Challenge #00361: Stupid Mammals.
*irritated muttering* "… Stupid mammals and their ability to function regardless of temperature….“
Cold.
The desire to hibernate was strong, but in this environment, the desire to hibernate could kill. This place was permanently cold. They would sleep and never wake up.
The ship’s human knew this. Given their species-inherent desire to eliminate the Other, the surprising part was how they did not use the current situation to win.
The captain watched in amazement and torpor, as the human dragged each and every one of the surviving crew to the warmest area in the ship. How she used blankets and ‘hottie botties’ to at least keep a majority of the crew conscious.
How she used a blanket and paperclips to fashion insulation for herself. One blanket! When the others had all the layers that the human could gather and mattresses and hot water bottles and anything that could be forced to pump out heat.
Even the bodies of the dead were bought inside the one room with a positive temperature. Stacked respectfully in a corner in the hopes that they could be resuscitated when they were warmer.
It was such an odd human saying: they’re not dead until they’re warm and dead.
Mammals were warm all the time. Weren’t they?
The human finally stopped whatever it was doing and joined the huddle under the insulation. She told them about Emperor Penguins. How the males would nurse their eggs in the middle of the antarctic winters. How they would share their body heat by taking turns in the inside or the outside of the huddle. Fighting the cold together.
Yet the ship’s human was the only endothermic being on board.
It took some time for the crew to process the story and the plan that came with it.
The human, napping under so much insulation, would quickly overheat. BUT, if she were surrounded by a constant stream of chilled Trachylep crew, they could both keep each other alive for another day-night cycle.
It was a night worthy of farce, but the captain was very glad to huddle up against the warm human when the chill threatened to take higher functioning away. And, a subtle bonus, the entire crew had proof that she growled in her sleep.
She 'snored’, to use the human word.
*
It took her five days to make enough repairs to get them down the mountain. Part of which was constructing a 'sled bottom’ for their vessel during the warmest part of the day.
From ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. Those were the four hours when it was actually safe for the human to go outside. Captain Zix was certain the human’s plan would cause terror if they were more awake to process it.
She was going to slide the ship, crew and all, down the mountain and into a warmer area of the planet’s surface. There, the work that needed to be done to get them space-borne once more could be done faster.
She’d even planned a path to get them down with a minimum of damage. Zix would find out later about the mess that human "jerry rigging” and “jiggery pokery” could cause.
And it was a bumpy ride. Zix and her crew were tossed about like peas in a can. Many bundled themselves up in whatever padding they could grab. More than a few shed their tails in primitive panic.
Amazingly, astonishingly, they were alive when the remains of the ship finally came to a halt.
Except for those who were definitively dead to begin with.
The hoarfrost on the walls began to melt by the time the ship’s human returned. Worse for wear. Grinning like a maniac. Laughing sporadically and shivering.
“That was fun,” she panted. “Ambient temperature outside is nice and warm. Just the way you lizards like it.” She looked around at the bundled crew and the still-twitching tails scattered about. “Oops. I thought I’d warned you.”
“Stupid humans,” muttered Captain Zix. It was almost a mantra. “Stupid mammals and their ability to function regardless of temperature…”
“You’re welcome,” snarked the human. “Thanks for saving our truncated asses, Uhura. You’re welcome O Captain, My Captain. I’m certain you would deserve a medal or at least a commendation for your actions. Think nothing of it, My Captain; I was simply doing my duty.”
Stupid humans and their habits of parody. “You… did do well,” managed Zix. “We owe you our lives, Oo'oo'a.”
“Uhura,” corrected the human. “I’ll be sampling local flora and fauna while you guys thaw. The roof of the ship should be getting nice and warm.”
Now that was a hint they could all parse.
Zix made a mental note to balance the human’s efforts against the damage done while performing them. In the meantime, she was going to get warm at last.
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Challenge #00360: Everything Proof Shield
When the greatest weapons and technology does nothing, it’s not always the end of the battle. Sometimes you just have to grab the nearest heavy object and go medieval on your adversary.
She had watched them glide through nukes that did not explode as they were supposed to. She saw both bazookas and bombs fail to ignite in their presence. Even guns would not fire.
The alien invasion did not kill. They didn’t need to. They simply stopped their enemy - the humans - from doing anything to hurt them.
Not even tasers would fire.
All this, she watched, as the leader of the free world moved from office, to temporary shelter, to bunker underground. And her duty was to stand around, looking pretty in her dress uniform with a stupid dress sword and, only when push came to shove, put her body in the way of anything the aliens had to throw at him.
They defeated the electro-magnetic lock in less than a second.
“Why do you ascended monkeys keep on trying?” The alien shook his head. Only now, close up, was it possible to see that their mouths were out of sync with their words. “We have the means to defeat any and all sources of ignition on your pitiful weapons. You are completely powerless against us.”
The action came before the thought.
Swords don’t have ignition sources.
But by the time that went through her head, her sword was already out, in her hand, and speeding point-first towards the threat.
It was a perfect lunge. Something taught in Presentation Drill but never expected to be used. She would hurt tomorrow; but by tomorrow, the world would have changed.
The alien looked down at the metal sticking through its chest. “How crude,” it said. “And yet, so very effective.”
And then it died.
The Secret Service folks performing the wall of bodies around their leader stared in shock and awe.
“What are you all standing there for? Go get something pointy and stick it in these bastards!”
It was the first and last war won against superior technology with swords, arrows, spears, pikes and halberds. It was definitely the last war won by trebuchet, catapult, and mangonel.
And it was the last war that aliens ever tried to bring to Earth.
She hung the sword on her wall, when she retired with honours. A reminder for herself, her children, and anyone who came to see her or it.
There is no such thing as an everything-proof shield.
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Challenge #00359: Shining, Gleaming, Silken, Flaxen, Waxen…
Here’s a good challenge - write something that involves someone finding a way to explain Wolverine’s hair. Seriously, whether comics, cartoons, or movies, it’s always the same winged sorta puffed-out spiky thing that looks near-exactly like the sides of his costume’s mask. Does he style it that way intentionally, does he just have the world’s worst case of Hat Hair, or what?
They had been hiking for hours. Everyone’s hair was plastered to their heads with their own perspiration. Everyone… except Logan.
Sara spotted it when they took a break by the brook. She, like everyone else, had taken a moment or fifteen hundred to soak their bare feet in the cool flowing water.
Logan took off his hat and, much to her surprise, his hair popped up in those two, distinctive ‘wings’ that sort of echoed his hero uniform.
“How?” Sara managed between exhausted pants.
“How’s that, Tallwater?” he famed himself with his hat.
“How do you… get your hair… to do that?”
He reached up. Felt it. Snorted and shook his head. “When Nikola Tesla asks you to hold two wires? Don’t.”
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Chalenge #00358: O…MG Tannenbaum
“How did you even get a live pine tree onto the space station?”
“Uh… the Magic of Christmas?”
It was sixteen Standard Distance Units tall. It was coated in sparkling lights, then coated again in shiny metallic fronds of tinsel, then covered in small, shiny objects, then covered in bows. And then, to top things off, whoever covered it over in all of this thought that that wasn’t enough, and started all over with the lights.
But it was still recognisable.
Ax'and'l did his best to refrain from gibbering.
“Like it?” said Hwell.
Of course he did this. They’d been stuck in Hitizzy for a month and it was dangerously close to Silly Season. On the upside, it was also dangerously close to the Terran custom of Christmas.
Which kind of explained the tree.
“We’ve been trapped in a sealed environment for a month! We’re surrounded by deadly, arc'ing plasma, so nobody can go anywhere. No foreign biota is allowed. No airlocks exist big enough to even import that thing. How did you even get a live pine tree onto this station?!”
“Uh…” Hwell was a picture of innocence. A picture of dubious origin, forged by three-year-olds with crayons and finger paints. This would probably end with an investigation from Station Security. And fees, fines, and biological clean-up. “The Magic of Christmas?”
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New take on an old saw.
Whoever said that when all you have is a hammer, the world starts to look like a nail was a handless idiot. They’d obviously never stood in front of a forge, never beaten on a piece of red- hot metal, because the fact is that you start with a hammer; it’s the first and most fundamental tool, the one you use to give shape and structure, to bring all the others out of the raw material and make them things in themselves. There is tremendous subtlety possible, the foundations of the future can be, were and are laid with a well shaped lump of heavy metal. – RecklessPrudence
(#00357)
Glod hadn’t been really listening to the humans he was sharing the cabbage cart with. Not until one of them said it.
“When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
Glod had to speak up. “All I have is a hammer. If I find a piece of flint, I can light a fire with it. Once I have a fire, I can turn any old bit of metal into something else. Two hours and I can have a shovel and a pick. And once a Dwarf has a shovel and a pick, they have the rest of the world.”
The humans stared at him.
“Well… ye-es, I guess that’s true. But supposing you’re stuck in a cabbage field like this. There’s no flint for miles.”
“Nothing to burn, either,” said another human.
“Dirt’s easy to dig through,” said Glod. “Dig long enough and you’re bound to find something.” He caught one of them coming up with a clever argument and added, “And in the meantime, I can dry cabbage leaves for fuel.”
“Plenty of dung on the road, too,” added one of the quiet ones. “Plenty of people use dung in their fires.”
“But if you use it in your forge,” said another in the tones of an approaching bad pune, “would you wind up making shit metal?”
Nobody laughed. Nobody expected to.
“Hammers also make pretty good weapons, mind,” added Glod.
“I was just trying to be funny,” grumbled the punster.
“Well, you wound up just being trying,” said the quiet one.
They rode in silence for a while.
“It’s an interesting-looking hammer,” noted one of the humans who had started the argument. “What’s the spike on the end for?”
“In case I can’t make a pick with the metal I’ve found, yet. I can knock ore loose with it.”
“Bloody practical people, you Dwarves.”
“Thank you,” said Glod.
“So… what are you planning to do? With that hammer?” Obviously, the comment about weaponry had lead to some disturbing thoughts. At least the questioner was polite about it.
“Sculpture,” answered Glod.
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Challenge #00356: Average Ordinary Every-Day…
When your special talent is not having a special talent, and why it’s awesome
Storybook Slate could do a little of everything. She was the most helpful pony in Ponyville.
And yet, every morning, she would be touring the town seeking odd jobs to help with. Towing her tool cart behind her. Every day she was doing something different. Helping ponies everywhere.
Naturally, the Cute Mark Crusaders found her fascinating.
They caught her on a rare day off, when she was doodling in a notebook about whatever caught her fancy at the time. She got her latest thought down and put her tools away. “Hello, girls. Do you need help, today?”
“We were wondering if we could ask you something,” said Scootaloo.
“About Cutie Marks,” clarified Sweetie Belle
“And how you can know what your talent is,” said Applebloom.
Storybook poured them each a drink and said, “You girls had better sit down…”
“Ugh, a long story,” Scootaloo rolled her eyes.
“No dear. A sad and disturbing story.”
All three fillies’ eyes went wide as she pulled up her skirt to reveal a…
Bare.
Untarnished.
Blank.
Flank.
Applebloom fainted. Sweetie Belle screamed. Scootaloo began to hyperventilate.
“You… never… got your Cutie Mark?”
Storybook helped Scootaloo breathe into a paper bag. “Yes, I was teased in school by those who thought a Cutie Mark was the be-all and end-all. And yes, it was horrid. And for a while I tried what you girls are trying. Anything and everything to find my special talent. That’s when a funny thing happened.”
They were rapt, now. Almost breathless. Their drinks, unregarded, attracted butterflies and bees.
“I was a little good at everything. Not talented. Not specially. Just better than any pony who didn’t have the talent for it. I could be useful everywhere. I could turn my hoof to anything. And I loved it.” She covered her blank flank once more. “There’s a few of us. One’s a janitor at the Canterlot palace. He’s a lot more bold about it than I am. But since I never found a calling… I go where I’m needed and I like it that way. Today, I’m a writer. Tomorrow? Who knows? I could be catering with Pinkie Pie or an animal care assistant to Fluttershy. Or I could be helping Bubble Dream deliver parcels.”
“Bubble who?”
“You like to call her ‘Derpy’. There’s lots you don’t know about our silly blonde mailmare. Like - how her special talent is blowing bubbles in the most fascinating shapes. And they stay that way until they pop.”
“But she’s a mailmare…” protested Applebloom.
“Not every talent pays the rent, dear. Not every talent is useful. But I can assure you girls of one thing.”
They leaned forward.
“You have one. As unique as your good selves.”
That mutual sigh of relief should pay for some small sins.
“So we will find it one day,” said Sweetie Belle. “But the way you put it? I wouldn’t mind bein’ a blank flank for ever.”
“You should try the karaoke contest across town,” said Storybook. “You may surprise yourself.”
“Aw, but we were going waterskiing over a shark tank,” protested Scootaloo.
“Now that I think about it, Karaoke doesn’t involve so many doctor’s bills,” said Applebloom.
They galloped off to the cheer of, “Cutie Mark Karaoke Crusaders! YAAAYYY!”
Storybook Slate poured their unfinished drinks into saucers for the butterflies and bees. “I don’t suppose you want to hear this one?” she said to the dancing insects, “it’s about a pony who travels in time…”
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Challenge #00355: Designated Victim
When having no powers at all is a power all its own
The world was full of Supers. Capes. Special powers. Skin-tight costumes. Fantastic abs. And, in the case of the ladies, zero-gravity boobs and super-flexible spines.
They didn’t bother with secret identities. They all had super fortresses and leagues of allies. Some sworn to protect the ordinary citizen. Some working on their own agendas…
But most of them, to a cape, performing politics with their fists.
There were hardly any Normals, any more. Weeks could go by before she even saw another one.
And the Supers needed someone to rescue.
Back in the days of almost equal populations, it kind-of worked out. Each Normal had a Super who was sworn to protect them. And each Super, alas, had enemies who would use the Normals against the Supers.
And one by one, they failed.
Then there were teams dedicated to protecting the Ordinaries. And teams of the opposite, too.
And one by one, those failed, too.
And then there was now. Mere Mortals who trained themselves up or carried gadgets to make them almost-equal to their super-powered contemporaries.
Or those like her, who cowered in a protected bunker and ran the systems that the Supers used to train.
It was no less risky than going out there and fighting with the Supers.
Cassandra often wondered what the Supers would do when there were no more mere mortals left. Hell, some of them were growing secret creches of mere mortals to guarantee a supply of the helpless to protect.
It wasn’t any fun if they were all Super.
While her mansion full of heroes were out, the place was guarded by the junior Supers, still growing into their powers and, like ordinary teenagers everywhere, used the lack of adult Super-supervision to have a crazy party.
It was Cassandra’s job to stop the inevitable disasters.
And it was the Opposition’s job, apparently, to wreck the mansion, capture the kids, and threaten her good self.
Their leader called himself Technomancy. He did weird and wonderful things with machines and, had he been sane, could have easily made a fortune from any machine he made.
Cassandra made a modest living out of black-boxing some of his creations for the mutual benefit of all. Not that she had the freedom to go shopping with any of it…
He’d nullified the electric devices in the mansion, which meant that she had to go out in regular kevlar, rather than her technosuit. She loaded up on weapons, just in case, and began climbing the stairs.
Technomancy had got quite the rant on by the time she reached the main level. He was cackling at all of the suddenly distraught Junior Supers. Many of whom were prone and moaning.
“Helpless! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! My new Ultra-nullifier has rendered everyone within a five-mile radius as helpless as a Normal! HAHAHAHAHAA!”
O God, someone shut him up. Wait. “Everyone?” she asked.
“Yes of course everyone. I was thinking of calling it the Equaliser, too, but it didn’t have the same zing.” He spared her a contempt-filled glance. “Go away, mortal. I have gloating to do.”
“So everyone’s powers are gone? Even being bullet-proof?” which was, for Supers, about as normal as having teeth.
“Yes! Yes! Everyone is puny and weak.”
Cassandra reached for her gun. These idiots had no concept of forward planning. “Even you?”
He had just enough time to say, “Oh shit,” before she blew his brains out. Then she calmly picked the Equaliser out of his cooling fingers and turned it off.
“I’m calling the authorities,” she told the shaken Junior Supers. “This was clearly self-defence and the defence of others.” She opened the little hidden cupboard to the old-style tethered landline that she’d installed for just-in-case. “And FYI, this little darling is going to become part of the Naughty Room. Understood?”
“How did you even–?” one of the teens managed. Tears were still streaming down his cheeks. “Everyone was helpless…”
“Kid. You just experienced maybe twenty minutes of my entire life. If I sat around crying about it I’d never get anything done.”
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Challenge #00354: Tell Me How to Get… How to Get to…
There’s a monster in the woods at the edge of town, so be caref-
You’ve seen it?
Big, hairy thing with razor claw- oh no, that’s just Jeff, he runs the bakery on Bard street.
Monsters.
Monsters everywhere.
Fur and fangs and claws and the imitation of human faces. The mockery of human bodies.
He fetched up in an alley off the main street. He’d given up on holding back tears. This place was too strange. Too frightening.
He had just enough time to swallow his pounding heart again and catch his breath before he became aware of just where he was hiding.
It wasn’t a bundle of garden cuttings.
It was a nest.
And the lumpen shape on top was the slumbering creature who owned it.
The most terrifying part was the reality of it all. The smell of a bird that was more closely related to the dinosaurs than any other avian in his experience.
The hands were scaly and rough, just like a bird’s. He had no doubt that the legs would be the same. Only the feathers were the friendly yellow he remembered from too long ago.
But those were puppets.
This was… too real.
The snoring stopped. The beady eyes of the big bird were focussed in his direction.
“Are you scared of the dark, too?”
Fuck.
He instinctively backed away, and found his shoulders meeting with a corner.
He cursed all the times he’d wished to be here. He cursed every idle daydream of going. Because now he was here, all he wanted to do was get out.
He had to get out of Sesame Street.
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Three people on Tumblr
[1st person]-how did they learn to translate languages into other languages how did they know which words meant what HOW DID TH[/]
[2nd Person]
English Person: *Points at an apple* Apple
French Person: Non c’est une fucking pomme*800 years of war*[/]
[3rd Person]
I’m laughing entirely too hard at this. :’)[/](Bonus points for “pomme” - “Apple” in French, and “Pom” - English person in Australian) ;) – RecklessPrudence
(#00353)
Darleen hadn’t meant to start another war. After five hundred years of isolation, the nations had forgotten about other languages. And, just last month, they’d rediscovered each other simultaneously.
She’d been called in from Upper Tullagawupwup because she was one of the few nerds who knew anything at all about languages. And even then, she was certain that she was not the expert everyone thought she was.
Spurt (n) a drip under pressure. Ex (prefix): no longer relevant.
Put them together, and Darleen reckoned that should just about fit her.
In the month that they’d been trying to talk, the assembled impromptu delegates had given up on shouting at each other (Except for the Americans, but there you go) and had paired off with various teaching tools in a vain attempt to at least get some nouns under their collective belts.
Darleen found herself at the Franco-English table because she could at least understand some of what one of them was saying.
“Ap-ple,” said the Englishman.
“Pomme,” said the Frenchie.
Darleen couldn’t help herself. “Nah mate,” she said, "that’s the fucking Pom,“ and pointed to the Englishman.
It was, as they were wont to say, the final straw.
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Challenge #00352: The Case For Doing Your Homework
“At last! I have - No! Oxygen, my only weakness! How did you know?”
“… Did you even look up the planet before you got here?”
Zykryxx the Conquerer looked down at the small, blue-green marble in the view screen at his feet. There was, unbelievably, cogniscent life on it. A planet with seventy percent of its surface covered with liquid water.
They were undoubtedly primitives. They were still communication on radio bands, and had only recently graduated to digital in the place of analogue. They were used to war, he could tell from their transmissions. There was not one place on their entire surface that wasn’t at war with some other space for reasons that eluded Zykryxx.
He would turn them into warriors. And he would be magnanimous enough to allow them to fight for his causes in specially designed armour, instead of their soft and fragile skin.
Mammals. They were usually only good for food sources, but these ones… had a talent for war. They even invented weapons that only had to be used once, and then stockpiled them as threats against others of their own kind.
He had already threatened them on their own RF bands. And intercepted and destroyed their primitive weapons.
Nuclear missiles. How cute.
Zykryxx listened to their communications, watched the Auto-translator as it decrypted their various languages. He laughed at their pointless bickering.
He was busy picking the most impressive of their buildings to serve as a backdrop for his glorious conquest.
He expected some attempt at a battle. Their laughable weapons were no match for his, for all their talent at maiming the enemy. Even his natural carapace was proof against their lead bullets.
Their Inglesh was the language of conquerers. He set his Auto-translators to work with that one. He would speak in his native T'toxx, but they would hear their precious Inglesh. Almost in sync.
There. Red Square. That had the largest backdrop of impressive buildings. He let their jets follow him during his descent through the atmosphere. They had already tried their most terrifying weapons on his vessel and failed. Now they were watching to see what happened next.
He descended in glorious wonder. He could see their news feeds. It was theatre. It was a show.
They appreciated a show.
Zykryxx allowed his guard to descent first. Their armour was proof against the rigours of space. No native weapon could touch them.
They didn’t even try.
Zykryxx stood tall, because the natives respected height. He faced down the most prominent of the cameras and bellowed, “BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF ZYKRYXX THE CONQUERER! YOU MAY FIGHT, BUT AS OF THIS MOMENT, YOU AND YOUR WORLD ARE MINE!”
At least, that was the plan.
The problem was, he needed to take a breath of what passed for their air.
So all that came out was, “BEHOLD THE MIGHT OF ZYKRYXxxxxgaaaaaaahhackackackackackack…”
A minion arrived with a breather, but it was too late. He had fallen. Literally.
The natives threw aside their guns and turned to older weapons, like knives and bludgeons. Their talent for war came to the fore in a battle that Zykryxx would have appreciated if it wasn’t happening to his elite troops.
Maiming wasn’t just a side-effect of their weapons. It was a goal of their war. Maimed soldiers could still be interrogated. Investigated. Experimented on. All that was necessary was to render them helpless.
And all they had to do for that was disrupt the armour of the soldiers.
Zykryxx had no doubt that they would also maim him. His limbs could regrow, in time, but they didn’t need to experiment with that genetic bonus. Therefore, with prudence and forethought, he laid down and played helpless.
“How,” he panted through the breather, “How did you know that Oxygen was toxic to me?”
The human looked down on him with its ugly, flat, fleshy face. “You didn’t do all your homework on us, did you?”
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