson of his life on one of those nights.

Now it was his turn to teach it to Agatha. Though he was allowed to do more groping since Agatha was his lovely wife.

His lovely, tired, cranky, irritated wife.

He leaned on her from behind, resting his chin on top of her head and draping his arms heavily over her own, thus impeding her movement.

“Babe,” she sighed, “Fuck off?”

“It’s half-past ten at night,” he said. “Sleep is more important than this, right now.”

“Fuck off, you’re heavy.”

Well. He didn’t want to hurt his beloved. Strategy B it was, then. Leaning on her wasn’t working. Angus fucked off, but only temporarily.

He prepared some nibbles. Taako’s patented stun-’em-at-forty-yards, better-than-a-sleep-spell hot chocolate, and those apple pancakes that were guaranteed to make anyone who could resist the hot chocolate very blinky indeed. He plated the pancakes up with clotted cream and some of her favourite compote.

Angus smiled as he waved the prepared tray under her nose. “Some refreshments, my love?”

Glare. She had bags under those beautiful dark eyes. “I know what you’re trying to do. No.”

He employed the Puppy Eyes. “Not even a liddle taste?”

The barest ghost of a smile crept through her overall grumpiness. “You’re trying to feed me Faerun’s next best thing to a plus ten sleep potion. No. You go eat it.”

Curses. Foiled again. He popped it up on a convenient shelf and plonked a preservation cover over it. “Fine. Seduction it is.”

“Angus…” she protested. Agatha wasn’t very enthusiastic about fending him off. She giggled as he kissed his way up her arm to nuzzle and nip at her neck. “Stop it…”

He stopped. “Come to bed? This will be better solved with rested eyes.”

“But I need to get this done…”

“By tomorrow?”

She bit her lip. “No. The story deadline’s next week, but…” she gestured at the evidentiary documents strewn over her thinking place. “This is clearly not enough to nail that slippery bastard to the wall.”

He slid his fingertips up through her hairline and began a slow massage. “We’ll work on this together, tomorrow. Don’t tax your reserves here and now, okay?”

Agatha murmured a note of pleasure and leaned back in her chair. “Mmmmmmhhmmmmmm… fine. I’ll eat your damn sleep potion pancakes and get some Z’s…”

He escorted her away from her work and made sure she did that. Chatted about silly nonsense until she was almost done and almost asleep on her butt. After that, it was a simple trip to their shared bed and into their nightclothes to hold her down until her brain finally caught up with the idea that sleep was the good thing, now.

Not that she protested that part. She’d done her fair share of holding him down until his brain finally engaged sleep mode. Fair was, after all, fair.

He woke to her jolting upright and yelling, “TAXES!” in the dawn’s early light.

Angus knew better than to get in her way as Agatha charged downstairs, shuffled through her papers, and then charged off to the privy because it was the early morning and certain things were necessary. He just prepared coffee and her best brain-food breakfast.

She took her bacon crunchy and dipped it into her coddled eggs as she worked on finding and collating all the tax information with her other hand. Things were going well, judging by the way she was saying, “Yes,” at ever-increasing enthusiasm and volume.

Agatha kissed him enthusiastically when she was halfway through her coffee. “We. Are. Geniuses. I love you.”

He just chuckled and said, “Love you too, babe.”

Challenge #01747-D286: Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One

“Okay, this might be scary so if you need some time to prepare-”

“Jokes on you I’m terrified a hundred percent of the time anyway!” – OohLookShiny

A Havenworlder and a Deathworlder walk into a bar…

So very many jokes start this way, including the off-colour one that also included cogniphagia. But this time, it was reality. The Havenworlder was in their livesuit and tucked under the arm of the deathworlder. A big, burly, brick of a human.

The worst kind.

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Challenge #01571-D110: Lost With a Blue Box

:When summing up recent events:

The tree does seem to be suspiciously friendly and sane for an ancient being or ancient artefact, let alone both in one. Even the only other vaguely sane ancient being, the balloon-jellyfish godling, wasn’t this friendly until she was punched in the face a few times and given a pretty good Shut Up, Hannibal speech by a sapient brain tumor, and she doesn’t seem to have been nearly as old.

…that was a weird sentence. – @recklessprudence

It wasn’t every day that a companion went and rescued herself. And it was even less often that they turned up with allies. The Doctor looked over the motley crew. There was a brain in a tank/mecha body that seemed to be completely taken over by a tumour, a gigantic tree with a face, and a floating thing that looked like the unlikely progeny of a jellyfish and a dirigible.

“Well done, Holly,” said the Doctor. “I know I warned you about wandering off, so… how…?” he circled a finger at the general assembly. “This station is millions of years old. None of them should be alive.”

The tree creaked something that could have been words, but it seemed wont to hold Holly like some kind of treasured doll.

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Guy Memento [get it? Token male] is the cheerleader/comic relief and general support dude for the Unexpectables.

He’s the one who’s there with a fluffy blanket or a coffee or Lamb’s Fry during Shark Week.

And, when the writers are having a slow week, he’s the one who gets kidnapped with alarming regularity.

Yeah I basically reversed the gender roles for 90% of the Action Hero Team makeup.

For the record:

Munashe Castell is the ‘Beauty’. It shines out of her from within because she’s one of those people who make you believe in angels.

Jemima “Mimi” Wirth is the ‘Brains’. She’s a genius, and also the ASD poster child. Usually, Guy is her teddy-bear and they have lots of completely platonic hug sessions.

Corinna Dalca is the ‘Brawn’. People underestimate her because of her height, but she really is a lethal weapon in sparkly trainers.

As always - if you want to see more of any particular story team, all you have to do is submit a prompt!

Challenge #00894-B163: The Unexpectables!

Beauty, brains and brawn. The traditional makeup for any team. Have fun.

There’s hundreds of ways to be a hero. And more than one way to be a heroic team…

Munashe finished the delivery forms for her auction winnings. An entire library of childrens’ books from a now-defunct school. Purchased for a dollar from a government auction because nobody was interested in buying things from a school.

The story books were going to a children’s hospital. The educational stuff was going straight to an indie school in the same area that was doing weekend tutoring for donations.

“Excuse me, miss Castell?” said the clerk. She was a rangy teenager type, still growing into her full dimensions. Gangly, awkward, and probably feeling out of place wherever she went. “How do you do it?”

“How do I do what?” she asked.

“Um. Well. You look so… amazing. But you got everything wrong. I mean. According to all the beauty tips? You’ve gotta straighten, dye, bleach, pluck and lose weight? And you’re not even close to fashionable? But you look… adorable…” She was lost, and terrified, and she knew what she was saying was coming out wrong, and the blush that dominated her face and neck was now threatening to set her ears on fire. “How do you do it?“

“Beauty is more than what the magazines tell us it is.” Munashe tucked a stray Egyptian Twist behind her ear. “Most of it is confidence. Some of it is doing what’s right and the determination to do so. And you need a healthy dollop of ‘fuck the magazines, I do what I want’.”

The “Oh,” that came out of the kid was laden with relief. “But… I don’t even know where to start…”

“Start by finding what makes you feel good. Then move on to what suits you. And if you’re like me and you like clothes that both fit and last? Learn to sew.” She brought out one of the many contact cards in her purse. “Here’s a local place that does lessons for cheap.”

The kid was re-ordering the world inside her head as she took the card. Her narrow world was opening. Good.

Munashe loaded up her minivan with the extras she currently didn’t have a place for and headed for her U-Store shed.

It was looking like a beautiful morning.

*

Corinna was holding Mimi’s hand as they walked through the shadier side of town. Constantly on guard, even though her wariness was hidden.

“Somewhere here,” murmured Mimi. She had her eyes riveted on her tablet, and only let go of Corinna to tap an interface.

The tinny, find-me jingle of Guy’s phone sounded from an alleyway.

“Hey, ladies,” smoothed one of the local menacers. He was the athletic type who could do no wrong because he had a promising sporting career. “I could convince you to give up the lesbo life if you just give me some of your time.”

And of course Mimi had to open her mouth. “I’m not a lesbian, I’m asexual and I’m autistic. I’m trying to find my friend, leave me alone.”

Corinna winced. “Look. You probably have a busy day of yelling at women ahead of you. How about you pretend that you didn’t see us and then nobody gets hurt.”

“You threatening me, pocket rocket? I could make four of you.”

“You’d better listen to her,” monotoned Mimi, walking into the alley to find the jingling phone. “She can bench-press you.”

“…god damnit, mimi,” Corinna muttered.

The menace laughed, “Shyeah right,” and threw the world’s sloppiest punch.

It probably worked to ‘show’ hundreds of women ‘their place’, but it didn’t work on Corinna. She used her low centre of gravity and knowledge of the collected defensive arts to toss him casually towards the nearest trash pile.

“Listen,” she said. “I’d really hate to give you a broken limb, but if you insist on fighting me, I’m gonna have to do that. Tell you what. You leave now, and I won’t bench you for three months, how’s that?”

He picked himself up from the trash in a roaring rage.

“Try to be nice,” she sighed. She was in a good mood, so the breaks she gave him would not impede his ‘promising career’ for longer than it took to heal. Then she called him an ambulance.

He was still cursing when she ended the call.

“We did warn you,“ said Corinna. “You go ahead and tell your friends that you fell down the stairs. It’ll be our little secret.”

Mimi was down the alley. Rocking herself where angels would fear to tread.

“Jemima Wirth… what now?”

“Phone,” she said, busily oscillating. She was crying.

“Guy’s phone?”

Nod. “Promised.”

“I know he promised to keep it with him. Maybe he didn’t have a choice.”

“Phone. Promised.”

Corinna Dalca dialled up Munashe. “Yeah hi. We got a problem. Some asshole’s kidnapped Guy again.”

“That’s it. I’m getting him tagged,” said Munashe. “Okay. Get Mimi to play Sherlock until I get there. You’re gonna have to play Dolly and Watson.”

Right. Mimi liked alliterative adventure titles. Got it. Corinna worked her way into Mimi’s iron grip. Let the taller girl rock with her until their breathing matched.

“Okay. Sherlock… This is the case of the Purloined Pal. All Sherlock has is this mobile phone and the surroundings it was found in. Extrapolate as much as you can.“

One of the EMT’s came to investigate just as Mimi went into vacant, staring Static Mode.

“She’s okay,” said Corinna. “She’s autistic. This is a meltdown. I’ve got her. She’s going to come back out in five… four… three…”

Mimi snapped aware again. She wasn’t quite Mimi, any more. She was Sherlock. “The trash surrounding this phone has been here for several days, as evidenced by the mould growths. Therefore the phone was tossed down this alley at a vector indicating that our perpetrator was standing in or near the mouth of the alley. If I were to hazard a guess, there were many assailants who took the victim into a van and fled eastwards.”

Mimi stood, Corinna still absently under one arm as she brought up a map on her tablet. “Felons tend to flee in a diagonal pattern, and given the plethora of one-way streets in this neighbourhood, combined with the need for relative privacy and isolation, I would hazard that our best options are here, here, and here.”

The ambulance left, revealing Munashe and the mini van. “I got Vincent, just in case.”

Vincent was the ridiculously purple plush lion that Corinna had won at a carnival some subjective eons ago. Mimi almost literally dropped Corinna and dived into the sanctuary of Munashe’s minivan. In the absence of Guy, Vincent was the next-best security prop.

Corinna took the next seat in the back. At 4′10″, she was frequently cause for pull-overs because officers thought she was too young to ride shotgun. Not that Munashe didn’t get enough trouble for Driving While Black.

It was the most careful chase in the history of crime fighting. Munashe took deliberate pains to obey every single traffic rule, just in case. And even then, there were still three pull-overs because her minivan or herself managed to ‘match a description’ on their blotters.

Yeah. Like many perps used rainbow-painted vans with “FAIRY GODMOTHER FOR HIRE” blaring across the sides.

But it was okay. Munashe always carried a small stash of carrot cake muffins and diet-buster brownies to ensure the good feeling of every policeman she met. The resultant nostalgia was usually enough to allow them on their way.

Mimi, in Sherlock Mode, could pick out signs of use on any abandoned building in short order. Thus accelerating the locating of Guy.

Then they had to get her to be Miles Vorkosigan to come up with a genius strategy for trashing the bad guys.

The local criminal element was eventually going to learn that capturing Guy on the eve of their cunning plans was not going to cripple their team. They had hundreds of work-arounds for Mimi. And thousands of ways to use the city to their advantage.

It was why Mimi kept calling them The Unexpectables. Nobody ever did what the bad guys expected of them.

In short order, the meth ring was foiled and Guy was temporarily freed so that Mimi quickly wrapped around him.

“Now will you say okay to the locator jewellery?“ Mimi pleaded into his chest. Listening to his heartbeat and feeling his chest fuzz always grounded her. “I made it look and act like a sports watch. It’s pretty and everything.”

“I’m sorry,” Guy soothed. Petting her hair. “I thought I had a lead on those gum pops you like.”

“Not important,” said Mimi. “Next time, no surprises. We go together. Rule one: stay close. You promised.”

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SKIP Revamped: The Case of the Polite Vampire (part two)

He took off his stark white gloves and dipped the mug into the bucket. Guzzled cupful after cupful like a starving man tearing into a banquet.

Mesi watched, amazed. So very little of the blood was allowed to spill. Not one drop reached his crisp, grey waistcoat or fancy, wide tie. And none of it marred his tailored white shirt.

It wasn’t her imagination. Those manicured fingers were growing sharper as he fiercely gripped the bucket.

“So… were you planning on using me for a snack?”

He stopped for breath. “Only… with your kind… permission,” he admitted.

“You live above a butcher’s!”

He hung his head. Spoke in a voice less than two feet tall. “…beentooembaressedtogetanymore…”

“I get the distinct impression that I was never in any danger,” she said. If he was too embarrassed to ask for blood, he was definitely not going to be taking any samples from her veins. “What did you have in mind for me, if it wasn’t eating me alive?”

“I planned… to be… your sponsor… Your patron.” Another cupful of blood. “If you’d let me.”

Good grief, he was blushing. That had to break several of the vampire rules, or something. If he was blushing over that… Mesi checked out the windows so that she would have something to occupy her mind rather than laughing her socks off over him.

There was a very strange character lurking in the opposite alleyway. He was dressed… almost like a ridiculous stage version of a mediaeval plague doctor.

“That’s odd,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“There’s a fellow in the alley opposite dressed like a plague doctor. He looks like he’s waiting for someone or something…”

“He is?” M'seur D'raigun paused in his imbibing, delicately licking any spare dribs of blood from his face and fingers. He rose to join her at the window and peer out…

…forgetting that it was currently daytime.

He collapsed in a smoking heap, clutching his forehead in agony, falling headfirst into the bed and making repetitive little “aie!” noises.

“Are you… new at this?” Mesi guessed.

“…ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow…” gaaaaaaaaassssp “…ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow…”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’,” she sighed. Twitched the curtains so that no light could come in and harm him. Next on her agenda was to make sure her erstwhile patron had not come to any lasting harm. “It’s all right, now. The sun can’t come in any more. Let’s see you now.” Despite all his efforts at topping up, he was still as skinny as a rake and half that weight… and as she watched the burn on his forehead healed and faded into nothing before her eyes.

…and he was looking rather spellbound into hers…

Mesi cleared her throat and let him go. “Do you -ah- need more? Before it curdles… or… whatever blood does…”

“…coagulates…”

Right. “Um. Do you know that guy?”

“…yes… and no…”

*

Arthur woke in the seedier side of the underbelly of town.

“Rise, underling,” said the hooded figure above him. “Join the cavalcade of darkn–*”

The figure above him howled briefly as an oaken stake pierced his chest, and then dissolved into nothing more than dry ash.

The Plague Doctor, behind where the figure had once stood, gave a muffled cry of victory. “Two in one night,” he growled.

Arthur learned many things about vampires, that night. The first one was, in times of distress and panic, a vampire can play tricks with gravity and scrabble across any relatively level surface with ease.

The second was that vampires really shouldn’t remind themselves of what was physically impossible whilst halfway up a slum wall and escaping from a masked madman.

By sheer luck and good fortune, he landed on The Plague Doctor, knocking the madman’s breath out of his body.

Arthur had the wisdom to abscond with all due speed.

He found his home by reading the address in his wallet. And also found that he made some of his money by renting it out to the less advantaged.

All in all, being undead hadn’t made that many changes in him. There were no girlfriends to confess to. No friends of any other nature. Little in the way of family who remembered him.

And an amounting pile of money that he had little practical use for.

And a growing, visceral hunger from the pits of hades.

*

“And in all the books, your kind are supposed to seduce young actresses and drink their blood,” Mesi concluded. “It worked for all the others, why not you, right?”

A shame-faced nod.

Then Mesi spoke the words that would begin an interesting relationship. “Have you ever thought about biting the people who deserve it? The police blotters are full of people they want dead or alive…”

A crooked smile began to dawn on his pallid face.