Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
There are a certain number of possible reactions to finding out that one is temporarily invisible and inaudible to the rest of the crew aboard the vessel you all share.
“FUCK!” is in the top ten.
So is, “This is a plot from a bad science fiction series!”
As well as a solid string of curses old and new.
Jabrelle went through the entire top ten before she settled down and attempted to get a grip. She wouldn’t have even gone through number one on the list if she was also intangible. The effects of the gravity generator would have flung her through the floors and into instant and lonely death if she had been also intangible.
Therefore, she had to let the Captain know that something was going on. And, since the accident had also obliterated the non-essential comms systems… she had to do that in person.
Writing on the walls was not a viable solution. Firstly, an on-duty and crisis-stricken UFTP survey vessel tended to cut off access to art supplies. Secondly, all the walls were one hundred percent graffiti-proof. And the cleaners would get to anything on the floors before anyone intelligent could see it.
Therefore, after weighing all her options and finding very few available, Jabrelle calmly and logically chose to mess with the Captain’s Cup.
The Captain’s Cup, which was an old Terran tradition and an early warning system. The Captain’s Cup, ritually filled with piping-hot beverage and watched like a weak and wobbling lamb by an anticipatory vulture in times of tension. The Captain’s Cup which, despite being an inanimate piece of porcelain, knew something was up well before any sophisticated sensor could alert anyone.
Of course she started subtle, using the silver spoon like a transmission key on a telegraph.
K-E-E-P C-A-L-M. O-F-F-I-C-E-R J-A-B-R-E-L-L-E R-E-P-O-R-T-I-N-G, she began.
The captain had turned white - quite a feat considering her everyday hue - and fastened her seatbelt. “Stand ready,” ordered Captain Kimutai.
Jabrelle belatedly remembered that only colossal nerds like herself even bothered learning morse code at all, any more. And, out of distilled frustration, flipped the Captain’s Cup clear across the bridge.
There was only one sane reaction from the captain to the sight of the Captain’s Cup sailing, unprompted, across the bridge. “RED A-FUCKING-LERT!”
Which would have been fine, if the current bridge crew weren’t aliens.
“Sir?”
“SHIELDS ON FULL, PREPARE FOR IMPACT, RUN ALL SCANS, BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES AND PREPARE TO KISS YOUR ASSES GOODBYE!” Kimutai roared. “SET COURSE FOR THE NEAREST BASE, WARP FACTOR- FUCK OFF!”
“Sir, this is irrational behaviour…”
“Did you not see the Captain’s Cup FLY across the room?” Kimutai demanded.
Jabrelle recovered the cup, saucer and spoon and started making all three dance. Out of pure spite, she set the bridge audio playback to run Hello My Baby! before she did so.
"It’s dancing! Nowhere in history has The Cup flakkin’ danced—”
Jabrelle could see the metaphorical penny drop. At last. She’d found an area of common experience.
"Internal scans. Do we have any apparently missing crew?”
The lizard discretely typing out a message to send help at the comms station made a face that clearly said, What the flying hell? “Sir?”
“Do we have any crew members who have not apparently reported to their duty stations?” Kimutai enunciated.
Tap tap tap… “Officer Jabrelle Martinez, sir. She’s currently missing under suspicious circumstances.”
“Gimmie that milk,” The Captain unbuckled herself and slit open the entire bag that today’s luckless ensign had urgently ferried in for a refresh.
The assembled bridge crew gaped at the human outline as Jabrelle dripped and managed a dairy-soaked wave.
“Cancel red alert. Someone get this officer some spray paint and get her down to the medtechs.” Kimutai sank back down into her chair. “Gods damn it, Martinez…”
And that’s how clever minds can resolve bad science fiction plots in less than ten minutes.
One of your old stories - “(Nightcrawler) can get away with not using the image inducer if he just puts on a hoodie and keeps his hands in his pockets. I mean, he doesn’t even hide the tail! And his shoes have to be made special.”
Plus a paraphrased quote:
Most people don’t notice things they don’t expect to see. Children though, they’ll recognise you instantly.
It’s a good thing kids are also the least likely to screech “OMG it’s ____” and pull out a camera.
“I can’t believe it. I can not believe it,” Kitty ranted. “You just like, walked all the way through Bayville Mall and nobody… HOW?”
Safe in the darkness of the back seat, Kurt pulled his hood down. “It’s a very stupid trick, ja?”
“Well whatever it is, I totally want in.”
“You, Katzchen? You look–” Kurt fumbled with the right English. “–better zan fine.”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it.”
He grinned, sharp teeth shining almost a rival with his eyes. “I’ve had a lifetime of experience with being a mutant. I learned ways… and other ways… of hiding in plain sight.”
“Elf… Spill it.”
Kurt sighed. “People don’t look. Not all the time. They watch feet, to avoid stepping on others. They watch faces, but not always. They watch hands, which is where I have trouble… But they don’t watch -er- the lower body. From waist to knee.” His three-fingered hand gestured over the relevant area. “If I pull my tail up around my waist, under the coat? Nobody sees. Nobody looks. Ja, I have a bit of difficulty walking, but… that works in my favour, too.”
“Like, how?”
“When’s the last time you looked at a disabled person, Katzchen? Really looked?”
“Uuuhhhh…” Oh. OH.
Kurt grinned wider, now. “There’s only one thing that can break the spell.”
“Yeah?”
“Little kids. They have no fear and no filters. How long do you think social blindness lasts with a little kid hollering about the man with the blue fur?”
“So that’s why you used me as like, a stalking horse?”
“Ja. Sorry.”
“I’m pretty much not mad any more,” Kitty allowed. “Yikes.”
There was a small flock of scientists with her now. Including a very sweet, very junior male whom T'reka kept accidentally deferring to out of social instinct.
Koku had taken to very prominently wearing his ID with the ‘Junior’ part of his 'Junior Assistant’ title highlighted with the help of the humans photo-reactive ink.
Her fellow hens, three of them, were easier. She had seniority, rank, and a certain amount of hygiene standards to mark herself above the others. She didn’t abuse her power. Though sometimes, the thought was more than tempting.
The one thing she was strict with them about was in regards to personal grooming. Dust-baths during exterior exploration days, water baths during in-camp days and regular treatments for parasites. Here, the humans were helpful. They had inventions to help prevent their own kind from injuring themselves through scratching or picking. And though Numidid had no use for spinner rings, they found that chewing gum would give a person prone to picking something else to do with their beaks.
But what surprised her the most was how readily her younger contemporaries and the humans adapted to each other.
The humans had a short, seven-day week. And on the Sun’s day, they would take their ease and perform various ceremonies strictly for relaxation and entertainment. The variety of this entranced Koku where it simply perplexed T'reka, and both would find themselves staring at whatever was going on on the humans’ stage.
And then Syriki shyly asked if she could sing up there, too.
Diminutive Syriki, she of the deep black feathers and the hushed voice, and the permanently cowed posture, surprised everyone that night by not only having a wondrously loud, but also tuneful singing voice. The humans were so impressed that they unanimously stood up to make their celebratory noise. Applause.
The following act - a cadre of human puppeteers with homemade chickens - seemed embarrassed to follow her on stage.
“It is your turn,” she murmured in English. “The showing must to go on.”
The humans all adored Syriki. They lavished her with any kind of kind attention and -T'reka noted in her journals- tended to baby her owing to her small stature. They could not turn down her gentle insistence.
It was a comedy act. Puppet chickens brawked and buckawed their way through a well-known human tune with the occasional appearance of a humorous ping-pong ball.
“Oh dear,” whispered Syriki, almost hiding under T'rekas wing. “I see why they were embarrassed, now. They didn’t want to insult me.”
And, to show there was no hard feelings, she glided from her perch to the stage and joined in. She had an immensely good time and, after a heart-stopping moment of shock and awe, so did the humans.
Early explorers and colonists gave the best new worlds names considered “unappealing” to those back on earth, so as to discourage overcolonization and protect what they viewed as offworld paradises. This led to beautiful worlds with names such as Gehenna, Sheol, Yomi-no-kuni, and New Jersey. Over time, as these worlds became popular, their names lost their old meanings, and thus, the phrase “as beautiful as a New Jersey summer” was no longer seen as satirical. This made interpreting history/old texts somewhat confusing, and in some cases, nigh-unintelligible.
[AN: This doesn’t quite work with one-way-wormhole colonisation, but I’ll give it a go]
During the first wave of Terran Colonisation, The humans left behind couldn’t help but notice a certain pattern. Places named after paradises inevitably came to ruin. Even places where the paradise was subjective.
Citizens of Earth did not like watching the residents of New Q'onos perish of starvation or malnutrition as they insisted they hunted all their food. Neither did they admire ominously loosing contact with Heaven, Hope or Gaia Regis.
And the less said about Greater Deregulation, the better.
Therefore, the humans came up with a typically human solution: stop naming new worlds after paradises. No optimistic names at all.
Thus, there are an abundance of colonised planets with names like Hell, Gethsemane, Yomi-no-kuni, Purgatory, Sheol, New Jersey, Skegness, Minnesota, Woodridge, Bognor and Cauldera.
Which is why Shayde has permanent employment from the Archivaas Collective.
They had a very long list of originally unpleasant places, both real and mythological, for her to define.
Because sometimes, the true key to unriddling ancient narratives is understanding the joke.
Of course Steve had heard about the secret weapon code-named Rabbit. It was impossible to not hear about other secret weapons when one is also technically a secret weapon.
This was one of the few he got to meet.
He was used to techies referring to their weapons and vehicles as ‘she’ or ‘he’. He was not used to the pale wraith joining their team as “Rabbit’s chief technician”. He was the palest person Steve had ever seen, which made his black and blue-striped hair all the more startling.
The second thing Steve noticed was the harness he wore outside of his black jumpsuit.
Then his hands moved. “Most people stare at the hair,” said a mechanical voice from the technician’s right shoulder. “Blue Matter took my voice, so I made a new one for the people who can’t be bothered learning sign language. You can speak, by the way. I can hear.”
“Blue Matter?” he said. “Like the kind Colonel Walters Steam Man Band run on?”
“Run with,” said the techie. “Yes. Exactly like that.”
That was his first clue that the military minds behind winning the war were not entirely focussed on what was right for their more… special soldiers. But Steve, being an optimist, had imagined a more advanced model code-named after the Victorian-era copper automaton.
He didn’t actually see her until they were getting on the plane.
She wore loose-fitting paratrooper fatigues. One sleeve fitted with a zipper to make room for her Blue Matter gatling gun. Steve saw it all in that moment. The resigned walk, the thousand-yard stare, the necklace made out of paperclips and the fresh oil streaming slowly from her luminescent eyes.
She didn’t want to be part of this war.
“You’re making her jump out of planes?”
“Not me,” said her techie. Paul. His name was Walter Guy Paul.
Steve sat beside her, all the way to the drop zone. Keeping her company while the rest of the Howling Commandoes ignored her as if she were a piece of ordinance. Reminiscing, where he could, about her days on the stage.
He remembered her from world-of-tomorrow-today style exhibitions and one performance that was a present from his uncle. It was all he could talk about for months. Seven years old, and telling Bucky about every last detail from the Steam Powered Road Show.
“…wish I was b-b-b-b-b-b-back there, now,” sighed Rabbit.
Her stutter was miles worse than it had ever been. Steve shared a Look with Walter Guy Paul.
Steve’s look said, There’s something going wrong with her. She needs help.
Paul’s look said, I know. I can’t stop them long enough to fix her properly.
Which was why he held her hand - the only time he held a fellow Commando’s hand - when it was time to leave the plane.
Their parachutes - all of their parachutes - were army standard. They were not made to support the weight of a steam-powered, copper, clockwork automaton.
And hers… didn’t.
She fell faster than he did. Screamed all the way down. Shot wildly at the enemy and, when she hit… she hit harder. And had the dubious tactical advantage of scattering parts of herself over an area a ten-yard radius.
The plan changed in mid-air. The instant he realised what made Rabbit, the gentle, silly joker of the band such an excellent secret weapon. The United States Armed Forces was treating her like a shrapnel bomb.
Well. The Howling Commandoes were going to treat her like a soldier.
He did not, as the plan stated, immediately assault the enemy encampment. He took down everyone who was shooting at him and then ordered his men to establish a perimeter and gather Rabbit’s scattered parts.
“We ain’t got time for that!”
“Howling Commandoes never leave a man down!” He bellowed.
“That ain’t no man…”
“Then we don’t leave a lady down, neither,” He stood guard over her shattered torso and got out his Parade Ground Bellow. “NOW I GAVE YOU AN ORDER AND I NEVER GAVE IT TO HEAR MY TEETH CLICK! GET OUT THERE AND GET EVERY LAST NUT, BOLT, COG AND PINWHEEL YOU CAN SEE! I DON’T CARE IF YOU THINK ITS SHRAPNEL, WE GOT A SOLDIER DOWN AND WE’RE GONNA FIX HER! MOOVIT MOOVIT MOOVIT!”
Techie Paul landed last, but he’d definitely heard Steve.
The Japanese could have heard Steve. And they were on the other side of Russia from here.
“Wow. You g-g-g-g-g-got all that in one b-b-b-breath,” burbled Rabbit.
He knelt, still watchful and wary for the enemy. “At ease, soldier,” he soothed. “We’re gonna patch you up and then get moving.”
“Nev-nev-never walked home b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-before,” Rabbit sighed. “Some-somethin’ new…”
He took up her surviving hand in his own. Looked her in her mismatched eyes. “I’ll see what I can do about getting you some repair time. About getting you away from the war.”
“Won-won-won’t be mu-much,” said Rabbit. “We’re un-un-under c-c-c-c-c-contract.”
“Then I’ll see what I can do for you.”
Rabbit pulled herself up and kissed him.
Steve Rogers cleared his throat. “I have a girl back home,” he said, blushing.
"So do I,” Rabbit steamed a little. “It ain’t of-of-often folks t-t-t-t-treat me like folks. G-g-g-g-gotta be grateful y-y-y-y-ha know.”
He left her with Paul and promises that she would get back to a base that could help her ASAP.
And he didn’t see her again until well after the war. Years after his deep-freeze.
She’d lost the wigs he’d sent her. Or never got them. But at least they were letting her wear a dress. And she was back where she belonged… in the spotlight, and singing.
Rule of Fiction 13: Any monster, fictional or real, will have a romance written about it, often one where it turns out to be “not that bad”. A lot will be absurdly well-written and thought out, and a lot will be barely-readable trash.
Pre-Amity humans and Galactic Alliance again, I’d rather see well written (because your stuff is always well written) but there’s always the Twilight in Space option if you feel like it
[AN: The problem with any Twilight parody is that it gets mistaken for great literature. See: 50 Shades of Grey]
They froze, staring at each other across the open space of the plains between them. He was a brute of a human. All muscles and hair. She was not. All she had in her favour was her height which, thanks to her injuries, she could not use.
He could charge at any moment.
She remembered from her lessons that humans would not attack something that appeared to be docile, so she quickly adopted a submissive pose. Perhaps there was strength in weakness.
There was already strength in eye contact. The beasts’ eyes never left her glowing amber–
*
“Glowing amber? Two pages ago, her eyes were livid blue?”
“They change colour,” grumped Z'chedda. “That’s gonna come out in the next chapter.”
“Mmmm…” Chorish mumbled doubtfully. “You also said this was a rewrite of the movie. I’m not seeing a lot of similarities.”
“I’m making it better.”
“By putting a female lead in who looks exactly like you? Except with the kaleidoscope eyes.”
“Shut up. I think I’m doing okay.”
“I think it’s a little… out there.”
“Really. Why did I even bother showing this to you?”
“Because you wouldn’t shut up about it for three weeks? Because you keep telling me all about this story? Because everything that was wrong with The Beast From Outer Space has been the only thing you ever want to talk about? Because despite that, you’ve seen it like thirty times?”
Z'chedda made a rude noise to her friend. “If you keep being that critical, you won’t get any nest-mates.”
Chorish rolled her eyes. “Whatever. It’s good enough writing, but… kaleidoscope eyes? Really? You had to go there?”
“It happens sometime, okay?”
“Shyeah. With a bigger budget than Beast had… What are you calling this thing, anyway?”
“Beauty and the Beast.”
“O my Gods… That is the worst title ever.”
“What?”
“Nobody in their right mind would want a story with that title.”
“they’re British skeletons of course they’re dancing sarcastically. ”
The place was alive. But only technically.
Crowds of “people” flooded the dance floor and the air was full of the unique miasma of a dance club. Music, people shouting to be heard over the music, stale alcohol and even staler cigarette smoke.
This was Club 86. Where the undead went to live it up.
Maia was busy trying not to freak out. She was the only person… being… creature… in the room who did not have what Nedelcu referred to as ‘special circumstances’.
And this is what happened when a mortal asked her vampire girlfriend what it was like being undead.
A crumble of litches had the dance floor. How moving skeletons could move was a mystery Maia preferred not to think about. But they were moving, and something about what remained of their body language was… familiar.
“Are they… dancing sarcastically?” she asked over the steady bass thumping.
“They’re British skeletons,” said Nedelcu. “Of course they’re dancing sarcastically.”
“How can you even tell that they’re British.”
A level glare. “After a while… you get to know. Besides, they dance like they always lose at Eurovision.”
Observe - a Mad Scientist that’s cracked a little more than usual, and has completely stuffed up their cost-benefits analysis: “This weapon accelerates the round - any variety of tree nut - up to point-eight-cee in the direction of the target. Observe! An average walnut. Walnuts average between five and ten grams, while this particular specimen is right around the middle at seven and a quarter. If I place this nut here - you’ll see the machine analyses the round to determine that it is an accepted ammunition variant - and press this button here, then when the nut impacts the target - the so-called Face on Mars - in a bit under fourteen and a half minutes, we shall see an effect on the area roughly equivalent to a hundred-and-three kiloton bomb! And best of all, the ammunition is so cheap it literally grows on trees!” – RecklessPrudence
"You’re forgetting a few key factors, Weatherby.”
“Such as?”
“To reach Mars, this walnut will have to accelerate at speeds that will cause it to spontaneously combust. And you’ve forgotten about the aerodynamic capabilities of a walnuts surface.”
“Really?” Jane placed her hands on her hips. “And what would you suggest, Professor Hetherington?”
“Well, for comparable mass and density, you’d really need a macadamia nut. They’re denser, smoother and harder than your average walnut.”
She glared at her academic rival. “It’s always Australian things with you, isn’t it, Sheila?”
A character that uses every opportunity to throw her prosthetic arm at people, hand it to them etc.
The Membletak used to be a race of conquerors. As far as manifest destinies were concerned, they were mostly benevolent. They did not, for instance, use germ warfare or treat their conquered planets as dump sites or their conquered people as second-class citizens.
They did rely on heavy taxes, but you can’t have everything.
That is, they were conquerors until they sought to conquer the star system B3K.
There, they encountered a small Terran maintenance station manned by Gillian “Joker” McGee. She not only greeted the invaders with open arms and exclamations of joy, but offered her hand to the Ship’s Captain, Torq’a.
What the Membletak did not know was that “Joker” McGee had previously lost her organic hands to a liquid nitrogen mishap. They did not know that she thought it was funny to randomly detach her artificial replacements.
Therefore, when Captain Torq’a was left holding “Joker” McGee’s hand as she turned away to embrace another crewman, he experienced a sudden and fatal heart embolism and died on the spot.
The surviving crew were so impressed by his surprising demise that they surrendered to the human race at that very instant.
In the annals of Galactic History, Gillian McGee has been the most… entertaining… of the planetary Empresses. She insisted on being announced as the ‘Mistress of the Killer Joke’ until her dying day.
