Challenge #00144: Discovery!
Embarrassing sibling fluff (Evoverse or Girl Genius, whichever you prefer): Sister meets long-lost brother. They have much catching up to do, and she just wants to embarrass him (in front of the girl he likes makes it even better)
“Just get those clothes off before the contamination gets to your skin!” Agatha, wearing heavily re-inforced gloves, both shoved Gil towards the hot rain engine and tore at his stained shirt.
“Oooh, let me help,” squealed Zeetha. She, too had the gloves on, and eagerly moved in to clutch at his trousers. Her hands stopped an inch away. She stalled. Startled. “Where did you get that mark?”
“…huh?” Gill fumbled with his own pants anyway. “That? That’s always been there. Father said it was some kind of birthmark… Why?”
Zeetha twisted and showed the same mark on her own skin. “This,” she announced, “is the traditional tattoo of the Skifandran heirs. It’s placed in infants just as they’re born.”
“Fabulous. You’re long-lost siblings,” Agatha literally tore the last scraps of cloth from Gil and shoved him under the hot rain. “Scrub thoroughly with the number five decontaminate.”
“I do know procedures, I have been in labs my whole life…”
“Not all of your life,” corrected Zeetha. “My mother never mentioned a son… But then… Skifandran Queens routinely… kill… firstborn sons…”
“Father said that all he did was keep me alive…”
“Help me find the biotainment suits! Nobody bothered to sort the storage place.”
“Must feel like home, then,” Gil jibed.
“Keep washing that hair!”
“But… If I’m an heir… that means that my father…”
“…and my mother,” Zeetha nodded knowingly and cha-cha-cha’d the rest of the arithmetic.
“That means I can be a Baron and King of Skifander,” Gil brightened. “Sorry you turned me down, now, Agatha?”
“There are no kings of Skifander,” said Zeetha. “Only temporary ones. Until a daughter is born. Then… um… he'sasacrifice.”
Gil paused in his scrubbing. “It’d be interesting to hear how father escaped from that…”
Agatha returned. “Fully decontaminated? Good. Here’s your biotainment suit.”
“It’s… chintz…”
“It’s chintz or nudity.”
“Nudity’s more fun,” leered Zeetha.
“He’s your brother,” Agatha made a face.
“He still has a nice butt…”
“HEY!” Gil grabbed the suit. “I’ll take the chintz.”
“Skifandara says that it takes a real man to wear flowers…”
Gil glared at his new sister. “Not. Helping.”
“And enjoying it,” Zeetha sang.
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Challenge #00142: One Fine Day in Transylvania Polygnostic….
’…y'know what, etching “YOU’RE WRONG!” into the surface of the moon with a giant laser, without specifying exactly who was wrong about what, could be freaking hilarious.’
“Settle down, Snapcase,”
“This is theoretical mechanica, not theoretical mass psychology. Save it for the right forum, Snapcase.”
“And don’t say anything in front of Fozdyke. He’s a plagiarist.”
“Hey!”
“Well, you are…”
“Copy one set of notes from one lab, and the whole world has to hear about it.”
“Though we could formulate a clank that could do that…”
“…with the right kind of optics…”
*
The three of them, Fozdyke, Snapcase and Graal, sweated subtly in front of Baron Wolfenbach himself.
“Never before have I seen such a magnificent display of spontaneous civil upset,” said the Baron. “Had I a great and pressing need to conquer the world, I would have found it useful. But you three… gentlemen… evidently performed a global social experiment for… fun…” Fun, pronounced, mind-bogglingly stupid stunt that each one of you will pay for on a daily basis until long past your initial time of death.
“…i… thought it would be funny…?”
“I’m not laughing,” iced Wolfenbach.
…and that was how the Wolfenbach Empire put three men on the moon.
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(#00141)
[AN: Yes, I am taking ficwar prompts. I’m doing one story a day, every day, for as long as humanly possible. Give me lots of prompts. Feed the beast ;) ]
Friends. His friends were trapped. Kurt tried to get up, and was rewarded by searing pain. He dropped back down. Okay. Think. This wasn’t the first time he’d been unable to use his legs. Last time, they’d been burned.
Bloody Winzeldorf.
His faithful tail still worked, though some movements really stung. Kurt used it to keep his agonizing left arm out of the way.
The rubble was on fire. Not a big blaze, and not a smoky one, thank God. Not yet, anyway.
He knew from experience that smoke killed quicker than fire.
Memories of Winzeldorf threw everything into sharp focus. Even the Lights only he could see.
Good news, bad news. Good news - his panic attack had induced a state in which he could find his friends. Bad news - he was constantly battling flashbacks that could kill both him and his friends.
One good arm, maybe half a leg. Sundry bleeding wounds, but his friends were trapped in burning rubble. He had to travel in a least-cost path from Lights to Lights and hope that someone would be useful. Or helpful.
The first one he found was Lance. The idiot who started this mess.
Kurt did his best to get him free and poked him roughly. “Aufwachen, dummkopf!”
“…uzt…?”
He was not in the mood for this. Full volume. Drill sergeant mode. “[Get up off your lazy arse and do something helpful,] Dreckel!”
Lance shook off most of the dust and was at least sitting up before he realized he couldn’t understand the language he was getting yelled at in. “What t’ hell…?” He coughed. Looked around. Peered blearily at Kurt. “Jeez… you look even more like shit.”
“Your fault,” said Kurt. “Condemned skyscraper. Worst possible place to use earthquake powers. Got that NOW?”
“…where’s Kitty?”
“I can’t see her. I can’t find her Lights, either. Third time lucky[1], ja?”
Unfocussed glare. “Not funny, Fuzzbutt.”
“Try being charming with three broken limbs, sometime.”
“Ha. Must be why you’re more worm than usual, right?” He tried to laugh at his own joke and wound up coughing. It was a dangerously liquid noise.
“Next-nearest person’s three meters that way.” Kurt pointed. “We need to get everyone out before the fire gets bad.”
“There’s a fire?”
Kurt rolled back to glare at him. “How bad is your vision, right now?”
“Uhm. Blurs? I know you’re awful ‘cause even your legs don’t bend like that…” He mimed with both arms.
“There’s no time. I’ll be your eyes. You be the arms and legs. I’ll be the eyes and brains, ja?”
“You want me to shake the rest of this shit down?”
“Depends. Want to kill your friends?”
Silence. Too long by Kurt’s measure. He started dragging himself towards the next set of Lights. He didn’t have time for an arrogant, entitled arschlock[2]…
Who picked him up and slung him on his back. “Okay. Fuckit. Which way?”
Improvised straps helped, and freed up Kurt’s tail to help clear rubble.
“Damn, I keep forgetting how useful that thing is,” Lance muttered. “Who’ve we got?”
“Fred,” said Kurt. “His breathing sounds… awkward.”
“Is he on his back?”
“Ja.”
“Shit. Lardbutt’s got apnea when he lies on his back. Help me out.”
“I can only do so much from this angle, understand.”
It took another subjective forever to get Fred propped up on his side by inserting rubble under the tiny lifts Lance could manage. The unnervingly gurgling snore was, apparently, normal.
The next one they found was Jean. Also unconscious. With a nasty head wound. They got her comfortable, patched her up as best they could, and moved on.
Ororo. Injured and unconscious. Pietro. Same. Toad… delerious and chatty and pinned by something Fred could have shifted in a cold second.
“Why is it,” muttered Lance. “Everyone who’s halfway useful for saving our asses is out of it or too injured?”
“What does that make us, then?”
“Smartass.”
“Rather be a smart ass than a shit head.”
“I could dump you right here, you know.”
“And then how would you find Katzchen?”
Logan. Half-concussed and covered in blood. Still healing and unsteady. He made short work of the beam that trapped Todd, at least. And told them that he could not smell any death under the stinking miasma from the fires.
Good news: nobody had died. Bad news: yet.
Kurt was used to pain. It had been his frienemy since the first time he had tried to play with children who had not come from his village. But even so, it was difficult to stay awake. Had to. For everyone trapped.
“Deep breaths, Elf. We can do this.”
“…es ist ein wenig schwierig…”
Darkness closing in. Logan yelling at him to clench. Lance complaining that his eyes were passing out. And finally… gratefully… the separation of him from his pain.
*
Beep. Beep.
The smell of antiseptic. There was a tent over his legs. Too much white for his tender eyes. There was pain, but it was far away and he could easily ignore it.
And there was also Lance. “Relax, Fuzzy. You still got all your freaky pieces.”
“…sehr gut…”
“ver-y. good.” said a mechanical voice in Lance’s hand. He grinned and held up Kitty’s iPhone. “Translator app. Quacks said you’d be a little bit lala for a while on the pain meds. You’d never guess who saved all our asses in the end.”
“Katzchen?”
“kit-ten.” said the mechanical voice.
“Yeah. She just popped up with Rogue in her arms and complaining that she could hear us, like, five floors away.” He switched into a passable imitation of his erstwhile girlfriend as he was talking.
Kurt found the strength to smile.
“Anyway. Good-news, bad-news. Good news, we got rescued. Duh.” He gestured at the too-white surroundings. “Bad news… we were rescued by some government thing. The -uhm- Strategic Hazard Intervention… Essss…. Es… E-somethingorother. They really wanted their initials to spell “Shield”, okay?”
Kurt drifted back into the happy pink fog where pain didn’t happen. “Ich möchte einige Apfelkuchen, Mama…”
There was a small ‘pip’ noise before the mechanical voice could translate.
“I’ll see what can happen,” said Lance.
[1] Refers to _X Impulse_, where Lance tried to kill Kitty (and her family AND Jean) in a fit of anger, and that episode where his powers caused her to be nearly crushed by a falling episode.
[2] Probably misspelled. Look it up.
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FicWar Prompt
Building a superhighway with good intentions.
(#00140)
[AN: Shoutout to Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the monster he created]
“See, with quantum entanglement, we might not be able to transmit objects, but we can transmit data. That’s still a breakthrough,” she argued. “You can send data to a 3D printer on mars, or in orbit of Jupiter, and instructions to go with it. Without the comms delay of conventional radio.”
“And what about temporally-joined entanglements? Can we risk a paradox of sending a solution before there’s a problem?”
“I’ve come up with a way to avoid that.” She bought up another slide in her presentation. What she was also avoiding was the fact that a working prototype was already on the colony in Tsiolkovskiy crater on the far side of the moon. Paired with her ‘dummy’ unit in the middle of the conference room.
The look on everyone’s faces when they had a real-time chat with folks in the Hawking Observatory was priceless.
“Quantum internet,” one of her investors muttered. “The interstellar superhighway.”
“Almost,” she apologized. “I’m still trying to work out how to get the signal to go through wormholes…”
Twenty Years Later…
Someone had sent her another monographed dildo. It read, 360 BPS? U sux!
She didn’t bother to correct them, any more. Didn’t bother with browsing her adulterated creation, eventually named the Hypernet. She had become a recluse.
Because, somehow, the blame for Hypernet services lackluster performances got attached to her invention. And, therefore, herself.
Sometimes, she wished she’d never thought of the damned thing.
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(#00139)
Cold. Remember the three O’s.
Objective. Orientation. Orders.
Objective. Get the survivors safe.
Orientation. Back to the plane. If plane empty, downhill and downstream.
Orders. Stay safe.
Sara hunched inside her impromptu space-blanket cloak and wished her bio-mimetic battle outfit (a) covered more territory and (b) was warmer than it was.
Splint done. This individual would need help getting down. Travois. Skis and blankets and gaff. Loads of gaff. Drag them out and catch up with the last of the walking wounded. Pass them on and then back.
Someone was coming up.
“Not safe! Go down! Go down!”
Not a survivor. A friend.
“What t’ hell you doin’ up here?” Todd demanded as he landed from yet another magnificent leap. “Why’d you forget to radio?”
Radio? There had been a radio. “I dropped it.”
“…jesus fuck it’s cold…” He pulled something out of his belt and rattled off some numbers. Then he added, “Judging by the tracks, the actual crash is uphill. I’m’a get some readings an’ tell you. Start at those cords anyway. Don’t wait fo’ us.”
He snugged her onto his back. Leaped uphill, along the tracks the others had made. So much faster than slogging through the snow.
Inside the plane was out of the wind, but not by much. Sara headed to the nose and checked the pilots. Gone. If Todd radioed or gave co-ordinates, Sara didn’t hear him. She checked seat-by-seat towards the broken end. Empty. Empty. Empty. Gone. Empty. Gone. Gone. Empty.
Child.
Sara extracted the poor little scrap. Limp. Not bloody. Not broken.
“She’s gone, too,” said Todd. “Everyone left is dead, sweets.”
“Baby,” said Sara. Or at least, the little bit of her that was still functioning. “Not dead ‘till warm and dead.”
“You don’t got the warmth t’ spare…” He dithered for a moment, and made a sling for the little girl out of whatever came to hand. Tying her onto his chest. Then he tied her to his back and half leaped, half skidded away.
Following the sinuous curve ploughed into the snow by the walking wounded. By the survivors.
So cold.
So easy to go to sleep…
*
HOT!
Sara breathed in. Kicked and thrashed. Yawped.
“Easy now. Easy. You’re going to be okay. We need to get your body temperature up.”
“Mortimer? Baby?”
“Your… companion is in the men’s ward, undergoing the same treatment. He’s going to be fine.”
“The baby. There was a baby with us.”
The medic’s stony face said it all. “We tried everything.”
There was a horrifyingly small lump on the gurney just opposite her tub. Human-shaped. Child sized.
“I didn’t catch her name.”
The medic found a clipboard, flipped through sheets. “Peri Smith.”
There was one other name on that list. Sara could see it through the lax sheet flapping off the clipboard. The one name that mattered most.
Sam Adrien.
“Is that… all… a list of the dead?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I know you did your best, but many of them were gone before you got there. If you’d like to talk to a councilor…”
“The Sam Adrien on that list. Was… was he—” shivering came back. Violently. Making her stutter. “W-www-ww-w-w-was-s-s-s he S-s-s-sam-mmmmmm-muel L-llllyle Ad-d-d-rien?”
“I’ll have to check with the document recovery team. You stay put. No wandering off out of there without a thorough check up.”
“I’ll b-b-b-b-be g-g-g-ood….” Admittedly, her own last name was not as prolific as, say, Smith or Jones. There had to be other Sam Adriens out there.
Someone else’s husband. Someone else’s love. Someone else’s…
Daddy…
Not him. Not now. Not him. Not today. Not him. Please. If there’s any mercy in this universe. Any higher power who could…
Not Daddy.
Not today.
Her tears would not come. Not when the medic came back with a too-familiar wallet. Not when she saw the blood on it. Not even when she saw his smiling face on his driver’s license.
The one person who meant the most in her entire life. The man who kept her alive just by coming home.
Was never coming home again.
He’d died instantly. Painless. The same lie all doctors told relatives. It was quick. It didn’t hurt.
She must have passed him a hundred times. Checked for a pulse every time she stopped at his seat, in spite of the evident injury that killed him. She must have laid her hands on him so many times, checking for anyone alive. And never seen who he was. Never known.
The three O’s never let her see faces. Faces let her make mistakes. Got her involved in illogic. And illogic killed people in situations where the three O’s were necessary. It was for the greater good.
But right at that instant. Shivering fit to shake her skin off. Sara hated the three O’s with a vengeance beyond a million suns.
Because she had seen him. She had known. And now that it was confirmed… she couldn’t cry.
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(#00138)
Negative. Again. For the thirty-ninth time.
Sara tried to control her breathing. She did everything she could to remain quiet, but inside her head… a thousand suns were exploding.
Their anniversary was next week. Their third anniversary.
It was crucial that this test be positive. And, for the thirty-ninth time in a row… negative.
She’d failed him.
And now he’d go away.
To someone more shapely. To someone more fertile. To someone who would not wake him up at ungodly hours because an idea possessed her to the point where noise became inconsequential.
And she’d woken him again, despite her best efforts.
“I didn’t hear yo’ singin’,” he rasped. The morning frog-in-the-throat turned his voice almost into a literal croak. “You okay, sweetums?”
She couldn’t hold it in any more. Sara broke. A flood of tears and muffled shrieks erupted in one large, babyish wail and words so mangled not even the best expert at Tearful Girl could understand her.
Todd pried her left hand open. Found the little plastic stick that had managed to be a stake in her heart. He helped her up. Held her close. Guided her unsteady steps to the bed and let her cling to him and weep and wail.
Gone, soon.
Gone.
Because she couldn’t get pregnant.
She had three years and wasted them. They were gone, too.
And she couldn’t even speak to let him know. Just blub and sob and quiver like the useless lump her mother had always said she was.
Finally, after a subjective eternity in tear-soaked hell, Todd’s words became understandable in her ear. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It ain’t yo’ fault. I thought… I thought it’d be better to… Look. I had the Shot, okay?”
Oxygen returned. Tears still fell, though they fell slower. “You did what?”
“I took the Shot. Y’know. RISUG. The shot that empties th’ barrel?”
“I do know what RISUG is, dear. When—?”
“When you had that day at the dressmakers. I thought I was doing a good thing. I wanted you to get all’a them degrees an’ all. I thought… Young Mama’s never get looked at all that great. And…”’
Silence reigned for another eon. “And?” she prompted.
“I didn’t wanna be my dad.”
Ah. His father. Who ‘kept’ five women dependent on him via a series of pregnancies and thuggishly induced miscarriages. Mutantcy and a small set of miracles made sure he survived to independence.
“Th’ Gorgons have this rule,” Sara quavered. “If you can’t conceive in three years… you don’t deserve a spouse…”
There was blood on his shoulder. On the bedclothes. On her face. On everything she touched. It had been a long time since she’d cried so hard her nose bled.
And Todd didn’t care about it. Clothes washed. People washed. It was the crying that mattered. “We shoulda talked. I’m sorry, honey.”
“…’m sorry I didn’ think’f all th’ factors… y’mus’ think’m horr’ble…”
“Naw. Never. Ain’t never nuthin’ wrong wit’ makin’ a guess. Peeps make mistakes, yo. Even the smartest peeps inna world.”
Sniff. “Flatterer.”
“Gotta butter up mah sugar-buns.” He grinned. “Wanna discuss this in depth over Nana Kurbalowitz’s famous waffles?”
“Sounds like a definite plan.”
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Challenge #00137: Elves Don’t Live Forever.
As per the fic war… go old school. Kitty realizes her feelings for Kurt after he dies in some horrible manner. KILL ME.
[AN: Fic war prompts will have priority while they are in my inbox. I will get to the others in the fullness of time.]
They got most of the people out. Not all. Nobody could have got all of them out. And for a change everyone was working together. Lance beside Scott. Fred beside Jean. Pietro beside Ororo… and Todd beside Kurt.
They found Todd, bruised and battered, chattering a storm as he tried to lift rubble with muscles more adapted to jumping and bouncing. And what he was chattering was a litany of denial.
“Don'chu dare be dead, fuzzbutt. Be in a bubble or sump'in. Teleport out an’ diss me, I don’ care. Just don’t be dead yo’ stoopid fuzzy fre–” his voice stopped.
Kitty was still picking her way over the pile. Still some meters away. But she still heard him whisper, “Aw fuck,” as clearly as if she was right next to him.
Todd moved more carefully, now. Heaving pieces of former building away with careful respect.
She could see his tail. His three-fingered hand.
So still.
Kitty didn’t remember getting to him. She was just… there. Using her power to lift him free of the debris. Placing him carefully down. He wasn’t cold. She expected death to be cold. The warmth of him fooled her. Made her think that any second, now, he’d breathe in. Gasp. Cough. Despite the fact that his entire rib cage was not a shape that belonged to the living.
…any second now…
“Please, Fuzzy,” she whimpered. “Please just breathe.”
He’d always been there. The fly in her ointment. The pesky clown when things were serious. The chief cause of smiles on a bad day. The one person who knew how to cheer her up.
…any second now…
She had to try. Tilt his head right back. Push her air into his lungs. All that came out was a ghastly bubbling noise and blood.
“Ain’t nobody could–” Todd began. “I’m sorry, yo. He ain’t–”
Todd was crying, too.
“Damnit, Kurt,” Kitty managed. “Why?” Why did he have to go… just when she needed him most?
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1 - 2 - 3 - 4, I declare a fic war!
What: Tumblr Fic War
Who: Anyone who reblogs this post.
When: Until everyone is actualfax dead, because this is WAR suckers!
Why: FEELINGS
What: Everyone who reblogs this post is opening their ask box up to the most brutal, feelings-inducing prompts anyone who is playing can imagine. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take those prompts and DESTROY EVERYONE with them. Not just angsty stuff either, fluff can be just as bad, as many of you know!
I’m in