Challenge #01871-E047: Know When to Walk Away — Steemit
Never mind how they got there. The meeting should have been brief. It should have resulted in one of them knowing something the other had to bargain and both of them walking away and muttering, “Sucker…” in evident glee. And yet, the conversation had turned to, of all things, hats.
“Of course it changes every day. I’m a wizard. My hat is me. It suits my mood, my wardrobe… goes with everything, darling.”
Maxim was no fool. He’d tangled with technomancy, struggled against sparks, this was not the day to waltz with a wizard. “End who do hyu hev to keel to get vun like dot?”
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Challenge #01723-D262: Family is…?
I did not give that spider superhuman intelligence – @recklessprudence
Klaus looked at the spider. She was wearing a crinoline made out of her own silk. He turned back to Lord Falderil. “Really?”
“Absolutely not,” insisted Lord Falderil. His lab had every known piece of intelligence-augmenting equipment known to Spark-kind and a few more that he had evidently made himself. “She was already intelligent. I’ve been augmenting myself so that I can keep up.”
The giant spider, named Spinnerette, delicately put down her teacup. “I understand how this is confusing, Herr Baron,” she said. Her voice was not smooth, but rather like shaped buzzing. Her mandibles were not made for human speech. And yet, she spoke the lingua franca admirably well. “I was sent to this reality from another one where insects rule. Papa found me and raised me as his own. And when he realised I was intelligent, he began my education.”
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Challenge #01664-D203: Damnit, Podsbury!
“Wait, do you mean you made a new friend, or you made a new friend?” “Uhh, the first one. Wait, no, the second one… Which one doesn’t involve artificially crafted Lovecraftian horrors of medicine?” – @recklessprudence
“The second one,” sighed Master Brubrik, “Does involve artificially crafted Lovecraftian horrors of medicine,” she spared another glance at the thing on the slab. “Which of course means that you mean the latter of those two options.”
It had a tentacle wrapped around Podsbury’s arm. “Daaaa deeeeee,” it croaked.
“Uh. Yeah. Um. You know how I said I don’t socialise well…”
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Challenge #01280-C185: One Smoke-filled Afternoon in a Very Special School
@recklessprudence - someone either had a very bad idea or a very good one. You decide.
Challenge #00960-B229: One Stormy Evening in a Former Enemy's Tool Closet
A spot of Girl Genius, today.
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Challenge #00905-B174: Easter Egg
The best kept secret of the jaegermonsters
Jaegermonsters hunt in packs. That much is self-evident. Jaegermonsters are not the brightest candles in the window. That, too, is self-evident.
Lord Palinquest thought he was being clever by separating the invading Jaeger pack in disparate cells in the middle of unique booby-traps in the labyrinth under his castle. He’d even tune in when he was bored to see how they were doing.
What he didn’t know, what none but the most observant of Sparks knew… was that a Jaeger alone eventually becomes… smart.
Only one made it out of the labyrinth to kill him. And by that time, the assembled torments of the maze had honed it into something… else.
The world’s first JaegerSpark.
Fortunately for the world, Lord Gruesh the First was soon overthrown by his own rabid hunting mimmoths.
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Challenge #00859-B128: Abominations of Nurture
I need to show [Person] how to repair things properly. Their first instinct is still to reach for a roll of [duct tape]. I just hope I’m not too late. Power corrupts, but the power of duct tape corrupts absolutely.
“Trigellis is a Spark. And Sparks should never be raised in the Holy order of JOATs. Things go… very wrong.”
“For example,” Pletherly drew the curtains to reveal a contained lab. Where a Spark, presumably Trigellis, was busy piloting a machine apparently made of duct tape and paperclips… and nothing else.
“Yes. I’m going to try and show him the advantages of gears and pistons… but he may be too far gone.” Aukney produced the one key to the lab. “Do prepare the -ah- advanced C-gas?”
“Of course,” Pleatherly bowed.
Therapy time had begun.
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Challenge #00855-B124: One Dark and Stormy Evening in an Abandoned Subterranean Clank Lab
“Listen carefully,” they said. “This is absolutely true and not at all a desperate lie.”
Click-clack-clunk. “Previous data indicates that the organic will now lie. Subject… asks… that you do not.”
The human invader paused. “All right. Fine. I don’t want to be trapped in here.”
“Neither do I,” said Subject. “Subject wants… I need… my creator.“
Now the human narrowed their eyes. “You’re not the average clank… are you?”
Subject looked down at the floor. “Mama could not make children the organic way. So she made me.” At this point, she took out a locket and opened it to the faded image. “She went upstairs and has not come back.”
The human spent a long time looking at the image and humming to themselves. It was almost like Mama used to hum. Subject knew that sound, she knew that look. And that was why she gathered all the tools and parts she could.
“Can… you help?” asked Subject.
“Your… ‘mama’… may not return. But I can help you,” said the human. “I’m Agatha Heterodyne… and I’m sure you can help me when I’m done helping you.”
Oh goodie. Repairs at last!
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Challenge #00328: …and Wherefores
Gil took longer than most children to grow out of the “why?” stage (either Klaus or Von Pinn dealing with him at that age, you pick, I just want to see toddler!Gil and hilarity)
It was a little celebration amongst the rigger rats. They called it Family Day, and used it to remember the people they had left behind. Gil enjoyed the stories the others told but, when it came to his turn, his joyful mood fell to ash.
“I don’t have a family,” he confessed. “I don’t know where my home is.”
The others laughed at him. He ran away.
Von Pinn found him in the Escape Rig hangar, hiding between the emergency supplies and the mammoth baits. She reacted to his tears the way she reacted to anything outside of her field of order. With anger.
“Who harmed you?”
Gil automatically unfolded to show a lack of injuries. “They jus’ laughed at me, m’m,” he quavered. “Why don’t I have a family?”
“You do have a family,” Von Pin soothed. Or the closest thing she could get to ‘soothed’. “They are just… not here. Come along, this is a dangerous area.”
“Why?”
“Child, you are sitting next to poison in an area full of flying machines, with a door that leads to a five-thousand-foot drop. Which one of these features escaped your notice?”
“No, why is my family not here?”
Von Pinn picked him up by his suspenders and carried him at arm’s length. “Because they are located elsewhere.”
“Why?”
“Because they could not be here.”
“Why?”
“For your safety.”
“Why?”
Von Pinn tutted and rolled her eyes. “Young master Gil, are you asking to know or are you asking to annoy?”
“I wanna know. Where are they? Why aren’t they here? How can I be safe if I don’t have a mama or a papa? Who am I?”
“I give you leave to come to me after bedtime. I will tell you then.”
“Why?”
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