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	[WP] When you were a child a strange little man gave you a beautiful gold and silver pocket watch with the image of a serpent eating its own tail etched into it, now nearly a century later as you lay on you death bed the same strange little man appears to take the watch back, whispering "Thank you".	Finally, the room is quiet. Hours of visiting relatives could grate on the calmest nerves, and I was in little mood to be calm now. I could feel the end coming, my toes were already cold and numb, far worse than the frigid conditions of a hospital room could explain. It was almost time. Outside I can hear my great-grandchild babbling, too young to understand why everyone else is so sad. They named him after me, an honor I protested vehmently, much to everyone's dismay. None of them understood. How could they? None of them had ever seen what I had seen, and every attempt to explain it fell on deaf ears. The curtain moves by the window, as if in a breeze. "I know you're there," I call out softly. My last visitor has finally arrived. "You always were so perceptive," says the strage little man I thought I must have imagined as a child. I'd lost count of the number of times I'd tried to throw his gift away, sell it, pawn it, give it... no matter what, the watch always came back. Always in my pocket. Always as beautiful as the first time I'd seen it. Always as heavy as it has always been. "Why?" I asked as I offered the watch back to him. He points to the bedside table and I set it there with an effort. "You know that's not how this works," he said with a strange little smile. "I tried everything to get rid of it." "I know," he says with the first trace of sadness I'd ever seen on his face. "What is it?" I ask, the mystery of the watch tantalized my thoughts sometimes for days at a time, then not at all for months or even years. The watch simply... was. Enduring, unchanging, inexplicable. No tool I'd ever found could scratch it, not even diamond. Tungsten. Titanium. I'd tried them all. The watch never needed to be wound, never lost a second, never ticked. It was a silent sentinal throughout all of my life and yet... "A better question is, what do you think it is?" "My soul?" My answer seemed to amuse him, "You were a child when I gave it to you, you had a soul long before then." "Your soul?" That did not amuse him. "No." "I'm the most ordinary person anyone could ever meet," I say quietly. "Good kid, good grades, good family, there is absolutely nothing special about me... except that watch." His eyebrow twitched, just a little. Just enough. "So, was the watch supposed to protect me... or protect everyone else?" The strange little man's face scrunches up in something that might be disgust, but I don't think it's directed at me. "I can not answer that." "I'm dying. What would be the point in keeping it a secret?" "It is because you are dying that it has to remain a secret." Babbling outside of the door, the strange little man's face grows sad and I feel anger swelling in my throat. "No. No. Oh don't you fucking dare," I gasp as the last breath leaves me as though being pulled from my body with a vacuum. "I wish I could make you understand," he says with such profound grief in his eyes. "Everything depends on this. Everything you know. Everyone you love. Everything." I feel suddenly helpless and realize that the numbness has crept all the way to my throat now, my heart struggling against the spreading cold in my chest. "I never agreed with it," he whispers as my eyes close and my lips move wordlessly. The world goes dark around me as the sound of the watch rasps against the table, suddenly ticking for the first and last time. "I never agreed, but I will wait to pass it to him for as long as I possibly can. Thank you, for the sacrifice you never even knew you were making."	I laid there alone. My family had left, they had their lives to get back to. I was going to die. Soon. Maybe not soon enough. I had fallen very ill recently and now I was bed ridden. My family did visit, and looked after me, but I had been here, this way, for three weeks. They had lives to get back to. I understood nor did I blame them. So I laid, fiddling with a pocket watch. Old. Very old. Ornate. Gold and silver. A serpent cooling around the surface eating its own tail. Admiring the light reflecting surface, a sound I thought I had dreamed echoed through my room. Like a suction cup closing almost. “I thought I dreamt of you. All those years ago. But how could it have been a dream when you gifted me this pocket watch,” I said, staring at the roof. “Well, no I am back to reclaim it. Pass it here.” A voice said. The same as the man who spoke urgently the last time we met. Begging me to take it from his hands. “Of course. But for what purpose did giving me the watch serve?” I asked back. “I stole it. From deep in space. Further than you could imagine. I needed to hide it. Everyone knows Earth has no space travel, no intergalactic affairs. The perfect hiding place. You just happened to be where I landed,” the voice said. I felt his hand close around mine as he grabbed the pocket watch. He whispered thank you in my ear, as the sound of what I could only assume was his teleport took him away. “So I helped unknowingly in an intergalactic theft,” I said to myself. A smile spread across my face as I went to sleep for the last time. If you want to read more of my stuff it’s at r/DougysDramatics
	[WP] When you were a child a strange little man gave you a beautiful gold and silver pocket watch with the image of a serpent eating its own tail etched into it, now nearly a century later as you lay on you death bed the same strange little man appears to take the watch back, whispering "Thank you".	“Ouroboras” He said. “What do you mean?” I asked hoarsely. I could feel the life draining out of me. I wasn’t clinging to it anyway. I had lived a very succinct life. I had no regrets. Nobody does when you’ve lived for a 106 years. “It’s quite simple, really.” His eyes were animated, and he looked excited. “Explain quickly, please. I fear I do not have a lot of time left and I would like to spend my last moments in solitude.” The little man readjusted the robe he was wearing around his waist and looked intently at me: “I come from a special place in this world. It might amuse you but-“ “It won’t. When you’ve lived as long as I have, by the end nothing is amusing.” I smiled meekly and continued: “However, you probably have something to say about that too, considering how you haven’t aged a day, unless I’m delusional and my eyesight is playing mad tricks on me.” He grinned mischievously, ran his fingers across the gold and silver serpentine watch that I had just earlier given him. “I am one of the Regulators. We are a secret organisation, and since time immemorial we’ve been giving these artefacts or as you call them “watches” to people who we deem fit according to the criteria mentioned in the Sacred Scrolls. The artefact gathers all your life essence throughout your life, and on the time of death, you’re given a choice.” He paused, for suspense. He had my attention. “You’re given the choice to live again. To forget everything and everyone from this life, except the realisation that you’ve lived before and this is your second life. The realisation resides dormant in your mind till your early adolescence. For some, the realisation is crushing, while for others it’s motivating. The artefact merely powers the transition of soul from the dying body to the new born.” “What if I refuse?” “Then you get to live the entirety of your life again, in rewind, in the next few seconds.” I somehow managed to grimace. “What about the artefact? Who does it go to? Why did you give it to me?” The little man shuffled. “The answer to those questions is not for you to know.” He looked at the watch. “Your time is almost over. The serpent’s fangs are touching its tail.” His pupils dilated and he said, in an intimidating tone: “Decide. What’s it going to be? Is the serpent going to rescind the way it came back, one last time? Or is it going to eat itself whole to begin anew?” I closed my eyes, and sighed. I felt the last glimmer of life in me going out. But before I breathed my last, I managed to whisper: “Another chance. Another chance...”	I laid there alone. My family had left, they had their lives to get back to. I was going to die. Soon. Maybe not soon enough. I had fallen very ill recently and now I was bed ridden. My family did visit, and looked after me, but I had been here, this way, for three weeks. They had lives to get back to. I understood nor did I blame them. So I laid, fiddling with a pocket watch. Old. Very old. Ornate. Gold and silver. A serpent cooling around the surface eating its own tail. Admiring the light reflecting surface, a sound I thought I had dreamed echoed through my room. Like a suction cup closing almost. “I thought I dreamt of you. All those years ago. But how could it have been a dream when you gifted me this pocket watch,” I said, staring at the roof. “Well, no I am back to reclaim it. Pass it here.” A voice said. The same as the man who spoke urgently the last time we met. Begging me to take it from his hands. “Of course. But for what purpose did giving me the watch serve?” I asked back. “I stole it. From deep in space. Further than you could imagine. I needed to hide it. Everyone knows Earth has no space travel, no intergalactic affairs. The perfect hiding place. You just happened to be where I landed,” the voice said. I felt his hand close around mine as he grabbed the pocket watch. He whispered thank you in my ear, as the sound of what I could only assume was his teleport took him away. “So I helped unknowingly in an intergalactic theft,” I said to myself. A smile spread across my face as I went to sleep for the last time. If you want to read more of my stuff it’s at r/DougysDramatics
	[WP] When you were a child a strange little man gave you a beautiful gold and silver pocket watch with the image of a serpent eating its own tail etched into it, now nearly a century later as you lay on you death bed the same strange little man appears to take the watch back, whispering "Thank you".	As he lay awaiting for death one question kept nagging his mind over and over again. He didn't wonder if his life was a good one, he didn't mull over his failures, he didn't have regrets. The only thing he was interested in was what lay beyond, what was awaiting for him on the other side?. It seemed like the only important question. He knew what the end was going to be like, he already experinced it. Thirty years ago,a screaching of rubber on asphalt, a crash, his soul leaving the body, the overwhelming sense of peace, but he didn't get to experince the beyond, they brought him back before that. The doctors said he was dead for almost 6 minutes, but he knew that it wasn't so, he was travelling to Death but didn't get to meet her. After all this years he would finally know, he denied it in the last days but it was obvious now that the only emotion he felt was excitement. He smiled at that. It was time, he got ready, looked at his watch one last time and took a deep breath... Suddenly there was a warmth... on his hand, yes, and a man near the bed. He took the watch in his hand and was looking at it, he turned his face and spoke "Thank you!". That was confusing. Here he was, ready to go into the great beyond and a stranger was stealing his watch. Definetely strange. It didn't matter, nothing mattered anymore, he searched for his end...it wasn't there. The impending doom, the peace, the connection to the afterlife was gone, severed, with a start he understood that he was not going to die. "What the...", "So, how does it feel? Every time it's different for me but you say it's alwasys the same? Is it so now?" the thief asked. Caught in the moment he forgot about him "What? Where? Who... who are you?" asked the not-diying-anymore old man. "Ehmm, what do you mean who i am? It's me Amadiel, did that disease get to you again? I am sorry, i know how you hate when that happens, i would've come sooner. The healing has already started you should start remembering soon". At first it confused the old man even more but suddenly, as the thief predicted, he remembered. It was coming back, the crash, the life before it that he thought forevere forgotten, and not only one, all the lives he lived before,all his hundreds of children, all the wives, all the wars his friends, children, dying but not him, he didn't ever die. Most importantly he remembered the first life he lived and with it the memory of his deal. It happened on another bed, nearly five thousnad years ago somewhere around Egypt. He was little and dying, he didn't want to die and Amadiel was his salvation, an angel that wanted to be mortal. The deal was meant to last one lifetime, but it didn't, it lasted hundreds. Every time one of them got old the other would come and get the watch form the hands of the other. In so doing the taker of the watch became mortal, alive and aging while the other one getting younger and healing all the damage done to the body by being alive, but at the price of being dead on the inside as well as the outside. "You know" said the old man "this time i almost got killed, oh don't be so shocked, it wasn't because of me like the other times. It was an accident, a car some thirty years ago, all the memories gone, snap, in an instant. I lived as if for the first and last time, i forgot how it was...how it is meant to be...".	I laid there alone. My family had left, they had their lives to get back to. I was going to die. Soon. Maybe not soon enough. I had fallen very ill recently and now I was bed ridden. My family did visit, and looked after me, but I had been here, this way, for three weeks. They had lives to get back to. I understood nor did I blame them. So I laid, fiddling with a pocket watch. Old. Very old. Ornate. Gold and silver. A serpent cooling around the surface eating its own tail. Admiring the light reflecting surface, a sound I thought I had dreamed echoed through my room. Like a suction cup closing almost. “I thought I dreamt of you. All those years ago. But how could it have been a dream when you gifted me this pocket watch,” I said, staring at the roof. “Well, no I am back to reclaim it. Pass it here.” A voice said. The same as the man who spoke urgently the last time we met. Begging me to take it from his hands. “Of course. But for what purpose did giving me the watch serve?” I asked back. “I stole it. From deep in space. Further than you could imagine. I needed to hide it. Everyone knows Earth has no space travel, no intergalactic affairs. The perfect hiding place. You just happened to be where I landed,” the voice said. I felt his hand close around mine as he grabbed the pocket watch. He whispered thank you in my ear, as the sound of what I could only assume was his teleport took him away. “So I helped unknowingly in an intergalactic theft,” I said to myself. A smile spread across my face as I went to sleep for the last time. If you want to read more of my stuff it’s at r/DougysDramatics
	[WP] When you were a child a strange little man gave you a beautiful gold and silver pocket watch with the image of a serpent eating its own tail etched into it, now nearly a century later as you lay on you death bed the same strange little man appears to take the watch back, whispering "Thank you".	"Thank you." I was dying. An old friend I hadn't seen in...decades, now by my side. A watch to return. I'd always tried to pay back the time I was living on, borrowed or not. An Ouroboros over a pocket watch. I'd often wondered what it meant over the years. \--- My old friend explained to me what I'd been doing. I'd been recording moments of my life, highs and lows...storing a copy of sorts in this device. "You never needed to get it fixed." He's right, I'd never needed to take the watch in to get it fixed. I'd never needed to. Until now. \--- "I know, for you, a lifetime. For when I return to where I came from, a blink of an eye will have passed." Are you an angel? He smiled. "Would an angel need a pocket watch?" I smiled. \--- He left me a card, before I'd be alone with my thoughts...for the final time? "I needed to watch over you, time works differently from where I'm from. Your memories and feelings were recorded in this watch to be gifted to beings that...would love to celebrate your life more than once. You'll be a kind memory to those that need one, when they need one." &#x200B; Edit: I write short stories over at r/counterfiction	I laid there alone. My family had left, they had their lives to get back to. I was going to die. Soon. Maybe not soon enough. I had fallen very ill recently and now I was bed ridden. My family did visit, and looked after me, but I had been here, this way, for three weeks. They had lives to get back to. I understood nor did I blame them. So I laid, fiddling with a pocket watch. Old. Very old. Ornate. Gold and silver. A serpent cooling around the surface eating its own tail. Admiring the light reflecting surface, a sound I thought I had dreamed echoed through my room. Like a suction cup closing almost. “I thought I dreamt of you. All those years ago. But how could it have been a dream when you gifted me this pocket watch,” I said, staring at the roof. “Well, no I am back to reclaim it. Pass it here.” A voice said. The same as the man who spoke urgently the last time we met. Begging me to take it from his hands. “Of course. But for what purpose did giving me the watch serve?” I asked back. “I stole it. From deep in space. Further than you could imagine. I needed to hide it. Everyone knows Earth has no space travel, no intergalactic affairs. The perfect hiding place. You just happened to be where I landed,” the voice said. I felt his hand close around mine as he grabbed the pocket watch. He whispered thank you in my ear, as the sound of what I could only assume was his teleport took him away. “So I helped unknowingly in an intergalactic theft,” I said to myself. A smile spread across my face as I went to sleep for the last time. If you want to read more of my stuff it’s at r/DougysDramatics
	[WP] Magic has become a tool. It has labels such as good magic, or bad. It's been confined by so many rules and contracts that it's barely a shadow of what it used to be. You are going to remind the world what magic truly is.	They had forgotten their heritage. Their culture. Their history. But I would remind them. First in secret, I taught classes of more recent banned magics. Weather spells, that were strictly controlled. Earth manipulation, only allowed to even be learned by select few... and forcibly unlearned if that status was ever lost. Slowly, I accumulated more knowledge, as my pupils experimented, stole, and learned. Eventually I came across the ultimate spell. It had the potential to change the world, and it had, in the past. Warped many societies, wiped out entire cultures, a couple countries. It would happen again. But this time, it would be different. I would force magic on the world, to be used for the greater good. A select few of the higher ups in the enforcement agency for magical affairs had been alive to witness the usage of this spell. I'm sure there was even someone that had used it on a large scale. And none could stop me. At first, I used it on the small scale, unlikely to be noticed, as I prepared for a worldwide casting. My pupils were far and wide by now, and most were willing to help, placing small and large amplification runes, tuned to me, ready for my order. Several years passed before I felt ready to take on the mantle, but take it I did. As I finished the final part of the casting, I began to feel power, and information, well up within me. This spell, is for godhood. It imbues the caster with the collective intelligence of all affected by it, granting them the combined magical power as well. Subjects can be released at will, and they will be when they are not needed. I will transform this world into a perfect society, just and fair. Or die trying. After all, I want like those other guys. I wasn't one to go mad with power. But here I am now, years later, having slowly lost myself to the omniscience of this state of being. It was time. They have forgotten their heritage. Their culture. Their history. But I would remind them. Author's note: Hey, this was an interesting prompt. r/James_fire	It will be a magnificent display. I grab my phone, and I call up Marcel. Marcel is a retired performance wizard who specializes in pyrotechnics, formerly pyromancy. He is the first step. The second step is my mother, Susie. She was a Sage, a bender of nature and plant life, turned gardener by the enstated laws. She has had enough, and wants to flex her muscles a bit. The third and final step is a friend, Allison. She learned the ways of hydrokenesis, the control of water with concentration of the mind. All four of us enter the center of the Chicago Public park. The great Glass Bean stands in the middle. The three step in to do their magic. Not a fight, but a show of power, might, and beauty. Complex shapes made entirely out of water, floating in the air; massive clouds of fire making fireworks when powders are thrown into the air. The beauty of natural structure and growth combined with the human imagination. The people watching were dumbfounded. Some had pulled out their phones and started taping the entire thing. Good. Police were quickly met with astonishment at what they were seeing, along with not even knowing how to deal with the problem in the first place. All went according to plan. Some of the bans were lifted, for purposes of performance. Now there are protests going for the return of magic.
	[WP] Magic has become a tool. It has labels such as good magic, or bad. It's been confined by so many rules and contracts that it's barely a shadow of what it used to be. You are going to remind the world what magic truly is.	They had forgotten their heritage. Their culture. Their history. But I would remind them. First in secret, I taught classes of more recent banned magics. Weather spells, that were strictly controlled. Earth manipulation, only allowed to even be learned by select few... and forcibly unlearned if that status was ever lost. Slowly, I accumulated more knowledge, as my pupils experimented, stole, and learned. Eventually I came across the ultimate spell. It had the potential to change the world, and it had, in the past. Warped many societies, wiped out entire cultures, a couple countries. It would happen again. But this time, it would be different. I would force magic on the world, to be used for the greater good. A select few of the higher ups in the enforcement agency for magical affairs had been alive to witness the usage of this spell. I'm sure there was even someone that had used it on a large scale. And none could stop me. At first, I used it on the small scale, unlikely to be noticed, as I prepared for a worldwide casting. My pupils were far and wide by now, and most were willing to help, placing small and large amplification runes, tuned to me, ready for my order. Several years passed before I felt ready to take on the mantle, but take it I did. As I finished the final part of the casting, I began to feel power, and information, well up within me. This spell, is for godhood. It imbues the caster with the collective intelligence of all affected by it, granting them the combined magical power as well. Subjects can be released at will, and they will be when they are not needed. I will transform this world into a perfect society, just and fair. Or die trying. After all, I want like those other guys. I wasn't one to go mad with power. But here I am now, years later, having slowly lost myself to the omniscience of this state of being. It was time. They have forgotten their heritage. Their culture. Their history. But I would remind them. Author's note: Hey, this was an interesting prompt. r/James_fire	Chaos. Unleashing the hell-storm within my grasps, I showed the world the full potential of magic. Years of restrictions, licenses, forbidden arts, and authoritarian rule on the lost arts crippled our society. Magic is free and beautiful. It should not be shackled and rot in disuse. It is like the stars in the sky. Mysterious as the ocean, and vast as the lands we conquer. When I let it flow through me, I could feel how stuffed it was, how rotten it was with filth the modern era injected into nature and its very core. I broke the dam, and let it release over the city. Burning the sky and releasing a pleasant glow as if it was day in the stark night. It snowed luminescent bulbs, each bursting and covering the ground upon contact. Each bulb contained trapped emissions and cleaned the air. Within the next few days the climate in this area would change.
	[WP] Magic has become a tool. It has labels such as good magic, or bad. It's been confined by so many rules and contracts that it's barely a shadow of what it used to be. You are going to remind the world what magic truly is.	"Magic is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands," I hear a protester shout. "We need to protect our children, not our wands." It's actually in Portuguese, which I don't speak, but I ran it through a translation app last Thursday. I chuckle to myself. Here they are, treating magic as a weapon, and I can't blame them. The last couple centuries, that's how it has been portrayed. A few healing spells, but with modern medicine, the pills and treatments are replacing it. No need to pay for a trained wizard to visit. Most spells used are attacks. They're the simplest to learn, the most efficient. The energy to lift a weight by magic is more than by hand, but with a blast spell, you can send it flying. Metal detectors won't identify wizards like they do guns. And with the attacks on schools recently, all the news is leaning that way. Most schools don't even teach magic anymore, due to the risks. Most public schools, at least. Too long, the lower classes have stood by, been stepped on by the very people they chose to lead them. And in just a few minutes, agents of the enemy, themselves part of the downtrodden, will come to break this protest up. I watched it all happen, last week. The spell drained me for the day, but I saw it turn to violence. A minor massacre, outside a conference of world leaders. It'll be used to crack down on magic use, even more. It'll require special licenses, very expensive. It'll divide the world even more. Unless I step in. I carbo-loaded like a ultrathon runner, and pumped my self full of accelerants so I could pull it off. I start by pinpointing the corrupt cops, reading minds, then ramp up their feelings of guilt. If I'm lucky, it'll get them to confess, but it will be at least enough to stop them firing. Then I work through the crowd to the front door. I bit of handwaving, and I am in the building, everyone sure they don't need to look at me. Filled with a mild apathy. I make it all the way to the meeting room. Still no one notices me. I glance at my watch, only a couple more minutes. I step to the front, all cameras staring at me. I drop the apathy field, and then I show them all. I show them what was meant to happen. I show them what was done to make it happen. I show who was behind it. I show the world everything these leaders wanted them to see and more. I show how many lives could have been lost today, and how magic stopped that. How, instead of a dozen deaths outside the building, there'd only be the one. And as I drop, I see police pouring in to the room to arrest the criminals around me. It won't stick. They have to much money, too many lawyers. But now the world knows. They know what has been taken from them. What has been stolen. And now, enough of them will fight to get it back. Magic is a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. I just hope mine were the right ones.	Chaos. Unleashing the hell-storm within my grasps, I showed the world the full potential of magic. Years of restrictions, licenses, forbidden arts, and authoritarian rule on the lost arts crippled our society. Magic is free and beautiful. It should not be shackled and rot in disuse. It is like the stars in the sky. Mysterious as the ocean, and vast as the lands we conquer. When I let it flow through me, I could feel how stuffed it was, how rotten it was with filth the modern era injected into nature and its very core. I broke the dam, and let it release over the city. Burning the sky and releasing a pleasant glow as if it was day in the stark night. It snowed luminescent bulbs, each bursting and covering the ground upon contact. Each bulb contained trapped emissions and cleaned the air. Within the next few days the climate in this area would change.
	[WP] Magic has become a tool. It has labels such as good magic, or bad. It's been confined by so many rules and contracts that it's barely a shadow of what it used to be. You are going to remind the world what magic truly is.	The department of offensive and oppressive magic, it all started with them. Law after law they pushed for change. The evolution of magic they claimed. By the time people realized it, they had given up the real magic. The crap they do day to day is nothing like real magic. Tonight, I'll teach them what magic is all about. &#x200B; Runes were thought to be dangerous and to easy to cause massive destruction. With the banning of them, it had become a lost art, or so they thought. Tonight, I finished my drawings. I've been canvasing the sewers for nearly a year. Drawing runes and bringing power to the area. Tonight, the department burns down. It'll remind people what magic can do, and inspire the younger generation to embrace real magic. &#x200B; I climb out of the sewer and take a seat on the bench across the street from the department. The sun should rise around 6am. That's the trigger for the rune. Nobody should be inside, as they don't open until 7am. Still they'll get the message. Thirty minutes until show time. The anticipation is killing me. When the sun finally rises, nothing happens. &#x200B; Did I do something wrong? No, I copied them perfectly, I drew a grid, I mapped it. I couldn't have made a mistake. No, what's that smell? Fire, it smells like fire. Slowly the building starts to go up in purple flames. I guess it started slow. No matter now, soon the entire building will be burnt to ashes. No amount of water will stop that flame. It'll burn until the target is destroyed. &#x200B; I guess I should get out of here before more people start to show. Glad to have the magic back. This is just a start.	Chaos. Unleashing the hell-storm within my grasps, I showed the world the full potential of magic. Years of restrictions, licenses, forbidden arts, and authoritarian rule on the lost arts crippled our society. Magic is free and beautiful. It should not be shackled and rot in disuse. It is like the stars in the sky. Mysterious as the ocean, and vast as the lands we conquer. When I let it flow through me, I could feel how stuffed it was, how rotten it was with filth the modern era injected into nature and its very core. I broke the dam, and let it release over the city. Burning the sky and releasing a pleasant glow as if it was day in the stark night. It snowed luminescent bulbs, each bursting and covering the ground upon contact. Each bulb contained trapped emissions and cleaned the air. Within the next few days the climate in this area would change.
	[WP] You met God after death. God says you'll be sent to a world of swords and sorcery and grants you one wish. You wish for excellent aptitude in magic. He grants you all elements and a high magic stat. Then he... accidentally sent you back to Earth... with your new stats... this'll be fun.	A voice. It breaks the silence around me. The words appear in the air in front of them, a stark white on the endless void. CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE GAINED THE SKILL: MAGIC MASTERY. CONGRATULATIONS! THANKS TO YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF MAGIC YOU CAN NOW USE ALL THE ELEMENTS. CONGRATULATIONS! YOUR MAGIC SKILL HAS BEEN RAISED TO MAX LEVEL. TO READ THIS INFORMATION PLEASE GO TO THE JOURNAL PAGE OF THE MENU. Their eyes open, the harsh fluorescent light above burning into their retinas, the room is plain. Simple white walls, a framed picture of a sunflower hangs on the wall, the almost silent drip coming from the left, and the muffled noise coming from nearby. They take a deep breath and start to choke, something is lodged in their throat and they start to panic. Arms flailing, they grab towards their throat and find purchase on a piece of plastic, giving it a tug they feel the blockage move. Pulling harder the tube comes loose and they gasp for air. Now sitting up, a mirror shows a reflection of the beds occupant. A small, pale brown hair girl stares back. Memories flood the girls brain, a slippery road, the harsh screech of brakes and seeing a truck glide at a high speed towards her. She recognises the room, she was in a hospital. The distant noises roar into life as a door across the room opens. “Miss Tide, you are awake! That is fantastic how are you feeling?” said a kindly looking man, his blonde hair and crows feet giving him a fatherly feel. The girl stared blankly forward, she reached up to hold her throat. “Oh of course, you must be parched, let me see what drink I can grab you from our extensive menu” he said with a wink and turned towards the door. The girl stared on, unsure of what had truly happened. She thought through what she could remember. The messages that had seemed so real and the dream had promised her a world of magic and adventure. But it seemed it was just that a dream. No magic for her, no special abilities or adventuring. She looked down at her lap and let out a soft sigh. She had wanted a new start, somewhere she could have been someone new. But that just wasn’t on the cards for her apparently. She looked up as the doctor walked back in, he held a small plastic cup with a bright red liquid. “I am afraid I could only get a hold of raspberry flavour, I hope that is alright? It appears our menu has been limited due to a stocking error.” He chuckled holding out the cup for the girl to take. She reached forward to take the cup, thinking about how funny it is that the hospital has a menu of drinks. As the word menu crossed her thoughts a flat pale blue window popped up between her and the doctor. She jumped in surprise spilling the drink down her hospital gown. The cold liquid made her shiver and the surprise of this window appearing set her on edge. “Oh no, are you alright my dear?” The doctor reached out and took the cup, turned on his heels and walked to the door. “I will get a nurse to come with a change of gown for you, we can talk more once you are cleaned up. It is good to have you back with us miss Tide.” He said with a warm smile. The girl had not stop staring at the pale blue window. It appeared partially transparent but opaque enough for her to read from. The window had words like “Class”, “Level”, and “Mana” written in different places. Her name Jade Tide was in the top left just next to a small headshot of her, her “Class” showed Grand Sorceress and her “Level” was 50. She was unsure how to react to all this, was she hallucinating or was she still dreaming. She reached out her hand, seeing a tab on the right hand side that read “Spellbook”. She felt her fingers contact something solid, an audible “click” went off and the window changed. In-front of her was list after list of strange words. “Basic Recovery”, “The old ones knowledge”, “Ice Lance”, “Raise Dead”. The list continued seamingly broken into sections and levels. She laughed to herself, the drugs they had her on must be really strong. But her curiosity got the better of her, what happens if I say one of these, what would happen. She scrolled to the top and found a “spell” that said “Cleansing Touch”. She clicked on the name and the description told her it would clean up minor messes made in the last hour. It also told her the spell phrase she needed to cast it and that it would cost 2 mana. She shrugged and to herself said. “Purgatio Tactus.” A golden glow covered her hands, arms and torso. The warmth spread across her body and she watched as the raspberry stains on her gown faded away, leaving her cleansed. As she looked at her gown she froze and looked up. Standing in the doorway was a young nurse, his green eyes wide. “How, what did you just do…?” He stammered out. Jade looked from him to her gown and back. “Magic!” She said with excitement.	By luck or by chance I ended up going from an American to British. Still a farm boy though well technically a girl now. Im not quite sure if I should be flinging spells or not especially as a five year old. My new mother seemed to be worry herself enough with out knowing I could make it rain by waving my fingers. At first I thought that this place was just similar. Like my earth bit with magic. But nope. Brexit was still a thing. And when I was one trump was the president. So yep. Ots still mu glorious fucked up little ball of dirt. Today. Today was the first day my mom would let me head to the nearest town on my own. Which meant it was time to wonder into the nearest church and get some answers. "Oh?" A proper priest asked me. He was young, tall, blond and could easily pass for good looking. But if he was that kind of priest I'd have no reservation about him dropping dead due to lightning. "What brings you to our church little one? My names Arthur are you lost?" Arthur huh? I gave him a smile that was all teeth and gum and pushed my Auburn hair back behind my ear. Previously my name was Alex. But now, it was. "My names Merlin mister! Can I go inside and pray? I wanna talk to god." He blinked before erupting in laughter his hand rubbing my head as he messed up my hair. Well it was always a mess. "Certainly little Merlin! But while he will hear you he might not speak directly to you. He does work in mysterious ways." He offered me his hand and led me inside the modest building that was half overgrown by moss and ivy. "Oh I know he does." I skipped jumping up the first step. While being a child it was hard not to act like one. "Dont worry though. I'll be sure to ask him were Excalibur is for you." "My you're a clever one aren't you." He lead me to the first bench and sat me down. "If you need anything. Let me know." I wanted juice and crackers but that could wait. I clasped my hands and shit my eyes like I was praying and waited for Arthur to leave. "Hey God. Quit playing fortnight and answer me. Its Alex. Merlin. You know the guy you were supposed to send to a world of swords and sorcery. Im on earth. Pick up pick up! Hello!" The sound of a phone being picked up answered throughout the church. "What? I did? Huh? Oh I mean. Shit I died. Dammit. Oh well. Merlin now right?" "Yes?" I felt eye twitching. The only reason why I got this deal was because he smiled me because I killed him in fortnight. "I'm in the wrong world." "You are? Oh! Oh my goodness you are! Wait I uhh mean that you're not! I do work in mysterious ways after all." He laughed. "Its now your job to bring magic to earth so that way itll be less boring." With that he hung up. Guess I'll start Hogwarts or something.
	[WP] You met God after death. God says you'll be sent to a world of swords and sorcery and grants you one wish. You wish for excellent aptitude in magic. He grants you all elements and a high magic stat. Then he... accidentally sent you back to Earth... with your new stats... this'll be fun.	I awoke sitting under a tree in a forest. It is a beautiful spring day. The wind is blowing gently and I hear birds singing. About twenty feet in front of me a dirt path goes left to right and disappears around a bend. I smile and mentally call up my character sheet. An image forms in my mind of my stats and abilities. I had asked to be a Sorcerer. A being with magic in his blood. I check to make sure my spells are ready. For Cantrips I chose: Light, Prestidigitation, Ray of Frost, and Shocking Grasp. My 1st level spells are: Shield and Magic Missile. I have all the starting equipment I asked for too. I stand up and look around. I am ready to start my new life of adventure! Coming from around the bend I hear a familiar wooshing sound. I can't quite remember what it is but I know I've heard it before and it is coming closer very quickly. What should I do? I put my hand on my short sword but decide not to draw it. That might be too aggressive. I'll wait until I know what's going on. To my shock a man comes around the bend. He is wearing spandex, a helmet, sunglasses, and riding a bicycle. I don't even think he notices me as he zooms by and disappears out of sight. I am struck dumb by what I just witnessed. What just happened? Was that a memory? An apparition? I am confused. Shaking my head I start walking down the dirt path in the opposite direction the rider went. After a little while on the path the forest thins out. I can't believe what I am seeing. Concrete sidewalks. Benches. Families having picnics. Joggers. The sounds of traffic in the distance. An airplane overhead. A city skyline. I am in a park! What is going on?! Did I just hallucinate an afterlife? No, I still have my adventurer gear. Did I have a psychotic break? I don't think so. I need more information. I formulate a plan. I ask a passerby for directions to the nearest public library. They are wary at first and try to move away but I explain that I am new here and lost my cell phone. I get a notification in my mind [Persuasion skill check: successful]. I thank my foresight for putting points into that skill earlier. After getting the directions I thank them and head to the library. There I discover that I was back on Earth but it was five years later! What kind of a useless goddess sends someone to the wrong world and five years into the future?! I am both sad and glad that my friends and family moved on after my death. They are on the opposite side of the county so my chances of running into them are small. Trying to reconnect with them after all this time would be like opening old wounds. Not to mention I had asked to start over in a new life. But how do I start over? I had chosen my abilities with the idea I would be exploring dungeons and fighting monsters. If I had known I was going back to Earth I would have picked a different class, or at least different spells! My best spell now is probably Prestidigitation. It is ridiculously versatile and a Cantrip so I can cast it an unlimited number of times per day. Sitting in the library I write down any information I feel I might need later in my journal. I think about what I am going to do. Maybe I could start a cult to worship my power. Or assassinate people with magic. I shake my head. No, I didn't want to become a villain. I'll figure something out. I head to the pawn shop to sell the few gold coins I had left over after buying equipment. The manager is suspicious but after another Persuade check he agrees to buy my coins although I don't get nearly as much money as I suspect they are worth. I don't feel like spending what little money I now have on a hotel so I head back to the park. I have gear suitable to camping in the wilderness so a few days in a city park should be simple. I find a secluded spot and doze off but awake in the middle of the night. I feel a presence close by. Something is creeping up on me. I had taken the precautions earlier of sleeping with my short sword under my pillow. Drawing it in one hand I make a gesture with the other hand and say "Light!" in Draconic to cast the spell. A bright glow springs forth from the blade illuminating the area. A creature hisses and jumps back. Jumping to my feet I look closer at my visitor. It looks like a man but his eyes shined with reflected light like an animal and his open mouth revealed sharp fangs. His fingers end in claws and his posture is hunched over. Other than that he looked ordinary. He is wearing jeans and a blue polo shirt. "That was a good trick but it won't save you, human." He says. "Don't come any closer or you'll regret it!" I shout brandishing my blade. "Do you actually know how to use that thing or did you just buy it at the mall because it looked cool?" He asks with a wry grin. He licks his lips and starts moving closer. "Magic missile!" I say in Draconic while shaping the spell with my free hand. Three bolt of magic fly from my hand toward him. He quickly jumps out of the way to dodge but my bolts unerringly track and strike him. He yelps and flails a bit. "You stupid Mage! I was going to snap your neck so I could feed in peace but now I want to hear you scream!" He shouts and charges directly towards me. "Shield!" I say in Draconic while hold up my hand. An invisible magic barrier forms just in front of me. He crashes into it and tries get his arms around it to claw me. Luckily he misses but now the situation is dire. I can't cast any more 1st level spells and my Shield will disappear in a second. I get ready to cast Shocking Grasp and hope he doesn't claw me in a vital spot. Just then I hear someone say "Magic Missile!" in Draconic and I see six bolts of magic strike my attacker. He makes a gurgling sound as he slumps down onto the ground, dead. Looking around I notice a woman in a black pants suit above me. She is flying on a broomstick! "Thank you for saving me! You can cast spells too?" I ask. "Of course. You didn't think you were the only one did you?" She says with a smile. "Yeah, actually. Until I was given these powers I thought magic was fictional." I say sheepishly. "We work hard to keep it that way. I'm Agent Sarah Pru, Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. I'd like to ask you a few questions." She says as she flashes her badge.	The dim light flashed through my eyes and my view became more vivid. "Hey, you, finally awake" the voice of the man lurking in the scattering screams of men and the sound of the gunfire tearing them apart. "Head down soldiers, find covers... Ambush on the high point. We're taking heavy fire, request......" The man was down as waves of bullets coming to our position. I turned my back off the ground, looked at the sky, the line Earth XX appeared and it faded out to take place for Vietnam. The dialogue bar came up with the sound of a angry man. *Ray: "Damn it, damn those Vietcongs, they f\cking got our radio boy, we can't pass the border without artillery. Private Dover, come get the f\cking connection and call for air strike or artillery, or everything they got, we'll cover you. Move your ass go!"* Turned out, i was someone who called Dover and he was my captain. Easy enough, i didn't need to risk myself doing out there for a call. I can handle myself, easy... enough. I closed my eyes and the runic words with arcane lights began to run through my veins , a spark of ember begin to gather as an orb of fire on the right hand. The other hand opened to cast a Ward spell, a spell to protect the caster from magic and in this occasion, for the whole group of man. I threw the fire orb to where the fire came from, as it traveled through the air, it grew bigger to a meteor of flame. *Ray: "Dear God, dear Mister Dover, what the f\ck was that" The explode from my spell wipe our the whole area of woods, nothing can stand that Legendary Destruction spell, even the Grand Wizard who taught me this forbid me from using it, but that was emergency and such a chance to try it. But they were still shooting at us, the spell just only revealed themselves but not destroyed them. I looked at the captain, tempting to say what the hell were them. But my words just couldn't come out, i couldn't speak but when i tried to scream, it burst into extremely loud voice which shook the ground and cracked the sky. Ray: "What the f\ck are you?.... Soldiers, focus fire on them, on the high point."* I was shocked as my spell didn't give them a damn scratch, but both side were giving heavy fire to each other, i saw their men were down as my men too. At the moment, a dialogue bar appeared, but it was in red. Phương: "Các đồng chí, đạn rát, kéo theo người bị thương, rút lui." ("Comrades, heavy fire, carry the wounded, fall back") *Đạt: "Anh em chạy đi, để tôi cảm đường bọn nó... đ\t mẹ chúng mày" ("Comrades, run, leave me blocking their way... f\ck you")* My men kept firing at the open area which i just swept out by my spell, and their soldiers began to fall back. They escaped as we took the high point, we got 2 of their man and they got half of our regiment. A man of them was Đạt, he was wounded by the shot in his chest, nearly killed him, but not a single burn by the fire of which i casted upon them. Ray: "Finish him with what you casted or did with the ground, i want to see it again." Took the order, i left-hand casted a spell Soul Trap which appeared in a purple orb like the void and the other hand the white cold of Ice Spike spell. The arcane power surged through me as i tried to use all of my Magicka to cast them, to find out if it could affect on them. Nothing happen. My spells couldn't affect him nor harm nor leave a effect on him. In the world where i learnt those magic, there was a race of men, whom spells can not be cast upon them but can be casted by them. Those are rumored to have the dragon skin and are talented to conjure powerful creatures. Those people were called Brenton in that world, and i was afraid that in this world, they are called Vietnamese.
	[WP] You love posting weird conspiracy theories on the internet, and watching it spread. Today, the FBI takes you in and questions you as to how you know the truth about everything.	"FBI! Open Up!" Looking through the peephole in the door, two guys in suits. There's been some weirdoes reported lately. "Prove it!" One of them draws breath to shout. The other places a hand on his shoulder. Shouter looks annoyed but subsides. Calm pulls ID from a pocket, and shows it. "Looks real, what do you want?" "Open The Damned Door!" "You can piss off. I'll talk with your partner. I'm not going to have bad cop/good cop in my own house! Besides, you only get to give orders like that with a warrant, in hot pursuit, or with probable cause. You've got none of that, and you're rude, so piss off." From the look on his face, he just might die of apoplexy. Considering how rude and obnoxious he's been, good riddance. His partner grabs him in a come along hold, and drags him off. A short, angry, argument later, bad cop leaves. "Mr. Anderson, may I please speak with you regarding a number of social media postings you've made? You were only partially correct. We don't have a warrant, we're not in hot pursuit, but we do have probable cause." "Probable cause!? Hang on!" I slip the chain, and unlock the deadbolts. Whoever lived here before me had some serious issues. Normally, I only use one, but there's been those weirdoes. "That's a lot of locks Mr. Anderson!" "Heh. The person who lived here before me. Serious paranoia. Come in please." "Thank you. I'm Special Agent Smith." "And your partner is Jones, right?' "That's part of why we are here. How did you know that my partner's name was Jones?" "You're kidding. Smith and Jones? It's like Ham and Eggs if you've seen the TV show. ''Alias Smith and Jones''. Weird Western about two crooks who cut a deal with a governor for pardons." Now why did he suddenly go so bleak? "How did you find that out?" "Find what out?" "Don't play with me. How did you find out about our deal?" "Deal. Smith and Jones." It finally clicks. "You have a deal with someone for a pardon. What a coincidence! If you weren't here, talking with me, I'd never believe it. I'm not sure I do now." "How did you find out!?!" "You just told me." Frowning, "I did?" "Sure. I made reference to an old TV show purely on the basis of your names. You freaked and asked how I knew. I didn't know. You told me it was real when you asked that question." "Coincidence? Pure coincidence? ... Mr. Anderson, you are frighteningly dangerous. By rights, and according to my orders, I should shoot you dead right now." I'm stunned. "Shoot me? What for? I haven't done anything!?!" "Mr. Anderson, it took us a long time, but we finally traced a whole series of terribly accurate statements on social media sites to you. We want to know how you knew. Who leaked." "Postings." This cannot be happening. "Agent Smith? May I see your ID again?" He hands it over, I check for every verification and fake sign that I'm aware of. "Okay. The ID looks legit. You want to know how I knew what I put in those postings. Postings to conspiracy theory sites. Postings that no one with half a brain would believe. ... You do realize that you've just told me that one or more of them are true. True enough to warrant a visit from the FBI, frightening enough to not want to involve a Judge." "I know, but we really must know your source of information. This stuff is literally burn before reading." . "You're not kidding. Jesus! What percentage of what I posted was true? No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. ... Look, I just post those things to see how many gullible fools fall for them. It's a game. Trolling for idiots. Come on over here and I'll show you how I come up with those postings." It really is a game for me. Find some half baked idea, do a bunch of "what if", pair that with Google searches to figure out how likely any of the "what if" are, polish up the idea with the data I've scrounged up or twisted a bit to fit, post it to a few conspiracy groups, then I watch it spread. If the mainstream media picks it up, as a serious story, I count that a full up win. Smith has been exclaiming throughout the process. How could this information be out there? How I could be so right on such little information. "How can you do this! There's got to be something you aren't telling me!" "Nope. That's the whole thing. Let's try this way. You come up with some wacky idea you know isn't true, and we'll go through the process again, together." Oh but isn't it a doozy of an idea. I'd have passed on it as being utterly ridiculous to the point that no one would ever believe it. We do all the "what if" together, the searches, polish the basic idea, and drop it in the groups I use. "Woah, that was fast! Fox has already picked up on it!". We keep watching, fascinated by the spread for a story we knew was false. Pretty soon, the traditional three pick it up. The conspiracy boards go into terminal overload, crashing. ((To be continued))	The holding room was sparsely furnished, function clearly having a priority over comfort of the people inside. I shifted in my chair as the man across the desk lit up a cigarette and took a drag. "Well, Mr. Wilson?", he finally said after a pregnant pause, casually brushing the fallen cigarette ash off his suit. "Are you aware of the reason why you were detained?" I blinked in confusion, unsure what was his point. "Uh, no?", I offered weakly, "Sir?" "To put it simply, right now our agency is deciding whether to arrest you on charges of treason, and the evidence we have is quite overwhelming", the agent put a thick manila folder on the desk between us, nodding at it. "I suggest you get acquainted with your charges, because, son, you are in some deep shit." I skimmed through the folder's contents, and the further I read, the more my brows raised in sheer amazement, until I just couldn't take it anymore. "Are you fucking serious?!", I exclaimed, slamming the folder back on the desk. "Finland isn't real? Birds are secret governmental drones? Like, why is only the ridiculous stuff here? I would've thought I was right about some actually important stuff, like artificial diseases or killswitches or corporate collusion. Not this shit I post publicly for laughs." "Artificial diseases? Killswitches?", the agent suddenly looked at me worriedly, "What the hell do you mean?" "Shouldn't you know about this stuff if it existed?", I threw my hands up in the air in exasperation. "Like, you're a government agent, right? I haven't really talked about it to anyone, but let's say, for example, there's this chip implanted in your head and when I say something random, like, I dunno, 'Laputan Machine' or something, you would instantly-- Sir?!" I leaped across the desk as the man in front of me dropped into a seizure, his eyeballs rolling up and his jaw cleanly biting through his tongue. After a minute of me struggling unsuccessfully to save the man's life, the movement stopped and silence fell in the room. I had no idea what just happened or why. All I could do was just wait until the other agents, who sat behind the two-way mirror and observed our conversation, would burst into the room and slam me face first into the floor. But a minute passed, then another one and another one... and they never did. I cautiously stood up, moving away from the agent's dead body, dazed and confused by what just happened. Was it all my fault? That this man would never go home to his wife and kids? A treacherous thought suddenly popped into my brain, and I found myself unable to resist it. "Small mechanisms are actually operated by gnomes", I suddenly said out loud, the ridiculous proclamation echoing through the silence of holding room. As I took the watch off my wrist and ripped the back cover open, witnessing two tiny strange creatures turning the clock arrows, only one word filled the entirety of my brain. Cogitohazard...
	[WP] Turns out, most alien species actually evolved in the vacuum of space. Their bodies are unable to deal with even the weakest of gravitational fields and the presence of an atmosphere, hence they concluded life couldn't exist on planetary bodies...until they discovered humans.	##The case for carbon-based life forms existing in a highly gravitational body Huygs, Silon ABSTRACT: In this paper, I propose the idea that carbon-based life forms can theoretically exist on a highly gravitational body given sufficient conditions. Primarily, they would require to be on a body containing a high quantity of liquid H2O, existing in a specific region of a star relative to both the radiation output of such a star, as well as the radius of the given body. Additionally, there would necessarily need to be a strong electromagnetic field, as well as a moderate gravitational field. I conclude by giving research guidelines for a probable direction of locating such life. -- ##The improbability of life in gravitational fields: A rebuttal to Huygs Flaresc, Alo ABSTRACT: I demonstrate the improbability of the hypothesis brought forth by Dr. Silon Huygs detailing the idea of carbon-based life within a highly intense gravitational field. In this article, I detail how the proposed necessary fields would prove too strong for any organism to reasonably bare and sustain an extended life, let alone to reproduce. I conclude by commending his research attempts, but suggesting we stick to scientific pursuits grounded in evidence and not idle speculation. -- ##Life IS possible on planetary bodys: A rejoinder to Flaresc Huygs, Silon ABSTRACT: While I commend Floresc for his mathematical and biological knowledge in his critique of my initial paper, I dispute the claims made and offer up exciting evidence of a planet to give proper case study to. I discuss the fourth planet of a star located in a remote section of our galaxy, one that demonstrates the necessary conditions I gave initially, alongside showcasing small bits of evidence of intelligent life from it. I conclude by briefly showing the inadequacy of Floresc's models, and suggest the need for a scientific approach with an open mind. -- ##UOPs, Conspiracies, and Bad Data: A final response to Huygs. Flaresc, Alo ABSTRACT: The response to my initial rebuttal given by my colleague is baffling, for not only how it can get published in a scholarly journal, but how it can be seen as scientific. Rather than give solid scientific evidence, Huygs prefers to rely on eyewitness sightings of Unidentified Objects of Propulsion circulating a remote and rather unremarkable planet. While he makes a convincing case for it containing life given its atmospheres likely chemical composition were his hypothesis true, he has not yet developed a convincing case for life existing on a planetary body with his models. As such, this shall be my final response as I advise the editors of this journal to reconsider publishing such pseudoscience. -- ##Evidence of Earth: Proof of life on planetary bodies, and a final response to Flaresc. Huygs, Silon ABSTRACT: In his remarkably rude response to my rebuttal, Alo Flaresc has shown his willingness to ignore data with my carefully calculated response. As such, I cannot imagine his eyes will be open to bare witness to my laboratory's recent efforts in successfully recovering a spacecraft likely originating from this planet, according to models detailed within the paper. This spacecraft contains recordings from the dominant species on the planet, as well as rudimentary demonstrations of a developing knowledge in physics and mathematics, in addition to photographs produced within the paper. This discovery, I hope, can be said to provide adequate proof that life can and does exist on the planetary body these "human," as they call themselves, lifeforms call "Earth." In addition to changing how we conceptualize models for the existence of life, I hope we can help to inspire more open minding thinking in science, as opposed to the viewpoints espoused by my colleague. Edit: Obligatory thanks for the gold, kind stranger!	"A squall is blowing in" The sailor said, as he watched the sky. Windstruck was a cold, blustery planet and the millions of tiny ice particles on the ground spun and wove themselves in intricate cloudless swirls almost like dust in a desert. The sailor pulled up the Frio-Fibrus coat and put his head down, hoping to block some of the speeding howling biting crystals. Still, Windstruck had oxygen, a hard commodity, and each freezing cold breath the sailor took reminded him to be grateful. "God damn" The sailor said under his breath. "Fito, come inside" His captain said, the warm beckoning of the cabin behind him filling his voice with comfort. "You are no good to us dead. Fito turned around and shook his head. "I'm watching for the Squall" Fito turned back around and stared at the blank star filled sky. "It should come any day now and we will be free of this rock" The captian shook his head and walked out to where Fito was standing, the odd snow/hail of this world crackling beneath his feet. "You can't honestly be looking for that?" The captian asked, pulling his coat up and looking into the sky. "And why not?" Fito said, another sweeping billow of ice stinging his eyes. "The sensors indicated that throughout the Tiam Quadrant there would be black hole moving through 38 systems" Fito pulled out a terminal from his pocket and began fingering through the floating diagrams. "Scans from the League indicate that it will be heading this way, not affecting the planet, but creating a huge swath of destruction for the Nulls in it's wake" Fitto looked at the captian, his eyes filled with sadness. "Chrim might not be one of them, but when this damn war ends with massive losses on both sides, some null will come back to us and carry us away" Fitto put the terminal back and stared at the sky. "The ensuing Squall will be tumultuous, but from here it will probably be pretty" The captian had heard the argument before, precisely five hours ago when he asked Fito to come back in at first. "Listen, I understand you are angry, you and Chrim had a bond, I know that, and they stranded our ship here on a barely colonized world with nothing, but you can't let that kill you. You have to-" "Have you ever seen a null die?" Fito said, staring into the sky still "Gravity for them is like radiation for us. They live between electro-weak nuclear forces, and can bend rules of light to give us the stars. So what would a null look like when it died? Thousands of randomly associating muons and gluons suddenly being ripped apart by the immense gravitational squall" Fito looked over, the sadness turning into crazed dillirum "It will be the most colorful thing you'll ever have seen" He leaned his, his smile portraying a twisted sense of pleasure. "I have seen it, Null's ripped apart and it is the most devastatingly beautiful thing anyone has ever seen" "Fito, your scaring me" The captian said, his hand in the howling wind reaching for the Shutdown injector. "I wasn't supposed to scare you" Fito said backing up "I was trying to scare Chrim" Fito looked up toward the sky again. "Chrim still watches, they are out there currently throwing transdimensional punches and they are listening through your ears" Fito sighed "They told me before they left that they didn't think it would be that bad. They have no idea" A moment of whistling silence murmured through the plane. "I know" Captian said, his voice quavering a bit. Fito nodded, Chrim was a friend to them all, the best Null pilot that they ever had, and now they where going to die in a beautiful explosion of pain and destruction. In the end the silence told both of them, they knew nothing of Chrim's world, all the studies, the Leagues scans, all of it meant nothing to why Chrim wanted to fight in this seemingly senseless war. The captain thought for a moment that the nulls probably think the same of them. "We will all miss chrim if he dies, but if he doesn't then you won't do much good to him if your dead as well" The captain put a reassuring arm on Fito's shoulder "Come inside, wait it out, he might live" "They" Fito said, sighing, the vapors of his breath disipating in the now calm breeze. "Null's prefer to not use gender pronouns" Fito took a deep breath of stinging air and turned toward the cabin, not saying anything more as he walked back. The captain looked into the sky, scratched the crusty frozen tear on his face and simply whispered into the infinite ears of the Nulls "Please come back Chrim" Before he turned around and walked back to that dismal warm cabin.
	[WP] The Sandman drains the life force of humans, causing them to fall asleep. The Tooth Fairy has been collecting teeth so she can raise an undead army. And the monster under your bed is a secret agent trying to gather enough evidence to put them away.	I awake with a start. I can’t place my finger on it, but something is... off. _tap_ _tap_ I turn my head slightly to face the window, not daring to lift my head. Outside I can just make out a shadow, a small winged figure, claws working at the latch. Suddenly, another noise, a quiet pattering. This time the sound is outside the door. I start to lift my head, to catch a glimpse of whatever’s outside but I’m too late, the figure outside finally manages to unlock the window. I lay back down before whatever it is can see me. I can hear a slight buzzing enter the room, it moves next to me, it takes all my willpower to stay motionless. For what feels like hours the buzzing moves over me, apparently making sure I’m not awake, before moving away. Whatever is making the buzzing starts making quiet, but high pitched, screeching noises. The pattering responds in turn, changing pitch to apparently communicate, the screeches and chittering alternate with the patters. They both move towards me. I can feel the room suddenly go cold. The pattering and buzzing stop moving towards me. I can hear quiet clicking, the chittering gets more panicked and the pattering moves towards the door. I don’t dare to open my eyes. Then... silence. I’m shaking, from the cold or the fear I don’t know, but I finally open my eyes. I catch a dark... something retreating to the space under my bed. In the center of the room a single tattered wing slowly floats to the ground. I lay back down, thinking whatever happened was just a dream. In the morning, the window is still open.	12-year old Katie lies down on her bed. She had just finished her homework and packed away her things, so she was quite tired and ready to go to sleep. It was ten o'clock when she started to hear a sort of mumbling underneath her bed. She listens closely and she befomes more curious as she hears: "Okay, so when the tooth fairy collects the fake tooth, we're going to catch her and stop her from completing her skeleton army. The sandman will come the next night, and we're going to-" "Hello?" Katie asks, wondering where the sound is coming from, and what all the shenanigans about the tooth fairy and sandman are about. No response. She looks under the bed, examining every crevasse of it, and through the darkness of her room, catches a glimpse of a black blob, the exact same thing she saw when she was 9, when she slept in her parents' room. "Wait, are you-" "No time to explain," the monster said, "now pretend that you're sleeping. She's almost here." "But-" "Now! She cannot be aware of my presence." Katie, at this point, obeys the monster's command, and lies down on her bed with eyes closed, wondering about the 'she' it's referring to. She hears a presence hover over her, and feels a hand slide under her pillow, and pull something out. Just a moment after, what sounds like a net gun is heard, and she can hear wails near her side. The voice from the monster now said: "Okay, you can open your eyes. I have a lot to explain to you, don't I?" She opens her eyes to see some sort of fairy trapped in a net, unable to get out. "Yes, you have a lot to explain. Why are you here? What were you talking about with the sandman and the tooth fairy? What is she doing in a net? And most of all, what is happening?" The slimy creature hesitantly says, "Usually, nobody's supposed to know about this, but I'll have to spill the beans. So, basically, the tooth fairy is making an undead army, the sandman is sucking the life force out of people to 'awaken' the army, and I'm assigned to keep all of this skeleton army stuff from happening." "Uhh, okay? That was a lot of information at once. Can you explain this a little simpler?" "Okay. It might take some time." Through the night, the two became acquaintances, and made a plan to catch the sandman. Katie fell asleep at eleven o'clock, thinking of the big showdown on Friday night.
	[WP] The Sandman drains the life force of humans, causing them to fall asleep. The Tooth Fairy has been collecting teeth so she can raise an undead army. And the monster under your bed is a secret agent trying to gather enough evidence to put them away.	I awoke to the sound of screaming. “Hands in the air you bone-lovin’ bitch!” The large shadowy figure shouted. “That’s a swear!” I yelled back. The shadowy figure turned his glare toward me. “Not you, child. Her.” The large shadow raised his arm and pointed up at the ceiling. I looked and saw a horrifying old woman with tattered wings clutching my ceiling. “You think you’re the first Patrol to corner me?” The old woman hissed. “You’re a millennium too young to arrest me.” bang The muzzle-flash of a gun lit up my room. The winged woman fell to the floor and the shadowy figure kneeled beside her. “Where is your partner,” he said, sticking the barrel of the gun inside the old woman’s mouth. “Where is Sandman?” The old woman seemed to be answering him, but the gun caused her speech to come out garbled. At least to my ears. “Bullshit!” He pulled the gun out of her mouth and slapped her with the grip. I later learned this was called a pistol-whipping. “You start telling me the truth or that pistol-whipping is just the beginning!” “You think that’s the first time I’ve been pistol whipped?” The woman spat. “No, I very highly doubt that’s the first time someone slapped you in the mouth with a gun.” They seemed to be spending an awful amount of time talking about the pistol-whipping portion of this encounter. “What’s happening?” I asked, as the mood just seemed right. “You want to get pistol-whipped too, boy?” He shouted. “No, honestly that looked severely painful,” I stated plainly. “It is.” The woman said. The shadowy figure began beating the grip of the gun against the old woman’s face like a madman. “Whoa, man,” I said, jumping in between the figure and her. “Stop hitting her.” “She’s a monster, kid. She’s hellbent on raising an undead army.” He lit a cigarette. “You want me to let that happen?” He seemed like a straight shooter, so I decided to be straight with him too. “I just don’t want to see an old woman getting pistol-whipped at my bedside, man. I’m 9 years old. I have my own problems.” “And I respect that,” the shadowy figure said, walking around to my side and sitting on the bed. “I’m just telling you I’m gonna beat this old lady some more. Like a lot more. If you don’t want to be here for it, then you better get the fuck up out this room.” “But it’s my room...” I retorted. “Yeah, but I have a gun, and if I’m going medieval on an old woman, what are the chances I wouldn’t pistol whip you silly?” “He’s got ya there,” the old woman said with a pained laugh. “What is with you and pistol whipping people?!” I yelled in frustration. I mean my god, how long can someone talk about the same thing? “Fine,” he yelled, throwing his hands in the air. “You wanna break me down? You wanna open me up and see all the disgusting parts of me? I’m out of bullets, okay? Does hearing that make you happy? Does knowing I’m in a custody battle with my bitch of an ex-wife, which is costing me more than I’d make in a lifetime, so that I can’t even afford my water bill let alone bullets, make you happy?!” “Honestly I feel like you’ve sort of bummed out the whole room,” the woman on the floor said. “Shit, Sandman is in our safe house. I’ll take you there right now because honesty, I just feel sorry for you at this point and you clearly need a win.” The shadowy figure didn’t say a word, he just stood the woman up and handcuffed her. “I’m incredibly embarrassed,” he said, before he and the woman vanished. “As you should be,” I whispered into the darkness of my room before laying back down and falling asleep.	12-year old Katie lies down on her bed. She had just finished her homework and packed away her things, so she was quite tired and ready to go to sleep. It was ten o'clock when she started to hear a sort of mumbling underneath her bed. She listens closely and she befomes more curious as she hears: "Okay, so when the tooth fairy collects the fake tooth, we're going to catch her and stop her from completing her skeleton army. The sandman will come the next night, and we're going to-" "Hello?" Katie asks, wondering where the sound is coming from, and what all the shenanigans about the tooth fairy and sandman are about. No response. She looks under the bed, examining every crevasse of it, and through the darkness of her room, catches a glimpse of a black blob, the exact same thing she saw when she was 9, when she slept in her parents' room. "Wait, are you-" "No time to explain," the monster said, "now pretend that you're sleeping. She's almost here." "But-" "Now! She cannot be aware of my presence." Katie, at this point, obeys the monster's command, and lies down on her bed with eyes closed, wondering about the 'she' it's referring to. She hears a presence hover over her, and feels a hand slide under her pillow, and pull something out. Just a moment after, what sounds like a net gun is heard, and she can hear wails near her side. The voice from the monster now said: "Okay, you can open your eyes. I have a lot to explain to you, don't I?" She opens her eyes to see some sort of fairy trapped in a net, unable to get out. "Yes, you have a lot to explain. Why are you here? What were you talking about with the sandman and the tooth fairy? What is she doing in a net? And most of all, what is happening?" The slimy creature hesitantly says, "Usually, nobody's supposed to know about this, but I'll have to spill the beans. So, basically, the tooth fairy is making an undead army, the sandman is sucking the life force out of people to 'awaken' the army, and I'm assigned to keep all of this skeleton army stuff from happening." "Uhh, okay? That was a lot of information at once. Can you explain this a little simpler?" "Okay. It might take some time." Through the night, the two became acquaintances, and made a plan to catch the sandman. Katie fell asleep at eleven o'clock, thinking of the big showdown on Friday night.
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	Xarkan looked down at the blue-green planet below, peaceful and alone, from the bridge of his vast ship floating silently in orbit. A mixture of emotions contested within him. Disgust. Sadness. Sympathy. Contempt. Regret. &#x200B; Never before had he encountered a planet so completely isolated , living an existence without the threats so prevalent in most of the cosmos. It was a truly rare discovery. 'Earth' they called it. &#x200B; He waved his hand, and an image flickered on to the screen surveying the planet. A blue light blinked in the corner, letting him know that the message would be communicated on all frequencies, all languages, all devices, any screen built on their primitive technology. In the sky, his image would be projected, his voice booming. &#x200B; "Humans, I Xarkan, leader of the Aronos, have come to destroy your planet. There is no escape, there is no hiding. The day of reckoning is upon you. Bid farewell to your loved ones, make your peace, and prepare for death" &#x200B; He closed off the communication, and waited. &#x200B; It did not take long for his ship to detect incoming missiles from the surface. They collided harmlessly with his ships force fields, the ship absorbing the energy into it's reserves. Once the last wave had finished, he waved his hand again, and the ship slowly began to descend into the planet's atmosphere. &#x200B; As the ship noiselessly glided through the clouds, affording him a clearer view of the Earth, he drew in a sharp breath. It truly was beautiful, it's majesty rivalling that of even his own home world. A wave of nostalgia gripped him, memories of the past playing over in his mind. He steeled his emotions and reminded himself again why he had to do this. There was no other way. &#x200B; The ship came to a stop floating above one of the larger continents, Europe, they called it. He replayed the previous message, huge apparitions of himself manifesting near the ship. He could make out movement on the surface below, frenzied, panicked. &#x200B; Again he waited, and soon air assaults began to barrage his ship, metallic contraptions with missiles and other primitive technology. They did nothing, could not harm his defences. From the surface came other desperate attacks. &#x200B; He would wait like this, wait until they had realised the futility in their attempts at survival against such an overwhelmingly strong enemy. He wanted to make an impression, wanted them to understand and comprehend complete hopelessness. &#x200B; After a few days, all efforts had ceased, the people and the planet below completely bewildered by his actions. Judging by his surveillance on media, many had grown to accept their fate. World leaders had amassed below the giant ship, attempting to communicate with him in a show of strength and solidarity. There were so many of them, so disjointed and different. Governments, they called them, and their elected few. &#x200B; One more show of force would be all he needed to crush their hopes completely. He stepped forward , assuming a humanoid shape devoid of any defined characteristics, slick and black. Moving down he travelled through the ships floors that bent and flowed around him until he exited the underside of the ship. &#x200B; Without aid of any devices he flew down to the congregation below. As he neared them, he extended out a hand towards an empty field. An orb of crackling electric filled the space between his palm and fingers, and suddenly exploded out, crashing into the ground with such force that the earth shook. After the plume faded and the dust settled, there was only a gaping hole where the field had been. &#x200B; As the last of the debris fell, he gracefully landed in the centre of the mass. Cameras and eyes were fixed on him. He spoke, assuming the language he needed. "In recent days, you have tasted utter hopelessness. You have witnessed the sheer magnitude of my power. Known that I could destroy you at any moment of my choosing, but, I have not" He turned to each of the leaders, gauging their reactions, pausing to appraise them, seeing resolve in some, complete fear in others. They were however, acting as one. All the nations and groups represented. Good. "I give you 5 years. 5 years to choose your strongest warriors to fight against me in hand to hand combat, without the aid of any technology. Should you lose, or break these rules, I will end your existence" &#x200B; "How in the world can we fight a creature like you? It's madness. We can never hope to match you", a large fat man said, strands of bright orange hair waving over his near bald head. "Your physiiology has untapped potential.......Mr President. I will help you correct a major flaw, tap a previously unrealised power you all possess but hardly use . I believe some of you call this, 'Chi'. The power of life, and destruction" He again formed a ball of light between his hands, causing the group of leaders to step back and shield their eyes from the light. He disbanded the ball harmlessly, and floated back into the sky. "Do not fear the explosion of power that will ripple throughout your world momentarily. It will seek out any Human and make the changes of which I spoke, it will not harm any of you" &#x200B; "Train. Study. Realise your potential. Group together and hone your strength. You have 5 years, and then I will return to destroy you" &#x200B; Xarkan returned to his ship as it shot down an orb of flashing red that once it hit the surface, rippled out in all directions like a huge stone hitting a pond. It flashed through the group nearest, causing no harm, no immediate affect, and continued, gaining in speed until it disappeared into the horizon. &#x200B; As he returned to space, looking at the Earth become small, he felt a tiny slither of hope building inside him. They were his greatest hope, his only hope. If they could harness the power and potential he knew they had in them, combined with his own, maybe they would stand a chance. &#x200B; He turned his gaze into space, deep into the void. He knew the evil that was coming. 5 years. If only he had found them sooner.	I have slain countless peoples and bested more worlds than these humans know exist. I was startled at first, I'd never seen a planet so small divided amongst so many different governments. But I took it as a challenge a good test of my skills. I was undefeated after all and most of their leaders were aged and weak. We convened in the strange building they claimed held unified nations. Not unified enough to qualify as an entity however as their leaders almost only sent proxies there. I stood before them and flexed my triple mouths revealing rows of barbed fangs. It was an attempt to mimic the human body language of smiling a strange thing as in almost all life forms this would be an act of aggression not comradery. The human "diplomats" listened intently to me as I explained the rules we had developed centuries ago in order to limit the amount of unnecessary bloodshed. Something these humans could take head by themselves. As I went on most of the crowd grew pale or ill? These human languages are strange. Anyway, most grew pale but one man stood up as I asked for questions. He was rotund and wore a hat that you could have fit ten gallons of water in at least. His question will haunt my dreams till the day mother death takes me. "So let me get this straight feller. You said ya follow the most common law right. whatever the common folk view as a ruling government." I nodded and began explaining again how because they were divided the laws stated that I must fight the ruler of each government. He cut me off and smiled at me. " Oh no I gets what y'all are saying, mister, but I just thought I'd warn ya." I looked at him in confusion warn me I was undefeated what secrets could they think I couldn't face. I demanded he tell me. He adjusted his belt the large metal clip bouncing and grinned even wider. I was beginning to worry his face might split. "Well ya see we have some sayings down in Texas, that's where I'm from ya see. And I know they are pretty darn near universal, on Earth that is. A home is where the heart is. And a man's home is his castle. So if ya want this world your gonna have to go door to door for it." It was at that point as the man stood there chuckling deeply and I cast my gaze at the grinning diplomats that I realised how lacking my previous assessment was. Their smiles it appeared were most undeniably a terrifying sign of aggression.
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	Xarkan looked down at the blue-green planet below, peaceful and alone, from the bridge of his vast ship floating silently in orbit. A mixture of emotions contested within him. Disgust. Sadness. Sympathy. Contempt. Regret. &#x200B; Never before had he encountered a planet so completely isolated , living an existence without the threats so prevalent in most of the cosmos. It was a truly rare discovery. 'Earth' they called it. &#x200B; He waved his hand, and an image flickered on to the screen surveying the planet. A blue light blinked in the corner, letting him know that the message would be communicated on all frequencies, all languages, all devices, any screen built on their primitive technology. In the sky, his image would be projected, his voice booming. &#x200B; "Humans, I Xarkan, leader of the Aronos, have come to destroy your planet. There is no escape, there is no hiding. The day of reckoning is upon you. Bid farewell to your loved ones, make your peace, and prepare for death" &#x200B; He closed off the communication, and waited. &#x200B; It did not take long for his ship to detect incoming missiles from the surface. They collided harmlessly with his ships force fields, the ship absorbing the energy into it's reserves. Once the last wave had finished, he waved his hand again, and the ship slowly began to descend into the planet's atmosphere. &#x200B; As the ship noiselessly glided through the clouds, affording him a clearer view of the Earth, he drew in a sharp breath. It truly was beautiful, it's majesty rivalling that of even his own home world. A wave of nostalgia gripped him, memories of the past playing over in his mind. He steeled his emotions and reminded himself again why he had to do this. There was no other way. &#x200B; The ship came to a stop floating above one of the larger continents, Europe, they called it. He replayed the previous message, huge apparitions of himself manifesting near the ship. He could make out movement on the surface below, frenzied, panicked. &#x200B; Again he waited, and soon air assaults began to barrage his ship, metallic contraptions with missiles and other primitive technology. They did nothing, could not harm his defences. From the surface came other desperate attacks. &#x200B; He would wait like this, wait until they had realised the futility in their attempts at survival against such an overwhelmingly strong enemy. He wanted to make an impression, wanted them to understand and comprehend complete hopelessness. &#x200B; After a few days, all efforts had ceased, the people and the planet below completely bewildered by his actions. Judging by his surveillance on media, many had grown to accept their fate. World leaders had amassed below the giant ship, attempting to communicate with him in a show of strength and solidarity. There were so many of them, so disjointed and different. Governments, they called them, and their elected few. &#x200B; One more show of force would be all he needed to crush their hopes completely. He stepped forward , assuming a humanoid shape devoid of any defined characteristics, slick and black. Moving down he travelled through the ships floors that bent and flowed around him until he exited the underside of the ship. &#x200B; Without aid of any devices he flew down to the congregation below. As he neared them, he extended out a hand towards an empty field. An orb of crackling electric filled the space between his palm and fingers, and suddenly exploded out, crashing into the ground with such force that the earth shook. After the plume faded and the dust settled, there was only a gaping hole where the field had been. &#x200B; As the last of the debris fell, he gracefully landed in the centre of the mass. Cameras and eyes were fixed on him. He spoke, assuming the language he needed. "In recent days, you have tasted utter hopelessness. You have witnessed the sheer magnitude of my power. Known that I could destroy you at any moment of my choosing, but, I have not" He turned to each of the leaders, gauging their reactions, pausing to appraise them, seeing resolve in some, complete fear in others. They were however, acting as one. All the nations and groups represented. Good. "I give you 5 years. 5 years to choose your strongest warriors to fight against me in hand to hand combat, without the aid of any technology. Should you lose, or break these rules, I will end your existence" &#x200B; "How in the world can we fight a creature like you? It's madness. We can never hope to match you", a large fat man said, strands of bright orange hair waving over his near bald head. "Your physiiology has untapped potential.......Mr President. I will help you correct a major flaw, tap a previously unrealised power you all possess but hardly use . I believe some of you call this, 'Chi'. The power of life, and destruction" He again formed a ball of light between his hands, causing the group of leaders to step back and shield their eyes from the light. He disbanded the ball harmlessly, and floated back into the sky. "Do not fear the explosion of power that will ripple throughout your world momentarily. It will seek out any Human and make the changes of which I spoke, it will not harm any of you" &#x200B; "Train. Study. Realise your potential. Group together and hone your strength. You have 5 years, and then I will return to destroy you" &#x200B; Xarkan returned to his ship as it shot down an orb of flashing red that once it hit the surface, rippled out in all directions like a huge stone hitting a pond. It flashed through the group nearest, causing no harm, no immediate affect, and continued, gaining in speed until it disappeared into the horizon. &#x200B; As he returned to space, looking at the Earth become small, he felt a tiny slither of hope building inside him. They were his greatest hope, his only hope. If they could harness the power and potential he knew they had in them, combined with his own, maybe they would stand a chance. &#x200B; He turned his gaze into space, deep into the void. He knew the evil that was coming. 5 years. If only he had found them sooner.	Mighty ten feet tall red giants have plagued the galaxy since before humans existed. Their Emperor would go down to the planet and fight the leader and win. They would hang the leader’s head in the trophy room. In the year 2023, the 23rd Emperor of the savage race looked through the galaxy in search of a place that had yet to be conqured. Interdimensional Bing Translation: Emperor Zooune: ”Lieutenant!” Lieutenant KQ: ”Yes your highness?” Emperor Zooune: ”I’m looking for a place to conquer but everything within sight is already mine. Show me a place that has yet to been blessed by going under by control?” Many species around the galaxy who had heard the tales of the Emperor never heard what happened to the new subjects. Each new planet would get more resources and their natural resources restored. The 2nd in command leaders of every planet would collect tax for the empire, a rather lenient tax. Only 12 Zygons! Which would roughly translate into 6 USD. The people of every planet would actually become happier once they got under the empire control, which was surprising due to the savage emperor’s beheading the leaders. But who really likes world leaders? Lieutenant: ”There is planet 420 or also known as EarThe by the locals.” Emperor Zooune: ”Take me to this EarThe.” End of interdimensional Bing translation Emperor Zooune arrived at the little blue spinning planet. ”Give me the stats, Lieutenant.” The lieutenant quickly told his ruler and friend all information. Lieutenant: ”The ruling species on the earth is dolphins than humans, ” The Emperor nodded his head for the lieutenant to continue, he had seen other species (The Vulcans) and they were said to be similar to humans. He had also already talked to some dolphins as they traveled the galaxy for their yearly vacation. ”The humans have destroyed around 95% of the natural resources and have gone over the carrying capacity. The humans are very greedy and entitled people, especially ’Karens’”. The emperor scratched his head making a note of the ’Karens’. ”Lieutenant are the ’Karens’ the leader of EarThe?” The lieutenant shook his head before sheepishly laughing. ”There are roughly 200 world leaders.” The emperor barked out a laugh. ”Very funny.” ”I’m not joking sir.” The emperor looked at the lieutenant as if his 6 arms had grown into lizard wings (a common saying for their race). ”200 plus?” The lieutenant grimly nodded. ”Sir, on EarThe they have a thing called ’countries’ and each ’country’ has a leader. But sire this EarThe does have some positives a thing called, ’Anime’.” The emperor sighed. ”Why kongon me tuknl.” The lieutenant gasped. ”Language!” ”Prepare for my weapons.” The lieutenant scampered off as the Emperor Zooune stood up. ”Humans of EarThe tis I leader Emperor Zooune of the Mighty HunanananananasBanana. Send me your world leaders and I shall fight you all for the rights of EarThs!” Meanwhile on Earth, while everyone was doing their thing a voice echoed from the heavens. ”It’s God!” The Christians in America yelled as Trump sat in his office scratching his cheto wig. He called his secret lover, Trump: ”Putin babe, did you hear that voice?” Putin: ”Da I did! It was in Russian was it Russian for you too?” Trump: ”No but I’m sure to be Russian over to your place.” Putin laughed even though on the inside he hated the orange man. Trump: ”So I was thinking you could fight for me.” Putin: ”Of course darling.” Putin purred out but was overjoyed knowing that meant he controlled America! The United Nations called an emergency meeting. ”SACREU BLUE!” The French prime minister said into the his computer which he opened to Skype. ”We need a plan!” A world leader said and they made up a plan. Back up in the atmosphere. Emperor Zooune: We shall fight in one hour!” The hour passed to quickly for the little humans. The world leaders were teleported to the fighting arena where spectators from over the galaxy watched. ”They're kinda overweight.” A spectators whispered to their friend. ”I heard it's because they sit in their offices all day and eat food.” The spectator’s friend whispered back. ”Thank you for coming!” The emperor said walking into the arena. ”Let the fight begin!” Everyone began to fire guns at the emperor but it did nothing to phase him. He walked toward the humans, towering above them. (He’s taller than most of his subjects at a whopping 15 feet!) He swung his mighty boung which roughly looks like a huge axe. The world leaders crumbled as their heads rolled off. The emperor continued until their was only one left. ”What is your name?” The emperor asked the slightly old man as he kept jumping to dodge the axe. ”Putin!” The emperor nodded before slicing Putin in half as Putin had miscalculated his jump. ”Humans of EarThe you are my subjects now!” Trump paled in his little office. ”My lieutenant shall send you the files soon. Have a pleasant rest of your day! Dooong Clapap rarachaha.” Dooong Clapap rarachaha is the moto for the Empire. ”Be happy now.”
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	“Which one?” This one. This sentence. It is these two words that keep me for sleeping nowadays. “Which one?” should not be an answer to the order “I’m the Conqueror, here to win your planet in a trial by combat. Bring me your leader”. A good answer could be “Yes”, or “Of course”, or “Sure”. But not a squabbling about which leader should be shown to the Conqueror. The planet is divided. No surprise: a lot of planets are divided between five or six kingdoms, and rare are the planets to achieve global hegemony before the Space Age. But Humans love to divide. A lot, and pretty much everything. They just not divide the land: they divide the powers, the sovereignties, the competences, the roles, the time… First of all, Humanity proposed a trial against the UN Secretary. It is no surprise that I won the combat: the woman was just a bureaucrat full of ideals about peace and global cooperation, she did not have the strength to match up. But, after that, a lot of countries said: “Sorry, Conqueror, but a lot of us does not recognize the full sovereignty of the UN. You have not won our loyalty.” What does that even mean? I thought that the UN was the supreme government of Earth. Maybe the politics on Earth was oversimplified by my councilors. I should have killed them. So, I went to the countries, then. The Party General Secretary and President of China did not oppose great resistance, and all the ancient Middle Empire fall. After that, it was the turn of the President of Russia. Again, one man, one sword, and I won without any difficulties. But the worst went after that. My councilors – those idiots – figured three other large and powerful kingdoms of the planet that should cover a lot of land: the United States of America, the Commonwealth and the European Union. I thought America would be the same as Russia or China: one President holding all the power. But, after I vanquished him – again, a piece of cake – fifty morons just said that this kind of decision was not part of the President function. They all did secession for themselves, and now this big part of land is divided between fifty states and as much leaders to fight in battle. Fifty. The Commonwealth was pretty much the same, even if the Queen – the first actual queen I encountered – opposed a surprisingly strong resistance. But after she died, fifty-three states decided that, after all, the monarchy was an old system without real power, so the battle was obsolete – except for the chunk of land named Canada, that decided to follow the fall of its queen. Worst of all, the teeny tiny bit of land know as United Kingdom just split in four. Again. The European Union was the worst, because I did not have to fight one leader. They were the first to ask me: “Which one?” in the meaning that they have not one but multiple leaders. I had to fight twenty-seven. They assured me that the EU was a confederation that have twenty-seven head of state, or something like that – I begin to suspect that they lied to me, but it’s too late. It was the first time in my life. The rule is that I must fight the leader; and if the leader is twenty-seven people, I must fight all of them. In personal combat, where the other “person” is twenty-seven persons. The Commissioners were, like the other, soft bureaucrats that could barely hold a sword; but they gave me a tough fight due to their number. I must admit and recognize it: Humans are the first who manage to give me a good fight in years. Even if it was against twenty-seven old people. But, again, they said that the sovereignty was not theirs, so they twenty-seven countries of the European Union just took their independence back. And the fight just began over. I’m just drowning myself in a sea of layers of sovereignties. Each time I fight against someone, the country just say that he did not had the right to do it in the name of the country and subdivides itself. Germany split between sixteen constituent states, Switzerland between twenty-six cantons – after I had to fight the seven members of the Federal Council at the same time, again – and the City of London between 120 Livery Companies. Iran made me fought against their President then their Leader Supreme before accepting my domination. The Principality of Sealand just has been recognized as a sovereign states by the remains of the international community. It’s a nightmare. The question of sovereignty if one my councilors never thought of. Humans are petty, but it’s what make them my toughest opponent thus far. Addendum: they find a new trick. I fought against the two Captain-Regents of San Marino, and my Councilors assured me that they were the lowest level of sovereignty existing in this small republic. But after the battle, I discover that they give their independence to a castle twenty minutes before the fight. A castle. How could they do it? It’s madness! Now I have another leader to fight! My Councilors say to me that Humans are just trying to gain time until they find a better plan. But they cannot be a better plan. I’m stronger than any Human, and even if I have to fight them all, I will win this planet! Addendum 2: newest trickery. I might be forced to fight all Humans after all. Some philosophers backed up by all the hundreds of remaining leaders – some of them ruling only on a backyard – said that Humans believe in Democracy, a strange concept known nowhere else in the known universe. Apparently, the sovereignty lies in the hand of the People. Ipso facto \-as they said with smug – the actual leader of each democratic nation on earth is all the people – and, surprisingly, all nations switch to Democracy as soon as they discover it. Well, do they want me to fight all Humans? Well, they’ll be served. They agreed to make each battle one to one, because even me cannot fight ten billons of humans. They could crush me by their sole weight if they want. They could have won this way; they’re pretty stupid to think a long list of fighters would make me flinch. I’m immortal. I’m invincible. I’m undefeatable. They cannot win. My Councilors told me to abandon this planet, that it’s not worth it. But I can’t: if I do this, I would be the laughingstock of the galactic society. I can’t be the first Conqueror to lose a battle against a planet full of apes. I must win. And I will win. Addendum 3: it’s their latest trick. And they won. After years of fighting against elderly people, multiple times a day, my Councilors discover something: the time I would take to fight all ten billons of existing Humans, they would have procreated and made ten, twenty, one hundred billion more Humans. They reproduce faster than I can destroy them. This is the worst realization I ever make in my life. I cannot win. The multiple and bottomless subdivision of countries and the superposition of layers of sovereignty did not divide Humans but had the exact opposite effect: since I was an external threat, they united. But in heart, not in laws. There are no more wars, no more crime, no more quarrels. All diseases have been cured, energy is abundant, they live in a post-scarcity society were all is plentiful. The only Death they can experience is against me. They began space colonization, and they are building an interstellar empire, but ala Human: a nightmarish division of commissions, kings, assemblies, unions, presidents, despots, ministers and bureaucrats, with multiple sovereignties shared between all the specie, guaranteeing that they are no more dependent of one lame and incompetent leader. In the Galaxy, where trial by combat between leaders is the usual way of settling wars and gain new territories, they will be our supreme leaders. No one could match against a leader composed of more that multiple trillions of faces. And me? I lost, against all odds. It’s an endless cycle of fights that will never finish. And here am I, bound by my vow, reduced at a simple touristic attraction and euthanasia protocol while, all around me, life just go on. But now I must prepare for my next opponent, and the only question I can ask myself is: which one?	Mighty ten feet tall red giants have plagued the galaxy since before humans existed. Their Emperor would go down to the planet and fight the leader and win. They would hang the leader’s head in the trophy room. In the year 2023, the 23rd Emperor of the savage race looked through the galaxy in search of a place that had yet to be conqured. Interdimensional Bing Translation: Emperor Zooune: ”Lieutenant!” Lieutenant KQ: ”Yes your highness?” Emperor Zooune: ”I’m looking for a place to conquer but everything within sight is already mine. Show me a place that has yet to been blessed by going under by control?” Many species around the galaxy who had heard the tales of the Emperor never heard what happened to the new subjects. Each new planet would get more resources and their natural resources restored. The 2nd in command leaders of every planet would collect tax for the empire, a rather lenient tax. Only 12 Zygons! Which would roughly translate into 6 USD. The people of every planet would actually become happier once they got under the empire control, which was surprising due to the savage emperor’s beheading the leaders. But who really likes world leaders? Lieutenant: ”There is planet 420 or also known as EarThe by the locals.” Emperor Zooune: ”Take me to this EarThe.” End of interdimensional Bing translation Emperor Zooune arrived at the little blue spinning planet. ”Give me the stats, Lieutenant.” The lieutenant quickly told his ruler and friend all information. Lieutenant: ”The ruling species on the earth is dolphins than humans, ” The Emperor nodded his head for the lieutenant to continue, he had seen other species (The Vulcans) and they were said to be similar to humans. He had also already talked to some dolphins as they traveled the galaxy for their yearly vacation. ”The humans have destroyed around 95% of the natural resources and have gone over the carrying capacity. The humans are very greedy and entitled people, especially ’Karens’”. The emperor scratched his head making a note of the ’Karens’. ”Lieutenant are the ’Karens’ the leader of EarThe?” The lieutenant shook his head before sheepishly laughing. ”There are roughly 200 world leaders.” The emperor barked out a laugh. ”Very funny.” ”I’m not joking sir.” The emperor looked at the lieutenant as if his 6 arms had grown into lizard wings (a common saying for their race). ”200 plus?” The lieutenant grimly nodded. ”Sir, on EarThe they have a thing called ’countries’ and each ’country’ has a leader. But sire this EarThe does have some positives a thing called, ’Anime’.” The emperor sighed. ”Why kongon me tuknl.” The lieutenant gasped. ”Language!” ”Prepare for my weapons.” The lieutenant scampered off as the Emperor Zooune stood up. ”Humans of EarThe tis I leader Emperor Zooune of the Mighty HunanananananasBanana. Send me your world leaders and I shall fight you all for the rights of EarThs!” Meanwhile on Earth, while everyone was doing their thing a voice echoed from the heavens. ”It’s God!” The Christians in America yelled as Trump sat in his office scratching his cheto wig. He called his secret lover, Trump: ”Putin babe, did you hear that voice?” Putin: ”Da I did! It was in Russian was it Russian for you too?” Trump: ”No but I’m sure to be Russian over to your place.” Putin laughed even though on the inside he hated the orange man. Trump: ”So I was thinking you could fight for me.” Putin: ”Of course darling.” Putin purred out but was overjoyed knowing that meant he controlled America! The United Nations called an emergency meeting. ”SACREU BLUE!” The French prime minister said into the his computer which he opened to Skype. ”We need a plan!” A world leader said and they made up a plan. Back up in the atmosphere. Emperor Zooune: We shall fight in one hour!” The hour passed to quickly for the little humans. The world leaders were teleported to the fighting arena where spectators from over the galaxy watched. ”They're kinda overweight.” A spectators whispered to their friend. ”I heard it's because they sit in their offices all day and eat food.” The spectator’s friend whispered back. ”Thank you for coming!” The emperor said walking into the arena. ”Let the fight begin!” Everyone began to fire guns at the emperor but it did nothing to phase him. He walked toward the humans, towering above them. (He’s taller than most of his subjects at a whopping 15 feet!) He swung his mighty boung which roughly looks like a huge axe. The world leaders crumbled as their heads rolled off. The emperor continued until their was only one left. ”What is your name?” The emperor asked the slightly old man as he kept jumping to dodge the axe. ”Putin!” The emperor nodded before slicing Putin in half as Putin had miscalculated his jump. ”Humans of EarThe you are my subjects now!” Trump paled in his little office. ”My lieutenant shall send you the files soon. Have a pleasant rest of your day! Dooong Clapap rarachaha.” Dooong Clapap rarachaha is the moto for the Empire. ”Be happy now.”
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	"Sir?", a small alien creature is shily standing behind a giant monstrosity. "Not now.", the giant monstrosity faces a monitor and prepares to speak to all of humanity, "Inhabitants of earth, I'm Zorlac the conqueror of worlds. Our army is ready to ambush your planet, but I will give you one last chance to save your existence. I will fight the leader of planet earth. If victory is yours we will leave peacefully and never again threaten this world." "Sir, please?", the small alien remains persistent. "Feel free to speak, Teslac.", Zorlac sighs and turns of the monitor in front of him. "Master, I think your plan won't work this time.", Teslac's voice trembles. "You're always pessimistic. Where should it fail?", Zorlac pads Teslac's head, "We offer to fight there leader. They will accept because otherwise, they stand no chance of our advanced technology. Given my giant stature, I will easily win and we get the planet without hurting any of its resources. Easy peasy, every time." "Yeah, normally I would agree.", Teslac hesitates shortly before he keeps speaking, "But this time there is no leader." "What do you mean?", Zorlac looks heavily confused. "I mean there is no single leader.", Teslac stops a moment to think about the following sentence, "I'm confused either. Apparently, they are everything but united. They have hundreds of politically independent pieces of land distributed over the planet. They call it states. Each of these states has its own leaders." "Wait, leaders?", Zorlac confusion didn't get better. "Yeah, this is very strange. Mostly, they have a collection or even several collections of leader, which are voting over decisions. And to make it even worse, the states are sometimes not fully independent but have contracts and higher level structures with leaders of their own.", Teslac's hesitation vanishes more and more while his explanation gets more technical. "Ok, about how many humans are we talking?", Zorlac looks concerned. "So far, about a few ten thousands." "So far?", Zorlac starts to feel fear for the first time in a while. "The worst part is still missing.", Teslac starts to get excited by explaining the fascinating new situation, "Most of the people I called leader are only temporary leaders. A lot of these states have some weird government system called democracy. The inhabitants of each state vote representatives for a given amount of time." "So you're saying ...?", in the meantime, Zorlacs expression shows pure terror. "Yep, you basically challenged large fractions of there population.", Teslac keeps talking while Zorlac completely tries to grasp the situation, "Of course we have no arena large enough to handle this. I think the best solution would be, to make the fight on the whole planet. We will encapsulate the states with actual leaders by forcefields." "How should I win this?" "Ah, good that you ask.", Teslac is completely in his element as an assistant, "I made a plan. Of course, you can't kill one after another. These proceation-machines will produce more humans than you can kill. You must act from underground and push them to complete annihilation by themselves. For this, it makes sense to start in a powerful state. I investigated these. China is no democracy. Be thankful. This spares yourself a large fraction of the population and these guys are crazy. They actively toxicate their most populated places. The most obvious choice would be USA. But somehow they allow each inhabitant to own deadly weapons. I don't understand why anyone wants to live there but you should definitely avoid this place. Germany is another possibility, but I found some weird shit in their history. I don't want to talk about it but believe me, as a foreign being you should avoid them. I would propose Russia, this seems a good point to start." "This will take forever.", Zorlacs is completely desperate. "Not really, I estimated a duration 150 of their sun cycles if everything goes well.", Teslac winks at Zorlac, "But believe me, there is a good chance that they will finish it by themselves way earlier." "Is there no other possibility?" "You're the leader.", Teslac shrugs his shoulders, "Of course, you can stop the whole thing but you have to live with the shame." "You're right.", Zorlac is happy again, "I will use a compromise. That way I will keep my face and we will easily win." He turns the monitor on. "Hey inhabitants of this planet, Zorlac again.", he broadcasts to the world, "Your inability to accept that there are better and more capable than you and the resulting shit of a government system yielded some organizational issues. You're given the unique chance to choose your contestant in the coming fight." He turns the monitor off and turns to Teslac, "Wasn't this a glorious solution?" "Almost.", Teslac smiles sheepish, "The formulation 'inhabitants of this planet' was unfortunate. Did you, by any chance, read enough of the information of this planet to know what a grizzly bear is?" "Come on", Zorlac groans.	Mighty ten feet tall red giants have plagued the galaxy since before humans existed. Their Emperor would go down to the planet and fight the leader and win. They would hang the leader’s head in the trophy room. In the year 2023, the 23rd Emperor of the savage race looked through the galaxy in search of a place that had yet to be conqured. Interdimensional Bing Translation: Emperor Zooune: ”Lieutenant!” Lieutenant KQ: ”Yes your highness?” Emperor Zooune: ”I’m looking for a place to conquer but everything within sight is already mine. Show me a place that has yet to been blessed by going under by control?” Many species around the galaxy who had heard the tales of the Emperor never heard what happened to the new subjects. Each new planet would get more resources and their natural resources restored. The 2nd in command leaders of every planet would collect tax for the empire, a rather lenient tax. Only 12 Zygons! Which would roughly translate into 6 USD. The people of every planet would actually become happier once they got under the empire control, which was surprising due to the savage emperor’s beheading the leaders. But who really likes world leaders? Lieutenant: ”There is planet 420 or also known as EarThe by the locals.” Emperor Zooune: ”Take me to this EarThe.” End of interdimensional Bing translation Emperor Zooune arrived at the little blue spinning planet. ”Give me the stats, Lieutenant.” The lieutenant quickly told his ruler and friend all information. Lieutenant: ”The ruling species on the earth is dolphins than humans, ” The Emperor nodded his head for the lieutenant to continue, he had seen other species (The Vulcans) and they were said to be similar to humans. He had also already talked to some dolphins as they traveled the galaxy for their yearly vacation. ”The humans have destroyed around 95% of the natural resources and have gone over the carrying capacity. The humans are very greedy and entitled people, especially ’Karens’”. The emperor scratched his head making a note of the ’Karens’. ”Lieutenant are the ’Karens’ the leader of EarThe?” The lieutenant shook his head before sheepishly laughing. ”There are roughly 200 world leaders.” The emperor barked out a laugh. ”Very funny.” ”I’m not joking sir.” The emperor looked at the lieutenant as if his 6 arms had grown into lizard wings (a common saying for their race). ”200 plus?” The lieutenant grimly nodded. ”Sir, on EarThe they have a thing called ’countries’ and each ’country’ has a leader. But sire this EarThe does have some positives a thing called, ’Anime’.” The emperor sighed. ”Why kongon me tuknl.” The lieutenant gasped. ”Language!” ”Prepare for my weapons.” The lieutenant scampered off as the Emperor Zooune stood up. ”Humans of EarThe tis I leader Emperor Zooune of the Mighty HunanananananasBanana. Send me your world leaders and I shall fight you all for the rights of EarThs!” Meanwhile on Earth, while everyone was doing their thing a voice echoed from the heavens. ”It’s God!” The Christians in America yelled as Trump sat in his office scratching his cheto wig. He called his secret lover, Trump: ”Putin babe, did you hear that voice?” Putin: ”Da I did! It was in Russian was it Russian for you too?” Trump: ”No but I’m sure to be Russian over to your place.” Putin laughed even though on the inside he hated the orange man. Trump: ”So I was thinking you could fight for me.” Putin: ”Of course darling.” Putin purred out but was overjoyed knowing that meant he controlled America! The United Nations called an emergency meeting. ”SACREU BLUE!” The French prime minister said into the his computer which he opened to Skype. ”We need a plan!” A world leader said and they made up a plan. Back up in the atmosphere. Emperor Zooune: We shall fight in one hour!” The hour passed to quickly for the little humans. The world leaders were teleported to the fighting arena where spectators from over the galaxy watched. ”They're kinda overweight.” A spectators whispered to their friend. ”I heard it's because they sit in their offices all day and eat food.” The spectator’s friend whispered back. ”Thank you for coming!” The emperor said walking into the arena. ”Let the fight begin!” Everyone began to fire guns at the emperor but it did nothing to phase him. He walked toward the humans, towering above them. (He’s taller than most of his subjects at a whopping 15 feet!) He swung his mighty boung which roughly looks like a huge axe. The world leaders crumbled as their heads rolled off. The emperor continued until their was only one left. ”What is your name?” The emperor asked the slightly old man as he kept jumping to dodge the axe. ”Putin!” The emperor nodded before slicing Putin in half as Putin had miscalculated his jump. ”Humans of EarThe you are my subjects now!” Trump paled in his little office. ”My lieutenant shall send you the files soon. Have a pleasant rest of your day! Dooong Clapap rarachaha.” Dooong Clapap rarachaha is the moto for the Empire. ”Be happy now.”
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	“All hail Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg, conqueror of the universe! Let the trial by combat begin! Your rulers will be vanquished. Your puny planet will be forfeit. Our victory is inevitable!” The booming voice was emanating from a colossal silver sphere that hovered silently, two inches above the ground, in front of Buckingham Palace. The assembled leaders of Earth watched with trepidation as a human-sized portal opened in the side of the sphere. A ramp extended, tongue-like, prompting a flurry of kneeling and weapon-pointing from assorted security forces. “Send in the first combatant!” Justin Trudeau bounced eagerly towards the ramp, his red satin boxing shorts glinting in the sunlight. The remaining leaders watched in hope as Mr. Trudeau dodged and feinted up the ramp and disappeared inside. The portal slid closed and silence dropped as the crowd waited. Five minutes later, the voice boomed again. “Your first combatant is defeated! Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg is ready to destroy your next ruler. Prepare to fight and lose!” The portal re-opened and Mr. Trudeau crawled down the ramp, groaning, on his hands and knees, covered from head to toe in blue slime. His aides rushed forward to help him up, but recoiled when the stench of the slime hit their nostrils. Justin lay writhing on his back, feebly trying to wipe off the gunk with his boxing gloves. “What happened in there?” shouted Donald Trump, hiding a smirk as he held his nose. “It was awful,” moaned Justin. “I went in and there was nobody there, just this puddle of blue jelly on the floor. I trod in it and slipped, and it oozed up all around me and enveloped me. I kept trying to get up but it was too slippery, and the smell made my head spin. Then a voice said, “Do you submit?” and I said, “Yes”. Anything to get out of there!” Donald shook his head in mock disappointment, enjoying seeing the handsome Canadian laid low. “You’ve let us down, Trudeau, but I always knew you were weak. This is a job for a real man.” Trump’s porcine eyes moved over the group of leaders, who stared on in shocked awe. Donald Trump was going to fight next? Donald stood up and straightened his baseball cap. “Right then. Let’s do this.” He marched towards the leaders. “Putin, go show them how we do it here on earth!” Vladimir Putin gave a begrudging grin and stepped forward. “You are right, my comrade. I AM a real man.” Putin ripped off his shirt revealing the steely torso of a Russian adonis. “I will fight like an ox for the glory of Russia!” Putin disappeared inside the sphere. Less than a minute later the portal opened again and he slid headfirst back down the ramp on a wave of stinking slime. “We are doomed,” he gasped, “There is no way to fight such a creature!” “Send in the next combatant! Make it somebody good this time!” boomed the alien voice. There were no more volunteers. The leaders decided to pick straws. Theresa May gave a stifled sob as she drew the short straw. How could this have happened to her? If only she had resigned the leadership earlier, Boris Johnson would be standing in her place now. That would have served him right. Theresa gathered herself together and started towards the ramp, her limbs rattling like a box of broken Twiglets. Just as she was about to ascend, an imperious voice echoed out behind her. “Stop at once! We will not permit any more of this nonsense on our front lawn. We would like words with this Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg.” Theresa fell to her knees. “Your majesty!” she gasped, “You can’t hope to reason with this monster, and the fate of the world rests on us defeating him!” Queen Elizabeth II tightened the knot of her headscarf and gripped her handbag tightly as her green wellington boots squeaked up the ramp. “One has ways of dealing with pests like this,” she declared grimly. Theresa waited tearfully for her beloved queen to reappear, dreading the sight of blue slime soiling the stately British monarch. The portal slid open and Queen Elizabeth stepped out, pristine apart from a small blob of slime clinging to one cheek. She reached up and wiped it off, then flicked it away with disdain. The alien voice sounded much less bombastic when it announced, “The Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg is honoured to have fought with you today. Your superiority in combat has been proven, and we will leave your planet, never to return. The mightiness of the Earth warriors will be spoken of throughout the universe from this day forward!” As the Queen stepped away from the sphere, the ramp retracted and the portal slammed shut, and the sphere shot up into the sky. The leaders cheered and ran to Elizabeth, bowing and scraping in gratitude before her. “Unbelievable!” exclaimed Trump. “How did an old girl like you manage to beat that monster?” Queen Elizabeth II opened her handbag and pulled out a box of salt. “The same way one deals with slugs in one’s royal lettuce patch.” Everyone cheered again as she announced, “We would very much like to have a cup of tea after all that bother. All are welcome… oh, except you two, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Putin, we will not be amused if you walk blue slime onto our palace carpets. Guards, take them to the Tower!” “She meant to say “shower” I’m sure,” Theresa reassured the two worried men, as she watched her formidable majesty sail back into the palace for a well-earned cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake. It had been a very eventful day!	Mighty ten feet tall red giants have plagued the galaxy since before humans existed. Their Emperor would go down to the planet and fight the leader and win. They would hang the leader’s head in the trophy room. In the year 2023, the 23rd Emperor of the savage race looked through the galaxy in search of a place that had yet to be conqured. Interdimensional Bing Translation: Emperor Zooune: ”Lieutenant!” Lieutenant KQ: ”Yes your highness?” Emperor Zooune: ”I’m looking for a place to conquer but everything within sight is already mine. Show me a place that has yet to been blessed by going under by control?” Many species around the galaxy who had heard the tales of the Emperor never heard what happened to the new subjects. Each new planet would get more resources and their natural resources restored. The 2nd in command leaders of every planet would collect tax for the empire, a rather lenient tax. Only 12 Zygons! Which would roughly translate into 6 USD. The people of every planet would actually become happier once they got under the empire control, which was surprising due to the savage emperor’s beheading the leaders. But who really likes world leaders? Lieutenant: ”There is planet 420 or also known as EarThe by the locals.” Emperor Zooune: ”Take me to this EarThe.” End of interdimensional Bing translation Emperor Zooune arrived at the little blue spinning planet. ”Give me the stats, Lieutenant.” The lieutenant quickly told his ruler and friend all information. Lieutenant: ”The ruling species on the earth is dolphins than humans, ” The Emperor nodded his head for the lieutenant to continue, he had seen other species (The Vulcans) and they were said to be similar to humans. He had also already talked to some dolphins as they traveled the galaxy for their yearly vacation. ”The humans have destroyed around 95% of the natural resources and have gone over the carrying capacity. The humans are very greedy and entitled people, especially ’Karens’”. The emperor scratched his head making a note of the ’Karens’. ”Lieutenant are the ’Karens’ the leader of EarThe?” The lieutenant shook his head before sheepishly laughing. ”There are roughly 200 world leaders.” The emperor barked out a laugh. ”Very funny.” ”I’m not joking sir.” The emperor looked at the lieutenant as if his 6 arms had grown into lizard wings (a common saying for their race). ”200 plus?” The lieutenant grimly nodded. ”Sir, on EarThe they have a thing called ’countries’ and each ’country’ has a leader. But sire this EarThe does have some positives a thing called, ’Anime’.” The emperor sighed. ”Why kongon me tuknl.” The lieutenant gasped. ”Language!” ”Prepare for my weapons.” The lieutenant scampered off as the Emperor Zooune stood up. ”Humans of EarThe tis I leader Emperor Zooune of the Mighty HunanananananasBanana. Send me your world leaders and I shall fight you all for the rights of EarThs!” Meanwhile on Earth, while everyone was doing their thing a voice echoed from the heavens. ”It’s God!” The Christians in America yelled as Trump sat in his office scratching his cheto wig. He called his secret lover, Trump: ”Putin babe, did you hear that voice?” Putin: ”Da I did! It was in Russian was it Russian for you too?” Trump: ”No but I’m sure to be Russian over to your place.” Putin laughed even though on the inside he hated the orange man. Trump: ”So I was thinking you could fight for me.” Putin: ”Of course darling.” Putin purred out but was overjoyed knowing that meant he controlled America! The United Nations called an emergency meeting. ”SACREU BLUE!” The French prime minister said into the his computer which he opened to Skype. ”We need a plan!” A world leader said and they made up a plan. Back up in the atmosphere. Emperor Zooune: We shall fight in one hour!” The hour passed to quickly for the little humans. The world leaders were teleported to the fighting arena where spectators from over the galaxy watched. ”They're kinda overweight.” A spectators whispered to their friend. ”I heard it's because they sit in their offices all day and eat food.” The spectator’s friend whispered back. ”Thank you for coming!” The emperor said walking into the arena. ”Let the fight begin!” Everyone began to fire guns at the emperor but it did nothing to phase him. He walked toward the humans, towering above them. (He’s taller than most of his subjects at a whopping 15 feet!) He swung his mighty boung which roughly looks like a huge axe. The world leaders crumbled as their heads rolled off. The emperor continued until their was only one left. ”What is your name?” The emperor asked the slightly old man as he kept jumping to dodge the axe. ”Putin!” The emperor nodded before slicing Putin in half as Putin had miscalculated his jump. ”Humans of EarThe you are my subjects now!” Trump paled in his little office. ”My lieutenant shall send you the files soon. Have a pleasant rest of your day! Dooong Clapap rarachaha.” Dooong Clapap rarachaha is the moto for the Empire. ”Be happy now.”
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	“All hail Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg, conqueror of the universe! Let the trial by combat begin! Your rulers will be vanquished. Your puny planet will be forfeit. Our victory is inevitable!” The booming voice was emanating from a colossal silver sphere that hovered silently, two inches above the ground, in front of Buckingham Palace. The assembled leaders of Earth watched with trepidation as a human-sized portal opened in the side of the sphere. A ramp extended, tongue-like, prompting a flurry of kneeling and weapon-pointing from assorted security forces. “Send in the first combatant!” Justin Trudeau bounced eagerly towards the ramp, his red satin boxing shorts glinting in the sunlight. The remaining leaders watched in hope as Mr. Trudeau dodged and feinted up the ramp and disappeared inside. The portal slid closed and silence dropped as the crowd waited. Five minutes later, the voice boomed again. “Your first combatant is defeated! Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg is ready to destroy your next ruler. Prepare to fight and lose!” The portal re-opened and Mr. Trudeau crawled down the ramp, groaning, on his hands and knees, covered from head to toe in blue slime. His aides rushed forward to help him up, but recoiled when the stench of the slime hit their nostrils. Justin lay writhing on his back, feebly trying to wipe off the gunk with his boxing gloves. “What happened in there?” shouted Donald Trump, hiding a smirk as he held his nose. “It was awful,” moaned Justin. “I went in and there was nobody there, just this puddle of blue jelly on the floor. I trod in it and slipped, and it oozed up all around me and enveloped me. I kept trying to get up but it was too slippery, and the smell made my head spin. Then a voice said, “Do you submit?” and I said, “Yes”. Anything to get out of there!” Donald shook his head in mock disappointment, enjoying seeing the handsome Canadian laid low. “You’ve let us down, Trudeau, but I always knew you were weak. This is a job for a real man.” Trump’s porcine eyes moved over the group of leaders, who stared on in shocked awe. Donald Trump was going to fight next? Donald stood up and straightened his baseball cap. “Right then. Let’s do this.” He marched towards the leaders. “Putin, go show them how we do it here on earth!” Vladimir Putin gave a begrudging grin and stepped forward. “You are right, my comrade. I AM a real man.” Putin ripped off his shirt revealing the steely torso of a Russian adonis. “I will fight like an ox for the glory of Russia!” Putin disappeared inside the sphere. Less than a minute later the portal opened again and he slid headfirst back down the ramp on a wave of stinking slime. “We are doomed,” he gasped, “There is no way to fight such a creature!” “Send in the next combatant! Make it somebody good this time!” boomed the alien voice. There were no more volunteers. The leaders decided to pick straws. Theresa May gave a stifled sob as she drew the short straw. How could this have happened to her? If only she had resigned the leadership earlier, Boris Johnson would be standing in her place now. That would have served him right. Theresa gathered herself together and started towards the ramp, her limbs rattling like a box of broken Twiglets. Just as she was about to ascend, an imperious voice echoed out behind her. “Stop at once! We will not permit any more of this nonsense on our front lawn. We would like words with this Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg.” Theresa fell to her knees. “Your majesty!” she gasped, “You can’t hope to reason with this monster, and the fate of the world rests on us defeating him!” Queen Elizabeth II tightened the knot of her headscarf and gripped her handbag tightly as her green wellington boots squeaked up the ramp. “One has ways of dealing with pests like this,” she declared grimly. Theresa waited tearfully for her beloved queen to reappear, dreading the sight of blue slime soiling the stately British monarch. The portal slid open and Queen Elizabeth stepped out, pristine apart from a small blob of slime clinging to one cheek. She reached up and wiped it off, then flicked it away with disdain. The alien voice sounded much less bombastic when it announced, “The Emperor Blargen Smargen Flarg is honoured to have fought with you today. Your superiority in combat has been proven, and we will leave your planet, never to return. The mightiness of the Earth warriors will be spoken of throughout the universe from this day forward!” As the Queen stepped away from the sphere, the ramp retracted and the portal slammed shut, and the sphere shot up into the sky. The leaders cheered and ran to Elizabeth, bowing and scraping in gratitude before her. “Unbelievable!” exclaimed Trump. “How did an old girl like you manage to beat that monster?” Queen Elizabeth II opened her handbag and pulled out a box of salt. “The same way one deals with slugs in one’s royal lettuce patch.” Everyone cheered again as she announced, “We would very much like to have a cup of tea after all that bother. All are welcome… oh, except you two, Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Putin, we will not be amused if you walk blue slime onto our palace carpets. Guards, take them to the Tower!” “She meant to say “shower” I’m sure,” Theresa reassured the two worried men, as she watched her formidable majesty sail back into the palace for a well-earned cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake. It had been a very eventful day!	"Sir?", a small alien creature is shily standing behind a giant monstrosity. "Not now.", the giant monstrosity faces a monitor and prepares to speak to all of humanity, "Inhabitants of earth, I'm Zorlac the conqueror of worlds. Our army is ready to ambush your planet, but I will give you one last chance to save your existence. I will fight the leader of planet earth. If victory is yours we will leave peacefully and never again threaten this world." "Sir, please?", the small alien remains persistent. "Feel free to speak, Teslac.", Zorlac sighs and turns of the monitor in front of him. "Master, I think your plan won't work this time.", Teslac's voice trembles. "You're always pessimistic. Where should it fail?", Zorlac pads Teslac's head, "We offer to fight there leader. They will accept because otherwise, they stand no chance of our advanced technology. Given my giant stature, I will easily win and we get the planet without hurting any of its resources. Easy peasy, every time." "Yeah, normally I would agree.", Teslac hesitates shortly before he keeps speaking, "But this time there is no leader." "What do you mean?", Zorlac looks heavily confused. "I mean there is no single leader.", Teslac stops a moment to think about the following sentence, "I'm confused either. Apparently, they are everything but united. They have hundreds of politically independent pieces of land distributed over the planet. They call it states. Each of these states has its own leaders." "Wait, leaders?", Zorlac confusion didn't get better. "Yeah, this is very strange. Mostly, they have a collection or even several collections of leader, which are voting over decisions. And to make it even worse, the states are sometimes not fully independent but have contracts and higher level structures with leaders of their own.", Teslac's hesitation vanishes more and more while his explanation gets more technical. "Ok, about how many humans are we talking?", Zorlac looks concerned. "So far, about a few ten thousands." "So far?", Zorlac starts to feel fear for the first time in a while. "The worst part is still missing.", Teslac starts to get excited by explaining the fascinating new situation, "Most of the people I called leader are only temporary leaders. A lot of these states have some weird government system called democracy. The inhabitants of each state vote representatives for a given amount of time." "So you're saying ...?", in the meantime, Zorlacs expression shows pure terror. "Yep, you basically challenged large fractions of there population.", Teslac keeps talking while Zorlac completely tries to grasp the situation, "Of course we have no arena large enough to handle this. I think the best solution would be, to make the fight on the whole planet. We will encapsulate the states with actual leaders by forcefields." "How should I win this?" "Ah, good that you ask.", Teslac is completely in his element as an assistant, "I made a plan. Of course, you can't kill one after another. These proceation-machines will produce more humans than you can kill. You must act from underground and push them to complete annihilation by themselves. For this, it makes sense to start in a powerful state. I investigated these. China is no democracy. Be thankful. This spares yourself a large fraction of the population and these guys are crazy. They actively toxicate their most populated places. The most obvious choice would be USA. But somehow they allow each inhabitant to own deadly weapons. I don't understand why anyone wants to live there but you should definitely avoid this place. Germany is another possibility, but I found some weird shit in their history. I don't want to talk about it but believe me, as a foreign being you should avoid them. I would propose Russia, this seems a good point to start." "This will take forever.", Zorlacs is completely desperate. "Not really, I estimated a duration 150 of their sun cycles if everything goes well.", Teslac winks at Zorlac, "But believe me, there is a good chance that they will finish it by themselves way earlier." "Is there no other possibility?" "You're the leader.", Teslac shrugs his shoulders, "Of course, you can stop the whole thing but you have to live with the shame." "You're right.", Zorlac is happy again, "I will use a compromise. That way I will keep my face and we will easily win." He turns the monitor on. "Hey inhabitants of this planet, Zorlac again.", he broadcasts to the world, "Your inability to accept that there are better and more capable than you and the resulting shit of a government system yielded some organizational issues. You're given the unique chance to choose your contestant in the coming fight." He turns the monitor off and turns to Teslac, "Wasn't this a glorious solution?" "Almost.", Teslac smiles sheepish, "The formulation 'inhabitants of this planet' was unfortunate. Did you, by any chance, read enough of the information of this planet to know what a grizzly bear is?" "Come on", Zorlac groans.
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	"VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. Nearing a thousand worlds, and to this day I reign supreme by right of my unrivalled and unquestionable might. As before, so again. This worlds only difference is the failure of its people to produce a champion to unite them. All others had a leader, chosen by often inferior means, a single opponent who I need but break to demonstrate my glory to their race. Here, the people have divided their planet by land mass, producing variants and leaders of their own. Early analysis suggests there may be as many as a dozen separate peoples, the highest yet seen. I will crush them as all before them. Four down. --- "VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. This world's people are absolutely insane, my first act as their ruler will be tear every governance system and political border they've devised into scrap and reduce all who participated in the mess to a gas. 84. I have slain 84 of their leaders and yet to this day I have failed to conquer even half of a single planet. Our court established a law long past, that in the event a world had multiple leaders, to ensure a battle at full strength I would defeat a single leader per a full day on our planet. To humans, this is a single battle roughly every 243 of their days. Yet still, I have yet to conquer even half of them. Mad, all of them. --- "VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. I have grown to loathe this planet and its people in kind. Upon my arrival, there were 197 recognized lands among what passes for civilization for the humans. 197 leaders to defeat. Yet here I stand, 248 victories later, the job yet undone. Their species breeds a new generation in but 120 days! This is not the fastest in even this galaxy by any stretch, but their leadership tends to last only a fraction of this time! By the time I had defeated all 197, the remaining lands had splintered and fractured so many times over that I dare not even guess how many new leaders have risen. This is not even an attempt to manipulate us! Long before this ridiculous species even dared imagine my existence they had single towns who commanded a space measured in tens of kilometers. Yet they are recognized as distinct! As sovereigns! I have remained here so long I have learned their measurement systems, another thing which I shall uproot in its entirety. I briefly entertained merely dusting the entire planet, yet to change the law which I myself placed I must defeat a clone of myself from that time, and while the humans were initially without threat as time passed I found I cannot spare the strength to defeat my old self while conquering them. Still, the majority of this planet and its people are conquered. Surely they can only fracture so far, produce only so many leaders for me to vanquish before they are broken. --- "VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. Yet for the first time, I fear it may not always be so. The remaining humans are all located in the what they call Eastern Asia, the rest conquered, enslaved, and shipped off world to ensure they could incite no further rebellions and produce no further leaders. Yet as a species they have persisted for so long. Each battle, I face a leader manifested with a new act of daring, a new blasphemy upon their own selves designed to see me defeated. Most replaced parts of themselves with metal. Grafting weapons into their very bodies, yet their feeble weaponry was ultimately of no challenge to my superiority. Now, however... they have brought forth a new atrocity. With each battle, I find myself growing weaker. With each battle, I find myself stabbed, injected with some new concoction. In nearly a thousand worlds, I have never faced its like. They call it biochemical warfare. A mere day is no longer enough to recover my strength, yet by my own law the battles cannot by halted. By a law I no longer have the strength to overturn. 973 planets did I conquer, and now, at the 974th, for the first time... I question my own victory.	The following is an archived transcript of Dorito O'Shea's statements during an interview about his eyewitness experience during The Arrival of 2500. Some of the interviewer's notes are included as well. Who, me? Oh, I was in Costco- which one, you said? The Lowe's City one. But anyway, I was there learning for engineering class- I'm pretty smart- when they showed up. Their spaceships- I mean, dude, it was wild!- so big! We all waved to them, cuz, y'know, who doesn't like spaceships? Like, Star Wars, man! When I went home to get my electrolytes and dinner, the news man was talking about the spaceships! Like, the same ones I saw! Un-fuckin-real! Dorito, already sweating and out of breath from excitement, pauses to collect himself. And so, like, he says that all our leaders'n'shit gotta go do battle with some Emperor dude or some shit. Like, ha! BATTLE?! What was that dude thinking?! The Presidential World Cup was only like 3 weeks- days? months?- I forget, but whatever- everybody's shredded as fuck right now! Like, good timing, Mister Emperor! Ha! So anyway, we all decide that, like, this is a good time to get some real power rankings! I mean, shit, man! So damn cool! Dorito proceeds to explain the Presidential Power Ranking system, despite our insistence that he continue with the story. So anyway, we start going through, some of those little countries, y'know, Africa and shit, pretty low on the power rankings. Got their asses kicked! A couple European dudes tried, but, y'know, they've always been a bunch of wimps. Barely even shredded, honestly. A couple put up a good fight, though, we like those guys overall. Y'know, they've got good guys over there, but, I mean, you know we had to save the best for last. And you better believe that when I say the best, I mean the BEST. The One. The Only. THE President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, dammit! WHOOOOOO[sic]! Dorito is standing at this time, and begins pacing around the room. Oh shit, you could hear the hootin' and hollerin' from Coors Lite City at my place, I'm like, a long way away- wait, what'd you say? How far away? Oh, I don't know man, like 50 kilometers or something. Or about 4 miles- like I said, I'm getting my engineering degree- but anyway, I could hear the hootin' and hollerin' from the Public Storage unit I live at- well, I just moved in, I'm on the 3rd floor, it overlooks the local Devry Elementary School/Jiffy Lube, it's pretty sweet. But yeah, so anyway, you know what happens from there! He was firing some stupid laser-gun thing- didn't he see Star Wars, man, those things are useless, you gotta get a lightsaber- but yeah, you saw it man, President Camacho dodged that shit and then just hit him with a one-two, left-right, took that little alien's head clean off, just like this! Dorito begins shadow-boxing, making left-jab, right-uppercut motions that vaguely resemble punches, becoming unresponsive and endangering the intern manning the microphone behind him. It takes repeated attempts to calm him down enough to finish his story. And so, yeah. Then the aliens left and shit, and we were like, WHOA! That was AWESOME! And it was over in time for the premiere of the 500th season of Wrestlemania! Like, how dope was that!! Dorito proceeds to talk about wrestling for two hours, the rest is of no further academic use.
	[WP] When the aliens arrived to conquer Earth, they announce that they rule via trial by combat. Whenever they invade a planet, their Emperor personally fights whoever rules that planet. They have never lost, but they didn't expect the Earth to have so many governments...	"VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. Nearing a thousand worlds, and to this day I reign supreme by right of my unrivalled and unquestionable might. As before, so again. This worlds only difference is the failure of its people to produce a champion to unite them. All others had a leader, chosen by often inferior means, a single opponent who I need but break to demonstrate my glory to their race. Here, the people have divided their planet by land mass, producing variants and leaders of their own. Early analysis suggests there may be as many as a dozen separate peoples, the highest yet seen. I will crush them as all before them. Four down. --- "VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. This world's people are absolutely insane, my first act as their ruler will be tear every governance system and political border they've devised into scrap and reduce all who participated in the mess to a gas. 84. I have slain 84 of their leaders and yet to this day I have failed to conquer even half of a single planet. Our court established a law long past, that in the event a world had multiple leaders, to ensure a battle at full strength I would defeat a single leader per a full day on our planet. To humans, this is a single battle roughly every 243 of their days. Yet still, I have yet to conquer even half of them. Mad, all of them. --- "VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. I have grown to loathe this planet and its people in kind. Upon my arrival, there were 197 recognized lands among what passes for civilization for the humans. 197 leaders to defeat. Yet here I stand, 248 victories later, the job yet undone. Their species breeds a new generation in but 120 days! This is not the fastest in even this galaxy by any stretch, but their leadership tends to last only a fraction of this time! By the time I had defeated all 197, the remaining lands had splintered and fractured so many times over that I dare not even guess how many new leaders have risen. This is not even an attempt to manipulate us! Long before this ridiculous species even dared imagine my existence they had single towns who commanded a space measured in tens of kilometers. Yet they are recognized as distinct! As sovereigns! I have remained here so long I have learned their measurement systems, another thing which I shall uproot in its entirety. I briefly entertained merely dusting the entire planet, yet to change the law which I myself placed I must defeat a clone of myself from that time, and while the humans were initially without threat as time passed I found I cannot spare the strength to defeat my old self while conquering them. Still, the majority of this planet and its people are conquered. Surely they can only fracture so far, produce only so many leaders for me to vanquish before they are broken. --- "VICTORY FOR THE EMPEROR, ETERNAL AND UNDEFEATED!!!" Again, I stand victorious. Yet for the first time, I fear it may not always be so. The remaining humans are all located in the what they call Eastern Asia, the rest conquered, enslaved, and shipped off world to ensure they could incite no further rebellions and produce no further leaders. Yet as a species they have persisted for so long. Each battle, I face a leader manifested with a new act of daring, a new blasphemy upon their own selves designed to see me defeated. Most replaced parts of themselves with metal. Grafting weapons into their very bodies, yet their feeble weaponry was ultimately of no challenge to my superiority. Now, however... they have brought forth a new atrocity. With each battle, I find myself growing weaker. With each battle, I find myself stabbed, injected with some new concoction. In nearly a thousand worlds, I have never faced its like. They call it biochemical warfare. A mere day is no longer enough to recover my strength, yet by my own law the battles cannot by halted. By a law I no longer have the strength to overturn. 973 planets did I conquer, and now, at the 974th, for the first time... I question my own victory.	"Well shit!" Ragnar surveyed the battlefield, hundreds if not thousands of governmental leaders from all corners of the globe eyed him menacingly, from Russia whos president stood shirtless and proud, though quite possibly very drunk, to Canada whos national leader simply seemed apolagetic about the whole affair to even France who... Curiously enough the French president was nowhere to be seen, strange. Ragnar considered his options, he could fight and quite likely die, a warriors death but he generally preffered to not lose his life, he could negotiate, not his strong suit he much preffered a more agressive apporach to diplomacy, often involving weaponry and a bit of pillaging, he could simply retreat, likely lose his status as overlord of Mars, but he would still be alive at least. Ragnar was no coward though and to die on the battlefield is better than to live as a coward he raised one of his hands, bright red in the sunlight and beckoned the earthen warriors forth expecting them to approach honorably, one at a time, the however is not what happened, with a mighty roar all the worlds leaders charged toward the shocked martian, weapons and even chests bared, the last thing the poor martian warlord saw before he fell to the ground was the Earth for a brief moment banded together against a common foe, and as the warlord head was raised in the air, Ragnar name went down in history as the bravest ruler mars had ever known. The dust swirled around the young martian as he walked to crimson streets of his home planet, "another day, another tylke" he though to himself as he entered the bar and took his place, settling in for yet another 17 hour shift, he bgean to tune his instrument ready for his first perfomance of the day. "Oh, there one was a hero named Ragnar the red..."
	[WP] You are an Occult Private Investigator hire by Humans and Supernatural Entities alike. Today, a heavily pregnant young woman wants you to track down the biological father of her child whom she claim is an Angel. After looking at some pictures, you recognized a good client and a Prince of Hell.	She was radiant, even though she tried not to be. She stood cowering in a corner of my office, all loose clothes and droopy ponytail. But faces like hers belong in a classic painting, standing coyly next to drooling dragons while some chump in shining armor waves a sword around. &#x200B; I'm not a fan of heavy metal. I've traded guns in for a nice plastic taser, my silver flask in for a bottle of flavored water, and the best coins have been digital for a while now. &#x200B; I looked down at the pictures in my hand, and sighed. She'd handed me over a dozen photos. Here was the Colosseum at sunset, here were the Fjords of Norway, a glacier lagoon in Iceland, a beach shack on some island. The backgrounds varied, but the foreground remained the same. Her- blonde, blue eyed, radiant- beaming up at Him. In each photo, he smirked at the camera, his dark eyes full of mischief and a tinge of criminality. I always thought Nicky had a punchable face, but I guess the ladies liked to kiss it some. &#x200B; "Please, mister. You need to find him." She said, putting one hand on the bump at her stomach. "He's in trouble, I know he is- he'd never leave me otherwise. You have to help me, you just have to. He needs to come home." &#x200B; Oh-ho-ho. Nicky the Sirer of a million bastards, abandoning a woman he'd seduced? Color me shocked. &#x200B; Her eyes changed, just for a moment, "I know what you're thinking. I can see it on your face. But it's not like that with him. He's an angel, you know? A real angel. Oh if you knew the things he's said to me..." &#x200B; The waterworks started then, and it was either hand her a tissue or call a plumber. I seated her down, gave her half a dozen "there there"s, and wondered when it'd be the right time to introduce my premium pricing plan. &#x200B; Finding Nicky wasn't going to be a problem. As a regular client, he'd introduced me to a fair share of irate husbands and outraged women, all of whom eventually agreed to a price. I didn't want to kink-shame a Prince of Hell, especially not when he had me on retainer. But I wanted to ask Nicky if he couldn't upgrade it a little. Did his fantasies have to sound like scandals from a Victorian Gothic novel? &#x200B; When I'd worked out the coin with her and sent her off with half a dozen promises and reassurances, I threw on my coat and headed out. Modern day princes of hell prefer man buns, flowery shirts, and a vegan bar on the upper east side. Go figure. &#x200B; Sure enough, there he was, squeezed into a booth by a picture window, one hand around a girl, the other gesticulating as he talked her into doing something she didn't really want to do. &#x200B; "Sorry lady." I pulled a chair backwards and plopped onto it. "Nicky's got some child support to figure out right now." Her butt swung out the door before I could take a sip of the whisky sour before me. Nicky had a fresh hand print on his cheek. &#x200B; He gave me a sullen look. "Do you have to do that every time?" &#x200B; "What? Tell them a truth or two?" &#x200B; "Spoil my fun." &#x200B; "Ah but it brings a warm glow to my heart doesn't it?" &#x200B; "The only thing emptier than your heart is your pocket." Nicky said. "Now what do you want?" &#x200B; "There's a pregnant blonde in my office who thinks you're an aaangel." I said. "Give the poor girl some closure, will you? Meet up with her next week and we can sort out payment and child visitation maybe?" &#x200B; His eyes went blank with shock, and the color drained from his face. "Blonde? Mole on her left cheek? Smile like a camera flash?" &#x200B; "I wouldn't know. She wasn't exactly all smiles." I leaned forward. "What is it, Nick?" &#x200B; "I had no way of knowing!" Nicky was sweating now. "I cut out as soon as I found out. Malone, you gotta help me. You gotta. I'll be ruined. My dick'll be cauterized. Please, man. You have to rescue me from her." &#x200B; "Whoa now." I cocked my head. "You're afraid? You?" &#x200B; "You don't get it." Nicky said, in a full panic now. "She isn't human like I thought. I should have seen it right away- she was so radiant. But I was blinded by lust. Or maybe just blinded by her. Malone, man- don't you get what this is?" &#x200B; I did now. This was bad news at 3 am. This was napalm mixed in sugar syrup. This was the start of an inter-divinity war. &#x200B; Nicky, a prince of hell, had just lied to and impregnated an arch-angel.	I stood in my office looking out the window. The rain was pouring rather heavily today. My hand went to the scar on my forehead. An involuntary action. It happened on a night very much like this. I looked at the open case files on my table. Cheating husband. Wife who disappeared. Man charged with embezzling. A werewolf charged with murders. I felt dirty. In my line of job, you only came across the worst elements of humanity and otherworldly beings. And it wore on you. You reached a point where you hated everything. For me, that point had been years ago. But this was the only hung I was good at, the only skill I had. Your stomach didn’t care if you hated everything as long as it got food. No food, no life. I wondered what that would feel like. I didn’t remember much from that night. Just some lights. I touched my scar again and walked out the door into the rain. I let the water wash over me. Hoping it would clean me. Wash away my sins. Wash away the filth that has accumulated over the years. I felt a flash of pain as the world became colourful suddenly. I fell to one knee clutching my head. I looked around me wondering what was coming. I saw a bus stop in the distance and a young woman step out. Was this real? She felt completely out of place in this fucked up piece of town. No, she looked much too pure for this place. She looked around and tentatively stuck her hand out of the shelter. She then looked towards me, no, past me towards my office and with a determined look ran towards it ignoring the rain. I got up and walked casually towards my office too. We reached there at almost the same time. I held the door open for her as she stared at me. “Go on miss.” “Thank you.” I followed her into my office not knowing what awaited me. I offered her a towel to dry off a little. She took it with thanks. I looked at her as she stood there. She was a short woman with blonde hair, the sort country songs were written about. Alas, this place was as far away as possible from the wholesome country situations. “Come on in when ready.” I left her in the hallway and walked to my office. I paused at the door, looking around my office. I still don’t know why, but I quickly took down a rather unsavoury poster I had on my wall. And covered up the wanted board. She seemed too pure to be exposed to the filth I lived in. She gave off an aura of innocence that I had to protect at any cost. One of my biggest rules is not to get emotionally involved. I had always followed this rule. No attachments with the clients and certainly not with the one I was going after. I had broken this rule without even talking to her. She knocked on the door and I hailed her in. I went to my chair and she sat down opposite to me. I took the chance to really look at her. She was more beautiful than I had previously realized. The aura of innocence was stronger than I had realized her as well. I was curious as to why a simple girl like that would need me. In an ordinary world, our paths should never cross. I sighed. Ours was not an ordinary world. I waited for a couple of minutes. She played with a key ring, clearly nervous. She looked at her hands the entire time. “So Ms...” “Jones. Felicity Jones.” “Ms Jones. What brings you to this part of the world.” A part of me wanted to scream at her to get out of this part of the world. Before it tainted her with its ugliness. “It’s.. i... uh...” she hesitated. “Ms Jones...” “Felicity. You can call me Felicity.” I smiled. Probably the best and the most friendliest smile I could manage. “Felicity, anything you say here is confidential. Trust me. I am good at keeping secrets.” “It’s just... this is embarrassing.” “Ms Jones. The worst part of my job; anything you say, I’ve seen worst, first hand.” “I... well I am pregnant.” That was quite unexpected. I stared at her face, wondering where she was going with this. “Ok. So you are pregnant. And you need my help?” “I, well, I want you to find the father for me.” “You don’t know who the father is?” She looked at me, eyes wide. “Of course I do! I mean... I thought I did.” She stopped again, her eyes dropping to her hands. “Go on Ms Jones.” “Well we had been dating for a couple of months. And then he kind of disappeared. I went by his place and they said no one by that name lived there. I went to his work and they said he quit. I don’t know where to find him. I don’t think he even knows I am pregnant.” “Have you considered that he does and that’s why he ran?” She looked shocked again. Oh my sweet summer child. I almost felt bad suggesting these things to her. She was far too pure and removed from the harsh realities of life. “No! Damien would never do that.” “Ah. So there’s the first step. His name was Damien.” “Is Damien.” “Right. So your boyfriend is missing. This seems like a job for the cops.” “I already went to the cops. They couldn’t find anything. They are still looking. On of the deputies who was on the case suggested your name to me. Off the record.” “One of the deputies? Was this deputy named Frank by any chance?” “Yes! Frank Skinner his name was.” “Well if Frank sent you then I have to help you for sure. So do you have any pictures. Or you would have done a sketch for the cops.” “Well, Damien really didn’t like to be photographed.” “They never do.” “Excuse me?” “So no photographs?” She took out a crumpled photo and handed it to me. “This was taken by a friend of mine. It was karaoke night and her husband was singing. That’s him in the right hand corner.” I squinted. A young man. Dark hair. Past his shoulders. She took out a piece of paper and handed it to me as well. “That's the sketch I did with the cops.” I looked at the picture and a shiver ran down my spine. I had worked with this man before. But I had hated myself for it every time. “So Frank probably saw this sketch and sent you to me right?” “Yes! Do you know him?” “I think I do.” I got up, moping my brow. I could just be the rain water, but more likely it was sweat. Because I was scared. And I didn’t scare easy. I rummaged through the filing cabinet and took out a picture. It showed me with a man. The man was smiling. I was not. I handed it to her. “Yes! That’s my Damien! So you know him?” I stared at her face unsure of what I should tell her. “Yes Ms Jones. I know him. He’s the devil.”
	[WP] They arrived not with a bang, but with a whisper. By the time we knew they had taken over, it was already too late. They have taken over the minds of the populous, rendering humanity unable to resist their otherworldly control. Only a few of us remain, and we are running out of time.	sometimes the most miniscule details mean the most to us humans. a quick look, an object out of place, a spoken word, a touch. a whisper crawled through our minds - a long white tendril of them - like a snake sliding through wet grass, effortless. it came fast and silent in the night, an owl hunting its prey, ruthlessly. one by one people turned, neighbor against neighbor, brother against sister. The Expanse was just what came first. as it spread, chaos followed. they targeted crucial infrastructure like water treatment and power grids, crippling the world who did not know how to go out without being spoonfed. buildings burned, the sky filled with smog, nations crumbled. only a few of us remain, pockets of life here and there. we are reluctantly optimistic; time is running out. their scouts come nearer every day, our ammunition runs low, the soil we farm is depleted. it's our last option to strike, but how can we strike against the enemy within? can they be removed? are those lost even human anymore? my name is Graham Edison, and im going to find a way to save the fucking world. (it's early, i've never done this before, i'm on my phone, and i was in the shower. this is probably shit but hey i tried)	This is a relevant continuation of a previous [prompt](https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/c7syb5/wp_writingprompt_a_man_asks_you_in_a_shakey_voice/eshgvxp/?context=3)! *** They arrived not with a bang, but with the whisper of a quiet buzz, followed by the whispers of the mechanical boring as they entered our heads. I watched it happen, countless times. They took over the minds of the populous, rendering humanity unable to resist their control. Only a few of us remain. I think we're running out of time. "You see them too?" I dreaded the question. It was the first sign that the contagion had found another victim. I've seen colleagues infected. I've seen family members infected. I've seen thousands of people infected. Some struggle as they become infected. Those are the ones I was tasked to deal with. They scream and panic and fight. We wanted the quiet ones; the ones who didn't even notice what had happened and who simply went about their monotonous lives as if nothing had changed. And in a way, nothing had. Except that at any moment, we knew we could flip a switch and take control. "Hold on," I hissed. With a pair of tweezers I carefully grabbed the fly. I placed it on the mortar and before it could fly away I crushed it with the pestle. A spark flew. The mechanical beauty of the wings and the inner-workings of a creature that was almost alive turned into a thin powder. It joined the other two. Dead wasn't quite the right word because they were never quite alive. I admit, I am partially to blame for the state in which we find ourselves. I helped the operation. I grinned as the flies bored into people's heads. I marveled at the way they took control and how each day we came a step closer to our goal. It all changed when I returned for a debriefing. "Good morning, boss," I had said when I entered the lab. We had a lively bunch, each of us dedicated to this common cause. Control wasn't just a desire; in today's world, it was a necessity. So we facilitated it. We did our research and we refined our methods and then we released our creations so that they could take control. What you don't expect is to become the problem. You see, once they were in control, they turned to us and realized we harbored doubts. They were not in control of us yet. We became the next targets. I see them everywhere now. He stared at me with glassy eyes. I knew the symptoms. I backed towards the door as they all stared at me with those emotionless masks. "Good morning," they said in unison. And they all took a step towards me. Three flies. That's what it took. One was in each of their heads but two more remained outside. And then I saw them; those tiny little pairs of creatures with their lifeless eyes fixed on me. I slammed the door behind me and they slammed like bullets against it. I hadn't gone back. "Did you get it, Patrick?" Marie was waiting patiently on the chair in my kitchen. I had extracted the ones from her head. They seemed to be from the second beta version; old and unevolved creatures compared to the ones flying about now. Ancient compared to the ones in my pocket. I wondered how long she had been in their control. I wondered how much control they still had, once the extraction was complete. The experiments had never really touched on that. Why would they? There was never really a reason to wonder what would come once we wrested back control. That wasn't supposed to happen. I nodded. I looked at the little hole in the top of her head, right where her hair was a little thinner. It was perfectly circular. I dabbed away the blood. I felt movement in my pocket. They were quiet now, having been left in the dark for so long. But sometimes they stirred. When they sensed a nearby target, they stirred. I had carefully collected them, samples of the most advanced versions of the flies that I could find. It was survival of the fittest. Those old versions died and were turned to dust. We only wanted the most evolved versions. I removed one from my pocket and carefully set it atop her head and then I patted her back. She wouldn't feel a thing. "You're all set," I said with a smile as she turned towards me. "Got all three of them." I showed her the parts that sat crumbled in the mortar. "Thanks," she answered. She sighed. "There aren't many of us left." I know that. But there were still some left. "I know." I nodded knowingly and looked at her sympathetically. "We're doing what we can." *** Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please check out more stories at /r/MatiWrites. Constructive criticism and advice are always appreciated!
	[WP] After your landlord raised your rent, you put out an ad for a roommate. A ghost answered, and though they pay on time and keep the place tidy, their presence is making your love life difficult.	"I'm sorry, I can't," Sally pushed Mark off her and rolled across the bed. "What's wrong?" Mark asked, already knowing the answer. He pulled his pajamas back on with resignation. "It's just...can you ask your roommate and his girlfriend to be a little quieter?" Sally asked. "It's really off putting." "I can turn the music up," Mark offered. The soft jazz was doing very little to block out the wailing, screaming, and thumping coming through the walls. Mark didn't know how to tell Sally that there was no girlfriend next door, and that it was in fact the ghost of Silas Whetherby Fletcher, performing his routine haunt, making all the noise. Mark had spoken to Silas about keeping the noise to a minimum, but apparently it was very important that he reenact his own death every night and if he didn't things got a little...poltergeist-y. Otherwise he was the best roommate Mark had ever had. "What are they even doing in there?" Sally asked. Being run through by a bayonet half a dozen times, Mark wanted to answer. It wasn't a fast death, he'd learned. Silas would keep this up for another hour at least. "SILAS!" He banged on the wall. "Can you keep it down?" "Sorry!" Silas's ghostly head popped through the wall, dripping translucent blood down the flowery wallpaper. Sally screamed and was gone from the apartment before Mark could offer any explanation. "Another one gone, Mark?" Silas said sadly. "Yeah," Mark said. "Guess they don't like to stay for breakfast." "You'll find a wife yet!" Silas said with encouragement. "If I may beg your pardon, I'll be in my quarters, reminiscing on my demise." His phantom had disappeared from the wall. "Goodnight, Silas," Mark called. "Goodnight, Mark," Silas answered, and began screaming again.	A shiver runs down my spine. I can feel him watching me. I pull my headphones off, and as I do, I wonder why I do it. He doesn’t make any noise. It just feels like a courtesy, I guess. “Hey, remember what I said? You can hang out in here, but you have to… you know. Make yourself known.” He appears, suddenly. I was expecting him to be sitting in his favorite chair, but as it turns out, he’s sitting next to me on the couch. This is one of the hardest things to get used to, in terms of having a ghost for a roommate. There’s no audible sound to anything he does. In movies, sudden appearances or movements are always accompanied by loud sound effects. It’s more as though you blink and suddenly you realize he was there all along. He gestures at my headphones, as though inviting me to continue. He is nothing if not polite. “No way! I’m back. Ready for the third chapter!” We’ve been playing a game together. But I went out of town for the holiday weekend, and he can’t really play by himself. He can’t hold the controller. Or even turn on the TV. And I left at a suspenseful part, so I think he’s probably eager to resume. A cut scene starts, and I watch his face as he takes it in. It’s amazing how much we can learn about each other without actually talking. I’m fascinated by his reactions. I sigh to myself as I watch him. Man, I’ve got it bad. * &#x200B; Later that week, a friend comes over for dinner. “Ugh, something about your apartment is so weird. I know you like it here, but it just gives me the creeps.” I smile. “So anyway, what do you think? Can I give him your number?” A shiver runs down my spine. It’s not altogether unpleasant. I blush. I don’t really want him listening while she talks about how I just need to put myself out there more. I mean, yeah. I don’t really date often. I guess I’m just used to having him around. What am I going to do, bring someone back to the apartment with him in the next room? He can walk through walls. He appears at will. (I know that he wouldn’t actually do that. If I wanted to bring someone over, he would be a gentleman.) But I don’t really want to. Is this crazy? How am I so enthralled by someone I’ve never had a real conversation with? I don’t even know his name. “Please? He’s normal, I promise.” I shrug. “Normal’s overrated.” * &#x200B; After my friend is gone, I do get kind of sad. I’m used to being alone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get lonely. I mean, yes, it’s awesome to have a ghost for a roommate. Especially a ghost you genuinely find entertaining to have around. And yes, I’m very attracted to him. I’m only human. I just wish he was too. I have a lot of wishes where he’s concerned, though. I wish I could touch him. Just once. I wish I knew what it was like. I wish he was here. A shiver runs down my spine. I gasp. He appears, and he’s caught me off-guard. He’s closer than normal, and I’m not prepared for it. I can see how he’s looking at me, and it’s inviting all manner of dangerous thoughts. The closer he gets to me, the less coherent they become. By the time he’s in front of me, I can barely think, and only one thought is running through my head. moremoremoremoremoremore He reaches out his hand, and I inhale softly. I can almost feel him.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	Xavier and I had been best friends since our birth. We had a boy-girl friendship that people dreamed of. We would spend hours just talking or renting dvds to watch. He had a rough home life with an abusive father who left when he was 8 and a mother who worked 3 jobs just to keep a roof over him and his sister Roses head. At times when things got rough he would look up to the sky and yell “Skylar even when I have no hope I can look up at the sky an smile remembering a joke that you made” After whatever moment that had made him frustrated or sad had passed he would come over and we would laugh, play and just have the time of our lives. He was and would always be my best friend. After I finished the eulogy I could see Xavier’s mother tearing up. I knew the part about us hangout when Xavier was down would make her emotional. I myself was barely keeping it together. After the “accident” I was never the same. We had spent 19 years of our life together and know I didn’t know what to do with myself. At the time I had gotten the call I was dancing in my pjs while listening to God know what. I was laughing and having a good time. When I got the call I answered it in a half laughing tone. My demeanor quickly changed when I heard the news. The air turned cold and my beige colored walls began to spin. Before I knew it I was on the ground. Then as fast as I hit the ground I was back up again, sprinting to take my keys and get to the hospital. Once I arrived I was greeted by his mother Natalia or Mrs.Bradshaw and his sister. They were both crying uncontrollably and with time so was I. My only best friend was now dead. People in high school had always said we should have dated but I didn’t need a boyfriend I needed a best friend. Sure we had our ups and downs but we always made it through our problems with smile on our faces. I hadn’t smiled for 5 days. His mother wasted no time setting up the funeral it gave her something, anything to do. I had been picked to do the eulogy and I am proud to say Xavier would have loved it. Know standing in my black silk dress in flats and a black veil I feel empty. Later the day Xavier’s lawyer would go over his will. Why he already had a will at such a young age is beyond me. 2 hrs. later “...and finally” continued the lawyer “Mr.Bradshaw has asked that his best friend Skylar Lozano go to his laptop in the date July 8, 2019 at exactly 10:30 pm EST and delete his search history and trash the laptop I was confused and laughing at the same time. I had no ideas why their had to be an exact time I destroyed the laptop but the request sounded exactly like something he would ask me to do. I looked at my watch and saw the time was 10:00. I hugged his mother goodbye and told her I would meet her at their house. 25 minutes later I was at his house. I looked under the ceramic frog with the huge pink tongue and took out the key for the door. As I was about to open the door I felt as if someone was watching me I saw someone at the corner of my eye and spun around only to see a kid riding his bike home. I chided myself for being silly and irrationally. I opened the door and smelt the room. It smelt like purple cookies our favorite. Xavier and I had a long time running joke on purple cookies and his mother always made it for us even 19 years later. Whenever we came back from college the first thing we saw wine walking into his house was purple cookies. The smell was intoxicating and remindem me soo much of him. I looked at the usually clean sink that was now filled with dishes. The countertops dirty and full of pictures of Xavier. The peachy wall that clashed with the leather brown couch and the black recliner gave me nostalgia. Suddenly it felt as if the walls were closing in. I was starting to feel claustrophobic and was hyperventilating. I ran in Xavier’s room, opened a window and stuck my head out. The frigid air slashed at my face and the night sky was pure dark, just as I felt inside. I pulled my head back and walked towards his laptop. I didn’t want to be in here longer then needed so I went into his laptop and opened his search engine. I went to his history and fell silent He had three recent searches. One was “What if I found proof of supernatural powers” The other one was “ How to make a fake I.D” and the last one was- OMG! OMG OMG “How to fake your death.” Not more then 3 second later I hear a ding. A message pops up that says ”GET OUT NOW” I turn around without any hesitation. But before I go I take Xavier’s laptop with me. Farting out of his room I hear Xavier’s voice say DUCK! I duck turn around and with awe see Xavier crawling towards me. Tears fill up my eyes blurring my vision as I see my best friend staring back at me. He yells “No time to explain, listen to me very carefully.” In a few minutes were going to be surrounded. We have to make a break for the car and get out of here. I’ll explain later, know hand me the keys.” I’m flabbergasted but dare not oppose. I fumble for the keys and give it to him. Just as he predicted I see a red lasers pointing at us. “Run now” Xavier yells” I don’t need to be told twice. We sprint to the car with bullets fly our way. Xavier winces in pain as a bullet grades him. He continues on sprinting though. We get to the car and Xavier begins driving. I look back at the house taking in a mental photo because I have a feeling I may never see it again. We reach the highway and I let out the breath I had been holding in. Xavier looks at me with his emerald green eyes, dark black hair and chilled tan face. I see him in a new light and feel like I never even knew him. We ride and Watch the golden orange sunset as we ride to anywhere. Xavier turns to me and begins to explain. With the golden orange sunset reflecting on him I turn to him as he begins to speak. “ The truth is”, Xavier says “I work or worked for the government. I found out they- PT.2 Later	My best friend has been the worst since first I met him. We talked. That he was caring too little, I knew by the time that he was no one to trust. Nevertheless, he gave me all his passwords. Now, I just want to spoil his memory in, preferably, soil. That for one, he is dead, I don't doubt. For one, I have seen he is dead, although his face is smashed, There is no question about it. I can prove it. Someone is pulling the joke, and it is actually I! For I will go out in public to tell them what I saw was his last accesed words. My careless nonsense will nevertheless carry an import in the names of dozens, whence there will be the little notice in the local news about his deformed hacks. I can for one gather attention towards myself. I don't see that as any cynical conduct put on my part, since I clearly see that he is the greater liar, But that I can also bring to the stories unnecessary, untrue and false witness accounts that will make us think clearly about the person, once after the time of death, when time has amended the few vortices. I for one, am done with his ghostly apparition. He is no longer with us.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	So, Wayne, my best friend, is dead. He and I were closer than brothers. We separated, went our separate ways but stayed in touch. And, when we had the chance and actually meet face to face, it was as if we’d never skipped a beat. I couldn’t make it to the funeral, but I came his brother’s house as Jay had asked. Jay and I weren’t close, but we were friendly. “Wayne wanted you to have this,” said Jay. He handed me a sealed envelop. Wayne gad done well for himself, where I had become somewhat of a financial loser. To be honest, I was hoping he’d left me some money, any amount would’ve been appreciated. Jay and I reminisced about his brother and my brother-from-another-mother, I left around 5 pm. I sat in my car, no tears, Wayne knew the love. I opened the envelope. It was just a neatly written letter, nothing rushed about it. It read: “I’m not supposed to be dead. If you’re reading this they killed me. I need you to go to the Ventura house. The password to my computer is your name in according to the alphabet. Now, I know this is going to upset you, but I know how you paid off major debt, and why you disappeared for weeks or months at a time. Now, you can know, I worked for a private company, working with our government to keep tabs on unusual people, situations, and agencies, within the government and in the public and the private sector. The computer will give you more info. Get there after reading this. They’ll get there soon and try to break into my stuff. Be careful. BTW, kill ‘em all.” “I’m 65 years old, you jerk, “ I snarled at the letter. I smiled to myself, I thought I was the best keeping secrets, turns as in everything Wayne was better. “I love you, man.” It took me 8 hours to drive to Ventura from Sacramento. I wasn’t speeding. It couldn’t have been more obvious. It looked like Wayne was hosting an undercover cop convention. There are three black sedans blocking his driveway. Two more parked on the street. I walk up to the door, ring the doorbell, then knocked hard. A young man in a navy blue suit answers the door. “Is Wayne Williams home?” I ask. The door opens a little wider. Two more men are standing in Wayne’s living room. “And who are you?” The young man asks. I handed him an old business card, Travis&Travis Collections. “I can’t discuss our business, but it is urgent he and I speak.” I said. “Tell him to come back later!” Shouts another voice, not one of the two standing watching me. “You probably heard that,” and the young man closed the door. I return to my car and go to the trunk. I roll back the trunk carpet, lift the cloth covered cardboard flooring, open a compartment alongside my donut tire. I check the Colt .45 automatic with its extended clip. I holster the .45 Magnum Smith and Wesson. Strap it around my waist like a cowboy. I stuff a speed loader in my right from pocket and both back pockets. The holster is tied to my thigh. I close the trunk and walk back to the door. I knock, wait, thus time the door opens more quickly, I. Frustration. “It’s later.” I say, Then I shoot the young man between the eyes. Before he hits the floor, I head shot the other two standing in the living room. I know there’s another to my right behind the door. I shut the door behind me and I summersault toward the dead bodies on the floor. One of them is obese, I lie behind him, he gets two more bullets, friendly fire. I see my opponent’s leg and shoot it, in the shin. He crunches forward in pain and I head shot him through the back of his head. I run down the hall, exit into the backyard, and come around to Wayne’s office. I see legs crouching on the stairs,I’m guessing he’s trying to look into the living room. I open the door, I have a key. As I enter I shoot the legs. “Oh God!” He collapses back down the stairs. He’s looking at me lying on his back. “Don’t kill me, I’m just here to hack the computer,” he says. “Who were the hey?” “I can’t say,” said the young man. “How old are you?” I ask. “I’m 29, why?” “You don’t want to see 30?” I ask. “Huh? What? I’m really hurting,” “Who are they?” I asked again. “Who the hell are you?” He screams. I pull the 44 magnum out of the holster, I place the barrel to he forehead, “What do you want? I can get you into the computer, is that what you want?” “Last time, Who are they,” as I ask I cock the .44. He starts crying. “They’ll kill me.” “No, I will.” I pull the trigger and ruin my pants and shoes. It’s sucks, I know but I rifle through all their wallets. No identification, just drivers licenses from various states. But, they all had some money, hey won’t be needing it, so I take it. I go to Wayne’s computer, put in the code and see another note. Hey, Bud, go here for fake IDs, you’re gonna have to be in the move. They’re practicing weird stuff, some would say occult, and it’s our government sponsoring it. This is like Red Skull stuff, so I know you’ll like this. Write down the addresses here. Go to my appraisal files and get your old address appraisal. I didn’t keep anything to valuable online. Nothing’s private online. Like those “dick pics” you sent that lady you were dating. “I love you man,” I said to his ghost. I took the file he told me to grab. I found some lighter fluid from Wayne’s barbecue. I covered the four bodies with fluid. I find some wine, pour it on the desk then I set everything ablaze. I make sure there’s a good fire going in every room of the house. I close the front door. Suburbia is still quiet. No one’s on the street. I go back to the trunk, I replace the weapons, I take off the pants and shoes and put on some shorts. I turn my car around. “I guess I’ll see you soon, buddy,” I say to my best friend’s ghost.	My best friend has been the worst since first I met him. We talked. That he was caring too little, I knew by the time that he was no one to trust. Nevertheless, he gave me all his passwords. Now, I just want to spoil his memory in, preferably, soil. That for one, he is dead, I don't doubt. For one, I have seen he is dead, although his face is smashed, There is no question about it. I can prove it. Someone is pulling the joke, and it is actually I! For I will go out in public to tell them what I saw was his last accesed words. My careless nonsense will nevertheless carry an import in the names of dozens, whence there will be the little notice in the local news about his deformed hacks. I can for one gather attention towards myself. I don't see that as any cynical conduct put on my part, since I clearly see that he is the greater liar, But that I can also bring to the stories unnecessary, untrue and false witness accounts that will make us think clearly about the person, once after the time of death, when time has amended the few vortices. I for one, am done with his ghostly apparition. He is no longer with us.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	I was still puzzling over Jacob’s weird search history, when this email jolted me out of my reverie. Just two words – Get. Out. The email body was blank. I’m certain you can guess who the sender was. Yes, Jacob. A million questions buzzed through my mind. I’d just come back from his funeral, lowering his badly burnt corpse into the ground for him to rest in eternal peace. It was just yesterday when I had received a call from his distraught mother, saying that there had been an explosion at the laboratory where Jacob worked part-time. And now this? Someone had to be playing a sick joke. Curiosity killed the cat, and I rummaged deeper through his personal files. Symbolism, divination, Satanism, Human Sacrifices, Demonism – there were files upon files on these occult practices. Was he researching for a book? Unlikely. Was he dabbling with these understood practices? I’d never know for certain. Was he running away from something? My mind was on overdrive when one file caught my attention. It was titled “For Jason”. It was created on 6th July 2019, just a day before Jacob’s death. What did he want to say? With trembling fingers, I double-clicked the file name. It wouldn’t open. My hands were shaking so much, it went to the file rename step again and again. I managed to open the file on my third attempt. It looked like a letter of sorts. Like the ones that we used to write in school. It read as follows: Dear Jason, If you are reading this, you would no doubt have a few questions for me. This is my attempt at answering those and putting you at ease, as best as I can. We’ve been the best of friends ever since we met. However, we were never equals. You were always the more popular, better loved of the two. Everyone knew me as Jason’s friend, and I took great pride in that. Ever since you moved away for college, I’ve been left here, all alone, in our sleepy little town. Yet, I don’t grudge you your success. You’ve worked hard for it. I don’t grudge you your great looks. You’re a born superstar. I don’t even grudge you your collection of Dragon Ball Z figurines. Hell, you hunted them down more enthusiastically than I ever did! Lately, now that I didn’t have you to hang out with, I’ve had a lot more time on my hands. And I’ve been doing a lot of research. I’ve been reading about the secret magical societies or cults, as the uninitiated call them – understanding the unknown – how to connect with the departed – how to gain immortality – and what not. I find this world to be extremely fascinating. Wouldn’t it be great to have the powers of hell at your service? I’d be the most powerful man in all this universe. I could do anything. I could make everybody love me. I could make you love me. What I couldn’t do in life, I could do in death. I never realized I would be this jealous. Not until Jessica came along. You looked at her the way I looked at you. In your eyes, I could see love. It was this love that I’d always craved for. I began reading up. How could I make you feel the same way for me? “Please. Get. Out. Of. My. House!” – Another email from Jacob popped up. It nearly shocked me out of my skin. I couldn’t believe what my eyes were reading. I’d thought all our encounters in that cabin behind school were nothing more than childish curiosity. I continued to read on: My new friends had the answer – human sacrifice. To please the Lords from those deep pits with raging fires, I had to offer them something that I loathed with all my heart and something that I loved with all my being. You know where I’m getting at, right? Did Jessica say she was going home a few days ago? But she didn’t call you after reaching, as you would’ve asked her to, no? Have you been able to reach her since? I could just climax thinking of what my friends and I did to her. The way she kicked and screamed and struggled. You know, the Dark Lords love that – Fear. Mind you, I didn’t even so much as touch her. But it was such a release, watching her pay for all that she had attempted to steal from me. She lies now, at the bottom of a ditch, not more than ten yards from you. I didn’t know if Jacob was telling the truth. Jessica had indeed gone back home and hadn’t returned my calls. But how could this be? This was Jacob that we are talking about – my best friend. What had I done to hurt him so? Would I have acted differently had he confessed his love for me? I’d been a fool to ignore what had always been there in plain sight. “I can’t do this to you. I love you. They’re coming. Please leave.” – Another email chimed its arrival. And now it is time for me to sacrifice you. But don’t worry, you wouldn’t feel so much as a needle’s prick. I asked them to make it quick. And once I please the powers that be, I will ask them to return you to me, my beloved. And we shall begin our life, together, in a place far away from here. I’ve arranged for everything – new names, new jobs and a new house – my friends are extremely resourceful. Now all you need to do is die. Waiting for you Jacob He seems to have gone nuts, I thought to myself. How can any of this mess be true? Drenched in sweat, trembling with fear, I was about to call out for his mother, when I heard one last email come in – “Too late!” Even before I could open it, I felt a cold hand rest upon my shoulder…	It’s been 23 days since Ian’s house was destroyed by an Interdimensional Hell Beast (henceforth to be referenced as the IHB), summoned by a group of mad cultists calling themselves the Interdimensional Hell Beast Summoners, an accurate yet depressingly unimaginative name for any sort of cult. Since the destruction of Ian’s house, which I avoided being caught in thanks to his admittedly ill-planned email to himself rather than a forward warning against visiting his home in the first place, I have been in hiding. The cultists are looking for me, well, not me specifically, but the leech of a supposed to be dead best friend I am carrying around like an unwanted growth. After his house was obliterated by the IHB, and after I narrowly escaped the carnage, I returned home and found Ian in my apartment covered in blood, wielding a glowing sword towards me in a frenzy. I was admittedly in shock, and instinctively reacted by throwing a lamp at his head. The lamp proved effective, and knocked Ian unconscious, allowing me to confiscate the sword and clean up at least some amount of the blood. After he regained consciousness, Ian regaled me with fantastical tales of great battles fought against deadly monsters like the one that destroyed his home, other worlds that have actual real magic, and how he was fighting to save our world from an invasion of creatures like the IHB. I told him he was probably too late, considering one almost killed me and destroyed his house, and he responded by winking at me and telling me “all’s not lost friend.” Once again, in case you forgot, that was roughly 23 days ago. Since that day, nothing of note has happened besides some meddling from some exacting cultists. Though despite harbouring ancient secrets which can be used to summon other worldly monsters they appear to be about as effective as any other cult when it comes to getting results. After 20 attempts to break into my apartment, one group succeeded but was easily fended off by a long piece of wooden dowel. Ian was useless, claiming that the Champion’s Claymore was meant for monsters alone, and wetting it with the blood of a mere peon would anger the Gods. I found that to be strange, as Ian had always been an atheist before now. I digress, it is now the 23rd day of being in hiding, I woke up as I always do and went straight to my kitchen to quench my thirst. I poured a glass of water, then looked over to the couch where Ian always sleeps. Though he wasn’t there, and neither was half of my apartment. A giant chunk of my apartment was missing, as if a bite was taken out of it. I walked over to the newly defined edge of my apartment and noticed a trail of carnage leading to the hole in my building, not dissimilar to the destruction left behind by the IHB. When I reached the edge, I found myself peering over to see below. I could see Ian on the ground, covered in blood, it would have been presumptuous to say he was dead if the bottom half of his body wasn’t missing. Beside him lay the gigantic corpse of the IHB, with the Champion’s Claymore sticking out of its exposed brain, it seemed as if the sword had been used to carve a hole to the monster’s brain while it was still alive. While I never knew Ian to be the overly violent sort, maybe the battle drew out the worst in him. All in all it was a distressing image to be confronted with so early in the morning, so I went to the bathroom to relieve myself, and wash up. After which, I moved to a new apartment and reburied my best friend who was also now the saviour of Earth. Though after all the trouble he caused me I released his browsing history to the world and that accolades with quickly rescinded.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	The funeral was a good funeral. Instead of mourning and grieving people told stories about the good times they had with Frank. A live band played some of his favourite music and we were celebrating his life. This was the way that he would wanted it to be. He had lived a fun and happy life and that was a thing that most of us could learn from him. He found a job he liked, which paid him enough money for his many climbing adventures and allowed him to live a comfortable life beside it. He found a woman he loved and even had a kid. Then all of the sudden he disappeared, no one expected it and everybody was in tears. This young man, friend of many and lover of life, had just disappeared. He always said “I am going to live a long and healthy life, I will get about 80-90 years old with my loving family beside me.” Everyone believed that and most of us wished the same. We had searched for him a long time but no one found anything. We didn’t, the cops didn’t, the government didn’t, no one did. He had disappeared like he just went up in dust, poof, gone. The only thing that came back from him was a letter directed to me. Dear friend, Please do me a favour and delete my search history. Everything will become clear and I trust that my secret is safe with you. Frank. It was a short letter which brought up many questions and the next day I headed over to his house. Tiffany was working and Thomas was at school so no one would bother me. I turned of the alarm and entered the house with the spare key they gave me. It felt like betrayal, sneaking inside my friends house but he asked me to do it so I did. I started up his laptop and instantly I was greeted by about forty google tabs. ‘How to fake your death,’ ‘how to create a fake ID,’ ‘Map of New Mexico,’ ‘Aztecs,’ ‘Tenochtitlan,’ ‘Aztec treasure.’ It all had something to do with disappearing and the Aztecs, what was he planning. Well, it was quit obvious, he had faked his death so that he could go to New Mexico and do something with the Aztecs, but what was he doing. Was he on a treasure hunt? What was his plan. He had often talked about the Aztecs, he admired their well functioning society but it always seemed like a funny hobby, nothing serious. Them something happened, an unknown email address sent me an email. “Get out.” Was all it read. I looked around me and checked the room but there weren’t any cameras. I double checked, for some stupid hidden spy shit but again I found absolutely nothing. Another email came. “Get out NOW.” It read. Now I started to get nervous I wrote an email back asking if Frank was the sender. No reply. I copied all the google links and emailed them to myself so that I could have a second look at them. Then I closed the tabs, deleted his history and went back to my house. I also saved the email address. It had a weird name. Several numbers@several numbers.gmail.com. The numbers looked strange. It were to many numbers and to random numbers to make sense. What could they be? A few days later it hit me. Could they be coördinates? I opened google maps and surely the coördinates let to a point about two days driving from here. I knew that place, we had been there a lit, we went climbing there. If he would have left a hint to were he was it would be there. ———————————— I will later fix the email adress to some actual numbers. Feedback is always welcome.	It’s been 23 days since Ian’s house was destroyed by an Interdimensional Hell Beast (henceforth to be referenced as the IHB), summoned by a group of mad cultists calling themselves the Interdimensional Hell Beast Summoners, an accurate yet depressingly unimaginative name for any sort of cult. Since the destruction of Ian’s house, which I avoided being caught in thanks to his admittedly ill-planned email to himself rather than a forward warning against visiting his home in the first place, I have been in hiding. The cultists are looking for me, well, not me specifically, but the leech of a supposed to be dead best friend I am carrying around like an unwanted growth. After his house was obliterated by the IHB, and after I narrowly escaped the carnage, I returned home and found Ian in my apartment covered in blood, wielding a glowing sword towards me in a frenzy. I was admittedly in shock, and instinctively reacted by throwing a lamp at his head. The lamp proved effective, and knocked Ian unconscious, allowing me to confiscate the sword and clean up at least some amount of the blood. After he regained consciousness, Ian regaled me with fantastical tales of great battles fought against deadly monsters like the one that destroyed his home, other worlds that have actual real magic, and how he was fighting to save our world from an invasion of creatures like the IHB. I told him he was probably too late, considering one almost killed me and destroyed his house, and he responded by winking at me and telling me “all’s not lost friend.” Once again, in case you forgot, that was roughly 23 days ago. Since that day, nothing of note has happened besides some meddling from some exacting cultists. Though despite harbouring ancient secrets which can be used to summon other worldly monsters they appear to be about as effective as any other cult when it comes to getting results. After 20 attempts to break into my apartment, one group succeeded but was easily fended off by a long piece of wooden dowel. Ian was useless, claiming that the Champion’s Claymore was meant for monsters alone, and wetting it with the blood of a mere peon would anger the Gods. I found that to be strange, as Ian had always been an atheist before now. I digress, it is now the 23rd day of being in hiding, I woke up as I always do and went straight to my kitchen to quench my thirst. I poured a glass of water, then looked over to the couch where Ian always sleeps. Though he wasn’t there, and neither was half of my apartment. A giant chunk of my apartment was missing, as if a bite was taken out of it. I walked over to the newly defined edge of my apartment and noticed a trail of carnage leading to the hole in my building, not dissimilar to the destruction left behind by the IHB. When I reached the edge, I found myself peering over to see below. I could see Ian on the ground, covered in blood, it would have been presumptuous to say he was dead if the bottom half of his body wasn’t missing. Beside him lay the gigantic corpse of the IHB, with the Champion’s Claymore sticking out of its exposed brain, it seemed as if the sword had been used to carve a hole to the monster’s brain while it was still alive. While I never knew Ian to be the overly violent sort, maybe the battle drew out the worst in him. All in all it was a distressing image to be confronted with so early in the morning, so I went to the bathroom to relieve myself, and wash up. After which, I moved to a new apartment and reburied my best friend who was also now the saviour of Earth. Though after all the trouble he caused me I released his browsing history to the world and that accolades with quickly rescinded.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	The funeral was a good funeral. Instead of mourning and grieving people told stories about the good times they had with Frank. A live band played some of his favourite music and we were celebrating his life. This was the way that he would wanted it to be. He had lived a fun and happy life and that was a thing that most of us could learn from him. He found a job he liked, which paid him enough money for his many climbing adventures and allowed him to live a comfortable life beside it. He found a woman he loved and even had a kid. Then all of the sudden he disappeared, no one expected it and everybody was in tears. This young man, friend of many and lover of life, had just disappeared. He always said “I am going to live a long and healthy life, I will get about 80-90 years old with my loving family beside me.” Everyone believed that and most of us wished the same. We had searched for him a long time but no one found anything. We didn’t, the cops didn’t, the government didn’t, no one did. He had disappeared like he just went up in dust, poof, gone. The only thing that came back from him was a letter directed to me. Dear friend, Please do me a favour and delete my search history. Everything will become clear and I trust that my secret is safe with you. Frank. It was a short letter which brought up many questions and the next day I headed over to his house. Tiffany was working and Thomas was at school so no one would bother me. I turned of the alarm and entered the house with the spare key they gave me. It felt like betrayal, sneaking inside my friends house but he asked me to do it so I did. I started up his laptop and instantly I was greeted by about forty google tabs. ‘How to fake your death,’ ‘how to create a fake ID,’ ‘Map of New Mexico,’ ‘Aztecs,’ ‘Tenochtitlan,’ ‘Aztec treasure.’ It all had something to do with disappearing and the Aztecs, what was he planning. Well, it was quit obvious, he had faked his death so that he could go to New Mexico and do something with the Aztecs, but what was he doing. Was he on a treasure hunt? What was his plan. He had often talked about the Aztecs, he admired their well functioning society but it always seemed like a funny hobby, nothing serious. Them something happened, an unknown email address sent me an email. “Get out.” Was all it read. I looked around me and checked the room but there weren’t any cameras. I double checked, for some stupid hidden spy shit but again I found absolutely nothing. Another email came. “Get out NOW.” It read. Now I started to get nervous I wrote an email back asking if Frank was the sender. No reply. I copied all the google links and emailed them to myself so that I could have a second look at them. Then I closed the tabs, deleted his history and went back to my house. I also saved the email address. It had a weird name. Several numbers@several numbers.gmail.com. The numbers looked strange. It were to many numbers and to random numbers to make sense. What could they be? A few days later it hit me. Could they be coördinates? I opened google maps and surely the coördinates let to a point about two days driving from here. I knew that place, we had been there a lit, we went climbing there. If he would have left a hint to were he was it would be there. ———————————— I will later fix the email adress to some actual numbers. Feedback is always welcome.	"James you mother f-" An explosion rattled my skull as the wall to my left blew in violently. Splinters flew threw the air as annoying non-lethal shrapnel. I flew through the air, not from the explosion but by my own volition as streaks of light poured through in uneven lines. Curses flew between clenched teeth as I breathed a few words of protection, a prayer, a song, a poem and an ongoing sutra as the implications of my friend's actions came to mind. "Where is he?!", a grating voice that echoed a thousand scorned souls reverberated in my mind. I ignored it and powered through the painful psychic feedback as well as the backdoor. Man, that woman didn't know how to keep her voice down! "Where is James Sullivan?", the voice screamed once again and in the background of my deafened senses I could see sparrows and pigeons drop from the sky all around during my escape. Luckily none hit me nor my car parked down the road. My feet pumped the ground harder and faster than they ever had in my entire life and the mounting pain in my skull doubled as I finished the last words of my prayer. Gods this one was a strong one, James owes me a contract after this! I turned the key and my car roared to life. Unfortunate as the being thrashing inside my "best friend's" house also began roaring as it rushed out to follow the sound. My hand grabbed the shift stick, throwing it into a quick reverse. Gears barely clicking into place, I stamped the accelerator flat onto the deck. Car shooting backwards like some sort of deranged bullet as finally the creature smashed out of the house. A hideous being with six fleshy legs bursting from a chitinous body that ended in a scaled serpent's tale. Where the head would be was the upper half of an emaciated lady with scraggly hair and eyes far too big and white for even those nightmarish rapunzel nest to hide. The ghastly figure caught sight of my moving car and gave chase. My instincts screamed and dumb luck came in for the assist as I threw the car into a one-eighty only possible in the movies on a two lane suburban road. She screamed and so did I while pushing the 8 cylinders of my car to their limits. Through the howling pain and the torturous screams I thought one thing."How many times do I have to tell you James? Don't date daemons!"
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	The funeral was a good funeral. Instead of mourning and grieving people told stories about the good times they had with Frank. A live band played some of his favourite music and we were celebrating his life. This was the way that he would wanted it to be. He had lived a fun and happy life and that was a thing that most of us could learn from him. He found a job he liked, which paid him enough money for his many climbing adventures and allowed him to live a comfortable life beside it. He found a woman he loved and even had a kid. Then all of the sudden he disappeared, no one expected it and everybody was in tears. This young man, friend of many and lover of life, had just disappeared. He always said “I am going to live a long and healthy life, I will get about 80-90 years old with my loving family beside me.” Everyone believed that and most of us wished the same. We had searched for him a long time but no one found anything. We didn’t, the cops didn’t, the government didn’t, no one did. He had disappeared like he just went up in dust, poof, gone. The only thing that came back from him was a letter directed to me. Dear friend, Please do me a favour and delete my search history. Everything will become clear and I trust that my secret is safe with you. Frank. It was a short letter which brought up many questions and the next day I headed over to his house. Tiffany was working and Thomas was at school so no one would bother me. I turned of the alarm and entered the house with the spare key they gave me. It felt like betrayal, sneaking inside my friends house but he asked me to do it so I did. I started up his laptop and instantly I was greeted by about forty google tabs. ‘How to fake your death,’ ‘how to create a fake ID,’ ‘Map of New Mexico,’ ‘Aztecs,’ ‘Tenochtitlan,’ ‘Aztec treasure.’ It all had something to do with disappearing and the Aztecs, what was he planning. Well, it was quit obvious, he had faked his death so that he could go to New Mexico and do something with the Aztecs, but what was he doing. Was he on a treasure hunt? What was his plan. He had often talked about the Aztecs, he admired their well functioning society but it always seemed like a funny hobby, nothing serious. Them something happened, an unknown email address sent me an email. “Get out.” Was all it read. I looked around me and checked the room but there weren’t any cameras. I double checked, for some stupid hidden spy shit but again I found absolutely nothing. Another email came. “Get out NOW.” It read. Now I started to get nervous I wrote an email back asking if Frank was the sender. No reply. I copied all the google links and emailed them to myself so that I could have a second look at them. Then I closed the tabs, deleted his history and went back to my house. I also saved the email address. It had a weird name. Several numbers@several numbers.gmail.com. The numbers looked strange. It were to many numbers and to random numbers to make sense. What could they be? A few days later it hit me. Could they be coördinates? I opened google maps and surely the coördinates let to a point about two days driving from here. I knew that place, we had been there a lit, we went climbing there. If he would have left a hint to were he was it would be there. ———————————— I will later fix the email adress to some actual numbers. Feedback is always welcome.	(haven’t wrote in a while, forgive me. Also new to this) I pushed away from the desk, feeling a cold shiver crawl down my spine. Jake had been talking about a new cult he had found online, on the dark web. He said the followers were drawing people in through promises of riches. That the only price they had to pay, simply, was a human life. Then you could have any thing you wanted. I had laughed it off, while Jake kept looking into it. But before Jake died, a close friend of ours had committed suicide. None of us were surprised. Tim had severe depression, and had tried many times before. Yet the page he was on, was the cult’s homepage. And a fake ID...? “Jake, you didn’t...” I whispered. A little box popped up with a beep, flashing the contents. I gasped, at what it held. ItalionStalion69 “Get out.” I didn’t even bother trying to go downstairs. I locked the bedroom door, and opened the window. My adrenaline was pumping. No one knew his password for his email. A thump interrupted the silence. Someone was in the house. The cult? A thief? Either way I wasn’t going to stay around to find out. Crawling out the window, I held on to the edge to make sure no one was outside, waiting. No one was. Could it just be one person? The handle to the door rattled. I needed to go, now. Dropping, my breath left me as I landed hard. Nothing I hadn’t done before, when Jake and I would sneak out when we were 14. I broke into a sprint, running along the side of the house. My goal was to make it to the small forest, that was behind the cul-de-sac where Jake’s house was. An arm came out of no where, slamming into my throat. My feet left the earth, and I slammed onto my back, stunned. The owner of the arm stepped over me, grabbing my shirt and lifting me up. I was struggling to breathe as I met Jake’s cold, dead emerald eyes. “Sorry, Jess.” His fist slammed into my face, and my body went limp as consciousness faded. Did I really mean nothing to him? Even tho I had sacrificed Tim for him, so he could get into law college? Then darkness swallowed me. And I knew nothing more.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	“What if I betray you?” he said, quietly, sitting on the curb, a few minutes before his mom would come out and call for him to go back in. Sometimes his brain would take him to places like this, dark, random places you wouldn’t expect my happy-go-lucky best friend to ever be. “What?” “Will you understand? All the things we talk about, how we’ll always be there for each other, will it still be always the same?” “Why would you ever betray me?” “I wouldn’t,” he said. “But what if I did?” “I’d still be your friend,” I said. “Because I know it couldn’t be you, doing that to me. I’d know something must have gone seriously wrong with you, and I’d try to fix it.” “You’d do that for me?” “Of course. Wouldn’t you?” \- I don’t understand morbid curiosity. I mean, I guess it’s interesting, on some level, things that have to do with death, with the end. But for me, all that stuff just fills me with the deepest sadness. So many lasts. The last Nat Geo he’d ever get. The last drunk voicemail from his ex girlfriend, cryptically saying she wished she could have “saved him.” The last dishes he’d ever forget to wash, in the sink. Getting rid of all these things felt wrong. It felt like they should be preserved, like when they were gone, he’d fade out entirely too. There I was, at his computer. His email was open, and before I could look away, several of the titles jumped out to me. Leaving the Circle of the Baphomet – 7 Steps to Redemption You saved – How to register a fake passport in the US system There were several odd titles, and I scrolled down, feeling guilty as I did so. Then, suddenly, the page refreshed. One new message appeared. SORRY. YOU DESERVE BETTER was the title of the new email. There was no subject. “A new life,” a voice behind me said. “For a coward.” I turned around to see a dark, hooded figure, only a cruelly smiling face visible through the folds of his robes. “Who are you?” I asked. But somehow, deep down, I already knew. “The only way to leave the Circle is to find one to take your place. A more pure hearted soul than yourself. He always spoke highly of you.” “What?” The figure approached, and then reached a hand out to me. I felt a deep chill enter the room. “Do you still think he was your friend?” the figure asked as the spirits entered me… \- [r/penguin347](https://reddit.com/r/penguin347)	(haven’t wrote in a while, forgive me. Also new to this) I pushed away from the desk, feeling a cold shiver crawl down my spine. Jake had been talking about a new cult he had found online, on the dark web. He said the followers were drawing people in through promises of riches. That the only price they had to pay, simply, was a human life. Then you could have any thing you wanted. I had laughed it off, while Jake kept looking into it. But before Jake died, a close friend of ours had committed suicide. None of us were surprised. Tim had severe depression, and had tried many times before. Yet the page he was on, was the cult’s homepage. And a fake ID...? “Jake, you didn’t...” I whispered. A little box popped up with a beep, flashing the contents. I gasped, at what it held. ItalionStalion69 “Get out.” I didn’t even bother trying to go downstairs. I locked the bedroom door, and opened the window. My adrenaline was pumping. No one knew his password for his email. A thump interrupted the silence. Someone was in the house. The cult? A thief? Either way I wasn’t going to stay around to find out. Crawling out the window, I held on to the edge to make sure no one was outside, waiting. No one was. Could it just be one person? The handle to the door rattled. I needed to go, now. Dropping, my breath left me as I landed hard. Nothing I hadn’t done before, when Jake and I would sneak out when we were 14. I broke into a sprint, running along the side of the house. My goal was to make it to the small forest, that was behind the cul-de-sac where Jake’s house was. An arm came out of no where, slamming into my throat. My feet left the earth, and I slammed onto my back, stunned. The owner of the arm stepped over me, grabbing my shirt and lifting me up. I was struggling to breathe as I met Jake’s cold, dead emerald eyes. “Sorry, Jess.” His fist slammed into my face, and my body went limp as consciousness faded. Did I really mean nothing to him? Even tho I had sacrificed Tim for him, so he could get into law college? Then darkness swallowed me. And I knew nothing more.
	[WP]After the funeral for you best friend, you went to his house to delete his browser, following his wishes. In his computer, you see these last accessed pages: one about occultism, one about how to create new IDs and one about faking one's death. A minute later, get an email saying "Get out".	(Note: Forgive the grammar mistakes, this clocked in at a larger word count than I thought it would be) Adam lived the life I feared I would’ve had if my parents hadn’t kicked me out after high school. Twenty years ago we were best friends. We played Magic at lunch, watched anime after school, and loitered at the local hobby store challenging anyone who think their collectable armies can beat our custom painted ones. Like most friends we grew apart after school, only checking in on Facebook every once in a while. I didn’t know he died until his mom found my phone number in his address book, I had to unfollow him on Facebook because too many of his yuri Facebook group posts where showing up on my feed when I browsed at work. His funeral was at the crematorium and consisted of his mother, Elizabeth, myself, and the employee flipping the switch. I didn’t think I could feel guiltier about removing him from my life. After Elizabeth collected the Urn I caught up to her before she made it to her bus stop. “Hey, Ms. Low, I can give you a ride back to your place. I mean, you shouldn’t have to take the bus home. Just let me know where you’re living now.” I offered, it was the least I can do. “Oh, are you sure Max? I don’t want to be a burden t-“ “No burden at all, it’s the least I can do.” We walked to the parking lot in silence. I didn’t know what to say or bring up. Luckily Elizabeth broke the silence soon after I unlocked the car from the remote. “Oh, fancy. Is this one of those smart things the news keeps talking about? It looks bigger than I thought.” I chuckled. “Yeah, it’s a two-seater smart car. You can fit a lot in it, I have no issues with groceries. I bet Tim is more of a truck type?” I remembered when I hanged around their house Adam’s father Tim would always have a broken down truck or two he’s working on to resell. He would’ve made fun of my Eco-Smart Hatchback car. “Oh, Tim passed away four years ago.” Shit I thought, this is awkward. “I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine how hard this must be for you. First your husband and now your son.” “Yeah, I don’t… I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get by. Adam was the one paying the bills with his job.” My ears perked up as we pulled out of the crematorium. “Oh, he had a job? Doing what?” “Something online, government researcher? I don’t know exactly but he was in his room all the time and paid the bills every month along with take out every few days. With him gone, I think I need to find work again.” I didn’t know what to say, I mean good for Adam. After following Elizabeth’s instructions I pulled into the driveway twenty minutes later. Same childhood home, I remember bombing down Mary Hill with our bikes racing to get to his house after going to McDonalds for dinner. I smile, those were fun times. Now I steam tofu and veggies for dinner. “Hey Max, thanks for the ride. Can you do me another favour?” “Yeah anything.” “Can you check his room and let me know if there is anything valuable to sell? Those pawn shows often have those toys you and Adam are into on them and they sell quite a bit. It’ll save me time from having to find som—“ “Of course I can do that for you. It’s been a while since I played with toys, but I can look them up for you.” I cut her off, she sounded nervous about asking. I didn’t expect a senior citizen to be knowledgeable on Dragon Ball Z figurines and Warhammer. Walking into my best friend’s childhood home is almost exactly how I remembered it. The stale stench of cigarette smoke forever etched into the walls and ceiling of the one storey house. The place looked like how it did in the 90’s, stuck in the 80’s with beige wallpaper and brown furniture. The only thing new about the place is the cat piss smell and a half-dozen cats laying around the front room. My hand goes to cover my mouth, as I silently gagged. I didn’t remember the place being this rundown, I knew it wasn’t as nice as my parents or my condo that I live in downtown, but this was depressing. “Oh, I’m sorry. The place is such a mess. Since I heard about the accident on the highway, I figured what’s the point of cleaning up if it’s just me and the cats?” I smiled as wide as I can. “Oh, it’s fine Ms. Low.” “Would you like some tea or coffee before you start?” “No, I think it’ll be best if I get started. I need to be back home to cook dinner for the girlfriend.” I mentioned, she smiled as she escorted me down to the basement where Adam’s room was. “Oh, you have a girlfriend now? That’s nice. Adam he had… trouble with girls.” She off handily mentioned. “Yeah, been seeing her for two years now. I’m thinking about proposing to her soon.” I smiled, she frowned. “I guess I won’t know what it’s like to be a grandma…” She stammered. She walked back upstairs leaving me alone with Adam’s room. Adam’s room was next to the laundry room. It’s slightly better than a prison cell with food stained cement flooring, plywood walls put up by his dad dividing the laundry room and his room, and a broken futon bed slumped on one side with evidence of rat shit littered everywhere on the shelving ledges. His computer monitor is still on with a naked purple haired anime chick wrestling with tentacles as his screensaver. Here after hearing about his job I thought I totally misread Adam’s life. In terms of stuff, Adam had long boxes of comic books & magic cards along with a shelf full of Warhammer Figurines. I decided I would start there. Taking a long box and setting it on his desk, I took a look at his keyboard to decide if I wanted to type all of these out on my phone or risk my health by touching it. It looked clean-ish. No password on his computer. I opened up Chrome and typed in google, before I even got to O his bookmarks popped up for Gatekeepers Guardians, Gaia Online, Go-Daddy, and other websites beginning with a G. He’s categorized so many, the effort he put into bookmarking puts me to shame, I just google what I want. Like Facebook, I type in Facebook in google instead of going to the URL. I clicked on Gatekeepers Guardians since it was tagged as work, it brought me to a message form auto logging me into his account. The message board was scattered in discussion, there’s posts talking about the second coming of Christ, the rise of Gehenna, and the dominance and religious superiority of the white race. It was like a right-winged conspiracy theory occult message board. “What the fuck Adam.” I whispered, looking back at his posts. He talked about blowing up a Mosque in a city a few stateliness over, and how he can’t find a partner who believes in the spiritual superiority of the white race. I laugh when people say the N word in inappropriate contexts, but this is next level fuckery. I closed the page in disgust. I’ve heard of the stereotype of people staying online all the time in their mother’s basement being weirdos, but this. It was too much. I’m kind of glad he died in the car accident reading what he’s been typing online. Sickening. Still I need to see where I can sell off his stuff for his mom. I opened google and typed in Where to but before I put sell comic books, the last few searches of Where to buy fake IDs and Where to buy a gun popped up. Frozen, I couldn’t possibly imagine my best friend who I grew up with playing D&D and being outcasts all throughout school can grow up to be so different from me. A pop up notification from G-Mail alerting me of a new private message on Gatekeepers Guardians displayed, and on instinct I opened it. The message contained a google map image of Adam’s house with the words FOUND YOU on it from the username Gatekeeper. I got up from the chair, and left Adam’s room. “Elizabeth. We need to call the cops, like right now.” Freaked out about what I’ve seen, the authorities can deal with this. “Why, what’s going on?” She answered, sitting on the couch watching home renovation shows. “I think there ma-“ Riiiiing the house phone rang. “Don’t answer that!” I yelled. Confused, she answered it on reflex. “Hello?” PART 2 IN COMMENTS	Get out Funny, real fucking funny. Had to be Daniel, he knew I was coming over here to clean out Roger's house. Roger's parents had asked me at the funeral in front of him. No one else knew I was going to be here today. No idea how he got ahold of Roger's phone, but the joke was pretty tasteless. &#x200B; Roger's place was a mess, it always was. I'd been coming over here every weekend afternoon and most weeknights for years, and never once had I seen it clean. The man would occasionally do the dishes before bringing a girl over, but any hope that he'd vacuum had died years ago. The debris of a bachelor life was still strewn about the living room; he'd been dead for five days now, and the half eaten Chinese was well past starting to attract flies. Awesome. &#x200B; My phone buzzed again, I quickly drew it from my pocket and glanced at the screen, Roger's number again. &#x200B; Seriously dude, no time to explain this right now but get the hell out of my apartment. Fast. &#x200B; I was gonna have to kick Daniel's ass; sometime after I cleaned this living room. Not particularly wanting to get a jump on that job, I nudged the bathroom door open. Lovely place once I'm sure, before half the bulbs on the vanity had burned out and a dozen drunken misses from emergency toilet dives. There was no way anyone was giving back the security deposit from this place. My pocket buzzed again, but there was no way I was going to give Daniel's joke the time of day. &#x200B; Manfully ignoring the waste in the bathroom I opened up into the main, as in only, bedroom; and my brain froze right along with my breathing. &#x200B; I didn't know where to look first. The floor was as clean as I'd ever seen it, but only because the carpet had been ripped up, removed entirely. The bare plywood of the subfloor had been painted a dark matte black. The bed, end tables, tv, desk, computer - all the accessories that had made this room Roger's favorite spot to veg out were gone. Everything was gone. &#x200B; The bedroom was maybe a dozen steps across square, and laid in the center of it was the sort of thing you'd expect to see in some B grade horror movie. A six foot wide red circle painted on top of the black in a red, viscous substance that I refused to believe. Pentagram scribed inside the circle, candles at each nexus, the sort of thing I'd have drawn up at 15 if I'd wanted to summon a demon. I've never moved so fast as I did slamming the bedroom door shut, retreating back into the bathroom and pulling my phone out. No idea who I should call about shit like that, the police? &#x200B; My eyes were drawn to the messages prominently displayed on the lock screen, both from Roger. &#x200B; Just please promise me you won't open the bedroom door. &#x200B; Seriously man, get the fuck out of there and call me, I'll try to explain but DO NOT OPEN THAT BEDROOM DOOR. &#x200B; I tried to level out my breathing, Daniel couldn't have pulled off something like this even if he had wanted to be a dick. Hell, he could barely organize a weekend barbecue. Whatever was going on, I wasn't going to solve it here in this apartment. I would man up and deal with whatever this was later, but right now it was time to leave this apartment and get a drink. &#x200B; The door opened behind me. and I heard a metallic click on the tile. My back had been to the door, phone in my hand when I felt something sharp rest on my shoulder. &#x200B; "Hello there friend," the cold venom pumped into that word made my blood run cold, "I don't suppose you could help me find the worm that used to live here? He and I have a few things to discuss."
	[WP] You’re a necromancer in 2019. Everything supernatural is out in the open, and people flock for immortality, power, and wishes. However, necromancers are avoided like the plague. No one is comfortable with someone who deals with death. How do you make a living, do you act as a medium, or worse?	God I miss cigarettes, Patrick thought to himself. The one thing they never tell you when you go litch is how your sense of taste, smell, and touch rots away with your flesh. He didn’t need to sleep either, so he often found himself sitting at the local park bench for days at a time scaring the shit out of early morning joggers and children out playing late. It was funny at first, but even that lost its kick when the police started showing up to question the mummified skeleton in a superman t-shirt and cargo shorts. Patrick took out one of the many packs of smokes he occasionally bought because old habits really do die hard. He shrugged and lit one with a simple fire spell he learned from a fairy handing the scrolls out like tissues to promote some local concert or whatever. He couldn’t care less. Even if he did show up, the audience would run screaming. Patrick couldn’t blame them though, If he were perfectly immortal like them he too would run from the only thing that could kill him. Patrick took a drag from the cigarette held between his teeth and watched as the smoke blew out his ribcage. He missed the good old days before the emergence, when he still was the crazy occult nut raising an army of the undead. God he felt powerful back then; dark dealings with eldritch gods, discovering forgotten tomes of magic, and the occasional tussle with the group of crime solving kids. He felt special, he felt alive. Now that he learned that every unicorn, gnome, and sharp eared kid can become immortal by drinking dragon’s blood, he felt like a chump. They didn’t have to spend 20 years searching through cryptic texts, learn the fickle art of blood sacrifice, or perform the mental gymnastics required to split your consciousness so you could spiritually possess your own dead body. Before Patrick could continue swamping himself in pity, a brutish looking man wearing a uniform black suit sat down next to him. Patrick couldn’t help but notice the suitcase the man set inconspicuously equidistance between them. “Sup Bruno,” said Patrick as he flicked what was left of his cigarette into the trash bin. The man remained silent. “Didn’t expect you guys to be back so soon. What is it this time, rogue leprechaun? Some merlin trying to summon an old god through his toilet?” said Patrick. The man got up and brushed off his suit before he walked away, disappearing as he walked behind a streetlamp. Patrick shrugged and put the suitcase in his lap. As always, it was unlocked. Inside was the usual thick wad of cash, a date, a location, and a picture. The violet fire in Patrick'**s hollow eyes flickered for a second. “I guess ill be going to that concert after all.”	Nobody likes a necromancer. We're a bridge to the afterlife, and no one likes how those effects manifest in the world. It varies, but results range from lowered temperatures to freezing levels, bones rattling in our presence, poltergeist effects in the area or even just turning every place you walk into haunted. My affliction, for better to worse, is just that if you're next to me, you'll incessantly hear moans of the dead. I've long since learnt to ignore it, but it does make others jittery. That's why I chose to fake my credentials and pretend that I'm a priest from some ancient, eldritch god that has been forgotten to men. There's a surprising overlap in the abilities between clerics and necromancers. Both professions can act as mediums to the afterlife(though us necromancers are superior naturally, not being constrained to a single deity's afterlife), both can resurrect the dead(well, what they're resurrected as differs: clerics resurrect them as they were in life, but I maintain there's not much difference for most of my customers between when they were alive or as the zombies they are now) and we can both curse people(necromancers once again superior). Really, the one true difference is that necromancers don't have to beg a god every time they want something, and if you have the know how, it's easy to fool a layman into thinking the quirks of a necromancer are the quirks of the god you serve. However, every now and then, I have customers like the one now, who are skeptics, and just lack the trust between people that keep us together in these extraordinary times. "So, you can help me talk to my grandmother in Heaven again," the man said doubtfully, "I've spoken to lots of priests, but they said she's not there. Are you really sure you're up to this?" I coughed even as I looked through my notes on the data I had divined on my client's grandmother's soul. She wasn't in Heaven, she had somehow passed onto the Norse afterlife and become an Einherjar... How had his grandmother died again? I consulted my notes. Ah, fell in battle due to a heart attack while trying to kill a cockroach. Did that really fit the criteria of dying in battle? Regardless, it was impossible to summon a soul from over there, due to the Norse's fixation on spending every moment of the Einherjar's time on preparing for the final battle. Still, the issue wasn't that. It was that my client was absolutely convinced his grandmother was in Heaven, which was why he had come to me despite many priests from the church telling him otherwise. I frowned, thinking how I should approach this. Part of the deception was telling customers what they wanted to do. Sometimes, being honest led to them accusing me of being a fraud when I didn't conform to their world view. I would have to let him down gently and slowly, so that he didn't take it as me attacking his grandmother when i told him the truth. I lay down my notes and announced solemnly, "No problem, I'll connect to your grandma. My god, He Who Has Been Forgotten, was best buds with the big G back in the day. Now listen, listen to the words from beyond the grave, that mortals should not hear. You have to feel the words, not hear them." In tandem, the moans of the ghosts around me grew louder, as the man tried to strain his ears to listen. "Is that... moaning?" He asked hesitatingly. "No, that's the chorus of angels. Listen harder." I sighed, "Seems like this is going to take a while, for you to hear your grandmother."
	[WP] You’re a necromancer in 2019. Everything supernatural is out in the open, and people flock for immortality, power, and wishes. However, necromancers are avoided like the plague. No one is comfortable with someone who deals with death. How do you make a living, do you act as a medium, or worse?	I sit in the cafe, hold the mug to my cheeks, let the steam fog my spectacles. Ah. Warmth. I hate it when my face gets cold. Winter sucks. I should buy earmuffs but they're ugly. Oh well. The chair is soft and new-ish, quite a sturdy thing. The table has some spillage from the last customer but it's okay, I have a tray. And a spoon. The hot chocolate is a bit on the thick side but still drinkable. Will I ever get used to it? The stares, whooshing heads when my sight meets theirs, chairs screeching as they turn away in dismay. Yes. This hot chocolate is tasty and I'm enjoying it and I'm a necromancer. Scary, scary hot chocolate drinking necromancer. At least my feet are getting cosy now. "Folk like her should be locked away," I hear. I knock my head back and let out a chuckle. The world is weird upside down. People are looking at me weird. I look right back. "Folk like me help folk like you," I say to no one in particular since the owner of the voice isn't actually obvious. A man, yes. But there are several. Bearded, non-bearded, tall and handsome, average and smart, short and old. I keep scanning. There. What a glare. It should win awards. He stands tall among pathetic people who cower like little kittens. "Who, pray, do you help?" the man is feeling brave, I mean, look at his wild eyes. "Alright," I tilt my head back and jump to my feet. Hm, yuck. Dizzy spell. Whatever. I look around at the sheepish crowd. "Anyone here with a long lost pet?" The room fills with discombobulated murmurs and raised eyebrows. I hope there's a volunteer. Please. "Me," a young girl holds up her hand. Her mother swats it back down. "Okay, sure. What's your name, my dear?" I call across the silenced crowd of terrorised people who don't know what to do with themselves. A scary necromancer is going to, uh, destroy them all! Bwa-ha-ha? I don't know. "She's not telling you her name," the mother retorts. Yeah, okay. Fine. "Anyone else, oh brave folk?" I smirk at the man who stood up in the first place. "Freaks like you should be hanged," he says. "And then brought back to life by my friends or family to take revenge," I shrug. "You little---" A particularly uninteresting man stands up and pats the shoulder of the brave warrior. "Let me," he says. The boring guy actually gets the idiot guy to sit down. And the crowd is quieter all of a sudden. Weirdly quiet. But the dude isn't even handsome? So how's he got respect? I don't get it. It's weird. "My name is John Holmes and I had a pet dog. Why, can you bring it back?" I crack my knuckles. Oh yeah, perfect. I will continue....	Nobody likes a necromancer. We're a bridge to the afterlife, and no one likes how those effects manifest in the world. It varies, but results range from lowered temperatures to freezing levels, bones rattling in our presence, poltergeist effects in the area or even just turning every place you walk into haunted. My affliction, for better to worse, is just that if you're next to me, you'll incessantly hear moans of the dead. I've long since learnt to ignore it, but it does make others jittery. That's why I chose to fake my credentials and pretend that I'm a priest from some ancient, eldritch god that has been forgotten to men. There's a surprising overlap in the abilities between clerics and necromancers. Both professions can act as mediums to the afterlife(though us necromancers are superior naturally, not being constrained to a single deity's afterlife), both can resurrect the dead(well, what they're resurrected as differs: clerics resurrect them as they were in life, but I maintain there's not much difference for most of my customers between when they were alive or as the zombies they are now) and we can both curse people(necromancers once again superior). Really, the one true difference is that necromancers don't have to beg a god every time they want something, and if you have the know how, it's easy to fool a layman into thinking the quirks of a necromancer are the quirks of the god you serve. However, every now and then, I have customers like the one now, who are skeptics, and just lack the trust between people that keep us together in these extraordinary times. "So, you can help me talk to my grandmother in Heaven again," the man said doubtfully, "I've spoken to lots of priests, but they said she's not there. Are you really sure you're up to this?" I coughed even as I looked through my notes on the data I had divined on my client's grandmother's soul. She wasn't in Heaven, she had somehow passed onto the Norse afterlife and become an Einherjar... How had his grandmother died again? I consulted my notes. Ah, fell in battle due to a heart attack while trying to kill a cockroach. Did that really fit the criteria of dying in battle? Regardless, it was impossible to summon a soul from over there, due to the Norse's fixation on spending every moment of the Einherjar's time on preparing for the final battle. Still, the issue wasn't that. It was that my client was absolutely convinced his grandmother was in Heaven, which was why he had come to me despite many priests from the church telling him otherwise. I frowned, thinking how I should approach this. Part of the deception was telling customers what they wanted to do. Sometimes, being honest led to them accusing me of being a fraud when I didn't conform to their world view. I would have to let him down gently and slowly, so that he didn't take it as me attacking his grandmother when i told him the truth. I lay down my notes and announced solemnly, "No problem, I'll connect to your grandma. My god, He Who Has Been Forgotten, was best buds with the big G back in the day. Now listen, listen to the words from beyond the grave, that mortals should not hear. You have to feel the words, not hear them." In tandem, the moans of the ghosts around me grew louder, as the man tried to strain his ears to listen. "Is that... moaning?" He asked hesitatingly. "No, that's the chorus of angels. Listen harder." I sighed, "Seems like this is going to take a while, for you to hear your grandmother."
	[WP] You’re a necromancer in 2019. Everything supernatural is out in the open, and people flock for immortality, power, and wishes. However, necromancers are avoided like the plague. No one is comfortable with someone who deals with death. How do you make a living, do you act as a medium, or worse?	I sit in the cafe, hold the mug to my cheeks, let the steam fog my spectacles. Ah. Warmth. I hate it when my face gets cold. Winter sucks. I should buy earmuffs but they're ugly. Oh well. The chair is soft and new-ish, quite a sturdy thing. The table has some spillage from the last customer but it's okay, I have a tray. And a spoon. The hot chocolate is a bit on the thick side but still drinkable. Will I ever get used to it? The stares, whooshing heads when my sight meets theirs, chairs screeching as they turn away in dismay. Yes. This hot chocolate is tasty and I'm enjoying it and I'm a necromancer. Scary, scary hot chocolate drinking necromancer. At least my feet are getting cosy now. "Folk like her should be locked away," I hear. I knock my head back and let out a chuckle. The world is weird upside down. People are looking at me weird. I look right back. "Folk like me help folk like you," I say to no one in particular since the owner of the voice isn't actually obvious. A man, yes. But there are several. Bearded, non-bearded, tall and handsome, average and smart, short and old. I keep scanning. There. What a glare. It should win awards. He stands tall among pathetic people who cower like little kittens. "Who, pray, do you help?" the man is feeling brave, I mean, look at his wild eyes. "Alright," I tilt my head back and jump to my feet. Hm, yuck. Dizzy spell. Whatever. I look around at the sheepish crowd. "Anyone here with a long lost pet?" The room fills with discombobulated murmurs and raised eyebrows. I hope there's a volunteer. Please. "Me," a young girl holds up her hand. Her mother swats it back down. "Okay, sure. What's your name, my dear?" I call across the silenced crowd of terrorised people who don't know what to do with themselves. A scary necromancer is going to, uh, destroy them all! Bwa-ha-ha? I don't know. "She's not telling you her name," the mother retorts. Yeah, okay. Fine. "Anyone else, oh brave folk?" I smirk at the man who stood up in the first place. "Freaks like you should be hanged," he says. "And then brought back to life by my friends or family to take revenge," I shrug. "You little---" A particularly uninteresting man stands up and pats the shoulder of the brave warrior. "Let me," he says. The boring guy actually gets the idiot guy to sit down. And the crowd is quieter all of a sudden. Weirdly quiet. But the dude isn't even handsome? So how's he got respect? I don't get it. It's weird. "My name is John Holmes and I had a pet dog. Why, can you bring it back?" I crack my knuckles. Oh yeah, perfect. I will continue....	My name is Devin. I was born into a world that knew nothing of the supernatural. I am a necromancer. On the surface it seems bad, sure. I chose to become a homocide detective, a very successful homicide detective. I'd come to a crime scene, wait for a chance to be alone with the victim, and simply asked what happened. Well, then the damn government screwed it all up when they revealed the aliens in Area 51 are in fact, real. Then they gave full disclosure about Area 63 in Alaska, vampires are real. Area 29 I'm Colorado, werewolves. Area 14, ghosts. That one was actually amusing, turned out Ghostbusters was a documentary, thousands of New Yorkers were put into witness protection. Now the captain knows how I close cases so quickly. I haven't had a comendation in years, I'm just expected to ask the victim who killed them. There's a video crew that documents the session, a warrant is issued, and the suspect is arrested. The prosecution just shows the video in court, it's lazy to be frank. I just don't like it. It's not as though I can escape this life. Each supernatural species formed a guild of sorts to support each other. The government dictates each guild memeber be tracked, I have an identity tattoo on the back of my hand. The gravestone seems tacky as hell, but I wasn't consulted about the designs. The result, I'm locked into this life, couldn't even get a job flipping burgers if I wanted to.
	[WP] You’re a necromancer in 2019. Everything supernatural is out in the open, and people flock for immortality, power, and wishes. However, necromancers are avoided like the plague. No one is comfortable with someone who deals with death. How do you make a living, do you act as a medium, or worse?	I sit in the cafe, hold the mug to my cheeks, let the steam fog my spectacles. Ah. Warmth. I hate it when my face gets cold. Winter sucks. I should buy earmuffs but they're ugly. Oh well. The chair is soft and new-ish, quite a sturdy thing. The table has some spillage from the last customer but it's okay, I have a tray. And a spoon. The hot chocolate is a bit on the thick side but still drinkable. Will I ever get used to it? The stares, whooshing heads when my sight meets theirs, chairs screeching as they turn away in dismay. Yes. This hot chocolate is tasty and I'm enjoying it and I'm a necromancer. Scary, scary hot chocolate drinking necromancer. At least my feet are getting cosy now. "Folk like her should be locked away," I hear. I knock my head back and let out a chuckle. The world is weird upside down. People are looking at me weird. I look right back. "Folk like me help folk like you," I say to no one in particular since the owner of the voice isn't actually obvious. A man, yes. But there are several. Bearded, non-bearded, tall and handsome, average and smart, short and old. I keep scanning. There. What a glare. It should win awards. He stands tall among pathetic people who cower like little kittens. "Who, pray, do you help?" the man is feeling brave, I mean, look at his wild eyes. "Alright," I tilt my head back and jump to my feet. Hm, yuck. Dizzy spell. Whatever. I look around at the sheepish crowd. "Anyone here with a long lost pet?" The room fills with discombobulated murmurs and raised eyebrows. I hope there's a volunteer. Please. "Me," a young girl holds up her hand. Her mother swats it back down. "Okay, sure. What's your name, my dear?" I call across the silenced crowd of terrorised people who don't know what to do with themselves. A scary necromancer is going to, uh, destroy them all! Bwa-ha-ha? I don't know. "She's not telling you her name," the mother retorts. Yeah, okay. Fine. "Anyone else, oh brave folk?" I smirk at the man who stood up in the first place. "Freaks like you should be hanged," he says. "And then brought back to life by my friends or family to take revenge," I shrug. "You little---" A particularly uninteresting man stands up and pats the shoulder of the brave warrior. "Let me," he says. The boring guy actually gets the idiot guy to sit down. And the crowd is quieter all of a sudden. Weirdly quiet. But the dude isn't even handsome? So how's he got respect? I don't get it. It's weird. "My name is John Holmes and I had a pet dog. Why, can you bring it back?" I crack my knuckles. Oh yeah, perfect. I will continue....	God I miss cigarettes, Patrick thought to himself. The one thing they never tell you when you go litch is how your sense of taste, smell, and touch rots away with your flesh. He didn’t need to sleep either, so he often found himself sitting at the local park bench for days at a time scaring the shit out of early morning joggers and children out playing late. It was funny at first, but even that lost its kick when the police started showing up to question the mummified skeleton in a superman t-shirt and cargo shorts. Patrick took out one of the many packs of smokes he occasionally bought because old habits really do die hard. He shrugged and lit one with a simple fire spell he learned from a fairy handing the scrolls out like tissues to promote some local concert or whatever. He couldn’t care less. Even if he did show up, the audience would run screaming. Patrick couldn’t blame them though, If he were perfectly immortal like them he too would run from the only thing that could kill him. Patrick took a drag from the cigarette held between his teeth and watched as the smoke blew out his ribcage. He missed the good old days before the emergence, when he still was the crazy occult nut raising an army of the undead. God he felt powerful back then; dark dealings with eldritch gods, discovering forgotten tomes of magic, and the occasional tussle with the group of crime solving kids. He felt special, he felt alive. Now that he learned that every unicorn, gnome, and sharp eared kid can become immortal by drinking dragon’s blood, he felt like a chump. They didn’t have to spend 20 years searching through cryptic texts, learn the fickle art of blood sacrifice, or perform the mental gymnastics required to split your consciousness so you could spiritually possess your own dead body. Before Patrick could continue swamping himself in pity, a brutish looking man wearing a uniform black suit sat down next to him. Patrick couldn’t help but notice the suitcase the man set inconspicuously equidistance between them. “Sup Bruno,” said Patrick as he flicked what was left of his cigarette into the trash bin. The man remained silent. “Didn’t expect you guys to be back so soon. What is it this time, rogue leprechaun? Some merlin trying to summon an old god through his toilet?” said Patrick. The man got up and brushed off his suit before he walked away, disappearing as he walked behind a streetlamp. Patrick shrugged and put the suitcase in his lap. As always, it was unlocked. Inside was the usual thick wad of cash, a date, a location, and a picture. The violet fire in Patrick'**s hollow eyes flickered for a second. “I guess ill be going to that concert after all.”
	[WP] Shortly after first contact, small groups of humans joined crews of exploratory vessels. Overall, the experiences have been rewarding. Today, though, a non-sentient beast killed a member of your expedition. Your crewmates are about to learn another human rule: "If it kills a human, it dies."	Part 1: Tek’shri and Filsti’shri were running through the final shutdown protocols for the drop ship their team had been assigned for the data gathering mission. White they were waiting for their AI to finish the last steps, they observed the two humans, Ira and Max, making small talk while they set up their field lab equipment, hauling various crates out from the cargo hold. If Tek’shri and Filsti’shri were lucky, the humans would finish setting up the camp before the ship’s computer went into low-power standby. The gravity on planet 51433980 was significantly heavier than the artificial gravity on vertahlian ships, but Ira and Max seemed to be unfazed by it. Their skeletal frames were surprisingly strong for creatures without exoskeletons. Soft looking bodies with such a strangely elastic outer layer - Tek’shri had been at once fascinated and repulsed by human expressions. Their faces moved too much. It had taken the first team of negotiators and xenobiologists an incredible amount of time just to develop an expression database for non-verbal communication. Luckily they had verbal form communication. They weren’t always so lucky. Humans were still relatively new to the Intergalactic Trade Partnership, but they were eager creatures. Seemingly fearless despite their squishy-looking bodies. They could be cautious, of course, but sometimes it was over the strangest things. Without exoskeletons, humans were exceptionally vulnerable to damage from the lightest of contact. They had to be extra careful when touching a human directly. Vertahlian spines could slice open their outer layer so easily, it was amazing their species managed to survive the harsh environments of the universe. Not only survive, but thrive. Later, after their base camp was finally set up and all of their field equipment had been inspected, Filsti’shri had decided to set to work immediately, taking soil samples and recording their molecular structure and properties. Tek’shri was cleaning out a new set of vials, making sure they were absolutely sterilized. “Hey, Tex?” Ira called out to Tek’shri from across their base camp. Tek’shri was both annoyed and amused by the shortened name. From another vertahlian, it would be insulting, but from a human, it was a sign of affection or acceptance. Ira had a longer name. Three names, in fact, but Ira insisted on being addressed by the first part only. Using full names, Ira had said, sometimes made a human feel like they were in trouble or had done something socially unacceptable. Tek’shri didn’t want the already vulnerable humans to feel further anxiety. It was easy enough to use the shortened versions of their names. “Yes, Ira?” “Is it alright if Max and I take a hike down to the stream and collect some water samples?” Tek’Shri tapped at the display screen thoughtfully, scrolling through the preliminary survey data. There didn’t appear to be any reports of large predatory animals or vegetation in the area. It should be safe. “That would be acceptable.” “Aye, captain!” Ira made a short salute and the facial muscles pulled back, showing teeth. Tek’shri shuddered inwardly. Humans were such grotesque creatures.	The great war was devastating to humanity, but sometimes there is a silver lining to be found even in tragedy. As earth's surface was ravaged by nuclear explosions, to the others, who had by chance flown by, this was like a signal flare, and it got their attention. The only ones who were left after the bombings stopped where those far away from the large cities, far away from "civilization", as some used to call it. To them, the other's spacecraft must have seemed like a life raft, send to them by Lord Jesus in their hour of need. Before the war, they had not been the most educated or open minded, looking at strangers with healthy distrust, but being, they had to assume, the last survivors of the human race, and, more importantly, their great nation, they greeted the travellers proudly under their star-sprangled banner and when the other's offered to take some survivors with them, many jumped at the opportunity to carry their superior culture to the stars. The others studied their new companions with great interest, and even though this partnership did not come without friction, much was learned on both sides. What was striking to the others was the set of rules the humans seemed to live with, the most important of which were the ten commandments of the Lord. Just when the others thought they had learned most all there was to human rules, there came the fateful day. Jim Bob Jones Jr. was out on a hunting trip, as was his favourite pastime since the old days on earth. The latest life bearing planet their craft had come upon was ripe with big game, the most interesting (and delicious) of which was the Darupian swamp buffalo - and Jim Bob had just spotted a calf that was apparently without it's mother and it's herd. Not one to shy away from an opportunity, Jim Bob took his shot. He was just about to disembowel his kill when he found out in the worst of ways that Darupian swamp buffalos did not tend to leave their young ones alone for extended periods of time. His mangled body was found soon after, barely identifiable by what was left of his clothes and his rifle. It was on this day the others learned an as of then unknown human rule. Humans did NOT take kindly to one of their kind getting killed. The next day, hundreds of swamp buffalos had already been hunted down and plans were in the working to rid the planet of this plague by the end of the year. The others, blinded by their misguided belief that all life was equally precious, tried to put a stop to this righteous campaign, but they, too learned what it meant to step between mankind and it's freedom. The battle was short, but fierce and mankind's indomitable will prevailed. Now equipped with a star ship, the galaxy at their fingertips, one thing was clear to the survivors of humankind. The homeland may lie in ashes, but America's spirit will survive!
	[WP] During a archaeological dig a cave that seems to have been man made is discovered. Within the cave are 20 people in pods with labels at the feet of each of the pods. The people are ordered in rows from the year 0-2000 with each person a century apart.	"Look at them, Thomas" said Elle with amazement in her voice, "how on Earth could they have gotten here?" She strolled past stopping at each one to gaze at the pod's contents. Behind, what she could only assume as glass, were people frozen in place, frozen in time. A man dressed in garb from the middle east, another in chainmail that still had blood stains along the sleeve near his hand. Another man dressed in Japanese Samurai armor, his katana lying at his side. "How is this possible?" "The line between possibilty and reality is a blurred one, my dear" said Thomas so matter of factly. "What you're seeing here is a preservation attempt." "Fascinating!" Elle placed her hand to the glass of the pod. Inside a woman, ordained in vibrant silk and a Hindu Bindi, looked as if she were simply sleeping. "They all appear to be roughly the same age." "That's a very astute observation, Miss Grimes. I'm pleased to see your pattern recognition coming into play" said Thomas, his voice calm and steady. Elle let out a little scoff. "I'm certainly no Indiana Jones, but my Archaeological education included pattern recognition in the basics." She crouched down on her knee to observe the base of the pod. "Look at this strange writing, Thomas, I've never seen anything like it." At the base of the pod was a cylindrical metal base. It's colour resembled an oil wash, possibly a result of unknown metallic alloys. Depressed in the metal were odd symbols that baffled Elle. She swung her satchel to her front and pulled out a notebook. Quickly flipping through pages full of drawings and field notes she stopped on a page with notes on languages and writing. "Find anything interesting?" asked Thomas. "I can't make heads or tails of this." she said, flipping another page in a mix of frustration and fascination. "Come now my love, did I not teach you anything in my lectures?" said Thomas as he laid a hand on her shoulder. Elle reached up with her free hand to hold Thomas's, she turned and smiled at her husband. "You've taught me many things, but university was 8 years ago. I'll record what I can for now and consult my notes later." She let go of his hand before turning back, rummaging once more in her bag. Sure brought out a tablet and unlocked the screen and quickly began taking photos. Only after a few the device glitched and the screen went black as the battery let out a small electric whine. "Goddamit! I think it's fried." Muttered Elle in anger as she rose to her feet. She put the tablet back into her bag along with her field journal. She stormed down the hallway towards more pods. "Yes" agreed Thomas, "there seems to be a odd electromagnetic field in this chamber. Perhaps there's something more on the bases that could help us." "Possibly but it would still take time to... wait a second." She paused, staring at the pod in front of her. Enclosed was a man that could have been plucked straight from Vogue. His hair was styled in a messy but stylish fashion, the kind that used to make women swoon. His clothes were clean and form fitting, accentuating his muscles beneath his shirt. "Look here, Thomas." Elle turned to motion Thomas towards her. "Look at his shirt." she said excitedly turning back to the pod. Emblazoned in bold white letters on a maroon polo were the words 'American Eagle 2000.' "Ah yes, quite right. This man appears to be from the late 20th or early 21st century." stated Thomas. Once more strolled over to Elle his hand right hand grasping his other wrist in front of him in relaxed fashion. "What do you make of him?" "Well, if he's from the late 20th or early 21st century then he's nearly 100 years old! But how? He appears to not have aged a day past 30." Elle moved back from the glass, a smile crawled over her lips as the cogs in her mind began to turn. She moved to the right, before stopping cold. Before her on the ground was a metallic disc, the same oily shine as the other metallic base, she stared at it a moment before the smile that was once forming faded. "Thomas, darling" Elle began, her voice cracking slightly as she swallowed, "you said before this was a preservation attempt... What did you mean by that?" Elle asked as she turned around to see her husband. Thomas was standing right behind her, his face as calm as collected as it had always been. "I meant precisely what I said, my dear." He took a small step towards Elle causing her to step backwards a bit. "Preservation of those I love." Elle panicked. She tried to step around Thomas but she couldn't move. As she tried to speak she couldn't. She was paralyzed, only her eyes could move as she looked at Thomas with terrified realization. The air immediately around her began to cloud in a fog that solidified into clear glass. Inside she was screaming but nothing came out before an intense exhaustion rushed over her like a wave upon the sand. She fought against it futilely her husband fading from view as her eyes closed. "I will save you and preserve you until the time is right." Thomas kissed his hand and pressed it to give glass. "Sleep well, my dear, the reckoning is almost nigh."	“Fascinating...” I gasp in amazement as I pass by each pod at a time. This cave was dug and expanded by a Jewish family before Jesus Christ was born a year, to bury a beloved family member. Twenty people, each belongs to the century they had lived in, and they all had the same blood flowing in their veins. Unfortunately, the last heir of this family has passed away recently, so the secrets of their mysterious tomb can never be solved. “June.” One of my colleagues call me. “Look at the pods’ details.” I look at the first pod, which is labeled in the old language Aramaic. It resembles the kind of pods in sci-fi movies, except the it is made out of wood, and there is a sheet of metallic glass covers the front. The labels below the pod state who is inside the pod, their occupation when they were alive, and finally their birth and death year. The guy in the first pod used to be one of Jesus’s disciple. His life expectancy wasn’t that long, we figure that he was executed. Then, we move to the second pod, third pod,... each pod was made from different materials, but there are always sheets of metallic glass cover them. The more we study about these pods, the more we know about this mysterious Jewish family. The person in the second pod, supposedly lived in the 2nd century was a Roman emperor. The person in the third pod was a Chinese warlord,... Up until the 20th pod, the person lies in there was a spy for the USSR, they died heroically in World War II. But some of these stuffs don’t make any sense. The history doesn’t have any records about a Jewish warlord in China, or Marie Antoinette had a step-sister who fought in the Haitian revolution. And the strangest thing of all: no one knew about this place except the family, but they never stepped into this place after World War I. Also, on the death bed, the last Heir of the family revealed the location of this cave, and he also said that there were only nineteen coffins. So... Who built these pods? And who had stepped inside here? And who are these people? Why weren’t they in the history book? There are so many questions in my head, so many mysteries revolving around this bury cave. “What about the local town? Maybe they found the cave by accident.” A person asks. “No, no, can’t be. The cave was blocked by a giant rock, and this is in a thick forest.” “How the heck didn’t we learn about a pirate that almost assassinated the King of Spain and overthrew the monarchy in school?” Discussion and theories start, archeologists and researchers begin to theories and deduct the mysteries. For my part, I approach one of the pods. The metallic glass looks new and shiny, even the material hasn’t worn out despite the humidity and the temperature in here. We don’t want to open the pods out since it’s against the last heir’s will, but to unveil the mysteries, that is a must. I touch the pod and slide my hand across the surface, until my fingers accidentally press something on the pod. There is a loud “click” and the glass begins to slide apart, revealing the person inside. “Uh, guys?” I call out to the rest of the team. “I did a thing.” Inside that 15th pod is something we never expect,.The person that is in here used to be a pope. Instead of finding a skeleton, there is a corpse, or that’s what I think. The skin isn’t pale, the flesh hasn’t rotten yet, someone had used a method of body preservation that makes him look like he is sleeping. When one of us approaches the pod, the pope’s eyes suddenly fling open, and he slowly rises from the pod. The horrifying scene makes all of us frozen in place, everyone looks shocked and bewildered. This can’t be happening... “Oh my God...” “Ah...” The guy in the 15th pod (a pope) stretches his body. “I’ve been sleeping a long time, tell me, what year is it? Is it 1800 yet?? Do we have flying horse yet? ” The guy speaks excitedly in Italian. “No...” Jake, the only person in the team who knows how to speak Italian. “It’s 2019... Horses still can’t fly.”
	[WP] Back then, you are just the fastest speaker on earth. But now you are deemed to be the strongest wizard because you can chant your spells faster than anyone could.	Magic, as written, is but a crude expression of the language of magic, the true essence of manipulating the ebb and flow of the secret energies and forces around us. To me, at least, when I looked at an expression of magic on the page, it was like looking at a musical score, and it seemed obvious to me what the author was trying to say and what the specific effect of the manipulation would be. I could cast my spells faster and more accurately, changing them almost at whim in ways my instructors had never seen. I danced and sang, my hands flowing through the cobwebs of aether around us. The group of master mages stood nearby, stunned, looking at the remains of the wooden dummy across the practice yard. The night was noticibly cooler as I had dragged the warmth out of both the air and the ground, the plants and all the insects in their burrows. Far more than the spell called for, really. Easy. "Can you do that again, Apprentice?" I frowned... there was still plenty of heat around, but things would get mighty cold in an ever expanding radius around me as I gathered power. I shrugged and hoped the instructors were rugged up against the chill. "!" I pronounced clearly, pointing at the next dummy. My next breath came out as a vapour, in the suddenly, shockingly cold snap. I mercilecely sucked ever joule I could out of the area around me, killing plant and insect alike. I reduced the temperature to arctic levels, just above what a human could survive. The magic was alive around me as it somehow, impossibly, amplified the heat I'd taken, and with thunder like that of the hammer of the gods themselves, a blue ball of superheated plasma engulfed the dummy. I was not expecting the brightness or thunderclap which flattened everyone and left us without sight and hearing for several minutes. When we had more-or less collected ourselves, we found a perfect glass surface in the shape of the ball of plasma, and nothing at all of the dummy itself. In all, one instructor was permanently blinded, and another lost his left eye from a splinter. Two continue to hear "ringing" in their ears. Three bones were broken, there were multiple bruises and contusions. The lead instructor beamed, and said, "The boy is truly talented. He'll be Grand Magus in ten years. You see that? The power! The speed that he speaks!" Some of the school thought I should be punished for injuring so many people, but as the lead instructor said, "That's why he's enrolled in school and not the Grand Magus. To learn a little finesse."	"And let there be light." A faint red glow started appearing in the sky. Yellow rays started penetrating the thick layer of clouds. The sky has parted, and the sun appeared in all its glory. "Do you still want to do this?" said Zafir. He has demonstrated his magical words, and the battle has yet to start. Just like all those that came before him, this opponent seemed confused and weak. Zafir wanted just this once to let him say a few words. It has gotten pretty boring winning every battle, but the stakes were to high. "You're unwell" said the man. An interesting though unoriginal curse choice thought Zafir. "It is you that is unwell. I can see your leaky nose and swollen eyes." The man seem resigned to his fate, this was going to end fast. Zafir has started with a fast barrage of blows: "Your're weak and unable. Your tongue feels heavy. Your chicks feel unbearably hot. Your sexual fantasies rule you. You're a bad person, and therefore should cease to exist" The man looked at Zafir, scared. no. It was something else that Zafir detected. He did not like what he saw. "You're a bad man." said the man. Zafir couldn't let such a blatant attack go unanswered. "I'm good, and you and everyone else knows that. It's your weakness that makes everything that comes out of your mouth a lie. You're repenting deep in your heart!". This was a good defense Zafir knew, the attack was strong but the defense was more than enough to protect against it. The man was visibly shook witnessing the skill of Zafir. "That wasn't it" cried a small voice in Zafir's head. "This man is not a match for me" thought Zafir for himself trying to squash the doubt. "They're not your enemies, don't you see?" the incessant thoughts kept piling up. Zafir wanted to go away, the man has been beaten. He did not have a high enough skill level to cause any serious curse damage. "Please stay here" said the man, in a commanding voice. "Haven't you had enough" called Zafir. "Dude, help is on the way. Just stay where you are, and I promise you everything will be fine" answered the man. &#x200B; Zafir couldn't believe what he saw. The man kept attacking even after he was done for. OK, if this man wishes to continue on this path, then I'll make him regret it, thought Zafir. "No one is coming besides a weakness in your legs and the shivers in your spine". Zafir did not like what he saw in the man's eyes. It wasn't fear as he expected given the terrible curses he inflicted upon the man. It was.. that couldn't be it.. or could it be? pity? Why would this man feel sorry for a strong magical warrior such as himself. Zafir had survived jumping from 10 foot pole when he tested his newly acquired athletic abilities. He believed he was immortal, having conquered the demon realm and convincing the daemon voices to stop his torment. This was a new stage. He needed to win this fight and many others after it, he needed to gain power, to rule the mortals, to bring heaven or hell for those who deserve it. &#x200B; Zafir had no doubt about his abilities. This man needed to die, this wasn't a normal battle. This man was a very dangerous opponent. &#x200B; "Die you weak soul. DIE! DIE! DIE!" screams Zafir. &#x200B; The man was not phased. &#x200B; "They're on their way, just relax. I promise you everything will be fine." &#x200B; Zafir could hear a sound of sirens. Straight away he understood what happened. The world governments have made an alliance against him. They know just how powerful he is now. It was foolish of him to expect the secret of his power to be unknown for long. He needed to run away and regroup. &#x200B; This man could handle his curses, who knows how many such people the government has working for them. &#x200B; "I've lost this battle. But I'm not going to lose the war" announced Zafir and opened in a run towards the alleyway. &#x200B; "I'm the greatest curse caster the world has ever seen, they will see. One day they will fear me!"
	[WP] For first time it is possible to document all lightning strikes on earth in real time. While going over the data you detect a strange pattern. On a whim you run it through the supercomputer to confirm your theory. You were right, It is... music.	I get bored easily. One night, I was at home in my apartment just staring outside the window, tapping my fingers to the rain, feeling the steady pulse and thrum, thrum, thrum of the drops as background noise. Then, though, came the flash of lightning and moments later the crash of thunder. I jumped a little, as it caught me off guard, but as the storm continued and I focused on the rain beat against my window, the crash of thunder was a background beat for me. There was a certain....elegance...to the sound that caught my ear. It took me months to gather the data, but I began collecting lightning strikes and intensity level through the region, then the state. I wanted to look at the world, but my computer didn’t have that kind of power. Next step was to play with intensity and duration. It took me weeks of working with the data to realize I’d been looking at it all wrong. It’s the globe is the key. I had to contact some friends and start getting national data. I mapped out the strikes against greenwhich mean time, latitude and longitude. The higher north of the equator, the higher the pitch. I got excited as something resembling a beat began to form around the Florida keys. I groaned inwardly at the realization that the keys were the key. After weeks more of plotting, I assigned an instrument per time zone. East coast as a base guitar. Central time for drums. Mountain for a piano and west coast for regular guitar. Soon enough, the song began to take shape. It wasn’t long before I realized, this wasn’t the greatest song in the world...it was only a [tribute.](https://youtu.be/_lK4cX5xGiQ)	"Bro check this shit out!" You call your friend to a discovery. "What is it?" "I put all the lightning strikes through the supercomputer and it made this fire song." "Play it!" "Alright" I play the track. A mix of rock and pop with some classical elements. "Dude this is fire." "Yeah. I should release it under a secret name! What should I call myself though..." "DJ Zeus, Major thunder, Perkūnas, biggie zap..." "Lets just use a name generator." "Good call" "Lets see..." I load up a name generator. I got [this](https://fun.namerobot.com/name/dj/Diabetic_Peehole) "Hahahaha! Dude you should totally use it!" "NO! I'll think of something else..." "Just call yourself DJ Thor and be over it." "Yeah that's a good name." "Wait shouldn't we investigate what's with the lightning music?" "Nah the science nerds can handle it" "But you're a science nerd." "...We're going to McDonalds."
	[WP] A dragon that's the absolute worst at being a dragon gets the aid of a princess fed up with the constant courtship. She relaxes in its tower, coaching the dragon as knights and warriors from all over attempt to free her.	A tall tower with the flag of the House of Theodora perched on top shines on an hill amidst an island. A knight jumps off a ship to save the Princess. Following him comes his trusty silverback horse... He buttery claws fail him again as he nearly slips from the minaret sending off a clear confident message to the silver-clad knight in front: he was a Great Worm not to be trifled with. Barely managing to cling on with his talons in the nick of time, the dragon lets out a fiery roar sounding akin to a angry mouse's squeak. The knight checks his horse to a walk, bemused. "Good job Morty! You have scared him!" the princess voices words of hopeless encouragement from the verandah, "Remember all we have practiced! And please do mind your tail!" Morty lets out another 'vast' noise (of appropriate dragon standards, of course) which now has the knight thoroughly puzzled. "What is this sorcery? This surely is a ploy from the dragon to throw me off my game." Sir Dante thinks aloud, "fear not princess! Your saviour has arrived!" He shuts his visor and doubles down on his beast, kicking him into full speed ahead. Morty squints his baby-blue eyes, "Not on my watch you two legged scum." Inflated from words of advice from the Princess he swoops down on the knight barely managing to avoid hitting the Princess with his spiked tail. Sir Dante stood no chance. He never saw it coming. Mid-flight Morty forgets to flap his wings and he comes crashing down onto the mud path into a giant cloud of rubble and dust. The Princess observing all this thanks the Rain Gods for the ample water they delivered yesterday as Morty goes slipping straight on the watery muddy path to hit the horse and the knight adorning it. The horse and its surprised master do not have time to react as they fall off the narrow path on the hill to greet the ocean below. A dejected Sir Dante swims back to safety of his ship hoping his friends on the ship didn't see that embarrassing display of Knighthood. Morty rolls in the mud in delight and flies back to his Princess. All remains well, yet again.	“And...good! Claws, and fire breath! Steady though, please don’t kill him, James!” The Princess was sitting in a pile of surprisingly comfortable hay (mAgiCal, perhaps), as she lazily watched the dragon, James, awkwardly battle a knight in literal shining armor. She was yelling from the tower top, coaching him. “Come to think of it, we should also work on the name. I love a James here and there, but I was thinking something like more battle-y, you know? Anyway, fire breath! Now!” James went for fire breath, but leaned too far forward as he bent down to unleash his flames. Yelping, James fell forward, his head narrowly missing the knight. “Do not worry, beautiful princess! This dragon will fall, and you will be rescued from that cruel, imprisoning tower!” The knight cried, leaping to the side and holding out his sword. With a groan, James managed to get back up but fell over again. It was a truly sad sight, but this particular knight was not one for emotions. He picked up his sword, gleaming and smudged green from dragons’ blood, and stood over the helpless dragon. James let out a sigh of frustration, waiting for the final, blow to be delivered. Just as the sword was about to come crashing down on the dragon’s narrow neck, there was a flash of pink and silver. Then, with his eyes still squeezed shut, James realized he was still a dragon, in one piece. He slow.y opened them to see the princess, her thin brown hair falling softly to her shoulders, yet her eyes a fierce—but still somehow with a hint of laziness—golden brown. There she was, holding a sword that looked too large for her, and the knight limp on the ground. She dropped the sword, and dusted off her pink, silky dress. “Never doing that again!” she declared. “I’ll stick with the coaching, thank you very much.” James pulled himself up to a standing position, folding his wings back. “Princess, did you—” his worried and guilty eyes must have alerted the princess. “No, I hit him with the side of the sword, I didn’t kill him,” she assured him with a small smile. “I’ve watched the movies, you know? And of course, real life does teach me a few things. I was debating about hitting him with the hilt, too. I didn’t check if he had a pulse, though...” James let out a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness, Princess. I thought—I never wanted to hurt him.” The princess laughed. “Alright then, for a dragon you do have quite the heart, which I believe is your problem. You care too much.” “And is it that caring little is the key to mastering being a dragon?” James asked. “The key to being a dragon,” she replied, “is having me as your coach. I see another coming, James, and this time, let’s try to land a hit.”
	[WP] A dragon that's the absolute worst at being a dragon gets the aid of a princess fed up with the constant courtship. She relaxes in its tower, coaching the dragon as knights and warriors from all over attempt to free her.	A tall tower with the flag of the House of Theodora perched on top shines on an hill amidst an island. A knight jumps off a ship to save the Princess. Following him comes his trusty silverback horse... He buttery claws fail him again as he nearly slips from the minaret sending off a clear confident message to the silver-clad knight in front: he was a Great Worm not to be trifled with. Barely managing to cling on with his talons in the nick of time, the dragon lets out a fiery roar sounding akin to a angry mouse's squeak. The knight checks his horse to a walk, bemused. "Good job Morty! You have scared him!" the princess voices words of hopeless encouragement from the verandah, "Remember all we have practiced! And please do mind your tail!" Morty lets out another 'vast' noise (of appropriate dragon standards, of course) which now has the knight thoroughly puzzled. "What is this sorcery? This surely is a ploy from the dragon to throw me off my game." Sir Dante thinks aloud, "fear not princess! Your saviour has arrived!" He shuts his visor and doubles down on his beast, kicking him into full speed ahead. Morty squints his baby-blue eyes, "Not on my watch you two legged scum." Inflated from words of advice from the Princess he swoops down on the knight barely managing to avoid hitting the Princess with his spiked tail. Sir Dante stood no chance. He never saw it coming. Mid-flight Morty forgets to flap his wings and he comes crashing down onto the mud path into a giant cloud of rubble and dust. The Princess observing all this thanks the Rain Gods for the ample water they delivered yesterday as Morty goes slipping straight on the watery muddy path to hit the horse and the knight adorning it. The horse and its surprised master do not have time to react as they fall off the narrow path on the hill to greet the ocean below. A dejected Sir Dante swims back to safety of his ship hoping his friends on the ship didn't see that embarrassing display of Knighthood. Morty rolls in the mud in delight and flies back to his Princess. All remains well, yet again.	\Sounds of ferocious roaring, flame breathing, screams\ \-All right, with that guy gone i feel like a have defeated an army! \-Take it down a little bit Rothar, he was a punny noble called Bob and its like the fifth guy you have defeated in your whole life \-Senna, as my coach you should try to positively reinforce my sense of confidence \-Ok Rothar, you are doing pretty amazing, you are such a strong and powerful dragon \-I know you are done with the nobility and just want to get away for a bit, you dont have to be sarcastic with me, i just want to do my best you know? \-Fine, look, you are great with the fire breathing business, but, remember that some shields may well be immune, you should wait for a strong attack from the opponent, then they will expose themselves \-But Senna, if i miss i cut get injured! \-Don't focus on missing! Also you have scales as strong as steel! \-Wait! Something is coming! \Trumpets sound closing in, the earth shakes to the rhythm of an army marching, banners of all colours are flying\ \-By the mother of the gods! \-Its an actual army! Senna! I'm going to die! \-And i will be dragged to the castle! ok, Senna think!, I wasn't sure if my father would dare… \-Your father is the local King, it's obvious he would call all the families, maybe he even promised your hand \-Now you are an expert an courtship?! Hell, you would make a better princess than me \-Ok Senna, stop, help me help you and we could just make it \-Fight or flight! One option is to just fly away \-I DONT KNOW HOW TO! I have told you that \-Sorry i forgot, then fight it is, follow my lead \Silence get the upper hand in the battlefield as the armies take position, then an announcer promptly does his job\ \-Hear, hear! Prince Archibald the third, second prince of… \-I DON'T CARE \-Nice Rothar! now challenge him to single duel \-Are you sure? Archibald is the best fighter in all of the 10 kingdoms \-Yes, he is the best, but you have me as your secret weapon, and that big ego will be his own demise \-ARCHIBALD I CHALLENGE YOU TO A SINGLE DUEL, FACE YOUR DEATH-\Lowering his voice so just Senna can hear him\-Death its just too messy, i would like him just to flee because \-Focus Rothar! I dont want to hurt him either, well maybe just a bit \-My lady Senna, I Archibald the third will make swift work o…. \A ball of fire goes slightly to the left of archibald\ \-You monster will be defeated! \-Ok Rothar! Now, Sweep your tail!, then a straight kick! \Archibald jumps and dodges the first attack, while getting hit by the kick\ \-Now start preparing for the firebreathing, get closer fast and fake a claw attack! \-You are not going to win monster! \Archibald raises his shield to parry the claw attack, the second he drops his shield he raises his sword, then the fire breath connects before he could defend again\ -What?! How can you predict me! Im the best! \-Finally a strong up kick! \Archibald goes flying\ \-I WILL Beee baaaaaaaaaa... \-NOW BEGONE… OR ELSE! \As the armies run away Rothar approaches the balcony Senna is laughing\ \-Senna! We made! \-Oh the gods Rothar! Thank you! You are the best! \-We are the best! \-This will be the best day ever! \-Don't get too confy Senna! We may have another round soon! \Sounds of another impending army coming\ \-Why worry Rothar? we will be ready!
	[WP] A dragon that's the absolute worst at being a dragon gets the aid of a princess fed up with the constant courtship. She relaxes in its tower, coaching the dragon as knights and warriors from all over attempt to free her.	"Mornin', Glynryth," the princess muttered, stretching as she slid off her bed. Her temporary room was cramped, to be sure, but it would do--for now. "Good morning, Lady Veridian!" the dragon chirped. The drake was relatively young--only about 450 or so--and had accepted Veridian's request for solace. "Gee, it sure is crazy out here. You should see 'em all!" "Describe them to me," she said, moving over to the sink. She washed her face and readied for the day, making sure to be extra-careful with her makeup. Just because she was away from poite society didn't mean \she\ had to be a brute, after all. She faintly heard the roaring of men as Glynryth began its assault. "Well, there's a bunch of the old fogey-types like last time. All of 'em in bright, shinin' armor! Wowee!" "Standard routine," Veridian said, bored. Really, was this the best they could send to rescue her? She almost began to miss the court--at least there had been handsome men there. Here? All crusty, sun-dried knights who surely meant to take advantage of her great beauty and station. "Fly high to avoid the arrows and then fire." "You sure about that?" "It's fine. They know what they're getting into. Besides, they have enchanted armor, right? A little scare is good." The dragon obeyed her commands, attacking from where no man could reach. They had stopped sending mages weeks ago--far too expensive, you see. The screaming began, and Veridian yawned. Really, when would her father learn? He-- The screaming stopped cold. Veridian paused, stopping her makeup to peek out the window. "Glynryth? What's going on?" "I dunno. A guy in weird armor showed up. Everyone stopped! It's weird! He must be their leader, or something!" "Huh," the princess said. "Well, what's he like?" "Shouldn't be too hard. He's just got a really big sword." "A really big sword?" the princess muttered. Now where had she heard of that before? Suddenly, Glynryth shrieked. It was a shreid unlike Veridian had heard before--a cry of primal fear and pain. Concerned, Veridian moved to leave the room and descend the stairs. The castle split in two. There was a great woosh--as if a gale had passed through. For a moment, nothing. Then the castle began to shake as its walls crumbled to the ground. By the grace of God the tower where Veridian stood, the stone having been shorn clean as if a hot knife had split butter. Veridian froze, door open. She could see the other half of the castle from where she stood. The stairs were no more--having been blown away by whatever force had shattered the keep. There were soldiers down below, standing away from the scorched land. A few were lying down, being treated for injuries. A few more were kneeling. Glynryth stood, hunched over in terror. There were lines drawn around it--great gouges in the earth. A prison, not of iron bar, but of promise. You take one step over the line, and the land will be stained red with your blood. She turned a shaky glance up. Sitting on the ruins of the other parapace was a man clad in emerald armor. There was a massive metal sheet behind him--and Veridian realized with a start that wasn't a sheet, but a sword. It was longer than he was tall and nearly as broad. The man waved lazily. "Hey there," he said. He was pretty--nearly as pretty as her, she thought with some bitterness. It's not fair. "How are you doing, sis?" "Just fine, thank you," she bit out. "What are you doing here, Verdant?" "Just checkin' up on my dear older sister," he said, legs swinging over the edge. "Heard you left home." "Ah, you finally admit I'm the elder," she said with some small satisfaction. "By fifteen minutes, but yeah, sure," he said. "So, you roped a dragon into your little game this time? Impressive." "Shut it, barbarian." "Whatever," he said, rising. "Dad said to check on you, and check on you I did. I'm gonna be heading back now." She grit her teeth. That insufferable man--he always was. "You didn't have to break my home, you know." "It was falling apart. Shouldn't of been damaged by a little breeze like that." He stood up. Glynryth, apparently, had found her courage. "S-stay away from her, you--you bad man!" she half-roared, half cried, as she spat a ball of fire at him. He casually cut through it with his massive sword, scattering it to the wind. "So I'm the bad guy, is it?" he said, looking slightly bemused. "Yeah! You can't take her back to somewhere she doesn't want to be! It's horrible!" the dragon shouted. "Oh?" Verdant said. "She told you the story of how 'poor little Veridian ran away from her horrible, horrible home because there were too many people wanting to wed her' and 'oh, what a horrible thing it is to be so beautiful?" "That's right!" the dragon said, growing more confident. "Leave!" "Did she tell you about all the suitors she rejected for being not handsome enough or not rich enough?" Verdant said lazily, leaning on his sword, "or how she's used many a man to drive away unwanted suitors, only to leave them, heartbroken, afterwards?" The dragon stopped. "Huh?" "Yes, my sister. My poor, poor, sister. Father says she can't play around all her life, she must get married. So she breaks every heart that comes across her way. Jonah still longs for you, by the way," he said, directing the last part to his sister. "As he should," Veridian said with a sniff. "I am the best thing to happen to him in his entire life." The dragon's eyes went wide. "S-so . . . you're not the bad guy? She is?" "Never said I wasn't bad," Verdant said. "Killed lotsa people. Some deserved it, some probably didn't. But at least I have the decency to know I'm scum." The dragon looked at Veridian, betrayal and shock apparent on its inhuman features. At one time, Veridian might have felt something for the innocent creature--cast out by its kind after being too kind. Now, however, all she felt was irritation--irritation at her dear brother for ruining things. The dragon sniffled, choked a sob, and flew off into the sky, crying. "Now look what you've done," the princess complained. "Now I'll have to find someplace else to go. You've ruined all of my stuff!" Verdant rolled his eyes. "I'll send a Dragoon friend after it. He can teach it the ways of true dragonhood. But as for you--" he pointed his great sword at his sister "--I'm to bring you back home. Dad told me too." "You said it was just a check up!" "I did. Dad thought you might have learned something in your freedom. You clearly didn't, so I'm taking you home." He leapt across the gap and held out his hand. "Or, you can stay up here where nobody will come to get you." She growled. "Fine," she snapped. Verdant shook his head, tossed his sister over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, and leapt to the ground, ignoring her screams. He landed. "Captain Silvers," he saluted the elderly man, who saluted back. "I'll be taking her home. Is Rogers all right?" "He will be fine," the captain sighed. "Don't worry about us, Greenstorm. Do as the king commands." Verdant nodded. He set his sister down. His sister kicked him in the shins--which hurt her more than it hurt him--and she climbed up on his waiting horse. "Hurry up," she snapped again. He sighed and lead her back home.	\Sounds of ferocious roaring, flame breathing, screams\ \-All right, with that guy gone i feel like a have defeated an army! \-Take it down a little bit Rothar, he was a punny noble called Bob and its like the fifth guy you have defeated in your whole life \-Senna, as my coach you should try to positively reinforce my sense of confidence \-Ok Rothar, you are doing pretty amazing, you are such a strong and powerful dragon \-I know you are done with the nobility and just want to get away for a bit, you dont have to be sarcastic with me, i just want to do my best you know? \-Fine, look, you are great with the fire breathing business, but, remember that some shields may well be immune, you should wait for a strong attack from the opponent, then they will expose themselves \-But Senna, if i miss i cut get injured! \-Don't focus on missing! Also you have scales as strong as steel! \-Wait! Something is coming! \Trumpets sound closing in, the earth shakes to the rhythm of an army marching, banners of all colours are flying\ \-By the mother of the gods! \-Its an actual army! Senna! I'm going to die! \-And i will be dragged to the castle! ok, Senna think!, I wasn't sure if my father would dare… \-Your father is the local King, it's obvious he would call all the families, maybe he even promised your hand \-Now you are an expert an courtship?! Hell, you would make a better princess than me \-Ok Senna, stop, help me help you and we could just make it \-Fight or flight! One option is to just fly away \-I DONT KNOW HOW TO! I have told you that \-Sorry i forgot, then fight it is, follow my lead \Silence get the upper hand in the battlefield as the armies take position, then an announcer promptly does his job\ \-Hear, hear! Prince Archibald the third, second prince of… \-I DON'T CARE \-Nice Rothar! now challenge him to single duel \-Are you sure? Archibald is the best fighter in all of the 10 kingdoms \-Yes, he is the best, but you have me as your secret weapon, and that big ego will be his own demise \-ARCHIBALD I CHALLENGE YOU TO A SINGLE DUEL, FACE YOUR DEATH-\Lowering his voice so just Senna can hear him\-Death its just too messy, i would like him just to flee because \-Focus Rothar! I dont want to hurt him either, well maybe just a bit \-My lady Senna, I Archibald the third will make swift work o…. \A ball of fire goes slightly to the left of archibald\ \-You monster will be defeated! \-Ok Rothar! Now, Sweep your tail!, then a straight kick! \Archibald jumps and dodges the first attack, while getting hit by the kick\ \-Now start preparing for the firebreathing, get closer fast and fake a claw attack! \-You are not going to win monster! \Archibald raises his shield to parry the claw attack, the second he drops his shield he raises his sword, then the fire breath connects before he could defend again\ -What?! How can you predict me! Im the best! \-Finally a strong up kick! \Archibald goes flying\ \-I WILL Beee baaaaaaaaaa... \-NOW BEGONE… OR ELSE! \As the armies run away Rothar approaches the balcony Senna is laughing\ \-Senna! We made! \-Oh the gods Rothar! Thank you! You are the best! \-We are the best! \-This will be the best day ever! \-Don't get too confy Senna! We may have another round soon! \Sounds of another impending army coming\ \-Why worry Rothar? we will be ready!
	[WP] A dragon that's the absolute worst at being a dragon gets the aid of a princess fed up with the constant courtship. She relaxes in its tower, coaching the dragon as knights and warriors from all over attempt to free her.	"Ugh, another one?" the Princess sighed at the sight of a heavily armoured knight riding his gallant steed towards the tower. "Yeah... Sorry, but I'll get right on it, Princess!" said the large dragon that was perched just outside her window. "Don't forget, if he tries to charge–" "Double-evade, just in case, then strike from above, don't worry..." *** Jamie was a brave knight, brought up in the Kingdom's capital to a noble family of knights and famed heroes. From the very tender age of 6 he had received tutelage from some of the bravest most skilled knights from across the Kingdom. Even the Head Knight of the Kingdom's Royal Select trained him in swordsmanship and organisational matters. He was even rumoured to have been selected to be the Head Knight's prodigy when he had come-of-age. On his 18th name day, he was given his own small fiefdom to do as he please. Of course, this was to familiarise him with the act of ruling, managing finances, and all sorts of things related to a nobleman's life. During this time, he kept to his chivalrous roots that had been planted by the various knightly training since he was a child. He handled the fiefdom in a gracious manner, drawing praises from both the nobility and the small-folk alike. That was to say, all manners of preparations for him had been done by his family no matter the cost. But when he had heard that the Princess had been snatched away by a terrible beast, Jamie pledged on his proud name to vanquish it and bring home the Princess. For it was always the dream of every fledgling knight to beat the mighty monster and get the princess in return – as well as some fame and glory, of course. So he embarked on a journey many had taken before him. Sixty knights, known and loved by the people, had tried to do what Jamie wanted to do as well. None returned the way they were, most were not even in one recognisable piece. At first, Jamie thought those before him had been foolish in their conduct. Surely, he thought, I could do better than all of them! He charged towards the mighty dragon who had taken an immovable stance in front of the tower where the princess was held. He put his all in his trusty lance, made of iron wood and the best quality steel. He put his faith in the mighty steed that he had groomed to be the best charger in the Kingdom. He put his faith in all of the people who had brought him towards this very moment – one which would truly immortalise his name in songs and legends. "Huh?" Jamie said, exasperated at his missing the beast's belly. "Foolish human, you are nothing more than the rest of them!" The Dragon roared a thundering mock. At that very instant, the proud knight redirected his aim to the evading dragon. The sudden jerking almost broke his steed's legs as it screeched to turn. Such a masterful manoeuvre only could've been executed by a master of horses and lances. Yet... The dragon rotated it's body in a twirl and struck the knight right on the helmet with pinpoint accuracy. The strike was so focused that the resulting damage caused a tiny puncture wound right in the centre of his helmeted temple. Just like that, the knight who had been brought up in such an elaborate manner, who had dreamt to be a legend himself, was struck down by a mighty beast of an opponent. *** "So... how was it then?" the Princess said as she presented a cup filled with boiling hot tea to her supposed "captor". "Ah, thank you!" the dragon took the cup in a merry mood and continued, "it's okay, I suppose. Though again, the knight just charged at me in a straight line." "Hmmm? I saw he tried to make a counter, though..." Caught off-guard by her remarks, the dragon simply retorted, "well, thanks to your suggestion, I managed to counter his counter first!" "Hehehe, see! Well, let's train some more tomorrow! Maybe there'd be another worthy opponent who might even scratch you later on!" Said the Princess in a sheepish manner.	\Sounds of ferocious roaring, flame breathing, screams\ \-All right, with that guy gone i feel like a have defeated an army! \-Take it down a little bit Rothar, he was a punny noble called Bob and its like the fifth guy you have defeated in your whole life \-Senna, as my coach you should try to positively reinforce my sense of confidence \-Ok Rothar, you are doing pretty amazing, you are such a strong and powerful dragon \-I know you are done with the nobility and just want to get away for a bit, you dont have to be sarcastic with me, i just want to do my best you know? \-Fine, look, you are great with the fire breathing business, but, remember that some shields may well be immune, you should wait for a strong attack from the opponent, then they will expose themselves \-But Senna, if i miss i cut get injured! \-Don't focus on missing! Also you have scales as strong as steel! \-Wait! Something is coming! \Trumpets sound closing in, the earth shakes to the rhythm of an army marching, banners of all colours are flying\ \-By the mother of the gods! \-Its an actual army! Senna! I'm going to die! \-And i will be dragged to the castle! ok, Senna think!, I wasn't sure if my father would dare… \-Your father is the local King, it's obvious he would call all the families, maybe he even promised your hand \-Now you are an expert an courtship?! Hell, you would make a better princess than me \-Ok Senna, stop, help me help you and we could just make it \-Fight or flight! One option is to just fly away \-I DONT KNOW HOW TO! I have told you that \-Sorry i forgot, then fight it is, follow my lead \Silence get the upper hand in the battlefield as the armies take position, then an announcer promptly does his job\ \-Hear, hear! Prince Archibald the third, second prince of… \-I DON'T CARE \-Nice Rothar! now challenge him to single duel \-Are you sure? Archibald is the best fighter in all of the 10 kingdoms \-Yes, he is the best, but you have me as your secret weapon, and that big ego will be his own demise \-ARCHIBALD I CHALLENGE YOU TO A SINGLE DUEL, FACE YOUR DEATH-\Lowering his voice so just Senna can hear him\-Death its just too messy, i would like him just to flee because \-Focus Rothar! I dont want to hurt him either, well maybe just a bit \-My lady Senna, I Archibald the third will make swift work o…. \A ball of fire goes slightly to the left of archibald\ \-You monster will be defeated! \-Ok Rothar! Now, Sweep your tail!, then a straight kick! \Archibald jumps and dodges the first attack, while getting hit by the kick\ \-Now start preparing for the firebreathing, get closer fast and fake a claw attack! \-You are not going to win monster! \Archibald raises his shield to parry the claw attack, the second he drops his shield he raises his sword, then the fire breath connects before he could defend again\ -What?! How can you predict me! Im the best! \-Finally a strong up kick! \Archibald goes flying\ \-I WILL Beee baaaaaaaaaa... \-NOW BEGONE… OR ELSE! \As the armies run away Rothar approaches the balcony Senna is laughing\ \-Senna! We made! \-Oh the gods Rothar! Thank you! You are the best! \-We are the best! \-This will be the best day ever! \-Don't get too confy Senna! We may have another round soon! \Sounds of another impending army coming\ \-Why worry Rothar? we will be ready!
	[WP] A dragon that's the absolute worst at being a dragon gets the aid of a princess fed up with the constant courtship. She relaxes in its tower, coaching the dragon as knights and warriors from all over attempt to free her.	"Ugh, another one?" the Princess sighed at the sight of a heavily armoured knight riding his gallant steed towards the tower. "Yeah... Sorry, but I'll get right on it, Princess!" said the large dragon that was perched just outside her window. "Don't forget, if he tries to charge–" "Double-evade, just in case, then strike from above, don't worry..." *** Jamie was a brave knight, brought up in the Kingdom's capital to a noble family of knights and famed heroes. From the very tender age of 6 he had received tutelage from some of the bravest most skilled knights from across the Kingdom. Even the Head Knight of the Kingdom's Royal Select trained him in swordsmanship and organisational matters. He was even rumoured to have been selected to be the Head Knight's prodigy when he had come-of-age. On his 18th name day, he was given his own small fiefdom to do as he please. Of course, this was to familiarise him with the act of ruling, managing finances, and all sorts of things related to a nobleman's life. During this time, he kept to his chivalrous roots that had been planted by the various knightly training since he was a child. He handled the fiefdom in a gracious manner, drawing praises from both the nobility and the small-folk alike. That was to say, all manners of preparations for him had been done by his family no matter the cost. But when he had heard that the Princess had been snatched away by a terrible beast, Jamie pledged on his proud name to vanquish it and bring home the Princess. For it was always the dream of every fledgling knight to beat the mighty monster and get the princess in return – as well as some fame and glory, of course. So he embarked on a journey many had taken before him. Sixty knights, known and loved by the people, had tried to do what Jamie wanted to do as well. None returned the way they were, most were not even in one recognisable piece. At first, Jamie thought those before him had been foolish in their conduct. Surely, he thought, I could do better than all of them! He charged towards the mighty dragon who had taken an immovable stance in front of the tower where the princess was held. He put his all in his trusty lance, made of iron wood and the best quality steel. He put his faith in the mighty steed that he had groomed to be the best charger in the Kingdom. He put his faith in all of the people who had brought him towards this very moment – one which would truly immortalise his name in songs and legends. "Huh?" Jamie said, exasperated at his missing the beast's belly. "Foolish human, you are nothing more than the rest of them!" The Dragon roared a thundering mock. At that very instant, the proud knight redirected his aim to the evading dragon. The sudden jerking almost broke his steed's legs as it screeched to turn. Such a masterful manoeuvre only could've been executed by a master of horses and lances. Yet... The dragon rotated it's body in a twirl and struck the knight right on the helmet with pinpoint accuracy. The strike was so focused that the resulting damage caused a tiny puncture wound right in the centre of his helmeted temple. Just like that, the knight who had been brought up in such an elaborate manner, who had dreamt to be a legend himself, was struck down by a mighty beast of an opponent. *** "So... how was it then?" the Princess said as she presented a cup filled with boiling hot tea to her supposed "captor". "Ah, thank you!" the dragon took the cup in a merry mood and continued, "it's okay, I suppose. Though again, the knight just charged at me in a straight line." "Hmmm? I saw he tried to make a counter, though..." Caught off-guard by her remarks, the dragon simply retorted, "well, thanks to your suggestion, I managed to counter his counter first!" "Hehehe, see! Well, let's train some more tomorrow! Maybe there'd be another worthy opponent who might even scratch you later on!" Said the Princess in a sheepish manner.	“Tarthir,” the young girl called, “Where did you go this time?” I’m over here Janessa, a soft sad voice told her, indicating the dark room that was adjacent to her main living quarters. As she walked towards the door, she snatched a candelabra from the desk. He liked to glower in the dark recesses, a habit that she was not fond of. “You know I can’t see in here,” she complained, stepping carefully over a poorly lit tail. I failed again today, he told her, his eyes whirling an anxious yellow. “Tarthir, you never fail. The others just tease you,” she said with exasperation. “What happened today?” She had reached his large head by then and was trying to find a place to set the lightsource without catching her skirts on fire. Finding a place she settled herself in the crook of his neck. She rubbed gently at his pale peach colored scales, which were not much different from her own skin tone. My flame, if you can even call it that, failed to ignite the practice dummy. Instead it melted it. She felt as he let out a long sigh, and she reached up to scratch an eye ridge. “You’re young! I am so proud of you for even doing that! And melted is still dead,” she said. “Tomorrow you’ll do it again, better. If it melts it again, just act like that’s what you intended in the first place.” But no one else’s flame is like that, he sighed. Just another thing that I’m different in. Turning to face the large eye that was closest, Janessa leaned in close, resting her forehead just above the first eyelid. Listen here Mighty Dragon Tarthir. You are my dragon. I am Princess of this realm, and you are my companion. For life. Not any of them. I love you, exactly as you are. She said each word clearly in her mind, emphasizing each point with a deep felt emotion. As Tarthir’s eye slowly returned to its normal pink, she stared with both of her dark blue eyes into it. When the young dragon had finally calmed she straightened. “You haven’t even heard about the day I’ve had.” Oh? he asked with mild interest. “Only three more suitors and another adventurer,” she said drolly. “You would think that they would know by now that I don’t need to be rescued from you. I’m not even sure where the last one was from. Maybe the north?” She shrugged, picking at a nail. At twenty three, Janessa was less preoccupied with men, and more with how her young dragon was fairing in the training grounds. Tarthir hissed slightly, You shall never wed a northerner. Over my dead body would he have even been allowed near you had I known. “Mother would not let someone too stupid in. Never someone from our peoples murderers.” She shuddered, thinking about the atrocities from so many generations ago. I could spray your would be suitors with my fire, if you like, he said helpfully, changing the subject back to a more innocuous one. “No. These ones are part of noble families. Can’t be killing off all of the nobles of my generation. Mother would be unhappy. Plus, that would mean I would have to deal with their younger brothers, which might be even worse.” Do you need any of them? he asked curiously. “Do you need the Elder Council?” she asked in retort. They don’t need me, that’s for sure, he huffed, trying and failing to produce a cloud of smoke. What came out was more a noxious gas. “Tar! Watch it! Come on, let’s go outside. You can practice flaming for me.” She grabbed the dimming candles and walked back to her room. Tarthir followed, and as he entered Janessa did her best not to grimace. Tarthir was not like the other dragons. His scales were thin, and he didn’t even have vestibules of wings. His body was long, but his legs short. Of course she loved him, but the people were not happy that he had been the one to choose her. Said it faired poorly for the kingdom. A kingdom that was already suffering. A hundred and forty years after human and dragon alike had been brutally slaughtered, and the people of Etria still suffered. --- I will be continuing this as the start of book two Shatterscale, in my series A Thunder of Dragons. To read book one, Heartscale, check out my sub r/LandOfMisfits - where you can read more by me. Or r/RedditSerials - where you can read more by me and others.
	[WP] All humans are born with a superpower. Those who don't have one are seen as sad rejects. You are one of these. While walking to school with a friend, he gets killed in front of you by a mugger. Right then and there, you snap. An almighty, horrifying power awakens from the depths of your soul.	I heard it before I felt it. A rush through my skull; a freight train barreling up my spine. For a split second I thought I was losing consciousness, but as the moments passed everything in sight sharpened, slowed. I watched the veins in the man's eyes as he realized what was unfolding. The sound of his feet on the pavement made a prolonged thud as he attempted to vault above the alley we both stood in. It felt as if I only observed myself raising a hand, attached to a pulsing iridescent arm, and casually outstretching my fingers toward the murderer. In that moment I beheld him. That is not to say that I merely laid eyes upon his disintegrating figure, but rather that I transcribed the history of his melting flesh with each layer that burned. I could see the day his father broke him. The moment his only sister was lost forever. The day his son was born. I could taste the tears of anguish, feel the shivers of joy, and see the raw emotions as colors shifting before my eyes. When I finally realized that I had been screaming, I was almost out of air and could see stars starting to form in the peripheries of my vision. The murdering fucker was dust, along with the surrounding buildings. Only I remained, and as my vision cleared it only revealed the body of my friend in my arms. Her head rolled back and her hair brushed the ground. The wound in her chest still pulsed warm blood, and I could only look on as her eyes faded into infinite dusk. The horrifying reality set in: I was gifted. Perhaps the most powerful person in the world. But I wasn't powerful enough to save her. No existential shift or reality bending rupture could bring her back. I was powerless before, and may as well be powerless now. And this is why I write, to whoever might take heed. It is better to be powerless than to be without your true friends. It is more valuable to love than to destroy. I have no one left, so I bid the world goodbye. May the terrors of the power you all hold carry you past the point of no return. As for me, I can't go on living like this. You may never remember me, but I remember her. To my family, those that loved me despite my handicap, I am truly sorry. Your faith and perseverance were in vain. And to you, father, well you were right. I'll never be able to fail you again. Despite all that I love you. I love her. I have nothing left. Goodbye.	You'd think two kids with holes in their shirts and worn out shoes wouldn't be bothered on their way to school. But that's exactly what happens. Again and again. My friend Kyle is the only reason that I make it everyday. The living redbull they call him. He has this power over addrenilin. With it he can shoot out red lightning or have it emanate around him like an aura. With a little touch someone has a sugar rush. If he gives it a kick they fly off and fall like a brick. Any more and the closest hospital is saint Moore. I however was thought to be powerless. But I had constantly had all the symptoms that someone would have if they over used their power. And it never let up. It baffled the doctors. Even the ones that could see anothers abilities didn't see anything in me. So they gave me drugs to inhibit power use and they helped a good bit. Eventually I did discover my power. Kyle and I were talking to school. There's always this dark part of the road where kids shoot out the lights with their BB guns. And there was a man waiting for us in the shadows. He had this power to use the air and cut things from a distance. In four different swishes of his finger, before we even realized what was going on our backpacks fell to the ground. He didn't even cut our shirts underneath. He told us to scram. Kyle then used his power, hit him with a good jolt. But instead of the usual harmless reaction the old man's power errupted from him violently slashing everything around him deeply. Kyle was hit first, I saw him explode in a sea of red. Right after would have been me, but then it happened. Everything froze for a second. I had a solid visualization of everything that was happening around me. It felt as if I could rewind time. Except it wasn't time that I was rewinding. I caught the old man's power and flung it back at him with an an equal but opposite force. He was nothing but a red mist. I looked over and Kyle was all back together eyes wide with a a red like scar running down his body. But I wasn't done. I looked at that mist and pulled it all back together. And there appeared an old man with a dozen or so red scars across his body. He collapsed. And then the birds resumed chirping.
	[WP] All humans are born with a superpower. Those who don't have one are seen as sad rejects. You are one of these. While walking to school with a friend, he gets killed in front of you by a mugger. Right then and there, you snap. An almighty, horrifying power awakens from the depths of your soul.	It all happens in the blink of an eye. One moment he's there. He's laughing at something I said, smiling at me. The next moment he's gone, his lifeless eyes stare up forever at the suddenly darkening sky. One bird drops from the sky next to me. Then a second- a third. Their master, my best friend, lost his life- and in this they lost their own. He kept them alive, he gave them a second chance, he showed these animals mercy. I would not be so kind. In a world where people like me, people with no powers (no respect), were meant for nothing more than sitting back and watching as my very limited friends and family were toyed with because what are you gonna do, Lacker? It's finally time that I show them what I'm made of. I stand slowly, the laughter of the mugger like it's own stab to my gut. "Is the Lacker gonna cry?" He taunts, and I turn to him. He saying something, but I can't hear him. The rage, the utter fury, coursing through my veins sets me on fire. My arms suddenly light up with flames as something dark overcomes my thoughts. Show him what you're made of, "Lacker." I give in so easily, it makes me wonder where it's always been. Wings destroy my shirt as the fire engulfs me. I feel agony twist through my head as two spiked horns curl up to the dark sky, but I don't scream. I relish in the way the mugger's eyes widen with horror, running down the street before leaping into the air and whipping around to release a beam of pure kinetic energy. It hits me in the shoulder, not my heart like my best friend, but I don't feel it. My nails grow become claws, the rest of my clothing burning away from my crackling skin that appears as nothing more than lava creeping through tar streets. For a moment I stare at him, and he stares back at me. The fear in his gaze is delicious, and something vile curls through me. I'm going to make him hurt. I am going to make them all hurt. In a heartbeat I am grabbing him by the front of his shirt. His bloodcurdling scream resounds in my ears, and I slam him to the ground- his entire body disintegrating with the heat I emit. I hear more screams, I hear people shouting, I feel something hitting me. I look up to the people who try to rescue the others, but they know as well as I do that there's no stopping me. The one person who was with me until the end... well, he's met his end. Who can tell me that there is good in this god forsaken city? Who is going to tell me that it's wrong to rise up against the ones who have oppressed me since childhood? I take one last look at his lifeless body before launching myself into the air. Nothing else matters anymore, I decide. More people try to attack, but anyone who gets too close dies. I am the epitome of destruction. I decide who lives: and none of the people in this filthy place make the cut. I fly up and up and up and up... "Goodbye, Pompeii." I explode.	You'd think two kids with holes in their shirts and worn out shoes wouldn't be bothered on their way to school. But that's exactly what happens. Again and again. My friend Kyle is the only reason that I make it everyday. The living redbull they call him. He has this power over addrenilin. With it he can shoot out red lightning or have it emanate around him like an aura. With a little touch someone has a sugar rush. If he gives it a kick they fly off and fall like a brick. Any more and the closest hospital is saint Moore. I however was thought to be powerless. But I had constantly had all the symptoms that someone would have if they over used their power. And it never let up. It baffled the doctors. Even the ones that could see anothers abilities didn't see anything in me. So they gave me drugs to inhibit power use and they helped a good bit. Eventually I did discover my power. Kyle and I were talking to school. There's always this dark part of the road where kids shoot out the lights with their BB guns. And there was a man waiting for us in the shadows. He had this power to use the air and cut things from a distance. In four different swishes of his finger, before we even realized what was going on our backpacks fell to the ground. He didn't even cut our shirts underneath. He told us to scram. Kyle then used his power, hit him with a good jolt. But instead of the usual harmless reaction the old man's power errupted from him violently slashing everything around him deeply. Kyle was hit first, I saw him explode in a sea of red. Right after would have been me, but then it happened. Everything froze for a second. I had a solid visualization of everything that was happening around me. It felt as if I could rewind time. Except it wasn't time that I was rewinding. I caught the old man's power and flung it back at him with an an equal but opposite force. He was nothing but a red mist. I looked over and Kyle was all back together eyes wide with a a red like scar running down his body. But I wasn't done. I looked at that mist and pulled it all back together. And there appeared an old man with a dozen or so red scars across his body. He collapsed. And then the birds resumed chirping.
	[WP] All humans are born with a superpower. Those who don't have one are seen as sad rejects. You are one of these. While walking to school with a friend, he gets killed in front of you by a mugger. Right then and there, you snap. An almighty, horrifying power awakens from the depths of your soul.	"Hey, NoPo! I think you have something of mine!" I groaned and stopped in my tracks. That was Shank's line, which he always said just before robbing me. Shank was a particularly nasty Powered who took special care to antagonize me at every turn. It didn't help that he was dangerous, with the power to form blades from any of his appendages. I slowly turned around and reached for my wallet before realizing that the figure behind me wasn't Shank at all. It was Echo, one of the few Powereds who didn't prey on us NoPoes at every turn. Granted, her power wasn't anything outright deadly: she could mimic any voice or sound, and throw her voice relatively far. I suppose this made her my best friend. "Well, NoPo? Are you gonna cough it up, or am I gonna have to give you another belly button?" she continued, still using Shank's voice. I slowly withdrew my hand from my pocket, revealing only my middle finger, fully extended. At this we both broke out laughing, Echo finally using her normal voice. I said before that I thought of Echo as my best friend, but that's not entirely true. It'd be more accurate to say that I was madly, hopelessly in love with her. But I couldn't exactly tell her that. No way would she ever want a guy like me, with no powers to speak of. As the laughter finally died down, I noticed a figure approaching from the same direction Echo had just come from. "Hey, NoPo! Got something for me?" demanded the real Shank. "Oh, god. Stay here, Null. I've got this." Null. Another daily reminder that I was nothing. Children were always named when their powers manifested, around age five. Those who never developed powers were named accordingly. "Well, look who got himself a girlfriend," came the taunting voice of Shank. "And a Powered, no less. Maybe you've got something for me?" "Like hell I do," Echo replied. "That's a shame. Guess I gotta rob both of you now." "Hey! What are you kids doing?" That was the voice of Boomer, Shank's father. But I immediately knew it wasn't actually him. Unfortunately, so did Shank. "You aren't fooling me with that again, Echo," Shank declared, but only after looking around, just to be safe. "You aren't fooling me with that ever again," he said as he suddenly lunged forward, impaling Echo through the neck with his hand, now a three-foot-long blade. And just like that, she was gone. She made a soft gurgling noise, and then the light faded from my friend's eyes. I couldn't do anything but stand there, staring at the lifeless body of my only friend, unable to tear my eyes away. Even Shank seemed appalled by what he had just done. "W-well, NoPo, you... you wanna put up a fight, too?" I heard him, but I couldn't understand his words. And then my eye started to burn. It burned with a pain no mere tears could bring. After about half a second, all I could see out of my left eye was a deep shade of purple. And my right eye saw Shank crumple to the ground, a hole in his chest. A hole made by my right hand, which was now a three-foot-long blade. The glow in my left eye slowly faded, and I found that I had Shank's power now. Any appendage I wanted to, I could turn into a steel blade. I still felt a slight tingle behind my eye as well, and I instinctively knew that Shank's wasn't my only power. My name is Null. It's a good name, and well-suited to my ability.	You'd think two kids with holes in their shirts and worn out shoes wouldn't be bothered on their way to school. But that's exactly what happens. Again and again. My friend Kyle is the only reason that I make it everyday. The living redbull they call him. He has this power over addrenilin. With it he can shoot out red lightning or have it emanate around him like an aura. With a little touch someone has a sugar rush. If he gives it a kick they fly off and fall like a brick. Any more and the closest hospital is saint Moore. I however was thought to be powerless. But I had constantly had all the symptoms that someone would have if they over used their power. And it never let up. It baffled the doctors. Even the ones that could see anothers abilities didn't see anything in me. So they gave me drugs to inhibit power use and they helped a good bit. Eventually I did discover my power. Kyle and I were talking to school. There's always this dark part of the road where kids shoot out the lights with their BB guns. And there was a man waiting for us in the shadows. He had this power to use the air and cut things from a distance. In four different swishes of his finger, before we even realized what was going on our backpacks fell to the ground. He didn't even cut our shirts underneath. He told us to scram. Kyle then used his power, hit him with a good jolt. But instead of the usual harmless reaction the old man's power errupted from him violently slashing everything around him deeply. Kyle was hit first, I saw him explode in a sea of red. Right after would have been me, but then it happened. Everything froze for a second. I had a solid visualization of everything that was happening around me. It felt as if I could rewind time. Except it wasn't time that I was rewinding. I caught the old man's power and flung it back at him with an an equal but opposite force. He was nothing but a red mist. I looked over and Kyle was all back together eyes wide with a a red like scar running down his body. But I wasn't done. I looked at that mist and pulled it all back together. And there appeared an old man with a dozen or so red scars across his body. He collapsed. And then the birds resumed chirping.
	[WP] All humans are born with a superpower. Those who don't have one are seen as sad rejects. You are one of these. While walking to school with a friend, he gets killed in front of you by a mugger. Right then and there, you snap. An almighty, horrifying power awakens from the depths of your soul.	It all happens in the blink of an eye. One moment he's there. He's laughing at something I said, smiling at me. The next moment he's gone, his lifeless eyes stare up forever at the suddenly darkening sky. One bird drops from the sky next to me. Then a second- a third. Their master, my best friend, lost his life- and in this they lost their own. He kept them alive, he gave them a second chance, he showed these animals mercy. I would not be so kind. In a world where people like me, people with no powers (no respect), were meant for nothing more than sitting back and watching as my very limited friends and family were toyed with because what are you gonna do, Lacker? It's finally time that I show them what I'm made of. I stand slowly, the laughter of the mugger like it's own stab to my gut. "Is the Lacker gonna cry?" He taunts, and I turn to him. He saying something, but I can't hear him. The rage, the utter fury, coursing through my veins sets me on fire. My arms suddenly light up with flames as something dark overcomes my thoughts. Show him what you're made of, "Lacker." I give in so easily, it makes me wonder where it's always been. Wings destroy my shirt as the fire engulfs me. I feel agony twist through my head as two spiked horns curl up to the dark sky, but I don't scream. I relish in the way the mugger's eyes widen with horror, running down the street before leaping into the air and whipping around to release a beam of pure kinetic energy. It hits me in the shoulder, not my heart like my best friend, but I don't feel it. My nails grow become claws, the rest of my clothing burning away from my crackling skin that appears as nothing more than lava creeping through tar streets. For a moment I stare at him, and he stares back at me. The fear in his gaze is delicious, and something vile curls through me. I'm going to make him hurt. I am going to make them all hurt. In a heartbeat I am grabbing him by the front of his shirt. His bloodcurdling scream resounds in my ears, and I slam him to the ground- his entire body disintegrating with the heat I emit. I hear more screams, I hear people shouting, I feel something hitting me. I look up to the people who try to rescue the others, but they know as well as I do that there's no stopping me. The one person who was with me until the end... well, he's met his end. Who can tell me that there is good in this god forsaken city? Who is going to tell me that it's wrong to rise up against the ones who have oppressed me since childhood? I take one last look at his lifeless body before launching myself into the air. Nothing else matters anymore, I decide. More people try to attack, but anyone who gets too close dies. I am the epitome of destruction. I decide who lives: and none of the people in this filthy place make the cut. I fly up and up and up and up... "Goodbye, Pompeii." I explode.	I heard it before I felt it. A rush through my skull; a freight train barreling up my spine. For a split second I thought I was losing consciousness, but as the moments passed everything in sight sharpened, slowed. I watched the veins in the man's eyes as he realized what was unfolding. The sound of his feet on the pavement made a prolonged thud as he attempted to vault above the alley we both stood in. It felt as if I only observed myself raising a hand, attached to a pulsing iridescent arm, and casually outstretching my fingers toward the murderer. In that moment I beheld him. That is not to say that I merely laid eyes upon his disintegrating figure, but rather that I transcribed the history of his melting flesh with each layer that burned. I could see the day his father broke him. The moment his only sister was lost forever. The day his son was born. I could taste the tears of anguish, feel the shivers of joy, and see the raw emotions as colors shifting before my eyes. When I finally realized that I had been screaming, I was almost out of air and could see stars starting to form in the peripheries of my vision. The murdering fucker was dust, along with the surrounding buildings. Only I remained, and as my vision cleared it only revealed the body of my friend in my arms. Her head rolled back and her hair brushed the ground. The wound in her chest still pulsed warm blood, and I could only look on as her eyes faded into infinite dusk. The horrifying reality set in: I was gifted. Perhaps the most powerful person in the world. But I wasn't powerful enough to save her. No existential shift or reality bending rupture could bring her back. I was powerless before, and may as well be powerless now. And this is why I write, to whoever might take heed. It is better to be powerless than to be without your true friends. It is more valuable to love than to destroy. I have no one left, so I bid the world goodbye. May the terrors of the power you all hold carry you past the point of no return. As for me, I can't go on living like this. You may never remember me, but I remember her. To my family, those that loved me despite my handicap, I am truly sorry. Your faith and perseverance were in vain. And to you, father, well you were right. I'll never be able to fail you again. Despite all that I love you. I love her. I have nothing left. Goodbye.
	[WP]: You were born to a powerful magical family. Unfortunately, you are perfectly ordinary. There is magic in the written word though, and that's open to everyone. So, you decide to be a librarian. A librarian that caters to the needs of the paranormal/supernatural community.	"Um, excuse me, miss?" I heard a small voice say I looked up and was surprised to see a teenage girl struggling to make eye contact. "Yes, how may I help you?" I looked her up and down trying to class her but nothing fit. she has five fingers on each hand and her limbs were proportionate, so she wasn't fae. Her eyes weren't blood shot, so neither was she lycanthrope or vampiric. "Um... I was wondering if maybe the librarian was in?" her soft shy voice said. "Maybe a siren?" I said under my breathe. "What?" she asked "Oh nothing, I'm the librarian. what do you need?" Her face turned a bright red. Not siren. No wand either. Obviously not centaur, satyr or mermaid. No animal parts. And definitely not ghost. "I was looking for um... the-" "What race are you?" I asked. I ruled out so many but I couldn't find the answer. Not a witch, no wand. Not a succubus I'm not outrageously jealous. "Excuse me?" She said the gaze in her dark eyes shifted from shy and quiet to hurt. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend, you see normally I can Identify quite well, but you don't have any... identifying characteristics." "I am a HUMAN BEING just like you" she said as she stormed off to the catalog system. It was then I realized that she had wavy hair and copper skin. I offended her over a normal on-going human quarrel that I didn't even fully understand; I mean besides unicorns and the fae we all bleed the same color liquid. So I followed her. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that, I'm just curious" "I am Native American, Okay?! I don't get why you white people are so racist" "Oh so you're a medicine ma- woman?" "No! Just stop with the whole stereo-typing please this isn't Pocahontas" Her voice growing angrier by the minute. I could barely even recognize her from the girl I met at the front desk. "Sorry, um what can I help you find?" humans normally didn't just randomly show up in this library. There was always something that led them here. Something in their blood, something magical. Even I was drawn here, even though I was born ordinary, My family has had a very strong blood line, full of magic. "I was looking for information on any Indian reservations here in New Mexico?" She asked her eyes now hopeful. "Well we have the history of medicine women, healers and shamans for both Apache, and Pueblo. There are also news paper clipping from before technology took over. There are also books on the history of Native Americans in New Mexico, we also have spell and potion books of every assortment which would you like?" Her face fell flat. "If you are going to keep those joke running, Ill find somewhere else to look." "My sincerest apologies, please allow me to help you." I tried to bury my curiosity and try to remember that I am helping someone who grew up in the human world. She relaxed a little. then continued scrolling through the catalog as she spoke. "I was hoping you'd have information on adoptions, or missing people.... Family trees.... things like that" "We do have an assortment of books and information, when it comes to missing people that's more of a police department. Adoptions though are public records. and family trees we only have the medicine women/men and shaman blood lines recorded here. I'd be happy to help you find your lineage as I think those books will assist" I finally understood. "Look I told you I'm done with your jokes, I'm going else where" She shut the catalog drawer she had opened and began to storm away. "You were drawn here," I said and she stopped, " there are many libraries all over, but you were drawn here. You tried to talk one of your friends into joining you but they 'just couldn't', am I right?" She turned to look at me her eyes wide. "H-how did you know?" she asked fear closing in on her, "Are you stalking me?!" "No I merely run the library." "Then How did you know?" "This library caters to the paranormal, the strange, the odd, the supernatural, and you are one of them." "No, I was born in New Mexico, I'm a normal girl, just looking for my birth family. You are just some crazy lady that's read to many fantasy books" "Hardly anything is fantasy anymore. I mean look around have you ever seen a library with an indoor waterfall before? Or organized by 'fantasy' classes and types?" She looked around her eyes wide and panicking. As she finally saw the mermaids in the pond, the Gnomes moving the books, the graceful fae admiring her section. Her breathing started to speed up, almost hyperventilating before she looked at me again and ran out the door. almost slamming into a satyr on her way out. "I think you scared that poor thing, Miss" the satyr said "She will be back. They always come back" I responded, "She's going to be a great healer one day" "How do you know, Miss?" he asked as we came to the front desk. "Because, my friend, she didn't faint" I looked at the satyr, "Now, how can I help you, since you took a portal all the way to the desert to see me"	You can get lost in the right kind of library. I did. At first, it was an escape from a world I didn’t belong in, the one where my younger sister could spit fire and my dad jumped across continents the way most people skip between puddles. Yearly family gatherings had become nightmarish hellscapes of aunts and uncles inquiring in concerned voices about those talents I never manifested. What I did cultivate was a love of books and a quiet, unassuming personality. I still remember the very first time my mother took me to the Grand Library of Esoterica, the largest collection of paranormal and otherworldly books known to my kind. I applied to work there as a page practically the day I turned eighteen, and now, nearly a decade later, there I was, wrangling with a book. The encyclopedia of demonic expression growled at me! I growled back, lunged at the twenty-pound volume, and wrapped both arms around it. It hissed at me and cursed my very existence in Latin as I made space for it on a shelf and gingerly lined it up alongside its new friends. “You shouldn’t let them give you lip,” said a nearby patron. I looked over at the speaker, a man in his early thirties with long, blond hair and harrowing red eyes. “Every book needs its moment. They tend to get lonely if neglected for too long.” “Perhaps, you’re right,” the gentleman agreed with half a smile. “And what’s your name, then?” “David.” “Well, then David, perhaps you can give me a hand.” The patron gestured at the books at on his table. I could see a couple of volumes on elves and witches and an ancient text regarding the nature of wild magic. “Where would you recommend looking for information about the unfathomable elders?” I chewed my lip thoughtfully. “You might try The Great Divine, one of Plato’s lesser-known works. We may have a couple of books on the elder gods. Lovecraft covered the Dreamer pretty well, I believe.” After a pause, I pointed to a section underneath the library’s grand staircase. “If you dare brave the forbidden works, we have some firsthand accounts of the unfathomable beings in there.” The vampire studied with an approving look. “For a mere mortal, you’re plenty well-read.” “Comes with the territory,” I muttered, cheeks burning. “Of course it does, and yours is vast indeed.” I shook my head and looked back at the books still in need of shelving. “If you are all set, I’d like to get back to my work. Books wait for no man.” The patron smiled. “You never asked me for a name.” “It’s Alucard, son of Dracula,” I replied with a shrug. “You’ve heard of me?” “And your cursed father, yes.” Quoting now, “What is a man, but a miserable little pile of secrets.” Alucard laughed and it was the sweetest sound in my universe. “Now I’m really impressed. Tell me, David, why do you work here? Surely, there are more exciting opportunities in your world.” “Unfortunately, this is as good as it gets.” “You aren’t a wizard, then?” I shrugged. “I wasn’t born with those gifts. Books on the other hand. The written word is my domain.” One moment, the blonde was sitting at his station, books strewn about his desk, and the next he was practically in my face. Up close, he smelled of mint and roses. My body sang to a tune I’d never heard before. “There is power in knowing what you know, magic in speaking the right words in the right way,” said the vampire, “and strength in standing so close to a monster without so much as flinching.” “But you’re… beautiful.” “Am I?” “Yes, yes you are.” Alucard smiled. “There is a task I must undertake. I seek three companions. Will you join me, Librarian David, master of the written word?” Remembering a quote from the Book of Beginnings, I replied, “I pledge to you my knowledge and my fealty, so long as the quest is righteous. May our days be many in number and our swords ever unsheathed.” My words made Alucard grin. He bent down on one knee. “I do believe I’m in love,” he said with that half-smile of his.
	[WP] There’s a strange girl at school but you’re just so attracted to her. You’re a little awkward but your best friend says go ask ask her out dude the worst thing that could happen is she says “no”. So you go over and ask her out but what happens was way way way worse than her saying “no”.	“Yes!” I blinked, hesitating for just a second too long, “A-awesome. So, if we meet by the train station, 6pm?” “Awesome.” She repeated, smiling, “Tuesday, six-O’clock!” \---- “Come here for a second.” I turned back and walked up to her where she stood in the doorway, “I like like you, a lot.” I sighed, “Thank god, I know it’s dumb to be worried, but I wasn’t sure I was reading you right.” She planted a kiss firmly on my lips, my first. “Well that makes us even then, since you asked me out” \---- “Hey, so, I really like you, I want this to be serious, slap a label on it. You’re my girlfriend now officially.” I layered insincerity into my voice, “as long as you’re cool with that?” She slapped my arm gently, “You doofus, I was going to ask you.” “That’s two to one, I’m pulling ahead!” I taunted her briefly, before tackling her onto the couch like the overeager teen I was. \---- “I love you.” Her face lit up as I spoke, “I’ve known for about a month I loved you, but I was too nervous to say it.” “I love you too honey, and I know, I saw you mouthing it into the window after you walked me home from the cinema. You’re at three-one now, I have to catch up!” \---- “Professor Hamilton says we have field work in Reading next week, so I can’t make it to the game night.” She seemed to vaguely register what I had said, but she was thinking about something else, just waiting for a chance to talk. “You know, if you leave it too long, I’m going to propose first.” A grin overtook my face, “Well, I’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen, when is too long?” “I’m not going to tell you that, but definitely before you finish your PhD.” She laughed and squeezed my hand as we climbed the stairs to my flat. \---- “Hey!” She opened the door and I reached to hug her. “Hi honey,” I reached to hug her, “Really long day.” She gave me a quick squeeze, “Food’s cooking.” She ran up the stairs. I sighed and climbed after her, I loved her food. \---- “How was work?” She’d just come in the door and slung her bag into the corner of the room. “Hot.” She collapsed onto my bed face first. I pulled her hand free from under her and wrapped it around the water bottle I had chilled for her arrival. “So,” I said, closing my tabs, “I finished my assignment early and we have the whole weekend free. I was thinking we could watch Westworld?” “I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that.” “Okay, how about we play some Se-seven-nen.” “I guess we could.” Her voice was a little deflated. “No, we’ll save it for another day if you’re not into it.” I queued up some YouTube videos and crawled onto the bed next to her. \---- The whole world slowed down, she sat on the bed. I felt overwhelmed, the joke hadn’t landed sure, but what was this? “Are you okay.” “I, don’t think I can say I love you if you say stuff like that.” There were tears in her eyes. “I, I don’t understand.” “Maybe I just need time, I need to clear my head.” “Whatever you need, I’ll sleep on the couch then?” “No, sleep here.” \---- “I love you too honey, night-night.” She kissed me and with that turned to face away from me. I snuggled up to spoon her. “You’re prickly, I’m not sure I can sleep like this.” “Gotcha, important day tomorrow, I’ll roll over.” \---- “Sleep well honey, I love you.” “I love you too, have a good night.” I finished tucking her in, planted a big kiss on her forehead and turned off the light. I’d been staying up later and later, chatting with friends online and applying for jobs, At the time I thought that was why I was going to bed later and later. The truth, looking back on it, was that I couldn’t stand to lie awake in bed next to the woman I loved and not touch her. \---- “If that’s how you feel I’m breaking up with you.” She snapped the words in fury, I felt a weight lift, and simultaneously my gut dropped through the floor. We cried, we shouted and then we descended on each other with a passion. \---- “You’re my partner” she said, leaning her head up against me, nuzzling into my shoulder. I grimaced with pain and clenched my fists. “I’m not your partner, you broke up with me, we’re keeping up appearances through Christmas and your birthday like you asked, then I’m going home.” “If you’re not my partner then don’t make that breakfast, we talked about, I wanted my partner to make it for me.” \---- “We can still make it work.” I choked out, in-between sobs, the guilt and pain and fear were overwhelming, “I love you.” “No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t have done that. You never loved me, you were never who I thought you were.” “I did. I do. Please!” “Oh god how did this happen?” “I was stupid, afraid and hurt.” \---- “My parents think you won’t forward my degree when it arrives.” “That’s crazy.” “They don’t seem to get that just because we’re breaking up doesn’t mean…” “It’s not like we’re at war or anything.” “Right, I want nothing but the best for you.” “Same for you, I just wish we’d been better at communicating.” \---- “I miss you,” she said down the phone. “I miss you too, remember you can always call me if you need something, if the anxiety is too much or you just need someone to talk to. I’ll always be ready to help if you need it.” “Thank you, if you ever need anything then I’ll do what I can to help too.” \---- “I don’t miss you anymore.” “Well, that’s. Not a very helpful thing to say.” “It’s not my job to help you now, you betrayed me. I hate you.”	“Who put you up to this? Let me guess. Sue? She did? I knew she had to. I see you guys always plotting about something anytime I pass by. Or even online, all that weird s—t you guys post. She isn’t slick and you aren’t either. The answer is no. Actually hell no but we’ll stick to no for now. You need better friends Josh. This was a bad idea. You wanna know why? Because I know you dated my friend Dani for years. Didn’t think I’d notice huh? Just because you don’t hold hands and go ga-ga everytime y’all are out doesn’t mean you didn’t date. You are full of it ya know? I’m going to tell Dani about this. I’m going to ruin ya’ll. This is trifling Josh. I wouldn’t expect this from you. You think because you’re funny you’ll get away with anything, everything but you won’t. You don’t get a pass. Women aren’t collectibles, we aren’t fodder for the locker room, lunchroom, or back of the bus. I’m not going to be a war story to regale your friends with. I’m not going to be another story that’ll stretch on for years about ‘this one time I dated’ . Nope. Cut it . This is a story of failure and gluttony. You’re going to lose Dani and not even get me. That’s the story. I see Sue over there staring at her phone but being a nosy little s—t like always, eavesdropping. Tell her to get her acting skills, act like you’re scrolling, type, or maybe just read a damn book. I saw her last test scores. Bye Josh.”
	[WP] There’s a strange girl at school but you’re just so attracted to her. You’re a little awkward but your best friend says go ask ask her out dude the worst thing that could happen is she says “no”. So you go over and ask her out but what happens was way way way worse than her saying “no”.	“Yes!” I blinked, hesitating for just a second too long, “A-awesome. So, if we meet by the train station, 6pm?” “Awesome.” She repeated, smiling, “Tuesday, six-O’clock!” \---- “Come here for a second.” I turned back and walked up to her where she stood in the doorway, “I like like you, a lot.” I sighed, “Thank god, I know it’s dumb to be worried, but I wasn’t sure I was reading you right.” She planted a kiss firmly on my lips, my first. “Well that makes us even then, since you asked me out” \---- “Hey, so, I really like you, I want this to be serious, slap a label on it. You’re my girlfriend now officially.” I layered insincerity into my voice, “as long as you’re cool with that?” She slapped my arm gently, “You doofus, I was going to ask you.” “That’s two to one, I’m pulling ahead!” I taunted her briefly, before tackling her onto the couch like the overeager teen I was. \---- “I love you.” Her face lit up as I spoke, “I’ve known for about a month I loved you, but I was too nervous to say it.” “I love you too honey, and I know, I saw you mouthing it into the window after you walked me home from the cinema. You’re at three-one now, I have to catch up!” \---- “Professor Hamilton says we have field work in Reading next week, so I can’t make it to the game night.” She seemed to vaguely register what I had said, but she was thinking about something else, just waiting for a chance to talk. “You know, if you leave it too long, I’m going to propose first.” A grin overtook my face, “Well, I’ll have to make sure that doesn’t happen, when is too long?” “I’m not going to tell you that, but definitely before you finish your PhD.” She laughed and squeezed my hand as we climbed the stairs to my flat. \---- “Hey!” She opened the door and I reached to hug her. “Hi honey,” I reached to hug her, “Really long day.” She gave me a quick squeeze, “Food’s cooking.” She ran up the stairs. I sighed and climbed after her, I loved her food. \---- “How was work?” She’d just come in the door and slung her bag into the corner of the room. “Hot.” She collapsed onto my bed face first. I pulled her hand free from under her and wrapped it around the water bottle I had chilled for her arrival. “So,” I said, closing my tabs, “I finished my assignment early and we have the whole weekend free. I was thinking we could watch Westworld?” “I’m not sure I’m in the mood for that.” “Okay, how about we play some Se-seven-nen.” “I guess we could.” Her voice was a little deflated. “No, we’ll save it for another day if you’re not into it.” I queued up some YouTube videos and crawled onto the bed next to her. \---- The whole world slowed down, she sat on the bed. I felt overwhelmed, the joke hadn’t landed sure, but what was this? “Are you okay.” “I, don’t think I can say I love you if you say stuff like that.” There were tears in her eyes. “I, I don’t understand.” “Maybe I just need time, I need to clear my head.” “Whatever you need, I’ll sleep on the couch then?” “No, sleep here.” \---- “I love you too honey, night-night.” She kissed me and with that turned to face away from me. I snuggled up to spoon her. “You’re prickly, I’m not sure I can sleep like this.” “Gotcha, important day tomorrow, I’ll roll over.” \---- “Sleep well honey, I love you.” “I love you too, have a good night.” I finished tucking her in, planted a big kiss on her forehead and turned off the light. I’d been staying up later and later, chatting with friends online and applying for jobs, At the time I thought that was why I was going to bed later and later. The truth, looking back on it, was that I couldn’t stand to lie awake in bed next to the woman I loved and not touch her. \---- “If that’s how you feel I’m breaking up with you.” She snapped the words in fury, I felt a weight lift, and simultaneously my gut dropped through the floor. We cried, we shouted and then we descended on each other with a passion. \---- “You’re my partner” she said, leaning her head up against me, nuzzling into my shoulder. I grimaced with pain and clenched my fists. “I’m not your partner, you broke up with me, we’re keeping up appearances through Christmas and your birthday like you asked, then I’m going home.” “If you’re not my partner then don’t make that breakfast, we talked about, I wanted my partner to make it for me.” \---- “We can still make it work.” I choked out, in-between sobs, the guilt and pain and fear were overwhelming, “I love you.” “No, you don’t, or you wouldn’t have done that. You never loved me, you were never who I thought you were.” “I did. I do. Please!” “Oh god how did this happen?” “I was stupid, afraid and hurt.” \---- “My parents think you won’t forward my degree when it arrives.” “That’s crazy.” “They don’t seem to get that just because we’re breaking up doesn’t mean…” “It’s not like we’re at war or anything.” “Right, I want nothing but the best for you.” “Same for you, I just wish we’d been better at communicating.” \---- “I miss you,” she said down the phone. “I miss you too, remember you can always call me if you need something, if the anxiety is too much or you just need someone to talk to. I’ll always be ready to help if you need it.” “Thank you, if you ever need anything then I’ll do what I can to help too.” \---- “I don’t miss you anymore.” “Well, that’s. Not a very helpful thing to say.” “It’s not my job to help you now, you betrayed me. I hate you.”	(I’m using my actual characters for this one oh boi) “You’re such a natural flirt and have dozens of people flock over you, yet you can’t ask Reyna out? She’s a nice gal, but she’s kind of shy. I thought you’d have her wrapped around your finger already!” Drake said, my best friend observing my very different reaction to this sort of thing. “Yeah, lover boy! I thought you were the charming ‘Pan with a Plan’?” Try, my other best friend taunted. Drake laughed , then joined in. “The ‘Seductive Salamander’?” “Mister ‘Steal Your Significant Other’!” The laughing turned into an uproar and I quickly resisted the urge to sock both of them as they continued poking fun at me. The worst part was, they had some sort of a point. I was known for being flirty and able to charm anyone, but Reyna King was different. She was a nice girl and a good friend, sweet and adorable. She was physically attractive, a rather large girl with a very kissable face and hints of muscle throughout her big body, although only around my height. In other words, she was fucking cute. I thought she’d be easy to ask out, I was definitely experienced. It was strange that I was acting like I used to before I was such a charming person. “Fuck you guys! I’m going to ask her out and she’s going to say yes!” I yelled at my friends as I stomped out the door. “Yeah, maybe she’ll be moaning your name by midnight!” Drake retorted, leaving me embarrassed and their exasperated lungs about to fail them from laughing too hard. - “Come on, bitch! We’ve been over this! Just say something to him! Ask him out!” Anne told me, as I messed around with my bunny hair clip. She took a sip of her coffee as we walked down the park trail, where she once again gave me love advice about my crush. “What if he says no? Then what do I do? It would be so awkward between us and he’s probably going to hate me!” I pushed my face into my orange hoodie. Taleen was a great guy, and I couldn’t help but have a crush on him. A bunch of people did. He was lean and his face beautiful and his body was toned. In other words, he was fucking hot. “Reyna, Taleen would sleep with a sentient pillow if it asked him. He’s not going to say no to fucking a mushroom let alone fucking you!” She slapped the back of my head as she continued. “He says no, his loss! And Tal’s a nice guy, despite his rather strange natural talent. He would let you down easy if there wasn’t a 100% chance of a yes, which there is! Look there he is!” She pointed behind me and I yelped as I did a complete 180°. I growled as she giggled about me being gullible, only to trip and fall on someone. I toppled over as everything flew by. When I opened my eyes, I saw Taleen’s face looking back. I realized he had went out of his way to catch me after bumping into him, and that we were in a normal position for a couple, a very awkward position for just friends. A few seconds later, he pulled me closer and smirked. “Hey, are you okay? Because you sure look hella fine.” He uttered in a smooth voice. I gave him a reassuring “taleendbcjdhotlskdjjdohmygod” and he put me upright. “So, sorry about that. I just wanted to know if you were interested in going out for a nice cup of tea, or coffee if you prefer. I assume the answer is yes now anyway, so Saturday should be good. After all, you did fall for me!” He winked and made a genuine smile this time, and I couldn’t believe my crush had asked me out. The only logical answer was to judo flip him and slam him into the sidewalk, which is exactly what I did. Unfortunately, Anne and BOTH Drake and Ryu who were following Taleen saw the whole thing. They did what any good friends would do, and laughed their asses off. Taleen proceeded to mourn and suffer with multiple injuries and a judo flipped self esteem over his abrupt rejection, but still tried to relish the idea that he managed to feel her huge beautiful thighs. Reyna screamed and sobbed into a pillow for hours until her voice stopped working, and only took joy reminiscing about how rough his sexy abs were. Their friends watched in pity, but couldn’t help themselves in laughing about their pain as they replayed a moment so amazing it felt like a scene from a terrible romantic comedy.
	[WP] There’s a strange girl at school but you’re just so attracted to her. You’re a little awkward but your best friend says go ask ask her out dude the worst thing that could happen is she says “no”. So you go over and ask her out but what happens was way way way worse than her saying “no”.	There are worse things in this world than the answer, "No." I kept repeating that mantra through my head as I nervously approached the new girl, pale blonde hair cut short in a bob that framed her face into a pale oval. Dark eyes flashed like sparks in the night, staring into you with an indifference no one could read. She was entirely apart, entirely unfathomable, and I was smitten almost immediately. I just knew I wasn't the only one; I could tell as I made my way that other guys around the courtyard of the school could read my intent, watching in resentful anticipation as I made the first move. I blinked and her eyes filled my vision, nearly black and almost baleful, she was peering inside of me. She was examining my soul as much as my face. She could see through intent, she could study the intricate details of my psyche as easily as a pattern on my shirt. She could- I blinked again because she'd murmured something softly and I'd missed it. "H-huh?" I mumbled. "I said, can I help you with something?" She repeated. I swallowed nervously, my mouth dry, my heart hammering away in my chest. She smiled, her eyes flashing dangerously. Did she just lick her lips? "Oh yeah, I uh..." I rubbed the spread of stubble on my chin and continued to stammer, "Did you uh... I mean, would you like to, y'know..." "You know?" She repeated after me, her face holding the slightest hint of amusement. "Yeah, uh, you know..." All around her the world was growing bright, the temperature was rising. My cheeks were flushed and I could see several girls and a few guys snickering scornfully, ready to lose it. They were celebrating my absolute failure, right here in front of the entire world. I was being offered up as the first of many foolish sacrifices to the pile of those clearly unworthy to speak to this girl, completely and utterly- "You know?" She repeated again, this time an actual question, waiting for me to finish. There are worse things in this world than the answer, "No." The mantra swam through my thoughts again and I gritted my teeth, a wave of determination washing over me. "You wanna go out sometime?" I asked, definitively, sternly, assertively. My offer was thrust forth, awaiting her parry. I felt like I'd shouted my challenge to the world, and the world responded in kind with silence. Awe. Anticipation. Fear. "Yes," she answered simply, her eyes full of some unknowable feeling, some uninterpretable depth. I found myself lost, standing in a black world with a single shimmering moon high above. My will was slipping away, draining into the moon high above its radiance filling me, replacing my own control with something else. Something dark and powerful and terrifying. It felt warm, but it wasn't real warmth. It was warmth compared to being met with the chill outside a pool of water. Slinking back into the water meant warmth, but it meant you were without warmth. Your body would soon succumb. You had no power. You had no life. You were gone. Staring into her eyes felt like hypothermia. I blinked and she was in front of me again and the world was around me and I felt the chill in my bones. "Oh uh, wait, yeah?" "Yes, of course. I'm Dahlia." She extended her hand and I reached out to shake it. She murmured her address, the time, the place, the date to me. It was like a chant, her soft tones echoed throughout my mind and I barely noticed my hand was bleeding after she released it. I just hoped I hadn't gotten blood on her. Everyone around stared in muted shock as Dahlia nearly glided away, her feet silent on the brick as she disappeared into the afterschool throng. My friend was beside me, shaking my shoulder and excitedly asking me how it went, but I couldn't hear him. I could only hear Dahlia's command, no, her request. A request of love, that I cradled in my heart. Her eyes were black and empty, no, not empty but full. Full of the void, full and comforting and warm and cold? But also warm and so lovely. She had asked me to bring something to our date. I needed my friend for that, it was what Dahlia demanded, no, not demanded, but requested, oh so pleasantly. I couldn't remember where or when our date was to take place, but Friday night I found my feet taking me where I needed to go. I arrived there, at that place in the woods, a path that wove between two trees, two specific trunks that could've been any two trees. The path could've been anywhere and nowhere and yet it brought me to her, to Dahlia, and her dark eyes full of love and warmth and hunger. She stood in the center of a circle carved into a slab of stone in the center of a clearing. Around the edges of the clearing, the trees writhed and twisted, their shapes like smoke and shadow at the edges of my vision, at the edges of thought. The moon shone a spotlight upon Dahlia, the only thing that mattered. She had asked for a gift, and I could not deny her. "Did you bring it to me, you foolish boy?" She giggled, her voice something beyond the human tongue now. I didn't hear so much as feel it throughout my limbs and along the edges of every nerve, a voice so hungry and full of love. Every synapse and sensation was overcome with her presence, her dominating radiance. Her love was overwhelming and so cold and warm and awful. Her voice was a weight, heavy and overwhelming, and yet I shouldered it with all the might and strength of a lover. "Of course, Dahlia," I answered eagerly, dumping the bag I'd carried here, the bag I remembered I had in my hand at that very moment. "Not on the ground, fool, on the altar," she hissed, her form radiating silky moonlight around her in waves. She was almost floating, weightless in the clearing as moonlight danced upon her skin. I staggered to the altar, something cool and wet dripping from my nose. I wiped away the blood from my nostril and kept stumbling forward, my head hurting, my heart aching, screaming agony in every cell in my brain. "You've done well, fool now set it there," and she gestured to the altar. The altar was nearly white, nearly luminous, and a strange symbol was carved into it. It shifted in the earth as I drew near. The altar almost seemed to expand, cracks forming in the porcelain surface as it swelled as if it were breathing. I placed the bag there, pulled the edges away to reveal its bloody contents. Dahlia had demanded a gift; kindly she had asked for blood, and blood I had brought. "What a beautiful gift you've brought me, foolish lover." In the center of the altar lay a heart, a human heart. I stared at it dumbly, my head pounding, my heart throbbing, blood dripping from my nose and down my chin. And then in an instant, the heart was gone and so too had the pain vanished. "We are connected now, fool. My love will belong to you, and you shall belong to me." Dahlia was suspended above the clearing now, shafts of moonlight streaming from her eyes and mouth and pooling below her like milk, thick and warm. "Drink now and go, for there is more work to be done." I did as she commanded and stared up at her visage. Her skin was nearly translucent, cracked like glass and stained with splotches of blood. She was upside-down, her hair falling in curving slices of marble ending in shining lavender points like the dripping fangs of some inhuman predator, an impossible intelligence behind her dark, beautiful eyes. Her arms extended away into shadow, long tendrils of white dripping upwards into the darkness. Her legs split a thousand times until they were a million threads of wire sinking into the ground and the sky and the moon. I could see a thread snaking up from the earth and into my chest, and when I tugged at it I felt my chest throb. "Don't tug at your boutonnière, my love. Now, take my bouquet and bring me more gifts." The 'bouquet' rose suddenly from the pool of white: an ax of silverish light, glowing and sparkling in the pool. When I took it, the light danced away in sparks and the ax became solid as if it were made of white granite. I trudged out of the clearing, my grim task before me. Not so grim, just labor. A labor of love. And as I wandered out of the woods and felt her eyes behind mine staring into town, into the windows, and through the doors, I could feel her cool touch on my doubts and fears. For there are worse things in this world than the answer, "No." --- If you liked this, check out my subreddit r/senatorpikachu for more writing kind of like this.	"Sure," Melissa replied with a twinkle in her eye, "meet me behind Gertz' after Organic Chem." She spun away, her long golden locks dancing in the late afternoon light. I stood stunned. That did not just happen… did it? Melissa was special. Some girls would have taken that God-given beauty, and milked it for all it was worth. Not Melissa though, I’ve never seen her charm others to do her bidding. Instead, she was quiet and reserved. And although she was polite when spoken to, she mostly kept to herself. Melissa was the proverbial rose in the desert. Untouched, unblemished. When I invited her to dinner, I fully expected a shy smile and a shake of her head. "No way!" Jonas guffawed buffonishly by my side as we watched Melissa walk away. I think he went on to say something else as well, but all I heard was Melissa's mirthful voice, and the way it had turned a single word into a heavenly chorus. Professor Taylor's lecture on heterogeneous catalysis went on forever and an age. I spent every moment tracking the minute hand as it took its leisurely stroll around the clock. When it finally reached the bottom in a (seemingly) resounding clank, I yanked my zipped backpack off the floor and leapt out of my chair. I was going to see Melissa. We were going to have dinner. Together! The doors couldn't open fast enough, and I bumped my head on the way out. It did not dampen my spirits. I walked hurriedly - ran, almost - to Gertz’. The bar was on the other side of campus, on the back-end near the tracks. When I got there, the place was still relatively quiet, its nightly patrons only just starting to stream in as the final classes of the day let out. I darted around the empty green bins as I squeezed my way through the narrow side-alley. The overhanging wall-light flickered and dimmed as I passed underneath, and my shirt snagged on a jagged turn of the sewer pipe lining the bar’s outer walls. The sun had fully set, and the only light behind Gertz’ was a solitary lightbulb near the bar’s rear exit. I stood in the small pool of yellow in a sea of black. I could barely make out the chain link fence a few feet away which ferried VIA rail into town. Melissa was not here yet. I fished out my phone and decided to give her a call… then realized I didn’t have her number. I slipped my hands into my pocket and leaned against the wall. She would be here soon anyways, I’d just have to wait a bit. The chilly night air picked up, and I tugged my jacket around me. The weather vane on the roof spun with a grotesque grind. I looked up with a frown, was it supposed to sound like that? A light twinkled near the rusty rooster, and I shuffled to the side to get a better look. A shape was hunched there, slowly twisting the metallic ornament out of its fixture. My face twisted in a pained grimace, and I covered my ears to block out the grating metal’s cries. “Hey, stop that!” I cried. “What are you doing?” The shape froze, then unfurled as it rose to standing height. Atop its head, long wispy shadows streamed in the wind. I cocked my head, a question rising tentatively to my lips. “... M-” The final syllable caught in my throat as the shape dashed off the roof. Its wide maw was a circular row of calcite needles, and the abyssal depths within grew to engulf the world. - H.M. Bishop &#x200B; edit: formatting and word choice
	[WP] There’s a strange girl at school but you’re just so attracted to her. You’re a little awkward but your best friend says go ask ask her out dude the worst thing that could happen is she says “no”. So you go over and ask her out but what happens was way way way worse than her saying “no”.	She turned into a fucking puddle. OK, let me explain. So I had a crush on this girl, Sarah? She goes... well, I guess the correct word is went. She went to our school. Sweetest girl you'd ever meet, and she was pretty hot too, not gonna lie. So my friends always pick on me for not asking her out. My best friend, however, would always tell me to go ask her. "The worst that can happen is her saying 'no', dude. Just do it." Of course, I'd make up some dumb excuse as to why I couldn't. Not enough time, not enough of a common schedule. Eventually, however, he told me to cut it out. "Dude, stop being a pussy. Just ask her." So I did. I went over to her. "Hey, Sarah! Wanna go out on a date." And then, the weirdest thing happened. She looked at me... And she turned into a fucking puddle. Honest to goodness, she melted right in front of me. It wasn't gross or anything, but her entire body just... stopped having form? Look, it's hard to explain. She just was, and then she wasn't. The weirdest thing? I went to tell him, and he looked at me like I was insane. "Who's Sarah? I never heard of her." Let me tell you, there are worse things to happen when you ask a girl out. She could melt into a puddle and fall out of existence. Creepy stuff. --- I think I tried a little too hard...	"Sure," Melissa replied with a twinkle in her eye, "meet me behind Gertz' after Organic Chem." She spun away, her long golden locks dancing in the late afternoon light. I stood stunned. That did not just happen… did it? Melissa was special. Some girls would have taken that God-given beauty, and milked it for all it was worth. Not Melissa though, I’ve never seen her charm others to do her bidding. Instead, she was quiet and reserved. And although she was polite when spoken to, she mostly kept to herself. Melissa was the proverbial rose in the desert. Untouched, unblemished. When I invited her to dinner, I fully expected a shy smile and a shake of her head. "No way!" Jonas guffawed buffonishly by my side as we watched Melissa walk away. I think he went on to say something else as well, but all I heard was Melissa's mirthful voice, and the way it had turned a single word into a heavenly chorus. Professor Taylor's lecture on heterogeneous catalysis went on forever and an age. I spent every moment tracking the minute hand as it took its leisurely stroll around the clock. When it finally reached the bottom in a (seemingly) resounding clank, I yanked my zipped backpack off the floor and leapt out of my chair. I was going to see Melissa. We were going to have dinner. Together! The doors couldn't open fast enough, and I bumped my head on the way out. It did not dampen my spirits. I walked hurriedly - ran, almost - to Gertz’. The bar was on the other side of campus, on the back-end near the tracks. When I got there, the place was still relatively quiet, its nightly patrons only just starting to stream in as the final classes of the day let out. I darted around the empty green bins as I squeezed my way through the narrow side-alley. The overhanging wall-light flickered and dimmed as I passed underneath, and my shirt snagged on a jagged turn of the sewer pipe lining the bar’s outer walls. The sun had fully set, and the only light behind Gertz’ was a solitary lightbulb near the bar’s rear exit. I stood in the small pool of yellow in a sea of black. I could barely make out the chain link fence a few feet away which ferried VIA rail into town. Melissa was not here yet. I fished out my phone and decided to give her a call… then realized I didn’t have her number. I slipped my hands into my pocket and leaned against the wall. She would be here soon anyways, I’d just have to wait a bit. The chilly night air picked up, and I tugged my jacket around me. The weather vane on the roof spun with a grotesque grind. I looked up with a frown, was it supposed to sound like that? A light twinkled near the rusty rooster, and I shuffled to the side to get a better look. A shape was hunched there, slowly twisting the metallic ornament out of its fixture. My face twisted in a pained grimace, and I covered my ears to block out the grating metal’s cries. “Hey, stop that!” I cried. “What are you doing?” The shape froze, then unfurled as it rose to standing height. Atop its head, long wispy shadows streamed in the wind. I cocked my head, a question rising tentatively to my lips. “... M-” The final syllable caught in my throat as the shape dashed off the roof. Its wide maw was a circular row of calcite needles, and the abyssal depths within grew to engulf the world. - H.M. Bishop &#x200B; edit: formatting and word choice
	[WP] There’s a strange girl at school but you’re just so attracted to her. You’re a little awkward but your best friend says go ask ask her out dude the worst thing that could happen is she says “no”. So you go over and ask her out but what happens was way way way worse than her saying “no”.	She turned into a fucking puddle. OK, let me explain. So I had a crush on this girl, Sarah? She goes... well, I guess the correct word is went. She went to our school. Sweetest girl you'd ever meet, and she was pretty hot too, not gonna lie. So my friends always pick on me for not asking her out. My best friend, however, would always tell me to go ask her. "The worst that can happen is her saying 'no', dude. Just do it." Of course, I'd make up some dumb excuse as to why I couldn't. Not enough time, not enough of a common schedule. Eventually, however, he told me to cut it out. "Dude, stop being a pussy. Just ask her." So I did. I went over to her. "Hey, Sarah! Wanna go out on a date." And then, the weirdest thing happened. She looked at me... And she turned into a fucking puddle. Honest to goodness, she melted right in front of me. It wasn't gross or anything, but her entire body just... stopped having form? Look, it's hard to explain. She just was, and then she wasn't. The weirdest thing? I went to tell him, and he looked at me like I was insane. "Who's Sarah? I never heard of her." Let me tell you, there are worse things to happen when you ask a girl out. She could melt into a puddle and fall out of existence. Creepy stuff. --- I think I tried a little too hard...	There are worse things in this world than the answer, "No." I kept repeating that mantra through my head as I nervously approached the new girl, pale blonde hair cut short in a bob that framed her face into a pale oval. Dark eyes flashed like sparks in the night, staring into you with an indifference no one could read. She was entirely apart, entirely unfathomable, and I was smitten almost immediately. I just knew I wasn't the only one; I could tell as I made my way that other guys around the courtyard of the school could read my intent, watching in resentful anticipation as I made the first move. I blinked and her eyes filled my vision, nearly black and almost baleful, she was peering inside of me. She was examining my soul as much as my face. She could see through intent, she could study the intricate details of my psyche as easily as a pattern on my shirt. She could- I blinked again because she'd murmured something softly and I'd missed it. "H-huh?" I mumbled. "I said, can I help you with something?" She repeated. I swallowed nervously, my mouth dry, my heart hammering away in my chest. She smiled, her eyes flashing dangerously. Did she just lick her lips? "Oh yeah, I uh..." I rubbed the spread of stubble on my chin and continued to stammer, "Did you uh... I mean, would you like to, y'know..." "You know?" She repeated after me, her face holding the slightest hint of amusement. "Yeah, uh, you know..." All around her the world was growing bright, the temperature was rising. My cheeks were flushed and I could see several girls and a few guys snickering scornfully, ready to lose it. They were celebrating my absolute failure, right here in front of the entire world. I was being offered up as the first of many foolish sacrifices to the pile of those clearly unworthy to speak to this girl, completely and utterly- "You know?" She repeated again, this time an actual question, waiting for me to finish. There are worse things in this world than the answer, "No." The mantra swam through my thoughts again and I gritted my teeth, a wave of determination washing over me. "You wanna go out sometime?" I asked, definitively, sternly, assertively. My offer was thrust forth, awaiting her parry. I felt like I'd shouted my challenge to the world, and the world responded in kind with silence. Awe. Anticipation. Fear. "Yes," she answered simply, her eyes full of some unknowable feeling, some uninterpretable depth. I found myself lost, standing in a black world with a single shimmering moon high above. My will was slipping away, draining into the moon high above its radiance filling me, replacing my own control with something else. Something dark and powerful and terrifying. It felt warm, but it wasn't real warmth. It was warmth compared to being met with the chill outside a pool of water. Slinking back into the water meant warmth, but it meant you were without warmth. Your body would soon succumb. You had no power. You had no life. You were gone. Staring into her eyes felt like hypothermia. I blinked and she was in front of me again and the world was around me and I felt the chill in my bones. "Oh uh, wait, yeah?" "Yes, of course. I'm Dahlia." She extended her hand and I reached out to shake it. She murmured her address, the time, the place, the date to me. It was like a chant, her soft tones echoed throughout my mind and I barely noticed my hand was bleeding after she released it. I just hoped I hadn't gotten blood on her. Everyone around stared in muted shock as Dahlia nearly glided away, her feet silent on the brick as she disappeared into the afterschool throng. My friend was beside me, shaking my shoulder and excitedly asking me how it went, but I couldn't hear him. I could only hear Dahlia's command, no, her request. A request of love, that I cradled in my heart. Her eyes were black and empty, no, not empty but full. Full of the void, full and comforting and warm and cold? But also warm and so lovely. She had asked me to bring something to our date. I needed my friend for that, it was what Dahlia demanded, no, not demanded, but requested, oh so pleasantly. I couldn't remember where or when our date was to take place, but Friday night I found my feet taking me where I needed to go. I arrived there, at that place in the woods, a path that wove between two trees, two specific trunks that could've been any two trees. The path could've been anywhere and nowhere and yet it brought me to her, to Dahlia, and her dark eyes full of love and warmth and hunger. She stood in the center of a circle carved into a slab of stone in the center of a clearing. Around the edges of the clearing, the trees writhed and twisted, their shapes like smoke and shadow at the edges of my vision, at the edges of thought. The moon shone a spotlight upon Dahlia, the only thing that mattered. She had asked for a gift, and I could not deny her. "Did you bring it to me, you foolish boy?" She giggled, her voice something beyond the human tongue now. I didn't hear so much as feel it throughout my limbs and along the edges of every nerve, a voice so hungry and full of love. Every synapse and sensation was overcome with her presence, her dominating radiance. Her love was overwhelming and so cold and warm and awful. Her voice was a weight, heavy and overwhelming, and yet I shouldered it with all the might and strength of a lover. "Of course, Dahlia," I answered eagerly, dumping the bag I'd carried here, the bag I remembered I had in my hand at that very moment. "Not on the ground, fool, on the altar," she hissed, her form radiating silky moonlight around her in waves. She was almost floating, weightless in the clearing as moonlight danced upon her skin. I staggered to the altar, something cool and wet dripping from my nose. I wiped away the blood from my nostril and kept stumbling forward, my head hurting, my heart aching, screaming agony in every cell in my brain. "You've done well, fool now set it there," and she gestured to the altar. The altar was nearly white, nearly luminous, and a strange symbol was carved into it. It shifted in the earth as I drew near. The altar almost seemed to expand, cracks forming in the porcelain surface as it swelled as if it were breathing. I placed the bag there, pulled the edges away to reveal its bloody contents. Dahlia had demanded a gift; kindly she had asked for blood, and blood I had brought. "What a beautiful gift you've brought me, foolish lover." In the center of the altar lay a heart, a human heart. I stared at it dumbly, my head pounding, my heart throbbing, blood dripping from my nose and down my chin. And then in an instant, the heart was gone and so too had the pain vanished. "We are connected now, fool. My love will belong to you, and you shall belong to me." Dahlia was suspended above the clearing now, shafts of moonlight streaming from her eyes and mouth and pooling below her like milk, thick and warm. "Drink now and go, for there is more work to be done." I did as she commanded and stared up at her visage. Her skin was nearly translucent, cracked like glass and stained with splotches of blood. She was upside-down, her hair falling in curving slices of marble ending in shining lavender points like the dripping fangs of some inhuman predator, an impossible intelligence behind her dark, beautiful eyes. Her arms extended away into shadow, long tendrils of white dripping upwards into the darkness. Her legs split a thousand times until they were a million threads of wire sinking into the ground and the sky and the moon. I could see a thread snaking up from the earth and into my chest, and when I tugged at it I felt my chest throb. "Don't tug at your boutonnière, my love. Now, take my bouquet and bring me more gifts." The 'bouquet' rose suddenly from the pool of white: an ax of silverish light, glowing and sparkling in the pool. When I took it, the light danced away in sparks and the ax became solid as if it were made of white granite. I trudged out of the clearing, my grim task before me. Not so grim, just labor. A labor of love. And as I wandered out of the woods and felt her eyes behind mine staring into town, into the windows, and through the doors, I could feel her cool touch on my doubts and fears. For there are worse things in this world than the answer, "No." --- If you liked this, check out my subreddit r/senatorpikachu for more writing kind of like this.
	[WP]: You are a captain of a modern cruise ship. After getting sucked into a storm, you and your crew find yourselves stranded in early 18th century Caribbean. You are now in posession of the largest ship on the seven seas during the golden age of piracy	"This is your Captain speaking. We have been scanning the airwaves constantly, there is no radio communication of any sort. If you have been checking the skies for aircraft, you will have noticed, as we have, that there are no aircraft at all. More, if you have been watching the shipping around us, you will have seen only craft driven by sails, and armed with cannon. I assure you, this is not some sort of historical reenactment. The ships we see are all of a single basic type, and they are all armed to one degree or another. In the great sailing ships Armada that recently made a world tour, no two ships were of the same design, and precious few were armed. As such we must assume that we are now in the Age of Sail. Based on historical records, piracy is rife in this area, and we must be prepared to defend ourselves, because I guarantee you, no one else will. There has been some talk about allying with a friendly power. The best we could expect is to be pressed into service as a warship, or troop transport. In any case, you, the passengers for whom's safety we are responsible, would be dumped ashore, with your valuables, if you're lucky. We find this an unacceptable outcome. We would have failed in our duty to see to your safety There has been much talk about how to return to our own time. Since arriving in this time was, as far as we know, an act of God, we cannot hope for return by any other means. The best we've been able to come up with is deliberately sailing through every major storm we can find. I do assure you, that although we are seaworthy, we are not designed to repeatedly enter severe storms. We we're attempting to evade such a storm the night we ... transfered ... to this time. That storm tracked us, and moved far faster than we could maneuver. Finally, there is the matter of consumables. Not just food, but fresh water and fuel. Fortunately, our engines are capable of burning some fairly crude petroleum products. Unfortunately, that drives the maintenance requirements to extreme levels. Since most of you have no experience with the sorts of engines we use, let me say that the piston size is many times greater than the largest person on board. Those of you with any sort of engineering background, even shade tree mechanics, are invited to contact guest services for guided tours of our engine rooms. We can literally use all the help we can get. Those of you with experience in sail, even or perhaps especially exotic sails, are requested to make yourselves available to the Chief Engineering staff to discuss possibilities. While our supplies of metal are somewhat limited, any idea that has the slightest chance of reducing the fuel use to cruise will be taken seriously. Those of you who have practical experience with black powder arms of all sizes and periods are requested to make yourselves available to the Sergeant at Arm's. Military personnel with combat experience are especially sought. People with Naval experience are to report to the forward lounge immediately for interviews with the top officers." "PA off Captain. ... Eh, Captain? That forward lounge meeting, I think we'd better have guards on hand, every know-nothing egotistical ass is going to be there demanding to be taken home immediately." "Good point, Bosun. You're in charge, take no nonsense, use what physical force you feel necessary. As much as we are responsible for their safety, we cannot allow them to endanger others or this ship." "Aye, Aye, Captain." ((I'm going to have to think about where to take this. It could so easily explode into a novelette, if not a full novel. Unless I just let them get overrun. Which I'm disinclined to do.))	I’m totally missing the point here by going off on this tangent, but assuming fuel/supplies/parts to be more or less indefinite, you not only have the largest ship but a floating island. Furthermore, your ship is faster than any other vessel out there (by quite some margin), is totally independent from the wind, has radar to spot other ships at range, is basically incapable of being boarded by force due to the height of its sides/freeboard, and is probably relatively impregnable for cannons of the era (thin metal hull being most likely sufficient to repel most cannon balls unless at very close range). Hopefully someone writes a story about a cruise ship terrorizing pirates!
Based in this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/cfn55a/a_glimpse_into_teh_future/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)	[WP] It's been decades since the apocalypse. The Wise Elders from your village are Millennials and Gen Z. You visit them one day in searching for wisdom.	The year was 2049, exactly 30 years since the great Apocalypse. Governments around the world collapsed; military bases were overrun, shopping districts were looted, schools were closed down, buildings were abandoned - society was no more. 'Zombies' - as the High Millennials called them - has taken over the world. The entire planet was claimed by the Undead and has been so ever since the Fever hit, and humanity has been long fighting against these monsters for a claim - a foothold - in the Earth they once so proudly revered as their birthright - our birthright. &#x200B; Over the past few decades, in a continuous fight between the Living and the Undead, communities have arisen - a symbol of hope, for humanity, that they may try to rebuild their society for the good of mankind, and to reclaim the birthright they had lost to the corpses of those that have fallen and reanimated the the great War that is the Apocalypse. &#x200B; However, people have been fighting the dead for so long they've forgotten the inherent nature of the living. As communities rose, Faction Wars followed suit, each sub-community fighting each other for whatever extra resources they could get their hands on. &#x200B; It is these Faction Wars which has led me to what I shall have to do later, as the Warrior representative for my faction. &#x200B; \~ \~ \~ \~ \~ It was the first Event I'd ever officially participate in. Warriors were chosen by the Wise Elders and were trained from childhood, all to prepare us for major Events such as another Raid. I had absolutely no idea how an Event as big as this would work, and so sought council among the wisest of the Wise Elders in terms of Events such as these: Ser McLoughlin-Fischbach, son of Sean and Mark. &#x200B; It would have been great to have an audience with Lady Kjellberg, however, it was illegal to seek advice from a member of the High Council regarding Events lest there be arising bias towards a Representative from the Jury, plus, she was already Empress of the Order. A member of the Order shall not take sides, but seek to which is fair and well. &#x200B; As I approached my Patron's homestead, I paused the music on my Spotsify. It was a classic from before the Apocalypse, an iconic song named "All Star" by Smash Mouth. And I must say, the Wise Elders really are wise. The song touched me so much that I had searched through the old Archives to find the legendary movie of Shrek and shared it to my neighbor. After watching it, he told me that it changed his life so much so we decided to show it to our village and we were awed by it, and showed our gratitude for the sharer by commemorating him as a statue. &#x200B; \~ \~ \~ "Top of the mornin' to 'ya, laddie! I must say, what bringeth you here to my humble abode?" my Patron asked, in his all-too-familiar comical accent. &#x200B; "O Wise Elder, I seeketh and audience with you to inquire an obtain wisdom that might prove effectual for me in the upcoming Faction War Event." I said. &#x200B; "Hmmm," he thought. "yanno you could just YEET it, right?" &#x200B; "My apologies to you, Ser Patron. I know not of YEET, and I wish not of loss for this Event," I told him. &#x200B; He then began to laugh and ushered me closer, eager to transfer some sort of holy knowledge that would enlighten me. And then, he whispered something in my ear that would forever change how I view the world. &#x200B; \~ \~ \~ I was ready. My opponent is a Sister, but I am a Warrior. I am equipped with a deadly knowledge that could turn the tides over. I walked into the arena with my signature garb: a basic gray tee, black pants, and a neon green backpack. \~ \~ \~ It was a hard battle.. I did not know of the secret 'Gaymer' code my opponent had been carrying. It was now, or never... &#x200B; I redid my floss dance, determination flashing across my eyes. And finally, I uttered the phrase that would bring about a close to this entire Event. &#x200B; "One. Two. Two. Fifty," I announced, and everyone in the arena halted, shocked by my own words. &#x200B; It was an instant win.	Hell pure Hell, What can I say (except you're welcome \circa 2016\). Everytime someone uses any words they need to follow it up with any sort of meme (like the doozlebear \circa2049\) The only music anyone listens to is despacito 13-19 or classic rock as its more commonly known. (moomoodoodoo \circa2034) Any form of speech has been eradicated by all Memes (BUNKY DUNKY LIKES \Circa 2019) While the rest of the village is looking for food and water, the elder seem to be divided into factions (A surprise to be sure but a welcome one \Circa Prehistoric times\). GEN Z seems to be the most stoic in efforts to fight against the outnumbering Fortniters of GEN Alpha (бкскчбгдв \Circa 2060). The millenials are too busy eating their avacado toast of immortality to care. (the dude was a woman \Circa 2014) but one day I decided to ask what it was like, and the stories they described expanded my attention span by .005 seconds.(LONZO BALD \Circa 2038). One day A man came to the village and he was humming a tune not heard of by even the elder's (Anon is scared \ Circa Prehistoric times) He called it Bohemian Rhapsody and told us that the church of M.E.M.E.S. was created only about 50-60 years ago ( The province of Djerba in Tunisia \*circa 2043)The head priest had heard of this blasphemy and stepped away from the Pewdiepie Alter and ordered him to (1 not have any memes when refering to him in sentences from this point onwards (horrifying as it is), 2) to be drowned in the ocean of MR Beasts bank account. The man pleaded for his life and then he looked at me and threw me a strange ripped rectangular prism. The man spake, Behold, A BOOK......
Based in this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/cfn55a/a_glimpse_into_teh_future/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)	[WP] It's been decades since the apocalypse. The Wise Elders from your village are Millennials and Gen Z. You visit them one day in searching for wisdom.	(On mobile, so bear with my mistakes) No one had seen the elders since the village was founded. They came, implanted their ideals, and once their home was built, they went in and never came out. No one even knew what they looked like anymore. Our area of the world wasn't insanely prosperous, but it got by well enough. People embraced the gain of knowledge and ways of protecting our environment. Other villages tried to start wars, but the elders would send a couple representatives to speak things out and bloodshed seemed to be averted. I had grown to be a sort of philosopher myself. The elders wanted those first villagers to keep an interest in the arts and humanities, and so I decided to follow a path of logic. My path of logic finally led me to one question- "Why?" I asked myself that same question as I stood at the unguarded door to the mansion that housed the elders. With a deep inhale of courage, I knocked on the door. The door slowly opened up, and while I expected someone to be behind the door, there was no one. I chewed on my lip a bit as I entered the residence and headed into the main foyer. The place was lighted enough to not seem dim, but wasn't as bright as I expected. I heard a voice as I stood there, "We're in the game room!" No questions as to who I was? No guards? This was certainly odd and my curiosity about the elders was increased. I started off in the direction of the voice as I looked around. On the walls were various pictures. I looked at some of the nameplates and they made even less sense- "Handsome Squidward," "Rip Harambee, forever in our hearts," and even a picture of what had caused the world to change, "Naruto runners storming area 51." I shook my head a bit as I continued on. In the next room was where I finally saw people. Five people sat there in front of a TV, playing something that had a large X on it. One of them finally looked over at me and gave a sigh, "Ah shit guys, guess someone is finally here to kill us." They all started laughing as the attention came to my presence in the room. I cleared my throat a bit, "I uh... Came to see the elders." One stood up, wearing a large faded shirt with what appeared to be an emblem in the shape of a bat on it, "You've seen them." They shrugged, their attention turning back to the tv. I blinked a bit and shook my head a bit, "Shouldn't you have guards? You created a great place to live and I'm sure you have enemies." They laughed again and the one who was doing all the talking spoke again, "Never underestimate the power of someone goading you into trying to kill them. My name is Chad, by the way." This was... Quite a strange situation I was in. I shook my head again and decided to ask the question that led me here, "Why did you make the village like you did?" Chad shrugged, "We thought it would be funny."	Hell pure Hell, What can I say (except you're welcome \circa 2016\). Everytime someone uses any words they need to follow it up with any sort of meme (like the doozlebear \circa2049\) The only music anyone listens to is despacito 13-19 or classic rock as its more commonly known. (moomoodoodoo \circa2034) Any form of speech has been eradicated by all Memes (BUNKY DUNKY LIKES \Circa 2019) While the rest of the village is looking for food and water, the elder seem to be divided into factions (A surprise to be sure but a welcome one \Circa Prehistoric times\). GEN Z seems to be the most stoic in efforts to fight against the outnumbering Fortniters of GEN Alpha (бкскчбгдв \Circa 2060). The millenials are too busy eating their avacado toast of immortality to care. (the dude was a woman \Circa 2014) but one day I decided to ask what it was like, and the stories they described expanded my attention span by .005 seconds.(LONZO BALD \Circa 2038). One day A man came to the village and he was humming a tune not heard of by even the elder's (Anon is scared \ Circa Prehistoric times) He called it Bohemian Rhapsody and told us that the church of M.E.M.E.S. was created only about 50-60 years ago ( The province of Djerba in Tunisia \*circa 2043)The head priest had heard of this blasphemy and stepped away from the Pewdiepie Alter and ordered him to (1 not have any memes when refering to him in sentences from this point onwards (horrifying as it is), 2) to be drowned in the ocean of MR Beasts bank account. The man pleaded for his life and then he looked at me and threw me a strange ripped rectangular prism. The man spake, Behold, A BOOK......
	[WP] After running out of gas in the middle of a desert stretch, you spot an isolated bar and step in. Inside are a series of increasingly confused dads, all saying they ended up here after stepping out for a gallon of milk or a pack of cigarettes.	Last Stop Until Barstow the sign read. I needed fuel, but there was no way I was entrusting my car to the slurry these little mom and pop shops were pumping out of the ground. I’d already turned off the A/C and radio to squeeze any extra bit of economy from the reserves I was burning through fast. I’d make Barstow one way or another. “Damnit!” I yelled, slapping the steering wheel and pulling off to the shoulder a few miles later. Total absence of cellular service added to my woes, which included the fact the sun was low on the horizon and I’d be hoofing it soon in almost total darkness. I checked the trunk and glove compartment for anything useful, then left a note under my wiper indicating my direction of travel in case some curious cop or Good Samaritan happened by. After that it was just a matter of grabbing what was left of my water and heading off into the desert night. As it came into view I noticed there was something different about the place. It didn’t appear to have fuel at all. Just a buzzing neon sign flashing Harley’s Eats Liquor Libations and the muffled tone of rock music. It would have to do. “There he is!” a voice called out from behind the bar. I had no reason to think anyone would be addressing me, so I paused at the entrance a moment and had a look around. The entire place was painted black, including the windows. Red-hue lamps cast arcs of light around small tables where hopeless looking men crowded, seemingly drinking under duress. The place was packed with far more people than cars in the lot. Some were bedraggled beyond what was publicly appropriate, clothing deteriorating, beards and hair long, eyes sunken back in skulls staring dispiritedly over tankards and shot glasses. “Come, friend!” the bartender said enthusiastically, polishing pint glasses as he spoke. He was a large man. His skin noticeably sunburnt, further accentuated by the crimson tones that filled the place. His head was bald and his mustache long and jet black. His broad shoulders and musculature stood in stark contrast to the miserable bunch surrounding me. He gestured towards an empty stool, in front of which sat a telephone and cold pint of ale upon the bar. “Your seat, I believe! You’ve come a long way!” This place was the very embodiment of everything I didn’t trust about desert folk, and why I’d remained content to speed past them at 80 mph whenever I’d been unfortunate enough to venture through this way. ‘Desert trash,’ I thought. Junkies and alcoholics with nothing better to do on a weeknight than gather together in a freak show of a bar without care given to their hygiene and drink themselves catatonic. However, being short on options myself, I pulled out the stool. ‘Maybe not just yet,’ I thought to myself, returning it and setting the glass back on the bar. I had another look around, this time for a place to relieve myself. In the very darkest corner I saw the whites of his eyes staring back at me. The least offensive looking of the miscreants, slumped low in his chair, ignoring his drink, staring vacantly. His clothing, still relatively clean. His stubble, maybe a day or so’s growth. If I was going to find any peer in this place it would be him. “What’s going on here, friend?” I asked. His eyes tracked me as I sat down, never blinking. Seemingly satisfied with what he’d seen he closed them and took a sip from his mug. “What did you do to deserve this place? Tell the wife you were going for milk and diapers, then meet a younger lover?” His words cut me to my core. I had in fact lied to my wife, telling her I was headed for a week-long convention when in fact I was en route to meet the woman I’d met two years prior at a similar convention. “Who are you people?” I asked. The man held up his glass, gesturing around the bar as he introduced the other patrons to me from afar. “Cheating husband, cheating boyfriend, lying junkie. We got a couple murderers, deadbeat dads, a few general lowlifes. All of whom found their way down the same road, thinking they were getting away with something – or from something, but winding up at the same place.” “Yeah, well. I’ll leave you to it, then. I don’t plan on sticking around,” I said indignantly, rising up from my seat. His laughter started quietly at first, then rose up with a crescendo that everyone else soon joined, and to my horror, the door I’d entered only minutes earlier was now gone, replaced by a smooth black wall where a door once stood. I raced for the phone, drawing the receiver to my ear and was greeted by the deafening laughter of thousands of lost souls. “How ‘bout that drink, now?” The bartender said, sliding it towards me with a long white nail I hadn’t noticed before. “It helps with the wait.” Harley’s Eats Liquor Libations – H.E.L.L. A last stop on the road to perdition. The bartender is a creature of few words once you’re his. We only know that we’ll eventually be picked up and carted off to our damnation. Until then, most of us pass the time drinking. I prefer writing. If you’re reading this, then that means you’ve passed over the divide to a place where I once sat before you; just another unlucky sad-sack. So raise a toast. Make the most of it. Your ride’s almost here.	Rerouting Take the first left and continue for 30 miles.. "Ahhh Shelia, you haven't let me down yet." Vincent said to his New Zealand accented gps. "Cutting it close, gonna need gas soon" Vincent's 1988 Camaro scooted along the stretch of desert and peaked a hill. His vision saw as far as his eyes would let him. There was nothing, but miles and miles of dry, dusty, dirt, and the occasional cactus. "No police, no problem" Vincent said as he pressed the accelerator to the floor. The speedometer circled towards the upper limits of it's gauge. A smile broke upon his face that only a shot of adrenaline and speed can create.. "No, no, no, not now!!!" He said as he pounded the steering wheel. The recent velocity binge had pushed those thirsty horses to their limit and now he was stranded. The blurry landscape was now still, and a sinking feeling of isolation began to creep in. The Camaro coasted to a stop on the highway, it's windscreen reflected the countless stars in the night sky. He held his face in his hands and sighed "A moment like this, there is only one thing to do. Parch my thirst." His headlights weren't the only other lights on this road. An old cowboy ballad broke the night silence, and he looked towards the source. A red neon sign tacked on top of a telephone pole spelled the word "Moses'" "Big titted bitches don't just fall out of the sky you know" Vincent said as he looked towards the Celestial body above him. "Nothing?! Damn it! let's see what this honkey tonk can do." He said as he left his car abandoned. It was the type of building that offered protection, but never felt safe. The bar was inhabited by men, some of them glanced towards the door when it opened. Others too dazed to even care. Vincent grabbed a seat in the middle of the bar, strangers on both sides of him spaced a seat apart. The bar keep, too busy to end his conversation with the regulars to pay attention to the new patron. Vincent knocked loudly on the bar for service. "Yes?" The balded bearded barman. "Hey buddy, I ran out of gas do you have any, and what do you have on tap?" Vincent. "Closest gas station is back the way you came in. Beer on tap is Rolling Rock." Barman. "Shit! You don't have anything?!" Vincent. "They are putting a gas station in very soon." "How soon?!!" Vincent. "What year is it?" Barman. "2020." Vincent. "No worries mate, it will be done by 2025." "I can't wait that long!!! I am going to see my son. Haven't seen him for 3 months after the bitch of an ex wife ran away in the middle of the night!" Vincent. "Do you want that beer?" Barman. "Fuck, I guess so. Shit." Vincent was frustrated. This was the way his life had always been. When things were getting good, something had to mess it up. He sipped his beer, and stared blankly at the television. It was the world cup, and he stopped paying attention to fùtbol along time ago. Ever since he won ayso championship that his dad promised to be there and watch. He scoffed at each celebration the players did. "Arrogant pricks!" He said as he doused his mouth with barley soda. "I can't stand this sport neither! 90 minutes of potential points to end nil nil. It it just seems unamerican." A stranger said from the other end of the bar. "Cheers to a shitty sport!" The two raised their glasses. One beer turned into two. Two to four, and then each other lost count. They became the most talkative people in the bar and it seemed like they were with a long lost friend. "I didn't catch your name friend. My name is Vincent." "Vincent's a great name! Had a son named exactly that! My name is Hank. He would be about your age" "Get the shit out of here!" Vincent started speaking slurred. "My dad's name was Hank! Son of a bitch abandoned me!" "That's horrible! Did he ever apologize for his absence?" Hank. "Its been so long, an apology would be meaningless. I grew up with out him, had to fight my way through. Which why I got to get the fuck out of here. I got to be better than my dad and I am already fucking up" Vincent. "Hey Vincent, I am sorry I wasn't there for you. I have been in this bar, since your championship game. I wanted a little day time buzz to get me through, but I couldn't leave. And now this curse is passed to you!" Hank "What the fuck are you talking about? You are drunk! How the hell did you know about that!!!!" Vincent. "I am sorry, I hate myself for not being there. It's been a long 27 years watching the world move on with out you." Hank said as he got up and pushed his stool in. "Good bye, Vincent!" Hank said as he walked through the door. Vincent tried to keep up, but the door shut and locked in front of him. His fists were to no avail. "Don't worry son, the gas station will be built soon."
	[WP] When you created the universe and the lives, you liked the way people live and decided to be one of human beings. But you forgot that you were a god for a long time. You were an atheist, until your 25 th birthday as a human. You realized that you were the creator of the very world you hated.	Who am I? The question clamored like a bell tower through my head. I was unable to shake of the full realization I arrived at this morning when I woke up on my twenty-fifth birthday. Or was it? Why are there memories from before? "Answer me!" I screamed skywards. "Who the fuck am I?" I unleashed my pent up anger, my frustration, my powerlessness, to the uncaring balls of plasma hanging in the night sky. I waited for an answer... Fully expecting something to happen; a sign; a signal -- a falling star would do. Or maybe I hoped a mysterious apparration would appear with answers to all my questions. I waited. The silence gave no answers. The sky had only questions. I felt unsure about anything in this bleak world. I held my gaze locked to the night sky as if I could drag the answers out of those careless lights, bringing them down to Earth by sheer power of will. They twinkled, mocking me with their grandness, unreachable, zipping around their place in the heavens. They are so free... Why am I not? I sulked down on my peak, huddling my knees between my arms to keep myself warm; to feel safe. But the loneliness pushed on me, encroaching, engulfing, invading. Every fiber of my being taken over by the emptiness of it all. Why did I even come here? What was I thinking? I had climbed three-thousand feet to my father's observatorium in my search for answers. I thought a special place like this would be the place where something special would happen. But alas, this world isn't special -- And neither am I. Not anymore. "Why are you not answering me?" My voice croaked. The stars twinkled silently. Uncaring about my despair, their creator. Their beauty that once filled me with wonder and awe left no impact on me in my current state of distraught. "Please answer me." I whispered. The silence they left behind was deafening. The worst part was that I knew the answer -- and I hated it. "Why did I do this? Why was I so stupid to believe it would be fun to be human?" I felt the heat of tears well under my eyes, anxiety I wasn't sure what to do with, rising in my core. I threw my head up to the sky and cried. "I want to go back! This world doesn't want me!" But the words were ignored by the darkness. "take me back..." The words fleeted in the wind. I wouldn't answer myself. I couldn't comprehend why I was so cruel to me. I huddled even closer to protect myself. Outside of my void I felt the wind pick up, a cold piercing breeze blew away the last remnants of warmth trapped beneath my shirt. The chill lingered on my bare skin, piercing down to my bones. I shivered. A carpet of boiling darkness approached, shrouding the lights of heaven -- A thunderstorm was rapidly approaching my peak. I watched as the first arc of plasma streaked down, ionizing the atmosphere, illuminating skyscrapers far below in a cold blue light. The bolt of plasma struck the highest tower in the city, superheating the metal construction. "Good" I muttered. "That's one way to go home." I wished to end this dread more than anything. I wanted to stop feeling what I felt. I started waiting for my death. I heard the crunching of rocks as footsteps approached me from behind. A voice rung out through the dark. "Thank God I found you. What are you doing out here? Are you mad? There's a storm coming!" My father placed his hand on my shoulder, his warmth blazed my core. "Come, let's get inside." He nudged me to come with him. "Thank God I found you?" I wheezed. Pushing back on the man."That's a bit ironic wouldn't you say?" I heaved. My chest felt constricted. I wasn't sure how to explain it to him. How to continue. He'd think I was insane. "Go away! Leave me be!" I lashed out, trying to make him dissappear. It would be easier that way. "No..." His grip tightened under my words. Unwavering. He refused to give up on me. I shouldn't have come here. I should have known my father would come looking for me, of course he'd know where to find me; he knew me better than anyone -- Even me. I felt my jaw tighten as hot tears washed away the dust on my cheeks. Their heat burning with the pain I felt. I tried to stop them but had lost all control. His firm hand anchored me, guiding me through my emotions. I felt my anxiety, my pain, my distraught ebb away through our connection. He took it all in. Words were unneeded. I found myself crying freeer than ever before, rocking back and forth on the rough granite boulder underneath the night sky. My island in the sea of black. With my light beside me to guide the way through. I have no idea for how long I cried; a second, a minute, an hour. It felt endless and instantaneous. But my father stayed there with me for however long it took, sharing in my pain. Understanding my feelings as only a father could. "Are you feeling better now?" He asked. It felt like he understood my despair, even if he did not know of my turmoil within -- He did not need to know. He'd be there anyways -- no matter what. He sat down besides me and threw his arm around my shoulder. We both stared down at the world I had created so long ago. A world I had believed brought naught but pain. An arc of light illuminated dark, rolling clouds drawing near. They boiled and stirred under the rising of the wind. "Why does it hurt so much?" I asked, sniffing. Wiping the tears of my cheeks. "What's the point?" He fell silent. Pondering my question whilst overlooking the city lights below. Another arc illuminated the skies, streaking down the ground very close this time. "I don't know." He spoke. "I believe it's up to us to find out." "But why do anything if it's going to end anyways?" My father fell silent again. "Do you see that house over there?" He pointed at a house seperated from society on the rolling hills, a lonely light in the dark. "The man who lives there is all alone, his wife died of an illness twenty years ago, his kids all died in the war. But even still he lives on, honing his craft even to this day. I asked him the same question once." "What did he say?" I asked. Looking up at the stern face of my father, his features softened by the lights from the city below. "He told me that if he believed that if he wasn't there to remember them there would have been no point to their existence. He doesn't believe their deaths were in vain. He told me if there such a thing as a God and it's God that took his family -- It was only to show him something." "I'm so sorry." I felt guilt wash over me as if I killed his wife and kids singlehandedly. "But isn't that horrible? Too cause so much pain and grief to someone so undeserving?" "I told him the same thing. What good could possibly come out of so much sorrow?" The lightning struck again. Closer, the rumbling of the thunder hit us like a wall a few seconds after the arc appeared. We staid put. "So what did he say?" I asked. "It showed him how lucky he was to be with them in that moment of time. There is no such thing as beauty without ugliness. One cannot exist without the other." I did not know what to say to that. "And I believe he was right. Sometimes life throws us the ugliest of curve balls, drenches us in the dark. But that darkness only makes the light shine brighter." "But his wife and kids died. How can there be light in that?" My father sighed. "I don't know. I don't have all the answers for you." Another arc hit the ground. "But I'll tell you this. He is happy to have met them. Just as I am happy to have met you." I looked at the lonely light on the hill where the man who had lost everything lived. I felt the guilt wash away from me. He was happy. The thunder struck again, the sound was deafening, the light flared the darkness away. But we did not move to find shelter; we stayed right there. An unspoken agreement had formed between us to go where the other went. To go when the other went. My father did not want to abandon me; and I found that I did not want to abandon him. I felt happy knowing that. And that was enough.	‘Well hate is a strong word; I don’t know if I’d go that far my dude. I find people pretty gross but I mean yeah, they’re okay, I did make them you know, so kinda my fault I guess. To be honest I’m just stoked that I’m God, like dude, who would have thought that just a regular bro from Socal would be like THE GOD of all the things man, that’s pretty nar. But I’m glad though, I can’t wait to help all these poor people and get them fresh water and clean the oceans and all that dude. You know what I mean?’ Todd said while leaning into the rim of the beachside bar. ‘yeah, I totally catch your drift dude, like helping people is the way totally. Dude I once made a gofundme for this senorita who had her legs chewed off by a gaters, was so sad dude, we got her like $30 and it just set me up dude. I feel like a new person, like charity and all that dude, its worth it, for your soul’ Clay replied as he sipped on his bud light ‘bro I know, I made your soul, oh yeah man that was a good one. Its def not enough to get you into heaven but I already have you a free pass because I know you’re a pretty calm dude’ Todd said ‘oh, thanks bro, that’s nar, so like a get out of jail free card am I right?’ ‘yeah man you could like murder someone and I’d be chill with it just don’t go doing it too much though, okay my dude’ ‘Sick bro, thanks so much.’ ‘yeah bro, anyway, grab your board, I just sent a sick ass wave our way, should be like 30 seconds off’ ‘oh cool dude, wait what about helping all those people though bro’ ‘dude that can wait, grab your board, let’s go shred that nar’
	[WP] Due to a lack of donors, you sacrificed your own heart for a young child. Years later, the child learned the secrets of life and death, and was determined to repay you.	You know that sensation you get in the pit of your stomach when you fall? That pit that balls up and clenches? That's what I felt like when I woke up. Well, I didn't 'wake', to be accurate. "Oh, ok, we have readings from the frontal. She.. Appears to be aware. She may be able to hear us now." It sounded like a deeper voice that was talking, male perhaps. 'What the hell..?' I thought to myself. "What the hell..?" Followed right after my thought from what sounded like an Alexa. "Oh, yea. She can hear us. Phase one complete. Ask her anything." The deeper voice said. "Perfect.. Yuliya? You may not remember me. But I remember you." The new voice was lighter in tone, younger for sure, but I wasn't able to distinguish if it was possibly a male or female. Or anything really. It's like I was hearing from.. Outside? Was there an outside? 'Where the hell am I?' I thought-asked, and the Alexa-like voice mimiced my thoughts. "Well, you are in Russia. What is commonly known as Moscow, I guess, when you were alive. You are alive now too, but just in a different sense.. It's easier for you to just see for yourself. Long story short, this is the only place in the world I could go to that I could do my research legally. That's why you are here." Instantly, the pit felt heavier. WHEN I was alive? Commonly known? What? How? Last I remember, I was being put under by.. God, I can't remember, some freaking cocky surgeon. I wish I could have wrung his neck from how he acted, but.. Back to reality. 'Please. Tell me what is going on. I'm scared.' "Well.." Came the reply from the deeper voice. "Should we tell her?" "We could, the failsafe is active. If it will cause too much damage psychologically, then she'll just shut down." Said the lighter voice. "What about the equipment?" "What about it?" "Well, if we have a breakdown, we have to re-install the software, we don't know what all systems could be-" 'Shut up and fucking tell me what is going on. NOW.' I thought-commanded. "See what you did? Jesus. No choice now. Open her eyes." Said the lighter voice. "Fine." Said the deeper voice. Suddenly, I went from black to a dazzling white. I felt my eyes burning. I was in so much pain, but I couldn't bring myself to scream. I couldn't move. I couldn't even inhale. I couldn't blink. All I could do was bear this intense pain. 'It... Hurts... So.... Much....' It was all I could do to even bring myself to think aloud. "Just bear it for a minute, I'm sorry, but your optics have to adjust after we had to regrow about twenty percent of your body. That included your eyes, since they were among the first to decompose." Said the lighter voice. "On the bright side, you should have near perfect vision when your stop feeling the pain!" Said the deeper voice happily. I really wanted to punch them both, and really would have, if I had been able to so much as twitch my fingers. If I had them. I didn't even know that much. Do I have fingers? Fuck. Focus Yuliya. Focus. "The pain should be subsiding now. We are going to enable the motor functionality, and we are going to try and stimulate various parts of the cerrebellum, basal gangula, and cerebral cortex. I'm not going to bother telling you what order, because the pain is probably going to make you forget if I told you anyway" said the younger voice. 'Wait. No. Sto-' I tried to protest Pain. So much pain. I saw my.. Arm? Was that MY arm? It didn't look right... I saw the arm flailing, and my entire body was in pins and needles, except my pins were fire and the needles were brimstone just racking my body. I lost want little sense of time I had. The pit in my stomach was nothing in comparison to the new dread I felt. I now knew I had hands and fingers and arms, legs and feet and toes, but everything felt... So... Painful. "We should stop the simulation. I think that's enough." Said the deeper voice. "You're right, introduce the the dopamine." Said the lighter voice. Still racked with pain, euphoria set in. Shortly after that, I began to wonder what had happened. Why did I feel all of that pain? 'What's your name?' I asked. "I think she's asking you, young lady." Said the deeper voice. I heard some shuffling, and a door opening and closing. Then, I saw something. A face, maybe. The face was rippling, like I was submerged in something. "My name, Yuliya, is Gustina. You saved me over twenty years ago." Said the younger voice "Now. It's my turn to save you." At this rate. I don't know if I want to be saved.	"It was almost too easy. And it cost me hardly anything." I listened, unsure how I felt, as the chunk of charcoal told me how it came to be here. "I learned everything I needed online. It took a good while. I ended up using the last of my money to order some seeds, and cloned a lot of plants. The concentrates bankrolled the whole thing." I remembered concentrates. The wave that washed over me, relaxing my body. Then I remembered my body, and the clenching and burning of my lungs as I coughed and prepared another dab. My thoughts whispered about balance, pleasure and pain- but there was something else attempting to surface. Before it could, I glanced again at the flaking black lump before me. I was being told a story (how long has it been since I've heard a story?) and I should listen and engage. "Surely just reading wouldn't prepare you well enough?" I suggested. "No one's been prepared enough. At least not any of us, because no one has made it back yet to give advice. But I had to; I was working toward a deadline." As theirs and mine came forth, the words echoed and vibrated the way bells would, rang in anticipation or celebration, a welcome visit, or a birth, or- "The most frightening thing was hitchhiking across the country with a bag full of felonies," they continued. "Then again, there's a large contingent of truckers sick of sleepy weed. They were so grateful, they even fed me. The last day, though, I had to purge. I didn't want to contaminate the fuel. It was already barely enough to make it." I looked at the crumpled mess of metal they had floated out from. On one side, a marking was visible. No- part of a marking. Part of a letter. It was "N", and the telltale curve of its angles was all I needed to see to know its origins. It came from a land called Florida. No, not a land- a country...no, a state! I wanted an orange, but I didn't know what I'd do with it. I felt angry; at this intrusion, at the thing awakening in me. At the fact that I felt. The coal continued its incredible tale of stowing away in a rocket's fuel tank, and kicking the interior and saying the right words in the right volume and tone to push it off-course, into a cave on an anomalous asteroid with a great gravitational pull... I had to move around. Maths and sciences were never my thing, and I was overwhelmed. As I was behind the coal, a slight movement caught my attention. I moved closer, and I realized that the coal's single eye, the only remaining evidence of it being alive, had blinked. I knew that eye. Or, at least, had at one point. I saw it, shortly before...and there were bells, and doctors were bowing to me. The bells, for a death- my death, my sacrifice for- I gave it to- what was it? Who was it? I no longer had a mind to contain thoughts, but there were still too many. I couldn't comprehend any more of the things they said. I just stared, in shock, at the compressed vessel that housed my now-compressed heart. That was a person. That was a child that I had given my life to. And they stowed away on a literal spaceship to come to me, wherever I was. The ejection from the cave was too fast and long ago to remember the journey. "I wanted to repay you," the not-baby said. "I thought, the things I learned and the knowledge given to me at the crux of my mission, would enable me to send you back, to the place where I was okay. But that's not how this works. I know that now. You can't go back, but you can regain your humanity. I'm giving you mine." I didn't want it. I had chosen to give up my life and humanity for them, because I couldn't bear it. The pleasure, the pain, the pain, the pain...the reasons why I consumed so many concentrates. This...thing...could not have had any more humanity to give to me, for one truly aware would know that it would be inhumane and torture to force me to regain any. "I don't want it. I don't want it," I sobbed. "It's too late," they responded. "The crux, the thing that turned me into this, removed mine and you have been absorbing it since I arrived. Now you have back what you selflessly gave to me." Foolish, foolish coal. I know how I feel, and it's never going to be good.
	[WP] Due to a lack of donors, you sacrificed your own heart for a young child. Years later, the child learned the secrets of life and death, and was determined to repay you.	It was difficult, remembering how to think. &#x200B; Part of me figured I needed some sort of neural network, some sort of electric pulses and chemical mixture to form thoughts, the other part noticed that I was thinking right at that very moment without them. My being was so, so still without lungs inhaling or a heart beating, without the micro-movements I had never noticed before that were caused by a constant stream of blood through my veins. &#x200B; I wasn't sure how I was seeing, without eyes. I wasn't sure why these were the things that were bothering me. I had been dead, and now... &#x200B; I was still dead, just... incorporeal. A ghost. &#x200B; And a middle-aged man stood, looking at me. And I could see him without having eyes to see, a brain to interpret, a mind to react. &#x200B; "...Auntie?" &#x200B; It was a quiet word, and I heard it without ears. I was delighted. Being dead had been awfully quiet, and while I had been sure I wanted the sleep, I was alright to be awake. &#x200B; But wait... what had he said? &#x200B; "Auntie, are you there? Can you hear me? I think... I think it worked..." &#x200B; I was puzzled, I didn't know how to respond without being able to draw a breath in to rattle vocal cords I didn't have. But I was thinking without a brain, so... &#x200B; "Huh?" &#x200B; I had never been particularly eloquent in life, so my first word after dying didn't come to a shock to me. It did, however, seem to encourage the man. He stood taller, eyes alight, searching the air as if trying to make eye contact with me. &#x200B; "Auntie Katie, it's me, Henry. Remember? I was five, you died to give me your heart." He covered his mouth, and tears welled up. "Auntie, I never had the words to thank you, not then. I didn't understand. There had been so much going on, and it happened so fast, and I was so young..." &#x200B; "Henry?" Memories surfaced, from where I wasn't certain. The implications of memory being written not just on the brain but on the soul, however, started to feel less important as he pulled up an album of pictures. On the cover was a photo of the little golden-haired, blue eyed boy being held by me, a book open across my lap. A book about a panda. I gazed at it, then at the forty-something year old before me. He still had blue eyes, his blond hair cut short as his father's had always been. "My little hungry hippo?" &#x200B; A smile crossed his lips. "Yes, Auntie Katie. I have two little hungry hippos of my own now. My second is named Kaitlyn, after you. My eldest is named Thomas, after dad's dad. Though I guess you would have known that." &#x200B; He flipped through the album, a carefully curated story of his life, of our family. He told me about how he remembers the funeral, a little bit. He said he could find the video somewhere, because they had live-streamed it. &#x200B; "Mom still misses you. Even though she's older now, she still visits your grave a few times a year. Always brings purple flowers. I do, too, when I'm in town." &#x200B; He pointed to a picture of himself, so much younger than he stood before her, wearing a graduation cap and a diploma of some sort. "I got science degrees and medical degrees. I made a better method to lab grow organs from donor tissue, so that no more Aunt Katies had to die so their nephews could live. It's saved the lives of so many people, Auntie; especially people with rare blood types like mine -- uh, ours. They've named the technique after me, but... it's really because of you. It's because when the tissue you first donated didn't take, you weren't ready to stop sacrificing." &#x200B; Time didn't have meaning as I listened. The photos were beautiful. Graduations, birthdays, weddings, the birth of new children. I saw my own mother and father, lovingly remembered as Nana and Papa. I saw my nephew get his first bike, his first car, his first apartment. I watched through photographs as my sister and her husband grew older and became grandparents. &#x200B; "I wanted to thank you, Auntie," He said, long after a silence settled. "But apart from summoning you back as a spirit, I... I don't know how. Except..." &#x200B; He turned to the door behind him, hesitated. &#x200B; "It'd be your choice, Auntie." He said, hand hovering above the door knob. &#x200B; Finally, he resolved. He opened the door. &#x200B; I moved my presence with him. &#x200B; A body lay in a large, coffin-like tank. &#x200B; My body. Or at least, a look-alike. &#x200B; "I got very, very good at growing new organs." Henry said. He pressed his hand to his chest. "So long as I had living tissue to start with. I thought I could, you know, give you a second chance. My little Kaitlyn and Tommy would love to have an auntie like you." &#x200B; He placed the photo album on the tank, the picture of us reading together facing up. I looked around the room, at the neatly stored medical equipment, my attention settling on one last object. The panda book. &#x200B; I decided. &#x200B; And a long, long moment later, I breathed.	"It was almost too easy. And it cost me hardly anything." I listened, unsure how I felt, as the chunk of charcoal told me how it came to be here. "I learned everything I needed online. It took a good while. I ended up using the last of my money to order some seeds, and cloned a lot of plants. The concentrates bankrolled the whole thing." I remembered concentrates. The wave that washed over me, relaxing my body. Then I remembered my body, and the clenching and burning of my lungs as I coughed and prepared another dab. My thoughts whispered about balance, pleasure and pain- but there was something else attempting to surface. Before it could, I glanced again at the flaking black lump before me. I was being told a story (how long has it been since I've heard a story?) and I should listen and engage. "Surely just reading wouldn't prepare you well enough?" I suggested. "No one's been prepared enough. At least not any of us, because no one has made it back yet to give advice. But I had to; I was working toward a deadline." As theirs and mine came forth, the words echoed and vibrated the way bells would, rang in anticipation or celebration, a welcome visit, or a birth, or- "The most frightening thing was hitchhiking across the country with a bag full of felonies," they continued. "Then again, there's a large contingent of truckers sick of sleepy weed. They were so grateful, they even fed me. The last day, though, I had to purge. I didn't want to contaminate the fuel. It was already barely enough to make it." I looked at the crumpled mess of metal they had floated out from. On one side, a marking was visible. No- part of a marking. Part of a letter. It was "N", and the telltale curve of its angles was all I needed to see to know its origins. It came from a land called Florida. No, not a land- a country...no, a state! I wanted an orange, but I didn't know what I'd do with it. I felt angry; at this intrusion, at the thing awakening in me. At the fact that I felt. The coal continued its incredible tale of stowing away in a rocket's fuel tank, and kicking the interior and saying the right words in the right volume and tone to push it off-course, into a cave on an anomalous asteroid with a great gravitational pull... I had to move around. Maths and sciences were never my thing, and I was overwhelmed. As I was behind the coal, a slight movement caught my attention. I moved closer, and I realized that the coal's single eye, the only remaining evidence of it being alive, had blinked. I knew that eye. Or, at least, had at one point. I saw it, shortly before...and there were bells, and doctors were bowing to me. The bells, for a death- my death, my sacrifice for- I gave it to- what was it? Who was it? I no longer had a mind to contain thoughts, but there were still too many. I couldn't comprehend any more of the things they said. I just stared, in shock, at the compressed vessel that housed my now-compressed heart. That was a person. That was a child that I had given my life to. And they stowed away on a literal spaceship to come to me, wherever I was. The ejection from the cave was too fast and long ago to remember the journey. "I wanted to repay you," the not-baby said. "I thought, the things I learned and the knowledge given to me at the crux of my mission, would enable me to send you back, to the place where I was okay. But that's not how this works. I know that now. You can't go back, but you can regain your humanity. I'm giving you mine." I didn't want it. I had chosen to give up my life and humanity for them, because I couldn't bear it. The pleasure, the pain, the pain, the pain...the reasons why I consumed so many concentrates. This...thing...could not have had any more humanity to give to me, for one truly aware would know that it would be inhumane and torture to force me to regain any. "I don't want it. I don't want it," I sobbed. "It's too late," they responded. "The crux, the thing that turned me into this, removed mine and you have been absorbing it since I arrived. Now you have back what you selflessly gave to me." Foolish, foolish coal. I know how I feel, and it's never going to be good.
	[WP] Due to a lack of donors, you sacrificed your own heart for a young child. Years later, the child learned the secrets of life and death, and was determined to repay you.	It was difficult, remembering how to think. &#x200B; Part of me figured I needed some sort of neural network, some sort of electric pulses and chemical mixture to form thoughts, the other part noticed that I was thinking right at that very moment without them. My being was so, so still without lungs inhaling or a heart beating, without the micro-movements I had never noticed before that were caused by a constant stream of blood through my veins. &#x200B; I wasn't sure how I was seeing, without eyes. I wasn't sure why these were the things that were bothering me. I had been dead, and now... &#x200B; I was still dead, just... incorporeal. A ghost. &#x200B; And a middle-aged man stood, looking at me. And I could see him without having eyes to see, a brain to interpret, a mind to react. &#x200B; "...Auntie?" &#x200B; It was a quiet word, and I heard it without ears. I was delighted. Being dead had been awfully quiet, and while I had been sure I wanted the sleep, I was alright to be awake. &#x200B; But wait... what had he said? &#x200B; "Auntie, are you there? Can you hear me? I think... I think it worked..." &#x200B; I was puzzled, I didn't know how to respond without being able to draw a breath in to rattle vocal cords I didn't have. But I was thinking without a brain, so... &#x200B; "Huh?" &#x200B; I had never been particularly eloquent in life, so my first word after dying didn't come to a shock to me. It did, however, seem to encourage the man. He stood taller, eyes alight, searching the air as if trying to make eye contact with me. &#x200B; "Auntie Katie, it's me, Henry. Remember? I was five, you died to give me your heart." He covered his mouth, and tears welled up. "Auntie, I never had the words to thank you, not then. I didn't understand. There had been so much going on, and it happened so fast, and I was so young..." &#x200B; "Henry?" Memories surfaced, from where I wasn't certain. The implications of memory being written not just on the brain but on the soul, however, started to feel less important as he pulled up an album of pictures. On the cover was a photo of the little golden-haired, blue eyed boy being held by me, a book open across my lap. A book about a panda. I gazed at it, then at the forty-something year old before me. He still had blue eyes, his blond hair cut short as his father's had always been. "My little hungry hippo?" &#x200B; A smile crossed his lips. "Yes, Auntie Katie. I have two little hungry hippos of my own now. My second is named Kaitlyn, after you. My eldest is named Thomas, after dad's dad. Though I guess you would have known that." &#x200B; He flipped through the album, a carefully curated story of his life, of our family. He told me about how he remembers the funeral, a little bit. He said he could find the video somewhere, because they had live-streamed it. &#x200B; "Mom still misses you. Even though she's older now, she still visits your grave a few times a year. Always brings purple flowers. I do, too, when I'm in town." &#x200B; He pointed to a picture of himself, so much younger than he stood before her, wearing a graduation cap and a diploma of some sort. "I got science degrees and medical degrees. I made a better method to lab grow organs from donor tissue, so that no more Aunt Katies had to die so their nephews could live. It's saved the lives of so many people, Auntie; especially people with rare blood types like mine -- uh, ours. They've named the technique after me, but... it's really because of you. It's because when the tissue you first donated didn't take, you weren't ready to stop sacrificing." &#x200B; Time didn't have meaning as I listened. The photos were beautiful. Graduations, birthdays, weddings, the birth of new children. I saw my own mother and father, lovingly remembered as Nana and Papa. I saw my nephew get his first bike, his first car, his first apartment. I watched through photographs as my sister and her husband grew older and became grandparents. &#x200B; "I wanted to thank you, Auntie," He said, long after a silence settled. "But apart from summoning you back as a spirit, I... I don't know how. Except..." &#x200B; He turned to the door behind him, hesitated. &#x200B; "It'd be your choice, Auntie." He said, hand hovering above the door knob. &#x200B; Finally, he resolved. He opened the door. &#x200B; I moved my presence with him. &#x200B; A body lay in a large, coffin-like tank. &#x200B; My body. Or at least, a look-alike. &#x200B; "I got very, very good at growing new organs." Henry said. He pressed his hand to his chest. "So long as I had living tissue to start with. I thought I could, you know, give you a second chance. My little Kaitlyn and Tommy would love to have an auntie like you." &#x200B; He placed the photo album on the tank, the picture of us reading together facing up. I looked around the room, at the neatly stored medical equipment, my attention settling on one last object. The panda book. &#x200B; I decided. &#x200B; And a long, long moment later, I breathed.	Who am I? Well, I'm Jack C. Ackerman. I signed up to be an organ donor a little while back, figuring that since I lead a pretty uneventful, normal life here in my small town of New Rockland, I could at the bare minimum help people when I died by giving them something they need most. What I did not expect, however, was that I would be called for emergency medical at 3 in the morning, requesting that, "...since you were the only person whose blood type was compatible and were on the donor's list, we couldn't afford to pass this opportunity." How could I have said no? The kid was only six years old and running on a make-shift heart machine like it were some Iron Man suit. My wife had died about a decade ago due to medical complications after an... accident. I hadn't had any kids per both of our agreement. Too much to handle, not enough money nor willpower. Turning down the kid's life because I might have "had something better to do" would've been selfish and downright cruel. They took me into the operating room. After I signed all the needed paperwork, and said what needed to be said to those I cared about, I willingly had my life taken from me. After about an hour, everything had gone dark. .. I don't know what happened after that, but what I can recall is that... well, I've forgotten. ...Come to think of it, I can't remember if any of what I just told you is true. Did I seriously take my life? That sounds incredibly altruistic, almost overly-altruistic for someone who led a seemingly uneventful life. Wait, what does that even mean? "Alter... Alldri..." I don't know what that word means. It's a big word. I think I knew it but I don't remember anymore. I can't remember! Why can't I remember? Let me think for a bit. Do I know the last thing I ate? ...No, that's gone. What about the name of my mother? ...was it Sondra? Yea, Sondra! That's mommy's name! So who am I? I... I'm Ashlyn Turner. I'm 6 years old. I live in... I can't remember where I live, but I know I'm in Oregon. I like playing with my dolls, and I like my big brother! He's nice to me. He likes games, and I like games too! I wasn't feeling good, and I woke Mommy up and told her my chest hurted. Then, I remember Mommy being scared, and pushing me out to the car. I don't know what happened, because I fell asleep in the car, but I wasn't even tired! But I'm awake now, and I woke up in a doctor's office. There are a bunch of loud machines, and my chest feels a little funny. "Mommy? What happened?" I think Mommy's crying. She's hugging me, but I don't know why. I only took a nap! "Everything's okay, sweetie. Everything's okay. You were a little sick so we brought you to the doctor's. They fixed you up, all nice and tidy, and we'll be home in a couple months." But, I want to go home! I don't want to be stuck in this doctor's office, I miss Fuzzball and Rocket, and I miss my toys, and I miss watching Tommy play his games! I hope I can still see them and play with my dolls... .. Who am I? I'm Ashlyn Turner, and I'm 16 years old. Ten years ago, a man named Jack Ackerman took his own life to save mine. Since then, I've been blessed with an unusual ability to talk to those who have been wronged in their deaths, to understand them, and hopefully relieve their spirit of the guilt they harbor to send them to the place I almost ended up. I have the help of the man himself, though. Kid, why are you revealing me like that? Cmon, man, not cool. "Oh, hush, Jack. I'm just telling them information vital to understanding my life. I can't just waltz in and tell them I'm sitting in a graveyard preparing a ritual. ...Oops." Great going, kid. So, yeah, we're making a ritual circle. Not a Satanic one, nonono, just one that will allow us to actually see the spirits we're talking to. Using my weird connections to both life and death, I've been able to help even those who are dead after my physical death years back. It's kinda weird, but- "Oh, boy, you talk so much. Did you talk this much back then, dude?" Pipe down, Ash, you and I both remember when you went on a full rant about whatever that new "TMNT" show was. Last I remember the Turtles couldn't really get much worse. "Hey, it's not my fault they made Raphael into a monstrosity. That show is a mistake that needs to burn in the fi-" Easy with the afterlife talk, kid, cmon! We've talked about this. "Sorry, sorry. Anyway, where were we? This one, I'll admit, isn't one that was joint planned the way in which we usually operate." She won't tell me who we're speaking to, and since I can't see what she does, I'm basically going off of what she tells me and what she says. "Trust me, big guy, you're going to enjoy this conversation a lot." Y'know, you keep telling me that, but I'm starting to doubt it a little bit. I mean, you said something similar when we went to talk to the spirit of an old IBM worker, and he turned out to be a psychopath. "Bah, cmon, you can't say you didn't like his attempt at robbing the company a little bit. It was very interesting hearing about the technological loopholes, anyway." Mmm, fine. I guess you got me there. I still don't think I like the sounds of it. "Well, then, buckle up. We're here." As I walk towards the grave of our next "client" and prepare the ritual, I begin to feel Jack becoming uneasy. He doesn't seem to enjoy the fact I'm doing this on my own this time, much less I'm doing it to someone who he doesn't believe he knows. "Okay, and now we wait." I really don't like this, kid. "I can tell, man. Just relax, you'll like this one." As the ghostly figure appeared in front of me (us?), I simply only sat down politely in a chair I'd brought with me. "Hello, Mrs. Ackerman. It's great to see you!" ...You didn't. *\\*** For more of my work (which will hopefully get much better than they are now!), head over to u/cat-story-dot-txt, where I primarly post to r/nosleep. [I've made a continuation of the story here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/cjrqyk/im_ashlyn_turner_a_16_year_old_girl_who_guides/)
	[WP] You can see how many breaths each person has left to breathe. One day you see someone whose number is negative, and getting longer.	I never really understood where my power came from. Or even how it worked. All I knew is that everyone had a number, everyone. It was a little disturbing at first, being able to judge how much time everyone had left, and occasionally I would consider looking in the mirror to see mine, but I never did. After a while I grew to accept the ability, if someone had a low number, I would always pray for them, hope that their passing would be an easy one. But one day, I saw something new. Something confusing. It was a girl with a negative number. I was surprised at first, mainly because of how young she was. Sure, I had seen kids with low numbers before, usually they were sick, or would probably die from a freak accident, but never before had I seen a negative number. It was at a park down the street from my house. I was sitting on a bench, reading when I heard a help of pain from the playground. When I got up to see who was hurt it was a little girl. Above her head in white was the number -890. And every second or so, the number would get smaller. -891, -892, -893. I was massively confused as I tried to help her up. "Are you ok?" I asked, after helping her up from the ground where she fell. "Yes I am, thank you." She said politely in a slightly southern twang. I wanted to ask her. Find out exactly why her number was the way it was. Why it shrank further into the negatives with every breath she took. But she wouldn't know, she was only a kid. Besides that, nobody else as far as I was aware, knew of my ability. "Um, h-how are you?" I tried asking innocently. I prayed nobody thought I was being creepy. "Oh, I'm perfectly fine. How are you?" She replied in a chipper tone. She was so happy, which was a little strange considering she had just fallen from the jungle gym. "I'm good. Uh, where are your parents?" I asked clumsily, I decided it was better to ignore the number and try to get her back to her folks safely. She giggled at my question. "I don't have any." She answered, still maintaining the happy smile and tone. My face scrunched into a frown. Seeing my confusion she led me over to a bench and sat me down. "You know don't you?" I was caught off guard by her shift in mood. "P-pardon?" She shook her head. "Look, I know you're confused. But don't worry, you're not crazy. There are more people like me." I was beyond lost at this point. "What do you mean?" I asked. She sighed. "I'm a filler. I'm not really a person. Do you really think that there are 7 billion unique people out there?" She pointed to the busy sidewalk. "All with different lives and unique personalities? No, some of us exist just to fill space. We don't have a story, we don't have a life. We just go about the world, and take up missing space." Despite her explanation I was still confused. I guess the number was how many breaths she had taken so far. If that were true, she'd barely existed for less than a day. The girl stood up from the bench. "Look, don't worry about it. We're not meant to be noticed. If you see another one like me, just leave them alone. Let them do their job. The less we're noticed, the better." She waved goodbye to me with a large grin on her face, and began to walk away. She was the first 'filler' person I had ever met. But she was definitely not the last.	Every man and woman has finite breaths, a ticking clock of time that’s left, and watching these tick down tickles my interest, you can’t cheat me my name is death Always waiting, never late, Don’t ever make it past the first date, But that all changed when one day I saw a man whose number stayed After zero, took a minus and kept getting bigger Never happened before, and I just couldn’t figure Out this sorcery, this took up all my attention, Following him in his shadow, waiting for his final destination But 2 years had passed and he was still living, until one day He turned looked straight into my vision “death how nice to finally meet you, I’ve been waiting for this day to come , I am your replacement your number of breaths that’s left is one” I inhaled “ what do you mean.......” the whole room turning black, felt warmth run through my body from Toes and up my back, pure bliss, I never thought that this day would come, immortality was my sentence, I’d cheated death and won
	[WP] You and your friends are goofing around and you decide to catch it on super slow-mo on your phone. When you show the video to your friends you notice a man in a nice suit casually walking at normal speeds through the frame while making eye contact with the camera. He winks.	Writing time, about 40 minutes. Word count, 1,018. &#x200B; , &#x200B; “It won’t fly,” I told Jeff. “It will never fly.” “It’s a rock,” said Jeff. “It’s not meant to fly. The only time it ever flies--” “Stop.” “--is when you’re a medieval engineer putting one in a catapult, or trebuchet, whatever the fuck they call those things, and--” “Please stop.” “--hurl it at a castle or fortification or something, intending to destroy it, and guys with torches and pitchforks are waiting on the field--” “I’m begging you.” “--to storm the whatever-it-is, and I’m just going to keep talking because I know it annoys you, just like ancient warlords were annoyed by engineers across the field who--” “See this rock?” “--so the point is, don’t make puns.” He closed his mouth. “Okay.” I double-checked the settings on my phone, and aimed it at Jeff, the slingshot, and the makeshift bullseye we had erected fifty feet away. “Get ready to smile.” Jeff showed his teeth. Nobody except Jeff would ever call it a smile; a semiographist might call it a sign of mental instability masquerading as simple aggression, while an average housecat might call it run the fuck away. Jeff has one of those faces, is all. He can’t smile, not in anything like a conventional way. Usually he doesn’t try, just twitches a corner of his mouth in a half-smirk that conveys a kind of smugness that he only feels about half the time, but that looks better than the alternative. Now, however, he traumatized any wandering children with cheerful abandon. “I take it back,” I said, and pressed the record button. “Just be yourself.” “Hey, folks,” Jeff said with a smirk. “Jeff Baden here, and that’s Other Jeff behind the camera, and we’re here to show you how a slingshot works in super slo-mo. Ready, Jeff?” “Ready.” In the early days of our channel, my line was ready, Jeff! It got old really fucking fast. Jeff turned to face the target, raised the slingshot, waited a half-second for me to switch to the high frame rate, then slowly pulled back on the rock, aimed, released, said “shit!,” and ducked as the black blur passed in front of him and, apparently, through the rock. The rock sailed on in spite of my earlier prediction, and struck the bullseye a respectfully small distance from the center. I turned off the camera. “Got it.” “What the fuck was that?” Jeff waved his hands in front of his head for a moment, as though clearing away flies that had taken a sudden interest, even though there was no sign of insect life. He turned to me and blinked. “I’m not crazy, right? You saw it too?” “Saw what?” I asked. He gaped. “Just kidding.” That’ll teach you, asshole. “Yeah, I saw it. No idea what it was.” “Did you get anything on camera?” “I think so.” I rewound the footage from the start of the high frame rate and played it while Jeff took a position over my shoulder. “I was so focused on the camera that I didn’t flinch until later.” On the screen, over the span of a full minute, we saw Jeff pull the rock back in the band of the slingshot. It really was great footage. I could see the tiny cracks and gaps form one by one in the elastic, see the material deform as its length doubled, tripled, and so on. Then, many seconds later, I saw the elastic contract again as Jeff released the rock, accelerating it forward. The band wobbled and danced between the arms of the slingshot as the rock leisurely moved through the air in an arc above the target. Then I saw the man in the suit. He walked at a normal pace across the field, the only object behaving normally, rationally, in a severely slowed-down world. Tall, my height or taller, with a black suit coat and tie over an impressively bleached white shirt. Dark grey trousers. His shoes were not visible. He was painfully thin, so thin I worried about his health, and his face was gaunt and pockmarked. I wanted to cast him in a post-apocalyptic film. As we watched, the man sauntered over to the rock and watched it travel forward a few feet, a look of mild bemusement on his face. He raised his right hand, made an “OK” sign, positioned it carefully in front of the rock, and watched as it sailed cleanly through his thumb and index finger. Then he soundlessly chuckled, shook his head, looked at the camera and winked, fucking winked at me, and sauntered away across the field. Nothing else happened except that several seconds later, the rock struck the bullseye. \\\* “Okay,” I said after the third viewing, “so what have we learned?” Jeff stared at me. “We’ve learned,” I said, “that there is a man, or man-shaped being, who can move incredibly fast. We’ve learned what he looks like, and that he’s kind of a pain in the ass. What can we deduce from that? Anything?” “Why,” asked Jeff very slowly, “are you not freaking out?” I considered, then shrugged. “I guess there may be a being who instinctively knows that the first kind of being exists, even if he doesn’t know he knows. You know? That or I’m a freak who doesn’t react normally to weird situations. Does that sound right?” “Remember the nature center last year, the huge spider the guy took out of the cage? You screamed like a little girl?” “I did not scream like a little girl.” “You totally screamed like a little girl.” “I . . . no, look, the point is, I reacted appropriately, right?” “Appropriately, yes. For a little girl.” “Fuck you. So I usually react normally to strange or spooky things. But I didn’t react normally to this. What does that mean?” He looked blank for a moment, then gave his own shrug. “Beats me.” “Me too. Jeff, I need to think about this for a while.” “Sure, whatever. Okay if I keep freaking out?” “Go ahead.” I gave him the cell phone so he could re-watch the footage, and walked away. Very slowly.	He winks. I stopped and looked around, trying to see if anyone else saw it. I looked at Zach and Robby, watching them laugh at the video while everything around me seemed to be in retrograde, reversing ever so slowly yet in such a state of chaotic calm that I was lost in the static somewhere. I turned to meet the soft stare and smile that had been on me like a lion stalking its prey; it came from Chris. Usually so obsequious, I could feel him waiting on me, yearning for me to come to the realization. Chris gave me a soft smile, and winked. &#x200B; One who was scared would pretend to think nothing of the encounter, all the while it would eat at them until it broke them down on a molecular level. They would pretend that the world is still real, that what they saw was just figments of a universe they had only made in their head to support and rationalize the world they live in. That would have been Robby. &#x200B; One who was intimidated would turn primal, have "The Bells" Effect in a matter of seconds. When pure emotion and environment mingle, experience is born; when all norms and social constructs are broken at the simple gesture of a wink through a screen, all hell will break loose. Tik Tok, the bells would sound almost like a clock, like a timer that seemingly has no end, yet an end that once occurs will be the end of every emotion and every environment one has experienced. Tik Tok, it keeps going until the ticking and the tocking ceases, and all that is left is a shattered person, clawing at what just took away everything from them. That would have been Zach. &#x200B; Yet, one who isn't intimidated, one who is softly perplexed by the occurrence, one who sees it and almost smiles at the experience like it's a distant, fading memory, yet as it is something totally new. One that realizes that this does not mean the end, but quite the opposite. One that made eye contact with me, Chris, the one he knew all along was different, was ethereal. That was who it had to be. His name? Meaningless. His future? Well, what the world will make of him will turn to be just as meaningless as his name. He will be just another pixel that makes up the shadow of the human race he is a part of; a nameless being who will be the cause of the Earth's tears. One who, at the end of the day, doesn't care. This One is the one I show myself, because curiosity might kill a cat, but the thought itself will die with it.
	[WP] You and your friends are goofing around and you decide to catch it on super slow-mo on your phone. When you show the video to your friends you notice a man in a nice suit casually walking at normal speeds through the frame while making eye contact with the camera. He winks.	I don’t know how this could be. I took that video on my phone; I was watching every moment as it was recorded. It was just Blake on his skateboard, jumping over stairs and failing hilariously as he tried to look like Tony Hawk. That was when the video was being taken, but apparently, that’s something different from the finished product. As soon as my finger hit the button and the video stopped, the screen’s pixels went on the fritz. It didn’t surprise me or concern me at the time because my phone has always been crap. But when we played the video back... well that... that was something that concerned me; and it concerned me a great deal. “Who on Earth is that?” asked Will. How was I supposed to answer? I don’t know? It was just a guy, you know? Sure, he was dressed nicely, and definitely too nicely to be walking in this neighborhood safely. If he had walked by any other group of kids, well, let’s just say I hope he knows how to defend himself. Anyway, it would be abnormal even if we saw him outside of the video; but inside the video was even stranger. “Xander, I asked you a question,” said Will. “Who the heck is that?” “I don’t know!” I answered. “How should I?” “Wait, I’ve seen this before!” said Blake, seeming way too sure. “It’s one of those things, right? Xander set this up. I’ve seen ‘em before. There are these videos, and you’re so focused on what’s goin’ on in one part that you miss someth’n weird happen’n in another.” “Really?” said Will sarcastically. “It seems to me that some dude walking by at full speed in a slo-mo video is a little too weird to be some brain trick.” “Well, what do you think it was, Will?!” Blake argued. “Well, obviously it’s just a camera trick! Xander probably has an app on his phone or something for this kinda stuff. He’s just playing tricks on us.” Both ideas were equally plausible, to anyone who wasn’t me. Neither were correct. I hadn’t done anything to make this happen; but then, how did it happen? Who was that guy, how was he doing that, why didn’t we see him, and what the heck was the deal with that wink? I played the video again on my phone, hoping to find some answers. Maybe I missed something, and I just had to pay more attention to figure it all out. “Really?” mocked Will. “You’re playing that again? The joke’s run its course, Xander, you can’t fool us anymore.” “That’s just it,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to fool anyone. I had nothing to do with this, I swear. But I still don’t know why it happened.” Will shook his head and went on arguing with Blake while I studied the images in my phone. It was one of those apps where I could change the speed at any point in the video. Like, I could set it up so that after three seconds, the slow motion would turn on, or four seconds, or thirty. I watched the video, keeping the beginning at normal speed and the slowing it down part way through. Nothing. The man only showed up after a the slo-mo was turned on. I tried adjusting the effect, changing the playback speed down to make it a little faster. I don’t know why, but I guess I was willing to try anything at that point. “Wait!” I exclaimed. “Guys, come look at this!” “Are you seriously still trying to keep up the act?” Will accused. “Cut it out! Do you really think we’re that stupid?” I ignored him, mouth gaping as I watched the video. It all made sense now! Er, it made a little more sense. “Guys!” I urged. “Come look at this!” Will rolled his eyes while Blake crossed his arms. Reluctantly, they both walked over to me to look at the ‘baffling’ phone. Their mouths fell open just the same. The man was in the video, moving faster this time after I cut back on the slowing effect. I reset the video, making it closer and closer to normal speed each time. The man got faster, faster, and faster until he was just a faint grey blur. No wonder I never saw him! That blur blending right in with the concrete! Once the video was set back to normal speed, he didn’t show up at all. There was no blur left behind. “So... what then?” asked Will. “The guy just moves fast? That hardly makes any sense!” “Yeah, Xander,” said Blake. “It ain’t like we’re liv’n in a comic book or some action movie.” They were right. We weren’t living in some action movie or a superhero filled metropolis. We were living in Chicago, regular old Chicago. What the heck was going on!? “You know what,” said Will. “It’s been fun and all, but I’m going home. Either something freaky is going on, or your just being insulting. Either way, I’m not sticking around with you right now.” Will grabbed his skateboard and rode off, waving as he went down the road. I looked at Blake, who was strapping on his helmet. “Sorry man,” he said. “But I should probably get goin, too.” Taking his board up the stairs, he quickly jumped on and disappeared from sight. I didn’t bring my skateboard, or anything else to ride on for that matter, so I just had to walk. I walked by the side of the stairs where that showed up in the video, but I didn’t think anything of it. I pulled out my phone to check the time, and the pixels went on the fritz again. When it stopped acting messed up, my clock was doing this weird thing. It was going back and forth between 6:00 and 6:01, then 6:01 and 6:02, the screen lighting up red and blue around it. Something weird was going on. Well, obviously. I didn’t know what it was, but I had a few theories. One, I was dreaming. I blinked three times, as that usually wakes me up. Nope. Not that. So, theory number two: there was some weird virus or signal that my phone was reacting to, it was messing with it really bad. Or, three: something even weirder was happening, and time was being messed with in the process. I don’t know which one, but whichever it was, I didn’t want to dwell on it. I decided that it had to be the phone being stupid, because time travelers? Let’s be realistic. They could never exist. Could they? edit: I apologize to those who tried to read before I got the paragraphs in. I typed it on my phone, and the paragraphs didn’t make it in to the comment for some reason. Issue fixed.	He winks. I stopped and looked around, trying to see if anyone else saw it. I looked at Zach and Robby, watching them laugh at the video while everything around me seemed to be in retrograde, reversing ever so slowly yet in such a state of chaotic calm that I was lost in the static somewhere. I turned to meet the soft stare and smile that had been on me like a lion stalking its prey; it came from Chris. Usually so obsequious, I could feel him waiting on me, yearning for me to come to the realization. Chris gave me a soft smile, and winked. &#x200B; One who was scared would pretend to think nothing of the encounter, all the while it would eat at them until it broke them down on a molecular level. They would pretend that the world is still real, that what they saw was just figments of a universe they had only made in their head to support and rationalize the world they live in. That would have been Robby. &#x200B; One who was intimidated would turn primal, have "The Bells" Effect in a matter of seconds. When pure emotion and environment mingle, experience is born; when all norms and social constructs are broken at the simple gesture of a wink through a screen, all hell will break loose. Tik Tok, the bells would sound almost like a clock, like a timer that seemingly has no end, yet an end that once occurs will be the end of every emotion and every environment one has experienced. Tik Tok, it keeps going until the ticking and the tocking ceases, and all that is left is a shattered person, clawing at what just took away everything from them. That would have been Zach. &#x200B; Yet, one who isn't intimidated, one who is softly perplexed by the occurrence, one who sees it and almost smiles at the experience like it's a distant, fading memory, yet as it is something totally new. One that realizes that this does not mean the end, but quite the opposite. One that made eye contact with me, Chris, the one he knew all along was different, was ethereal. That was who it had to be. His name? Meaningless. His future? Well, what the world will make of him will turn to be just as meaningless as his name. He will be just another pixel that makes up the shadow of the human race he is a part of; a nameless being who will be the cause of the Earth's tears. One who, at the end of the day, doesn't care. This One is the one I show myself, because curiosity might kill a cat, but the thought itself will die with it.
	[WP] You and your friends are goofing around and you decide to catch it on super slow-mo on your phone. When you show the video to your friends you notice a man in a nice suit casually walking at normal speeds through the frame while making eye contact with the camera. He winks.	Tim did a double take and looked at his phone again. “Yo, Tim! Did you get it?” yelled Kate as she repositioned herself. “Yeah,” replied Tim as he replayed the slow-mo video of Kate flipping over a low hanging tree branch. Kate and the rest of the school’s gymnastics team recently placed 3rd in a big state competition. Her, Tim, and their other friend, Rob were bored at the park so she decided to show some tricks. “Nah, it’s probably blurry and shit,” said Rob who busy staring at his own phone barely paying the others any mind. “You know Tim can’t film anything for shit.” Tim gave Rob an annoyed glare and responded, “No, I did get it. But look at this. Both of you!” Rob who put his phone down immediately and ran up with Kate to Tim, both with a concerned look. They know something’s serious when Tim is serious. “What’s wrong, man?” asked Kate. “Look.” Tim replay the short video to them. All Rob and Kate see is the latter flipping over a tree branch in slow-mo. Rob, none the wiser, says “Not bad. So, you did film it. Hooray for you, I guess.” Kate giggled, “You didn’t need to scare us here to see it.” “No, look closer,” Tim says replaying again. In one of the frames, right when Kate’s first foot leaves the ground, Tim points to the background. There’s a man. A well-dressed man. But he appears to be staring right at the camera in each frame as walks away. Tim looked up and asked in a paranoid voice, “Who is that guy?” Kate shrugged and said, “Maybe it’s some businessman or something. I don’t know.” “Yeah, but he was making direct eye contact at the camera. Like, where did he come from? He wasn’t here when a took the video and he isn’t here now. Come on, guys! I can’t be the only one who’s-.” “Tim, having you been sneaking into my brother’s stash of shrooms,” joked Rob. “Rob, this isn’t funny!”, shouted Tim. “It kind of is,” teased Kate with a chuckle. “I think you’ve been out a little too long in the hot sun. It’s getting to your brain.” “But that’s another thing! Who wears a black full length suit coat in the middle of a hot summer day in the park?” asked Tim. “Come on, man. Kate’s right. It’s about time we head back anyway. Besides, you don’t want your FBI friend over there to come back and spy on you again, don’t you?” Both Rob and Kate are near the point of bursting out in laughter as Tim reluctantly drops the matter and walks along home with them. But I could have sworn something was fishy with that guy, Tim thinks to himself. But then again, Kate and Rob maybe right after all. It’s best I just drop it. ***************************** Several minutes before at the same park where Tim told his friends about the weird video, a man wearing a black suit coat appears suddenly and just stands for a minute to take in the moment. “Ah,” he exhaled. He then goes for a short walk around the park, making sure to look at every tree leaf and pebble on the ground. It brought a certain sense of nostalgia to him. Both happy, and at the same time, sad. As he walks, he hears some voices and looks to his right. There he sees a group of teens, goofing around near a tree. One of them, he immediately notices, is a boy who is siting and looking at his phone. The man smiles. But then, the man looks towards the other boy who is aiming his phone right at a girl. The boy with the phone shouts, “Alright, 1, 2, 3, go!” The girl runs and flips over the tree branch with ease. The man looks directly at the phone the whole time this occurs, as if it was his mission to. The boy who was siting down didn’t look up from his phone once. As the man walks away, fidgeting with his watch, a few tears stream down from his face. An insight had just occurred to him. When you’re young, you tend not to appreciate the little things in life like hanging with friends as they goof around. Now, the man knows and he will never forget to. The man leaves as he came, suddenly in the blink of an eye. But before that, he looks again at the boy who videoed the girl. Back then, he didn’t believe the boy when he said something was up with the video. Life is often filled with regrets. Now, the man thinks if only he had knew then that would be the last time he would be with his friend, he would have paid more attention to him. If only. The man knows he can’t and shouldn’t change anything. He only came to observe. And from afar, silently say goodbye to his friend, Tim. One last time.	He winks. I stopped and looked around, trying to see if anyone else saw it. I looked at Zach and Robby, watching them laugh at the video while everything around me seemed to be in retrograde, reversing ever so slowly yet in such a state of chaotic calm that I was lost in the static somewhere. I turned to meet the soft stare and smile that had been on me like a lion stalking its prey; it came from Chris. Usually so obsequious, I could feel him waiting on me, yearning for me to come to the realization. Chris gave me a soft smile, and winked. &#x200B; One who was scared would pretend to think nothing of the encounter, all the while it would eat at them until it broke them down on a molecular level. They would pretend that the world is still real, that what they saw was just figments of a universe they had only made in their head to support and rationalize the world they live in. That would have been Robby. &#x200B; One who was intimidated would turn primal, have "The Bells" Effect in a matter of seconds. When pure emotion and environment mingle, experience is born; when all norms and social constructs are broken at the simple gesture of a wink through a screen, all hell will break loose. Tik Tok, the bells would sound almost like a clock, like a timer that seemingly has no end, yet an end that once occurs will be the end of every emotion and every environment one has experienced. Tik Tok, it keeps going until the ticking and the tocking ceases, and all that is left is a shattered person, clawing at what just took away everything from them. That would have been Zach. &#x200B; Yet, one who isn't intimidated, one who is softly perplexed by the occurrence, one who sees it and almost smiles at the experience like it's a distant, fading memory, yet as it is something totally new. One that realizes that this does not mean the end, but quite the opposite. One that made eye contact with me, Chris, the one he knew all along was different, was ethereal. That was who it had to be. His name? Meaningless. His future? Well, what the world will make of him will turn to be just as meaningless as his name. He will be just another pixel that makes up the shadow of the human race he is a part of; a nameless being who will be the cause of the Earth's tears. One who, at the end of the day, doesn't care. This One is the one I show myself, because curiosity might kill a cat, but the thought itself will die with it.
	[WP] You and your friends are goofing around and you decide to catch it on super slow-mo on your phone. When you show the video to your friends you notice a man in a nice suit casually walking at normal speeds through the frame while making eye contact with the camera. He winks.	Tim did a double take and looked at his phone again. “Yo, Tim! Did you get it?” yelled Kate as she repositioned herself. “Yeah,” replied Tim as he replayed the slow-mo video of Kate flipping over a low hanging tree branch. Kate and the rest of the school’s gymnastics team recently placed 3rd in a big state competition. Her, Tim, and their other friend, Rob were bored at the park so she decided to show some tricks. “Nah, it’s probably blurry and shit,” said Rob who busy staring at his own phone barely paying the others any mind. “You know Tim can’t film anything for shit.” Tim gave Rob an annoyed glare and responded, “No, I did get it. But look at this. Both of you!” Rob who put his phone down immediately and ran up with Kate to Tim, both with a concerned look. They know something’s serious when Tim is serious. “What’s wrong, man?” asked Kate. “Look.” Tim replay the short video to them. All Rob and Kate see is the latter flipping over a tree branch in slow-mo. Rob, none the wiser, says “Not bad. So, you did film it. Hooray for you, I guess.” Kate giggled, “You didn’t need to scare us here to see it.” “No, look closer,” Tim says replaying again. In one of the frames, right when Kate’s first foot leaves the ground, Tim points to the background. There’s a man. A well-dressed man. But he appears to be staring right at the camera in each frame as walks away. Tim looked up and asked in a paranoid voice, “Who is that guy?” Kate shrugged and said, “Maybe it’s some businessman or something. I don’t know.” “Yeah, but he was making direct eye contact at the camera. Like, where did he come from? He wasn’t here when a took the video and he isn’t here now. Come on, guys! I can’t be the only one who’s-.” “Tim, having you been sneaking into my brother’s stash of shrooms,” joked Rob. “Rob, this isn’t funny!”, shouted Tim. “It kind of is,” teased Kate with a chuckle. “I think you’ve been out a little too long in the hot sun. It’s getting to your brain.” “But that’s another thing! Who wears a black full length suit coat in the middle of a hot summer day in the park?” asked Tim. “Come on, man. Kate’s right. It’s about time we head back anyway. Besides, you don’t want your FBI friend over there to come back and spy on you again, don’t you?” Both Rob and Kate are near the point of bursting out in laughter as Tim reluctantly drops the matter and walks along home with them. But I could have sworn something was fishy with that guy, Tim thinks to himself. But then again, Kate and Rob maybe right after all. It’s best I just drop it. ***************************** Several minutes before at the same park where Tim told his friends about the weird video, a man wearing a black suit coat appears suddenly and just stands for a minute to take in the moment. “Ah,” he exhaled. He then goes for a short walk around the park, making sure to look at every tree leaf and pebble on the ground. It brought a certain sense of nostalgia to him. Both happy, and at the same time, sad. As he walks, he hears some voices and looks to his right. There he sees a group of teens, goofing around near a tree. One of them, he immediately notices, is a boy who is siting and looking at his phone. The man smiles. But then, the man looks towards the other boy who is aiming his phone right at a girl. The boy with the phone shouts, “Alright, 1, 2, 3, go!” The girl runs and flips over the tree branch with ease. The man looks directly at the phone the whole time this occurs, as if it was his mission to. The boy who was siting down didn’t look up from his phone once. As the man walks away, fidgeting with his watch, a few tears stream down from his face. An insight had just occurred to him. When you’re young, you tend not to appreciate the little things in life like hanging with friends as they goof around. Now, the man knows and he will never forget to. The man leaves as he came, suddenly in the blink of an eye. But before that, he looks again at the boy who videoed the girl. Back then, he didn’t believe the boy when he said something was up with the video. Life is often filled with regrets. Now, the man thinks if only he had knew then that would be the last time he would be with his friend, he would have paid more attention to him. If only. The man knows he can’t and shouldn’t change anything. He only came to observe. And from afar, silently say goodbye to his friend, Tim. One last time.	Writing time, about 40 minutes. Word count, 1,018. &#x200B; , &#x200B; “It won’t fly,” I told Jeff. “It will never fly.” “It’s a rock,” said Jeff. “It’s not meant to fly. The only time it ever flies--” “Stop.” “--is when you’re a medieval engineer putting one in a catapult, or trebuchet, whatever the fuck they call those things, and--” “Please stop.” “--hurl it at a castle or fortification or something, intending to destroy it, and guys with torches and pitchforks are waiting on the field--” “I’m begging you.” “--to storm the whatever-it-is, and I’m just going to keep talking because I know it annoys you, just like ancient warlords were annoyed by engineers across the field who--” “See this rock?” “--so the point is, don’t make puns.” He closed his mouth. “Okay.” I double-checked the settings on my phone, and aimed it at Jeff, the slingshot, and the makeshift bullseye we had erected fifty feet away. “Get ready to smile.” Jeff showed his teeth. Nobody except Jeff would ever call it a smile; a semiographist might call it a sign of mental instability masquerading as simple aggression, while an average housecat might call it run the fuck away. Jeff has one of those faces, is all. He can’t smile, not in anything like a conventional way. Usually he doesn’t try, just twitches a corner of his mouth in a half-smirk that conveys a kind of smugness that he only feels about half the time, but that looks better than the alternative. Now, however, he traumatized any wandering children with cheerful abandon. “I take it back,” I said, and pressed the record button. “Just be yourself.” “Hey, folks,” Jeff said with a smirk. “Jeff Baden here, and that’s Other Jeff behind the camera, and we’re here to show you how a slingshot works in super slo-mo. Ready, Jeff?” “Ready.” In the early days of our channel, my line was ready, Jeff! It got old really fucking fast. Jeff turned to face the target, raised the slingshot, waited a half-second for me to switch to the high frame rate, then slowly pulled back on the rock, aimed, released, said “shit!,” and ducked as the black blur passed in front of him and, apparently, through the rock. The rock sailed on in spite of my earlier prediction, and struck the bullseye a respectfully small distance from the center. I turned off the camera. “Got it.” “What the fuck was that?” Jeff waved his hands in front of his head for a moment, as though clearing away flies that had taken a sudden interest, even though there was no sign of insect life. He turned to me and blinked. “I’m not crazy, right? You saw it too?” “Saw what?” I asked. He gaped. “Just kidding.” That’ll teach you, asshole. “Yeah, I saw it. No idea what it was.” “Did you get anything on camera?” “I think so.” I rewound the footage from the start of the high frame rate and played it while Jeff took a position over my shoulder. “I was so focused on the camera that I didn’t flinch until later.” On the screen, over the span of a full minute, we saw Jeff pull the rock back in the band of the slingshot. It really was great footage. I could see the tiny cracks and gaps form one by one in the elastic, see the material deform as its length doubled, tripled, and so on. Then, many seconds later, I saw the elastic contract again as Jeff released the rock, accelerating it forward. The band wobbled and danced between the arms of the slingshot as the rock leisurely moved through the air in an arc above the target. Then I saw the man in the suit. He walked at a normal pace across the field, the only object behaving normally, rationally, in a severely slowed-down world. Tall, my height or taller, with a black suit coat and tie over an impressively bleached white shirt. Dark grey trousers. His shoes were not visible. He was painfully thin, so thin I worried about his health, and his face was gaunt and pockmarked. I wanted to cast him in a post-apocalyptic film. As we watched, the man sauntered over to the rock and watched it travel forward a few feet, a look of mild bemusement on his face. He raised his right hand, made an “OK” sign, positioned it carefully in front of the rock, and watched as it sailed cleanly through his thumb and index finger. Then he soundlessly chuckled, shook his head, looked at the camera and winked, fucking winked at me, and sauntered away across the field. Nothing else happened except that several seconds later, the rock struck the bullseye. \\\* “Okay,” I said after the third viewing, “so what have we learned?” Jeff stared at me. “We’ve learned,” I said, “that there is a man, or man-shaped being, who can move incredibly fast. We’ve learned what he looks like, and that he’s kind of a pain in the ass. What can we deduce from that? Anything?” “Why,” asked Jeff very slowly, “are you not freaking out?” I considered, then shrugged. “I guess there may be a being who instinctively knows that the first kind of being exists, even if he doesn’t know he knows. You know? That or I’m a freak who doesn’t react normally to weird situations. Does that sound right?” “Remember the nature center last year, the huge spider the guy took out of the cage? You screamed like a little girl?” “I did not scream like a little girl.” “You totally screamed like a little girl.” “I . . . no, look, the point is, I reacted appropriately, right?” “Appropriately, yes. For a little girl.” “Fuck you. So I usually react normally to strange or spooky things. But I didn’t react normally to this. What does that mean?” He looked blank for a moment, then gave his own shrug. “Beats me.” “Me too. Jeff, I need to think about this for a while.” “Sure, whatever. Okay if I keep freaking out?” “Go ahead.” I gave him the cell phone so he could re-watch the footage, and walked away. Very slowly.
	[WP] You and your friends are goofing around and you decide to catch it on super slow-mo on your phone. When you show the video to your friends you notice a man in a nice suit casually walking at normal speeds through the frame while making eye contact with the camera. He winks.	Tim did a double take and looked at his phone again. “Yo, Tim! Did you get it?” yelled Kate as she repositioned herself. “Yeah,” replied Tim as he replayed the slow-mo video of Kate flipping over a low hanging tree branch. Kate and the rest of the school’s gymnastics team recently placed 3rd in a big state competition. Her, Tim, and their other friend, Rob were bored at the park so she decided to show some tricks. “Nah, it’s probably blurry and shit,” said Rob who busy staring at his own phone barely paying the others any mind. “You know Tim can’t film anything for shit.” Tim gave Rob an annoyed glare and responded, “No, I did get it. But look at this. Both of you!” Rob who put his phone down immediately and ran up with Kate to Tim, both with a concerned look. They know something’s serious when Tim is serious. “What’s wrong, man?” asked Kate. “Look.” Tim replay the short video to them. All Rob and Kate see is the latter flipping over a tree branch in slow-mo. Rob, none the wiser, says “Not bad. So, you did film it. Hooray for you, I guess.” Kate giggled, “You didn’t need to scare us here to see it.” “No, look closer,” Tim says replaying again. In one of the frames, right when Kate’s first foot leaves the ground, Tim points to the background. There’s a man. A well-dressed man. But he appears to be staring right at the camera in each frame as walks away. Tim looked up and asked in a paranoid voice, “Who is that guy?” Kate shrugged and said, “Maybe it’s some businessman or something. I don’t know.” “Yeah, but he was making direct eye contact at the camera. Like, where did he come from? He wasn’t here when a took the video and he isn’t here now. Come on, guys! I can’t be the only one who’s-.” “Tim, having you been sneaking into my brother’s stash of shrooms,” joked Rob. “Rob, this isn’t funny!”, shouted Tim. “It kind of is,” teased Kate with a chuckle. “I think you’ve been out a little too long in the hot sun. It’s getting to your brain.” “But that’s another thing! Who wears a black full length suit coat in the middle of a hot summer day in the park?” asked Tim. “Come on, man. Kate’s right. It’s about time we head back anyway. Besides, you don’t want your FBI friend over there to come back and spy on you again, don’t you?” Both Rob and Kate are near the point of bursting out in laughter as Tim reluctantly drops the matter and walks along home with them. But I could have sworn something was fishy with that guy, Tim thinks to himself. But then again, Kate and Rob maybe right after all. It’s best I just drop it. ***************************** Several minutes before at the same park where Tim told his friends about the weird video, a man wearing a black suit coat appears suddenly and just stands for a minute to take in the moment. “Ah,” he exhaled. He then goes for a short walk around the park, making sure to look at every tree leaf and pebble on the ground. It brought a certain sense of nostalgia to him. Both happy, and at the same time, sad. As he walks, he hears some voices and looks to his right. There he sees a group of teens, goofing around near a tree. One of them, he immediately notices, is a boy who is siting and looking at his phone. The man smiles. But then, the man looks towards the other boy who is aiming his phone right at a girl. The boy with the phone shouts, “Alright, 1, 2, 3, go!” The girl runs and flips over the tree branch with ease. The man looks directly at the phone the whole time this occurs, as if it was his mission to. The boy who was siting down didn’t look up from his phone once. As the man walks away, fidgeting with his watch, a few tears stream down from his face. An insight had just occurred to him. When you’re young, you tend not to appreciate the little things in life like hanging with friends as they goof around. Now, the man knows and he will never forget to. The man leaves as he came, suddenly in the blink of an eye. But before that, he looks again at the boy who videoed the girl. Back then, he didn’t believe the boy when he said something was up with the video. Life is often filled with regrets. Now, the man thinks if only he had knew then that would be the last time he would be with his friend, he would have paid more attention to him. If only. The man knows he can’t and shouldn’t change anything. He only came to observe. And from afar, silently say goodbye to his friend, Tim. One last time.	I don’t know how this could be. I took that video on my phone; I was watching every moment as it was recorded. It was just Blake on his skateboard, jumping over stairs and failing hilariously as he tried to look like Tony Hawk. That was when the video was being taken, but apparently, that’s something different from the finished product. As soon as my finger hit the button and the video stopped, the screen’s pixels went on the fritz. It didn’t surprise me or concern me at the time because my phone has always been crap. But when we played the video back... well that... that was something that concerned me; and it concerned me a great deal. “Who on Earth is that?” asked Will. How was I supposed to answer? I don’t know? It was just a guy, you know? Sure, he was dressed nicely, and definitely too nicely to be walking in this neighborhood safely. If he had walked by any other group of kids, well, let’s just say I hope he knows how to defend himself. Anyway, it would be abnormal even if we saw him outside of the video; but inside the video was even stranger. “Xander, I asked you a question,” said Will. “Who the heck is that?” “I don’t know!” I answered. “How should I?” “Wait, I’ve seen this before!” said Blake, seeming way too sure. “It’s one of those things, right? Xander set this up. I’ve seen ‘em before. There are these videos, and you’re so focused on what’s goin’ on in one part that you miss someth’n weird happen’n in another.” “Really?” said Will sarcastically. “It seems to me that some dude walking by at full speed in a slo-mo video is a little too weird to be some brain trick.” “Well, what do you think it was, Will?!” Blake argued. “Well, obviously it’s just a camera trick! Xander probably has an app on his phone or something for this kinda stuff. He’s just playing tricks on us.” Both ideas were equally plausible, to anyone who wasn’t me. Neither were correct. I hadn’t done anything to make this happen; but then, how did it happen? Who was that guy, how was he doing that, why didn’t we see him, and what the heck was the deal with that wink? I played the video again on my phone, hoping to find some answers. Maybe I missed something, and I just had to pay more attention to figure it all out. “Really?” mocked Will. “You’re playing that again? The joke’s run its course, Xander, you can’t fool us anymore.” “That’s just it,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to fool anyone. I had nothing to do with this, I swear. But I still don’t know why it happened.” Will shook his head and went on arguing with Blake while I studied the images in my phone. It was one of those apps where I could change the speed at any point in the video. Like, I could set it up so that after three seconds, the slow motion would turn on, or four seconds, or thirty. I watched the video, keeping the beginning at normal speed and the slowing it down part way through. Nothing. The man only showed up after a the slo-mo was turned on. I tried adjusting the effect, changing the playback speed down to make it a little faster. I don’t know why, but I guess I was willing to try anything at that point. “Wait!” I exclaimed. “Guys, come look at this!” “Are you seriously still trying to keep up the act?” Will accused. “Cut it out! Do you really think we’re that stupid?” I ignored him, mouth gaping as I watched the video. It all made sense now! Er, it made a little more sense. “Guys!” I urged. “Come look at this!” Will rolled his eyes while Blake crossed his arms. Reluctantly, they both walked over to me to look at the ‘baffling’ phone. Their mouths fell open just the same. The man was in the video, moving faster this time after I cut back on the slowing effect. I reset the video, making it closer and closer to normal speed each time. The man got faster, faster, and faster until he was just a faint grey blur. No wonder I never saw him! That blur blending right in with the concrete! Once the video was set back to normal speed, he didn’t show up at all. There was no blur left behind. “So... what then?” asked Will. “The guy just moves fast? That hardly makes any sense!” “Yeah, Xander,” said Blake. “It ain’t like we’re liv’n in a comic book or some action movie.” They were right. We weren’t living in some action movie or a superhero filled metropolis. We were living in Chicago, regular old Chicago. What the heck was going on!? “You know what,” said Will. “It’s been fun and all, but I’m going home. Either something freaky is going on, or your just being insulting. Either way, I’m not sticking around with you right now.” Will grabbed his skateboard and rode off, waving as he went down the road. I looked at Blake, who was strapping on his helmet. “Sorry man,” he said. “But I should probably get goin, too.” Taking his board up the stairs, he quickly jumped on and disappeared from sight. I didn’t bring my skateboard, or anything else to ride on for that matter, so I just had to walk. I walked by the side of the stairs where that showed up in the video, but I didn’t think anything of it. I pulled out my phone to check the time, and the pixels went on the fritz again. When it stopped acting messed up, my clock was doing this weird thing. It was going back and forth between 6:00 and 6:01, then 6:01 and 6:02, the screen lighting up red and blue around it. Something weird was going on. Well, obviously. I didn’t know what it was, but I had a few theories. One, I was dreaming. I blinked three times, as that usually wakes me up. Nope. Not that. So, theory number two: there was some weird virus or signal that my phone was reacting to, it was messing with it really bad. Or, three: something even weirder was happening, and time was being messed with in the process. I don’t know which one, but whichever it was, I didn’t want to dwell on it. I decided that it had to be the phone being stupid, because time travelers? Let’s be realistic. They could never exist. Could they? edit: I apologize to those who tried to read before I got the paragraphs in. I typed it on my phone, and the paragraphs didn’t make it in to the comment for some reason. Issue fixed.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	"Five to red. Have a good one, everybody. Ouranos ready in, five, four, three, two, one. Rolling!" Twenty screens flicker on, showing different angles of a glowing dust cloud dimming slowly to almost nothing. The control room readies for a cut to the flashback of the day after our Red Giant officially engulfed Prime Earth. Paul cues the announcers in the studio booth. -------- “Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Final Hour of Release Day. The clock starts now. If you’re just tuning in, we are sitting upon the last stage of our live stream of the death of our Sun.” “Here is the sunspot thought to be the remains of our old world” says Groger, the color commentator. “For all of you kids watching, remember this is a composite video shot over several hundred thousand years. And the fun part is...” A long, drawn out hum broadcasts into the air. “you can now hear the roar of our sun. Science sure is something, isn’t it? And if you speed up the soundclip, you get this.” The program plays a familiar sound. Groger turns to his colleague. “The sound that took the galaxy by storm. What do you think, Bobbert. Did the Sun real say ‘coming’ here?” “That’s just people making things more than what they are. People, romantics, projecting, grasping for meaning.” “So, you’re in the school of the boring.” “I’m in the school of logic. I’m team science. I mean, come on, now, Grogey. Why would the Sun even speak English? And to who?” “Well, thankfully the world isn’t quite as boring as you. Let’s cut to our street team to hear what other people have to say. Darniel?” Darniel straightens out his ‘Team Life’ shirt. “Hi guys. I’m here with the head Sun Spotter himself, Arvak Trundholm. Mr. Trundholm you’ve managed to reunite trillions of people with just a clever algorithm and a five-hundred-million-year-long audio sample. As a believer myself, that audio changed my life. But I’m curious. What was it like when you heard the output for the first time?” “First of all, the sun is talking, Darniel. Simply. It is not belief. You cannot say that just we are believers. It is simply as it is. Fire is hot. I wear this shirt. The sun talks. It is self-evident. There is no mistaking speech.” Darniel nods. “Your audio clip took over the Federation like a virus. People have reformed themselves. They’ve even formed factions based on what they thought the message was trying to say. It’s just incredible. According to a recent survey, there are now over seventy different subsects for each side of the debate. Seventy or so for Life and a little under seventy for Logic.” “Nearly one for every planet. Still, we are the biggest.” Trundholm grins. “By far. My wife is a Sun Spotter as well. So, tell me. What, to you, makes you different from the others?” “It is as I say. The others, they believe. They interpret. They say, ‘oh the Sun is warning you,’ ‘something’s coming,’ ‘they’re coming for us.’ Like that. However, Sun Spotters simply listen.” He smiles. “All we know is ‘coming.’ ‘Coming’ is enough to know.” “In about thirteen years, the audio recording will be complete. Since we are dealing with such long expanses of time, do you think that tiny bit of sound at the end will make a difference?” “I think no but Federation leaders are romantic. They want comprehensive. They want no doubt. So, we wait.” “Okay, final question before the break. People often wonder why you sold your code to the government. Why didn’t you keep it, wait for the rest of the data to be released, churn out the complete message, and reap all of the glory?” “My system. It takes three years to compress one word. If I keep the code, I also keep the electricity bill. Fame and fortune not always together.” -------- Hours away from the nearest mainland port, an island-sized data center floated in the middle of the ocean; its hills, antennas; its coastline, solar panels. Underground, two scientists were analyzing the output of the sped-up audio already recorded. One shouted in delight. “Team Science wins! We were right.” said Samantha. After a beat she added, “The people need to hear this, Kelly.” “No, they don’t. Dude, the government pays our bills. I’m not biting that hand.” Samantha was distraught. “But it’s all gibberish. Just like the last ten years down here waiting for the program to finish running. The next thirteen years of data, what does that boil down to? Another split second of background noise? Kelly. Let’s finally get out of this shithole. I’m so tired of waking up with backaches from those shitty mattresses. And getting the diarrhea from biscuits and nutrient pastes. And not doing anything meaningful for over a decade. Kelly, people out there are fighting over nothing. And we can be the ones who stop it. And --” “You’re right.” Kelly had heard enough. “We’re not spending another night down here. Let’s take this up to the Chief.” Samantha smiled from ear to ear. “Science. Wins.” She loaded the data onto her dongle and triumphantly marched toward the door. With her back turned, she remained clueless as Kelly brought a chair down onto her head, dealing an incapacitating blow. Kelly pried the dongle from her ex-lover’s hand and made her way to the docks. There, a man had been waiting in a speedboat. She boarded the craft while the man punched in the coordinates to where a submarine would be meeting them. As they pulled away, Kelly threw her badge and lab coat into the ocean, watching them disintegrate. When they were at a safe distance, a drone departed from the boat, flew over the data center, and self-detonated. The data center’s emergency lights flickered for a beat before shutting down, failing at their sole function. A giant bubble broke the surface of the water as the data center expelled its last breath. Kelly tried to drown out unceremonious thoughts of Samantha. Her mission, her family, had precedence. -------- On the far wall, a giant screen was showing the Ouranos Final Hour Release Day countdown. In 10 minutes, the Sun’s final photons would hit their planet for the last time. In the background, an new, unintelligible stream of cosmic noises became a cause for concern. Several fists slammed the desk, jostling sunburst coffee mugs. Sensing anger, the room emitted mollifying mists of space-acacia. A subdued voice called for the clip to be replayed. No difference. Still cosmic noises. “People are not going to like this,” said a man. “What about Brother Arvak? Do we tell him?” said another. “Of course, we do.” said Kelly. “My grandfather has every right to know.” At that moment, Arvak Trundholm and his procession of freshmen entered the room. “In here, just boring talks. Charity, missions --” His eyes met Kelly’s. “Rhea, please finish the orientation.” As the outsiders filed out, Trundholm beckoned his granddaughter for an embrace. “Kalda! Oh, I’ve missed you. Always.” He tightened around her. “You are early.” “Afi. You look much older now, afi.” “Every day, I worry. You, trapped at sea, ten years with other woman.” Kelly twisted out of his hug and looked away. He stared, confused, and said “we must talk.” He ordered the rest of the executive team out of the room and closed the doors. He dropped his fake cadence and spoke the way he only would with real family. “Kally, did something happen at the data center?” “The data center is gone, afi. Sam, she wanted to release the audio.” Tears blurred her vision. “I had no choice.” “You did the right thing Kally.” He furrowed his brows. “I will make sure she gets a proper burial.” He escorted her to the private elevator that went to her quarters and promised to meet later to talk things through. Trundholm approached the audio console. The dongle was flush in its port, imperceptible save a glimmer of its metallic façade. He took a deep breath and pressed play. Tears streamed down his face. He called in his team, unable to contain himself, his fake accent faltering. “Did you hear the message? Listen! We must tell the world.” He could not stop crying. “So sad. So beautiful. The last words of a dying star. A love letter.” In the background, Sun Spotters started counting down the seconds with the television broadcast. The noise in the streets was deafening. Ten... nine... eight... In the commotion, Kelly had rejoined the group, her elevator having never departed. As the Sun blinked its final blink, the room erupted in cheers. Flutes of champagne passed around. Trundholm, watery, faced his crowd and raised a silent toast.	The last the light filtered through the tree branches as day became a memory. "An eclipse?" "Could be, its been maybe 10 minutes now... don't stare at it." "This seems different. Its too dark." "You can still hear it." The fluctuating hum has been a backdrop for as long as I can remember. You get used to it, almost count it a blessing. Optimists considered it a song reminding us of light and warmth. I remember from school it takes a long time to reach us, that sound. A decade or something. Every once in a while it changes, we haven't figured out why. When it started making noise people assumed the worse, but nothing happened. People wrote books, made movies about it. There were mass suicides. Churches were packed to the rafters. Companies sent up probes, probably to figure out how to monetize it. Life went back to normal. Humans are good at acclimating to change after acceptance. Maybe we're just good at pretending. I survey what should be the hills and neighborhoods below us. Lights start to flick on in the distance. Car headlights follow each other into nothingness. "Maybe we should try to head back." Brandon sounds worried. I can tell he's running scenarios in his head. "OK." I try not to be worried. We're a good mile or two away from home. Brandon's face momentarily appears bathed in digital light. He turns on his phone flashlight and points it down the trail. We start plodding in silence. Sometimes a twig snaps or a foot scrapes. Brandon finally breaks the silence, "The sun would have reappeared by now if it was an eclipse. Stars die, you think the sun just died?" "I mean..." "The sun just fucking died." "Let's get home." He always plays out the scenarios. He's a mean RISK player. My heart is hammering. We made it home that day. We still had electricity, HVAC, wifi. We were surrounded by comforts while we entered the next ice age. We tried to figure out our play as the temperatures plummeted. The hum became a reminder there was no warmth. People wished for silence. There wasn't a move. Best chance anybody had was to get somewhere with geothermal heat. That is, if they were smart enough to do so in the first few days. Those who knew what's best for "the people" got to move to Iceland. A news report said we'd be negative 80 in a year or so. Brandon played out the scenarios. Month 4 I found him outside the refugee center. Stripped naked and frozen. Hypothermia used to be an uncommon way to lose a family member. Maybe not a bad way to go. I was stubborn. I made it another couple months before I walked out into the cold. I laid on a roof and stared into the direction of the hum. I got to hear sweet nothing long before the real silence set in. Rattles, roars, bright colors. Nature is often kind enough to warn you that you've screwed up. We'd made a solar death knell into a whale song.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	There was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air. The recirculated air. The nuclear-reactor heated air. The air they had been breathing for 13 years. It took the atmosphere a while to cool off and condense onto the surface, but not long enough for the survivors to build enough shelters around the few nuclear reactors running. The Sun provides some 170,000 Terawatts of power to the Earth. Geothermal grants you just a scant 40 Terawatts. The humans, while they dominated this world, controled some 20 Terawatts, only 10 of those non biological. What was left of humanity scarcely amounted to a single Terawatt. And so much was devoted to just staying warm. Imagine, for a moment, that everyone you knew and loved was either directly around you or frozen solid. There was not enough time to save very many. Psychological trauma was guaranteed. But we were all in this together. Shared suffering breeds compassion. We saved what we could. And what we could save was... sufficient. The satellites, solar powered, were of course useless. The higher altitude telescopes still functioned, and with so much easily available liquified oxygen, and hydrogen so easily cracked from water ice... We saw what was going on. And we had a plan to reach out. The neo-heliopause was going to reach us. We saw it coming in radio and infrared. We were prepared. As well as we could be. The telescopes in those bands that we got operating listened to that black-body static roar... And then... Silence. We turned up the gain. And we celebrated. Because now, we could see how they did it. We celebrated, because now, we could figure out how to undo it.	The last the light filtered through the tree branches as day became a memory. "An eclipse?" "Could be, its been maybe 10 minutes now... don't stare at it." "This seems different. Its too dark." "You can still hear it." The fluctuating hum has been a backdrop for as long as I can remember. You get used to it, almost count it a blessing. Optimists considered it a song reminding us of light and warmth. I remember from school it takes a long time to reach us, that sound. A decade or something. Every once in a while it changes, we haven't figured out why. When it started making noise people assumed the worse, but nothing happened. People wrote books, made movies about it. There were mass suicides. Churches were packed to the rafters. Companies sent up probes, probably to figure out how to monetize it. Life went back to normal. Humans are good at acclimating to change after acceptance. Maybe we're just good at pretending. I survey what should be the hills and neighborhoods below us. Lights start to flick on in the distance. Car headlights follow each other into nothingness. "Maybe we should try to head back." Brandon sounds worried. I can tell he's running scenarios in his head. "OK." I try not to be worried. We're a good mile or two away from home. Brandon's face momentarily appears bathed in digital light. He turns on his phone flashlight and points it down the trail. We start plodding in silence. Sometimes a twig snaps or a foot scrapes. Brandon finally breaks the silence, "The sun would have reappeared by now if it was an eclipse. Stars die, you think the sun just died?" "I mean..." "The sun just fucking died." "Let's get home." He always plays out the scenarios. He's a mean RISK player. My heart is hammering. We made it home that day. We still had electricity, HVAC, wifi. We were surrounded by comforts while we entered the next ice age. We tried to figure out our play as the temperatures plummeted. The hum became a reminder there was no warmth. People wished for silence. There wasn't a move. Best chance anybody had was to get somewhere with geothermal heat. That is, if they were smart enough to do so in the first few days. Those who knew what's best for "the people" got to move to Iceland. A news report said we'd be negative 80 in a year or so. Brandon played out the scenarios. Month 4 I found him outside the refugee center. Stripped naked and frozen. Hypothermia used to be an uncommon way to lose a family member. Maybe not a bad way to go. I was stubborn. I made it another couple months before I walked out into the cold. I laid on a roof and stared into the direction of the hum. I got to hear sweet nothing long before the real silence set in. Rattles, roars, bright colors. Nature is often kind enough to warn you that you've screwed up. We'd made a solar death knell into a whale song.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	And then – there was silence. Carl wept. The last recording of the sun’s sound was taken. There was nothing more to hear. Back, when it all went dark his retirement plans got flipped upside down, as everything happened way faster then he expected. Sure, we had it coming. Scientists had told us for a long time and while the results for the solar system were devastating – but humanity would survive. And finally see the other stars. 13 years ago they finished the last part of the Dyson sphere. Carl wanted to spend his last days in the system; wanting to hear the silence from the place where he was born. “I guess, we are done here.” he said, turning his craft around, activating the FTL drive. "I lived to long to end here - so let's spend time out there."	The last the light filtered through the tree branches as day became a memory. "An eclipse?" "Could be, its been maybe 10 minutes now... don't stare at it." "This seems different. Its too dark." "You can still hear it." The fluctuating hum has been a backdrop for as long as I can remember. You get used to it, almost count it a blessing. Optimists considered it a song reminding us of light and warmth. I remember from school it takes a long time to reach us, that sound. A decade or something. Every once in a while it changes, we haven't figured out why. When it started making noise people assumed the worse, but nothing happened. People wrote books, made movies about it. There were mass suicides. Churches were packed to the rafters. Companies sent up probes, probably to figure out how to monetize it. Life went back to normal. Humans are good at acclimating to change after acceptance. Maybe we're just good at pretending. I survey what should be the hills and neighborhoods below us. Lights start to flick on in the distance. Car headlights follow each other into nothingness. "Maybe we should try to head back." Brandon sounds worried. I can tell he's running scenarios in his head. "OK." I try not to be worried. We're a good mile or two away from home. Brandon's face momentarily appears bathed in digital light. He turns on his phone flashlight and points it down the trail. We start plodding in silence. Sometimes a twig snaps or a foot scrapes. Brandon finally breaks the silence, "The sun would have reappeared by now if it was an eclipse. Stars die, you think the sun just died?" "I mean..." "The sun just fucking died." "Let's get home." He always plays out the scenarios. He's a mean RISK player. My heart is hammering. We made it home that day. We still had electricity, HVAC, wifi. We were surrounded by comforts while we entered the next ice age. We tried to figure out our play as the temperatures plummeted. The hum became a reminder there was no warmth. People wished for silence. There wasn't a move. Best chance anybody had was to get somewhere with geothermal heat. That is, if they were smart enough to do so in the first few days. Those who knew what's best for "the people" got to move to Iceland. A news report said we'd be negative 80 in a year or so. Brandon played out the scenarios. Month 4 I found him outside the refugee center. Stripped naked and frozen. Hypothermia used to be an uncommon way to lose a family member. Maybe not a bad way to go. I was stubborn. I made it another couple months before I walked out into the cold. I laid on a roof and stared into the direction of the hum. I got to hear sweet nothing long before the real silence set in. Rattles, roars, bright colors. Nature is often kind enough to warn you that you've screwed up. We'd made a solar death knell into a whale song.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	My daughter had said that her head felt funny, and couldn’t finish her homework. I told her she was just trying to get out of doing homework. When I looked her in the eye she did look a little woozy and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach just a little bit but when I shook it off and the sinking feeling was gone I told her she could lie down for a little bit but she better finish her homework, and my hand popped a Valium into my mouth and my other grabbed the cold and washed the pill down with a swig of pale ale; and my brain told my gut she really did look fine and my gut was now too busy with pale ale and she was dead in the morning. Burst aneurysm in the brain, no pain. She was eight. Some time passed and I found out we were all going to die anyway and not in that general shrugging-your-shoulders “we all die sometime anyway” way but more or less like the “you have cancer and you have days” way. Way uncool, man. That’s how I talked to God--whom I never really used to talk to--but the prospect of death has a way of making you go religious. My daughter had been eight, and I was already dead anyway. When your daughter dies and you basically blame yourself then you’re basically dead. They swallowed the sun. I don’t mean that metaphorically like oh-I’m-so-sad, rain-clouds-over-my-head-and-no-sun kind of “no sun.” The sun was gone, baby. Gone. I say "they" swallowed the sun but maybe it was an “it.” Or a she. I picture a cosmic-scale Pac-man working his way through the corridors of the universe, following the dots of stars, tracing the constellations of his own manic pixie dreams. On the television, there is an Asian fellow, a physicist of some sort, theorizing about some “black hole artifict,” as he calls it, placed in the location where our sun used to be by a level-5 species who regard us as no more than a pestilence to be preemptively dealt with before we become a galactic nuisance. At the Universal scale at which this level-5 species traverses and exists, sentience is the norm and not the exception, and they had seen our like before: whenever a certain-sized planet was a certain distance from the sun and certain atmospheric and temperature conditions were met, oh-so-predictably there we would be like mold in the damp, just ruining things. Roaches reveling in the squalor and filth and calling it glory. The mop-headed physicist made it clear that tossing out a sun-consuming black hole artifact in the middle of a solar system likely meant no more to them than would absentmindedly tossing a Raid roach-motel cartridge into the dark recesses of some apartment Joe’s humble apartment would for Joe. The annihilation of seven billion future space-faring space monkeys as routine weed-whacking. Yawn. Oh-so-mundane. I prefer the innocent charm of my version: galactic Pac-man, King of the Universe, star-eater. My daughter would too, I think, if she were alive. Someone on the television had initially suggested that the sound of the sun being swallowed would take some thirteen years to arrive. Some questioned whether this would hold true in the vacuum of space. Most didn’t care because we would be too dead to find out. I was in the not-care camp. What would it sound like, they had asked. Plop! he had said. One day, all who were alive if there were any alive would hear a collective Plop! One consequence of the black hole artifact is that it seems to have implications for the fabric of our universe: namely, that the whole shebang seems to be going to strands. The seams are coming apart in our little corner of time and space. Timelines are intersecting, bending, criss-crossing. Space itself is hop-scotching around the plane of time while Father Time holds the rope of itself that Time itself is tightroping on. If you think that sounds confusing, it is. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes you walk into the kitchen and your daughter is in her Batman pajamas and she’s eight and looking through the fridge and not dead and you cry and hold her and ask her if she’s real and how is she alive but she just squirms away and wants to eat her cereal and watch cartoons. So you’ve got a giant bowl of Lucky Charms in between the two of you and you just make a day out of cereal and Powerpuff Girls reruns huddled inside a blanket fort because it’s fun but also because it’s cold and outside it is death and we don’t have long. And I was right. We have our little afternoon and she is there and then she is gone. I look up at the sky where I figure He must reside shaking my head. Not cool man, not cool. I saw an anchorman quit live on television. He wanted to spend the final days with family. I merely wondered if he had family to spend final days with what on earth took him so long. The kindly white-haired gentleman on the tv who so nicely explained his fairy tale of where the sun went must have not had family, for he did not quit. Maybe he just loved science. Or cameras. Or speculation. He was now speculating and spinning a fascinating fairy tale of what was causing these rifts in space-time, and his educated but mostly-still-a-guess relied heavily upon the deus ex machina of alien gravity artifact artifacts. Artifacts caused by intense gravitational disturbances inside a black hole. I thought maybe we might already be dead, and in the afterlife. As to the sound of it all, in the end they were all wrong. It wasn’t thirteen years. It wasn’t a plop. It was a steadily rising cosmic hum. Imperceptibly rising moment by moment and I knew in the moment that objectively it was a mere hum, but contained therein were the echoes and refrains of all the music of all humanity, and I knew there was no light and outside the world was dark but the world is light all the same, and it rose, and rises, and in periphery my daughter, thirteen-years-old in a universe where I had done the right thing, and she's in the hospital but smiling and turns, looks right at me with those blue irises containing our world, blue and bright and the sun still shining upon it and grace.	The last the light filtered through the tree branches as day became a memory. "An eclipse?" "Could be, its been maybe 10 minutes now... don't stare at it." "This seems different. Its too dark." "You can still hear it." The fluctuating hum has been a backdrop for as long as I can remember. You get used to it, almost count it a blessing. Optimists considered it a song reminding us of light and warmth. I remember from school it takes a long time to reach us, that sound. A decade or something. Every once in a while it changes, we haven't figured out why. When it started making noise people assumed the worse, but nothing happened. People wrote books, made movies about it. There were mass suicides. Churches were packed to the rafters. Companies sent up probes, probably to figure out how to monetize it. Life went back to normal. Humans are good at acclimating to change after acceptance. Maybe we're just good at pretending. I survey what should be the hills and neighborhoods below us. Lights start to flick on in the distance. Car headlights follow each other into nothingness. "Maybe we should try to head back." Brandon sounds worried. I can tell he's running scenarios in his head. "OK." I try not to be worried. We're a good mile or two away from home. Brandon's face momentarily appears bathed in digital light. He turns on his phone flashlight and points it down the trail. We start plodding in silence. Sometimes a twig snaps or a foot scrapes. Brandon finally breaks the silence, "The sun would have reappeared by now if it was an eclipse. Stars die, you think the sun just died?" "I mean..." "The sun just fucking died." "Let's get home." He always plays out the scenarios. He's a mean RISK player. My heart is hammering. We made it home that day. We still had electricity, HVAC, wifi. We were surrounded by comforts while we entered the next ice age. We tried to figure out our play as the temperatures plummeted. The hum became a reminder there was no warmth. People wished for silence. There wasn't a move. Best chance anybody had was to get somewhere with geothermal heat. That is, if they were smart enough to do so in the first few days. Those who knew what's best for "the people" got to move to Iceland. A news report said we'd be negative 80 in a year or so. Brandon played out the scenarios. Month 4 I found him outside the refugee center. Stripped naked and frozen. Hypothermia used to be an uncommon way to lose a family member. Maybe not a bad way to go. I was stubborn. I made it another couple months before I walked out into the cold. I laid on a roof and stared into the direction of the hum. I got to hear sweet nothing long before the real silence set in. Rattles, roars, bright colors. Nature is often kind enough to warn you that you've screwed up. We'd made a solar death knell into a whale song.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	And then – there was silence. Carl wept. The last recording of the sun’s sound was taken. There was nothing more to hear. Back, when it all went dark his retirement plans got flipped upside down, as everything happened way faster then he expected. Sure, we had it coming. Scientists had told us for a long time and while the results for the solar system were devastating – but humanity would survive. And finally see the other stars. 13 years ago they finished the last part of the Dyson sphere. Carl wanted to spend his last days in the system; wanting to hear the silence from the place where he was born. “I guess, we are done here.” he said, turning his craft around, activating the FTL drive. "I lived to long to end here - so let's spend time out there."	"Five to red. Have a good one, everybody. Ouranos ready in, five, four, three, two, one. Rolling!" Twenty screens flicker on, showing different angles of a glowing dust cloud dimming slowly to almost nothing. The control room readies for a cut to the flashback of the day after our Red Giant officially engulfed Prime Earth. Paul cues the announcers in the studio booth. -------- “Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Final Hour of Release Day. The clock starts now. If you’re just tuning in, we are sitting upon the last stage of our live stream of the death of our Sun.” “Here is the sunspot thought to be the remains of our old world” says Groger, the color commentator. “For all of you kids watching, remember this is a composite video shot over several hundred thousand years. And the fun part is...” A long, drawn out hum broadcasts into the air. “you can now hear the roar of our sun. Science sure is something, isn’t it? And if you speed up the soundclip, you get this.” The program plays a familiar sound. Groger turns to his colleague. “The sound that took the galaxy by storm. What do you think, Bobbert. Did the Sun real say ‘coming’ here?” “That’s just people making things more than what they are. People, romantics, projecting, grasping for meaning.” “So, you’re in the school of the boring.” “I’m in the school of logic. I’m team science. I mean, come on, now, Grogey. Why would the Sun even speak English? And to who?” “Well, thankfully the world isn’t quite as boring as you. Let’s cut to our street team to hear what other people have to say. Darniel?” Darniel straightens out his ‘Team Life’ shirt. “Hi guys. I’m here with the head Sun Spotter himself, Arvak Trundholm. Mr. Trundholm you’ve managed to reunite trillions of people with just a clever algorithm and a five-hundred-million-year-long audio sample. As a believer myself, that audio changed my life. But I’m curious. What was it like when you heard the output for the first time?” “First of all, the sun is talking, Darniel. Simply. It is not belief. You cannot say that just we are believers. It is simply as it is. Fire is hot. I wear this shirt. The sun talks. It is self-evident. There is no mistaking speech.” Darniel nods. “Your audio clip took over the Federation like a virus. People have reformed themselves. They’ve even formed factions based on what they thought the message was trying to say. It’s just incredible. According to a recent survey, there are now over seventy different subsects for each side of the debate. Seventy or so for Life and a little under seventy for Logic.” “Nearly one for every planet. Still, we are the biggest.” Trundholm grins. “By far. My wife is a Sun Spotter as well. So, tell me. What, to you, makes you different from the others?” “It is as I say. The others, they believe. They interpret. They say, ‘oh the Sun is warning you,’ ‘something’s coming,’ ‘they’re coming for us.’ Like that. However, Sun Spotters simply listen.” He smiles. “All we know is ‘coming.’ ‘Coming’ is enough to know.” “In about thirteen years, the audio recording will be complete. Since we are dealing with such long expanses of time, do you think that tiny bit of sound at the end will make a difference?” “I think no but Federation leaders are romantic. They want comprehensive. They want no doubt. So, we wait.” “Okay, final question before the break. People often wonder why you sold your code to the government. Why didn’t you keep it, wait for the rest of the data to be released, churn out the complete message, and reap all of the glory?” “My system. It takes three years to compress one word. If I keep the code, I also keep the electricity bill. Fame and fortune not always together.” -------- Hours away from the nearest mainland port, an island-sized data center floated in the middle of the ocean; its hills, antennas; its coastline, solar panels. Underground, two scientists were analyzing the output of the sped-up audio already recorded. One shouted in delight. “Team Science wins! We were right.” said Samantha. After a beat she added, “The people need to hear this, Kelly.” “No, they don’t. Dude, the government pays our bills. I’m not biting that hand.” Samantha was distraught. “But it’s all gibberish. Just like the last ten years down here waiting for the program to finish running. The next thirteen years of data, what does that boil down to? Another split second of background noise? Kelly. Let’s finally get out of this shithole. I’m so tired of waking up with backaches from those shitty mattresses. And getting the diarrhea from biscuits and nutrient pastes. And not doing anything meaningful for over a decade. Kelly, people out there are fighting over nothing. And we can be the ones who stop it. And --” “You’re right.” Kelly had heard enough. “We’re not spending another night down here. Let’s take this up to the Chief.” Samantha smiled from ear to ear. “Science. Wins.” She loaded the data onto her dongle and triumphantly marched toward the door. With her back turned, she remained clueless as Kelly brought a chair down onto her head, dealing an incapacitating blow. Kelly pried the dongle from her ex-lover’s hand and made her way to the docks. There, a man had been waiting in a speedboat. She boarded the craft while the man punched in the coordinates to where a submarine would be meeting them. As they pulled away, Kelly threw her badge and lab coat into the ocean, watching them disintegrate. When they were at a safe distance, a drone departed from the boat, flew over the data center, and self-detonated. The data center’s emergency lights flickered for a beat before shutting down, failing at their sole function. A giant bubble broke the surface of the water as the data center expelled its last breath. Kelly tried to drown out unceremonious thoughts of Samantha. Her mission, her family, had precedence. -------- On the far wall, a giant screen was showing the Ouranos Final Hour Release Day countdown. In 10 minutes, the Sun’s final photons would hit their planet for the last time. In the background, an new, unintelligible stream of cosmic noises became a cause for concern. Several fists slammed the desk, jostling sunburst coffee mugs. Sensing anger, the room emitted mollifying mists of space-acacia. A subdued voice called for the clip to be replayed. No difference. Still cosmic noises. “People are not going to like this,” said a man. “What about Brother Arvak? Do we tell him?” said another. “Of course, we do.” said Kelly. “My grandfather has every right to know.” At that moment, Arvak Trundholm and his procession of freshmen entered the room. “In here, just boring talks. Charity, missions --” His eyes met Kelly’s. “Rhea, please finish the orientation.” As the outsiders filed out, Trundholm beckoned his granddaughter for an embrace. “Kalda! Oh, I’ve missed you. Always.” He tightened around her. “You are early.” “Afi. You look much older now, afi.” “Every day, I worry. You, trapped at sea, ten years with other woman.” Kelly twisted out of his hug and looked away. He stared, confused, and said “we must talk.” He ordered the rest of the executive team out of the room and closed the doors. He dropped his fake cadence and spoke the way he only would with real family. “Kally, did something happen at the data center?” “The data center is gone, afi. Sam, she wanted to release the audio.” Tears blurred her vision. “I had no choice.” “You did the right thing Kally.” He furrowed his brows. “I will make sure she gets a proper burial.” He escorted her to the private elevator that went to her quarters and promised to meet later to talk things through. Trundholm approached the audio console. The dongle was flush in its port, imperceptible save a glimmer of its metallic façade. He took a deep breath and pressed play. Tears streamed down his face. He called in his team, unable to contain himself, his fake accent faltering. “Did you hear the message? Listen! We must tell the world.” He could not stop crying. “So sad. So beautiful. The last words of a dying star. A love letter.” In the background, Sun Spotters started counting down the seconds with the television broadcast. The noise in the streets was deafening. Ten... nine... eight... In the commotion, Kelly had rejoined the group, her elevator having never departed. As the Sun blinked its final blink, the room erupted in cheers. Flutes of champagne passed around. Trundholm, watery, faced his crowd and raised a silent toast.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	And then – there was silence. Carl wept. The last recording of the sun’s sound was taken. There was nothing more to hear. Back, when it all went dark his retirement plans got flipped upside down, as everything happened way faster then he expected. Sure, we had it coming. Scientists had told us for a long time and while the results for the solar system were devastating – but humanity would survive. And finally see the other stars. 13 years ago they finished the last part of the Dyson sphere. Carl wanted to spend his last days in the system; wanting to hear the silence from the place where he was born. “I guess, we are done here.” he said, turning his craft around, activating the FTL drive. "I lived to long to end here - so let's spend time out there."	On March 21, 4052, the solar panels stopped working and the sky was stuck at a vivid indigo blue. No midnight but no morning either. Just eternal dusk, speckled with only the brightest planets and stars. We couldn't see the moon either, but no one cared either way. At first, it was all hyped up. All the phones and tablets were blowing with notifications, news channels were screaming through the 3-D TVs . I remember everyone thought it was aliens. I mean, it couldn't be anything else, right? They had finally found us and taken over the light, somehow. But soon, we just . . . gave up. We gave up trying to find an explanation, we gave up counting on the day. No one really needed a Sun anymore, and now that it had disappeared, it didn't make any difference. Plant based food supplies weaned a bit, but scientists found artificial light sources which induced enough vitamin D to compensate. The Sun was gone, along with the day, but the dusk forged a world where light and dark met, when the twilight led to a new sort of vitality that didn't come with the two extremes of dark and light, a sort of softness that came with things tinted grey and the in-between. Sure, we all wished for the Sun to come back, but it wasn't the first priority. It went behind, always the last thing on our minds. The government released the documents two years later. They had known about the disappearance of our Sun 15 years before; they had tracked it and waited for the great star-- our star-- to finally fall. Finally, on March 21, they marked the death of the Sun, unable to do a single thing, too scared to tell the public. So as they waited for us to realize the truth, they soon realized themselves that we didn't care at all. Once, back in the early days, you could hear the roar of the Sun, loud and rapacious, blotting out the other stars in its ambition. You could see it's tendrils leap out of the sky, you could see the moon blushing in its presence. But as it burned, the humans evolved. We built ourselves the light of a thousand stars in our own backyard, bringing forth an artificial day, polluting the skies with an everlasting light. We built cars and sirens and machines so loud, we droned out the roar of the Sun, polluting the air with deafening noises. As the sun whispered it's dying words, we replaced it. And it worked for us, and us only.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	My daughter had said that her head felt funny, and couldn’t finish her homework. I told her she was just trying to get out of doing homework. When I looked her in the eye she did look a little woozy and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach just a little bit but when I shook it off and the sinking feeling was gone I told her she could lie down for a little bit but she better finish her homework, and my hand popped a Valium into my mouth and my other grabbed the cold and washed the pill down with a swig of pale ale; and my brain told my gut she really did look fine and my gut was now too busy with pale ale and she was dead in the morning. Burst aneurysm in the brain, no pain. She was eight. Some time passed and I found out we were all going to die anyway and not in that general shrugging-your-shoulders “we all die sometime anyway” way but more or less like the “you have cancer and you have days” way. Way uncool, man. That’s how I talked to God--whom I never really used to talk to--but the prospect of death has a way of making you go religious. My daughter had been eight, and I was already dead anyway. When your daughter dies and you basically blame yourself then you’re basically dead. They swallowed the sun. I don’t mean that metaphorically like oh-I’m-so-sad, rain-clouds-over-my-head-and-no-sun kind of “no sun.” The sun was gone, baby. Gone. I say "they" swallowed the sun but maybe it was an “it.” Or a she. I picture a cosmic-scale Pac-man working his way through the corridors of the universe, following the dots of stars, tracing the constellations of his own manic pixie dreams. On the television, there is an Asian fellow, a physicist of some sort, theorizing about some “black hole artifict,” as he calls it, placed in the location where our sun used to be by a level-5 species who regard us as no more than a pestilence to be preemptively dealt with before we become a galactic nuisance. At the Universal scale at which this level-5 species traverses and exists, sentience is the norm and not the exception, and they had seen our like before: whenever a certain-sized planet was a certain distance from the sun and certain atmospheric and temperature conditions were met, oh-so-predictably there we would be like mold in the damp, just ruining things. Roaches reveling in the squalor and filth and calling it glory. The mop-headed physicist made it clear that tossing out a sun-consuming black hole artifact in the middle of a solar system likely meant no more to them than would absentmindedly tossing a Raid roach-motel cartridge into the dark recesses of some apartment Joe’s humble apartment would for Joe. The annihilation of seven billion future space-faring space monkeys as routine weed-whacking. Yawn. Oh-so-mundane. I prefer the innocent charm of my version: galactic Pac-man, King of the Universe, star-eater. My daughter would too, I think, if she were alive. Someone on the television had initially suggested that the sound of the sun being swallowed would take some thirteen years to arrive. Some questioned whether this would hold true in the vacuum of space. Most didn’t care because we would be too dead to find out. I was in the not-care camp. What would it sound like, they had asked. Plop! he had said. One day, all who were alive if there were any alive would hear a collective Plop! One consequence of the black hole artifact is that it seems to have implications for the fabric of our universe: namely, that the whole shebang seems to be going to strands. The seams are coming apart in our little corner of time and space. Timelines are intersecting, bending, criss-crossing. Space itself is hop-scotching around the plane of time while Father Time holds the rope of itself that Time itself is tightroping on. If you think that sounds confusing, it is. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes you walk into the kitchen and your daughter is in her Batman pajamas and she’s eight and looking through the fridge and not dead and you cry and hold her and ask her if she’s real and how is she alive but she just squirms away and wants to eat her cereal and watch cartoons. So you’ve got a giant bowl of Lucky Charms in between the two of you and you just make a day out of cereal and Powerpuff Girls reruns huddled inside a blanket fort because it’s fun but also because it’s cold and outside it is death and we don’t have long. And I was right. We have our little afternoon and she is there and then she is gone. I look up at the sky where I figure He must reside shaking my head. Not cool man, not cool. I saw an anchorman quit live on television. He wanted to spend the final days with family. I merely wondered if he had family to spend final days with what on earth took him so long. The kindly white-haired gentleman on the tv who so nicely explained his fairy tale of where the sun went must have not had family, for he did not quit. Maybe he just loved science. Or cameras. Or speculation. He was now speculating and spinning a fascinating fairy tale of what was causing these rifts in space-time, and his educated but mostly-still-a-guess relied heavily upon the deus ex machina of alien gravity artifact artifacts. Artifacts caused by intense gravitational disturbances inside a black hole. I thought maybe we might already be dead, and in the afterlife. As to the sound of it all, in the end they were all wrong. It wasn’t thirteen years. It wasn’t a plop. It was a steadily rising cosmic hum. Imperceptibly rising moment by moment and I knew in the moment that objectively it was a mere hum, but contained therein were the echoes and refrains of all the music of all humanity, and I knew there was no light and outside the world was dark but the world is light all the same, and it rose, and rises, and in periphery my daughter, thirteen-years-old in a universe where I had done the right thing, and she's in the hospital but smiling and turns, looks right at me with those blue irises containing our world, blue and bright and the sun still shining upon it and grace.	On March 21, 4052, the solar panels stopped working and the sky was stuck at a vivid indigo blue. No midnight but no morning either. Just eternal dusk, speckled with only the brightest planets and stars. We couldn't see the moon either, but no one cared either way. At first, it was all hyped up. All the phones and tablets were blowing with notifications, news channels were screaming through the 3-D TVs . I remember everyone thought it was aliens. I mean, it couldn't be anything else, right? They had finally found us and taken over the light, somehow. But soon, we just . . . gave up. We gave up trying to find an explanation, we gave up counting on the day. No one really needed a Sun anymore, and now that it had disappeared, it didn't make any difference. Plant based food supplies weaned a bit, but scientists found artificial light sources which induced enough vitamin D to compensate. The Sun was gone, along with the day, but the dusk forged a world where light and dark met, when the twilight led to a new sort of vitality that didn't come with the two extremes of dark and light, a sort of softness that came with things tinted grey and the in-between. Sure, we all wished for the Sun to come back, but it wasn't the first priority. It went behind, always the last thing on our minds. The government released the documents two years later. They had known about the disappearance of our Sun 15 years before; they had tracked it and waited for the great star-- our star-- to finally fall. Finally, on March 21, they marked the death of the Sun, unable to do a single thing, too scared to tell the public. So as they waited for us to realize the truth, they soon realized themselves that we didn't care at all. Once, back in the early days, you could hear the roar of the Sun, loud and rapacious, blotting out the other stars in its ambition. You could see it's tendrils leap out of the sky, you could see the moon blushing in its presence. But as it burned, the humans evolved. We built ourselves the light of a thousand stars in our own backyard, bringing forth an artificial day, polluting the skies with an everlasting light. We built cars and sirens and machines so loud, we droned out the roar of the Sun, polluting the air with deafening noises. As the sun whispered it's dying words, we replaced it. And it worked for us, and us only.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	And then – there was silence. Carl wept. The last recording of the sun’s sound was taken. There was nothing more to hear. Back, when it all went dark his retirement plans got flipped upside down, as everything happened way faster then he expected. Sure, we had it coming. Scientists had told us for a long time and while the results for the solar system were devastating – but humanity would survive. And finally see the other stars. 13 years ago they finished the last part of the Dyson sphere. Carl wanted to spend his last days in the system; wanting to hear the silence from the place where he was born. “I guess, we are done here.” he said, turning his craft around, activating the FTL drive. "I lived to long to end here - so let's spend time out there."	We've figured out so much since then. At first it was a struggle, our population dwindled under hastily crafted domes that supported the fringes of what populations were left. Animals died out and only large trees scattered the barren wasteland outside our "cities". Exo-Cites, they called them then. When we finished pumping methane into the atmosphere to retain what little heat remained, we began to reclaim the surface. The stars in the night sky had vanished long ago, with Sol, though had they been there now; it would have been impossible to see them. In this time, we'd even attempted to create a brown dwarf from Jupiter, by chance having landed in its gravitational sphere of influence. Thirteen years later, and our persistent species keeps on keepin' on. In the aftermath of the sun disappearing, there was a chance of living through it all. Thinking though, had begun to get hard. A month ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, I was tired, but I couldn't fall back asleep at all. I haven't slept in days, and I'm beginning to wonder if this world is worth it anymore. It's been hell: using masks to get from one place to another, my friends are dead, I'm hungry, and now I can't sleep. I just sit up at night, listening for a missing sound I've had all my life. Instead I get voices telling me to do things. I think I'll stop their heinous thoughts tonight. I think I'll go find my house. My body has adapted, I'm sure of it. I don't need a mask to go out there, not anymore. I'll update this log when I'm back.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	My daughter had said that her head felt funny, and couldn’t finish her homework. I told her she was just trying to get out of doing homework. When I looked her in the eye she did look a little woozy and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach just a little bit but when I shook it off and the sinking feeling was gone I told her she could lie down for a little bit but she better finish her homework, and my hand popped a Valium into my mouth and my other grabbed the cold and washed the pill down with a swig of pale ale; and my brain told my gut she really did look fine and my gut was now too busy with pale ale and she was dead in the morning. Burst aneurysm in the brain, no pain. She was eight. Some time passed and I found out we were all going to die anyway and not in that general shrugging-your-shoulders “we all die sometime anyway” way but more or less like the “you have cancer and you have days” way. Way uncool, man. That’s how I talked to God--whom I never really used to talk to--but the prospect of death has a way of making you go religious. My daughter had been eight, and I was already dead anyway. When your daughter dies and you basically blame yourself then you’re basically dead. They swallowed the sun. I don’t mean that metaphorically like oh-I’m-so-sad, rain-clouds-over-my-head-and-no-sun kind of “no sun.” The sun was gone, baby. Gone. I say "they" swallowed the sun but maybe it was an “it.” Or a she. I picture a cosmic-scale Pac-man working his way through the corridors of the universe, following the dots of stars, tracing the constellations of his own manic pixie dreams. On the television, there is an Asian fellow, a physicist of some sort, theorizing about some “black hole artifict,” as he calls it, placed in the location where our sun used to be by a level-5 species who regard us as no more than a pestilence to be preemptively dealt with before we become a galactic nuisance. At the Universal scale at which this level-5 species traverses and exists, sentience is the norm and not the exception, and they had seen our like before: whenever a certain-sized planet was a certain distance from the sun and certain atmospheric and temperature conditions were met, oh-so-predictably there we would be like mold in the damp, just ruining things. Roaches reveling in the squalor and filth and calling it glory. The mop-headed physicist made it clear that tossing out a sun-consuming black hole artifact in the middle of a solar system likely meant no more to them than would absentmindedly tossing a Raid roach-motel cartridge into the dark recesses of some apartment Joe’s humble apartment would for Joe. The annihilation of seven billion future space-faring space monkeys as routine weed-whacking. Yawn. Oh-so-mundane. I prefer the innocent charm of my version: galactic Pac-man, King of the Universe, star-eater. My daughter would too, I think, if she were alive. Someone on the television had initially suggested that the sound of the sun being swallowed would take some thirteen years to arrive. Some questioned whether this would hold true in the vacuum of space. Most didn’t care because we would be too dead to find out. I was in the not-care camp. What would it sound like, they had asked. Plop! he had said. One day, all who were alive if there were any alive would hear a collective Plop! One consequence of the black hole artifact is that it seems to have implications for the fabric of our universe: namely, that the whole shebang seems to be going to strands. The seams are coming apart in our little corner of time and space. Timelines are intersecting, bending, criss-crossing. Space itself is hop-scotching around the plane of time while Father Time holds the rope of itself that Time itself is tightroping on. If you think that sounds confusing, it is. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes you walk into the kitchen and your daughter is in her Batman pajamas and she’s eight and looking through the fridge and not dead and you cry and hold her and ask her if she’s real and how is she alive but she just squirms away and wants to eat her cereal and watch cartoons. So you’ve got a giant bowl of Lucky Charms in between the two of you and you just make a day out of cereal and Powerpuff Girls reruns huddled inside a blanket fort because it’s fun but also because it’s cold and outside it is death and we don’t have long. And I was right. We have our little afternoon and she is there and then she is gone. I look up at the sky where I figure He must reside shaking my head. Not cool man, not cool. I saw an anchorman quit live on television. He wanted to spend the final days with family. I merely wondered if he had family to spend final days with what on earth took him so long. The kindly white-haired gentleman on the tv who so nicely explained his fairy tale of where the sun went must have not had family, for he did not quit. Maybe he just loved science. Or cameras. Or speculation. He was now speculating and spinning a fascinating fairy tale of what was causing these rifts in space-time, and his educated but mostly-still-a-guess relied heavily upon the deus ex machina of alien gravity artifact artifacts. Artifacts caused by intense gravitational disturbances inside a black hole. I thought maybe we might already be dead, and in the afterlife. As to the sound of it all, in the end they were all wrong. It wasn’t thirteen years. It wasn’t a plop. It was a steadily rising cosmic hum. Imperceptibly rising moment by moment and I knew in the moment that objectively it was a mere hum, but contained therein were the echoes and refrains of all the music of all humanity, and I knew there was no light and outside the world was dark but the world is light all the same, and it rose, and rises, and in periphery my daughter, thirteen-years-old in a universe where I had done the right thing, and she's in the hospital but smiling and turns, looks right at me with those blue irises containing our world, blue and bright and the sun still shining upon it and grace.	We've figured out so much since then. At first it was a struggle, our population dwindled under hastily crafted domes that supported the fringes of what populations were left. Animals died out and only large trees scattered the barren wasteland outside our "cities". Exo-Cites, they called them then. When we finished pumping methane into the atmosphere to retain what little heat remained, we began to reclaim the surface. The stars in the night sky had vanished long ago, with Sol, though had they been there now; it would have been impossible to see them. In this time, we'd even attempted to create a brown dwarf from Jupiter, by chance having landed in its gravitational sphere of influence. Thirteen years later, and our persistent species keeps on keepin' on. In the aftermath of the sun disappearing, there was a chance of living through it all. Thinking though, had begun to get hard. A month ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, I was tired, but I couldn't fall back asleep at all. I haven't slept in days, and I'm beginning to wonder if this world is worth it anymore. It's been hell: using masks to get from one place to another, my friends are dead, I'm hungry, and now I can't sleep. I just sit up at night, listening for a missing sound I've had all my life. Instead I get voices telling me to do things. I think I'll stop their heinous thoughts tonight. I think I'll go find my house. My body has adapted, I'm sure of it. I don't need a mask to go out there, not anymore. I'll update this log when I'm back.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	And then – there was silence. Carl wept. The last recording of the sun’s sound was taken. There was nothing more to hear. Back, when it all went dark his retirement plans got flipped upside down, as everything happened way faster then he expected. Sure, we had it coming. Scientists had told us for a long time and while the results for the solar system were devastating – but humanity would survive. And finally see the other stars. 13 years ago they finished the last part of the Dyson sphere. Carl wanted to spend his last days in the system; wanting to hear the silence from the place where he was born. “I guess, we are done here.” he said, turning his craft around, activating the FTL drive. "I lived to long to end here - so let's spend time out there."	There was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air. The recirculated air. The nuclear-reactor heated air. The air they had been breathing for 13 years. It took the atmosphere a while to cool off and condense onto the surface, but not long enough for the survivors to build enough shelters around the few nuclear reactors running. The Sun provides some 170,000 Terawatts of power to the Earth. Geothermal grants you just a scant 40 Terawatts. The humans, while they dominated this world, controled some 20 Terawatts, only 10 of those non biological. What was left of humanity scarcely amounted to a single Terawatt. And so much was devoted to just staying warm. Imagine, for a moment, that everyone you knew and loved was either directly around you or frozen solid. There was not enough time to save very many. Psychological trauma was guaranteed. But we were all in this together. Shared suffering breeds compassion. We saved what we could. And what we could save was... sufficient. The satellites, solar powered, were of course useless. The higher altitude telescopes still functioned, and with so much easily available liquified oxygen, and hydrogen so easily cracked from water ice... We saw what was going on. And we had a plan to reach out. The neo-heliopause was going to reach us. We saw it coming in radio and infrared. We were prepared. As well as we could be. The telescopes in those bands that we got operating listened to that black-body static roar... And then... Silence. We turned up the gain. And we celebrated. Because now, we could see how they did it. We celebrated, because now, we could figure out how to undo it.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	My daughter had said that her head felt funny, and couldn’t finish her homework. I told her she was just trying to get out of doing homework. When I looked her in the eye she did look a little woozy and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach just a little bit but when I shook it off and the sinking feeling was gone I told her she could lie down for a little bit but she better finish her homework, and my hand popped a Valium into my mouth and my other grabbed the cold and washed the pill down with a swig of pale ale; and my brain told my gut she really did look fine and my gut was now too busy with pale ale and she was dead in the morning. Burst aneurysm in the brain, no pain. She was eight. Some time passed and I found out we were all going to die anyway and not in that general shrugging-your-shoulders “we all die sometime anyway” way but more or less like the “you have cancer and you have days” way. Way uncool, man. That’s how I talked to God--whom I never really used to talk to--but the prospect of death has a way of making you go religious. My daughter had been eight, and I was already dead anyway. When your daughter dies and you basically blame yourself then you’re basically dead. They swallowed the sun. I don’t mean that metaphorically like oh-I’m-so-sad, rain-clouds-over-my-head-and-no-sun kind of “no sun.” The sun was gone, baby. Gone. I say "they" swallowed the sun but maybe it was an “it.” Or a she. I picture a cosmic-scale Pac-man working his way through the corridors of the universe, following the dots of stars, tracing the constellations of his own manic pixie dreams. On the television, there is an Asian fellow, a physicist of some sort, theorizing about some “black hole artifict,” as he calls it, placed in the location where our sun used to be by a level-5 species who regard us as no more than a pestilence to be preemptively dealt with before we become a galactic nuisance. At the Universal scale at which this level-5 species traverses and exists, sentience is the norm and not the exception, and they had seen our like before: whenever a certain-sized planet was a certain distance from the sun and certain atmospheric and temperature conditions were met, oh-so-predictably there we would be like mold in the damp, just ruining things. Roaches reveling in the squalor and filth and calling it glory. The mop-headed physicist made it clear that tossing out a sun-consuming black hole artifact in the middle of a solar system likely meant no more to them than would absentmindedly tossing a Raid roach-motel cartridge into the dark recesses of some apartment Joe’s humble apartment would for Joe. The annihilation of seven billion future space-faring space monkeys as routine weed-whacking. Yawn. Oh-so-mundane. I prefer the innocent charm of my version: galactic Pac-man, King of the Universe, star-eater. My daughter would too, I think, if she were alive. Someone on the television had initially suggested that the sound of the sun being swallowed would take some thirteen years to arrive. Some questioned whether this would hold true in the vacuum of space. Most didn’t care because we would be too dead to find out. I was in the not-care camp. What would it sound like, they had asked. Plop! he had said. One day, all who were alive if there were any alive would hear a collective Plop! One consequence of the black hole artifact is that it seems to have implications for the fabric of our universe: namely, that the whole shebang seems to be going to strands. The seams are coming apart in our little corner of time and space. Timelines are intersecting, bending, criss-crossing. Space itself is hop-scotching around the plane of time while Father Time holds the rope of itself that Time itself is tightroping on. If you think that sounds confusing, it is. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes you walk into the kitchen and your daughter is in her Batman pajamas and she’s eight and looking through the fridge and not dead and you cry and hold her and ask her if she’s real and how is she alive but she just squirms away and wants to eat her cereal and watch cartoons. So you’ve got a giant bowl of Lucky Charms in between the two of you and you just make a day out of cereal and Powerpuff Girls reruns huddled inside a blanket fort because it’s fun but also because it’s cold and outside it is death and we don’t have long. And I was right. We have our little afternoon and she is there and then she is gone. I look up at the sky where I figure He must reside shaking my head. Not cool man, not cool. I saw an anchorman quit live on television. He wanted to spend the final days with family. I merely wondered if he had family to spend final days with what on earth took him so long. The kindly white-haired gentleman on the tv who so nicely explained his fairy tale of where the sun went must have not had family, for he did not quit. Maybe he just loved science. Or cameras. Or speculation. He was now speculating and spinning a fascinating fairy tale of what was causing these rifts in space-time, and his educated but mostly-still-a-guess relied heavily upon the deus ex machina of alien gravity artifact artifacts. Artifacts caused by intense gravitational disturbances inside a black hole. I thought maybe we might already be dead, and in the afterlife. As to the sound of it all, in the end they were all wrong. It wasn’t thirteen years. It wasn’t a plop. It was a steadily rising cosmic hum. Imperceptibly rising moment by moment and I knew in the moment that objectively it was a mere hum, but contained therein were the echoes and refrains of all the music of all humanity, and I knew there was no light and outside the world was dark but the world is light all the same, and it rose, and rises, and in periphery my daughter, thirteen-years-old in a universe where I had done the right thing, and she's in the hospital but smiling and turns, looks right at me with those blue irises containing our world, blue and bright and the sun still shining upon it and grace.	There was a palpable feeling of excitement in the air. The recirculated air. The nuclear-reactor heated air. The air they had been breathing for 13 years. It took the atmosphere a while to cool off and condense onto the surface, but not long enough for the survivors to build enough shelters around the few nuclear reactors running. The Sun provides some 170,000 Terawatts of power to the Earth. Geothermal grants you just a scant 40 Terawatts. The humans, while they dominated this world, controled some 20 Terawatts, only 10 of those non biological. What was left of humanity scarcely amounted to a single Terawatt. And so much was devoted to just staying warm. Imagine, for a moment, that everyone you knew and loved was either directly around you or frozen solid. There was not enough time to save very many. Psychological trauma was guaranteed. But we were all in this together. Shared suffering breeds compassion. We saved what we could. And what we could save was... sufficient. The satellites, solar powered, were of course useless. The higher altitude telescopes still functioned, and with so much easily available liquified oxygen, and hydrogen so easily cracked from water ice... We saw what was going on. And we had a plan to reach out. The neo-heliopause was going to reach us. We saw it coming in radio and infrared. We were prepared. As well as we could be. The telescopes in those bands that we got operating listened to that black-body static roar... And then... Silence. We turned up the gain. And we celebrated. Because now, we could see how they did it. We celebrated, because now, we could figure out how to undo it.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	My daughter had said that her head felt funny, and couldn’t finish her homework. I told her she was just trying to get out of doing homework. When I looked her in the eye she did look a little woozy and I got a sinking feeling in my stomach just a little bit but when I shook it off and the sinking feeling was gone I told her she could lie down for a little bit but she better finish her homework, and my hand popped a Valium into my mouth and my other grabbed the cold and washed the pill down with a swig of pale ale; and my brain told my gut she really did look fine and my gut was now too busy with pale ale and she was dead in the morning. Burst aneurysm in the brain, no pain. She was eight. Some time passed and I found out we were all going to die anyway and not in that general shrugging-your-shoulders “we all die sometime anyway” way but more or less like the “you have cancer and you have days” way. Way uncool, man. That’s how I talked to God--whom I never really used to talk to--but the prospect of death has a way of making you go religious. My daughter had been eight, and I was already dead anyway. When your daughter dies and you basically blame yourself then you’re basically dead. They swallowed the sun. I don’t mean that metaphorically like oh-I’m-so-sad, rain-clouds-over-my-head-and-no-sun kind of “no sun.” The sun was gone, baby. Gone. I say "they" swallowed the sun but maybe it was an “it.” Or a she. I picture a cosmic-scale Pac-man working his way through the corridors of the universe, following the dots of stars, tracing the constellations of his own manic pixie dreams. On the television, there is an Asian fellow, a physicist of some sort, theorizing about some “black hole artifict,” as he calls it, placed in the location where our sun used to be by a level-5 species who regard us as no more than a pestilence to be preemptively dealt with before we become a galactic nuisance. At the Universal scale at which this level-5 species traverses and exists, sentience is the norm and not the exception, and they had seen our like before: whenever a certain-sized planet was a certain distance from the sun and certain atmospheric and temperature conditions were met, oh-so-predictably there we would be like mold in the damp, just ruining things. Roaches reveling in the squalor and filth and calling it glory. The mop-headed physicist made it clear that tossing out a sun-consuming black hole artifact in the middle of a solar system likely meant no more to them than would absentmindedly tossing a Raid roach-motel cartridge into the dark recesses of some apartment Joe’s humble apartment would for Joe. The annihilation of seven billion future space-faring space monkeys as routine weed-whacking. Yawn. Oh-so-mundane. I prefer the innocent charm of my version: galactic Pac-man, King of the Universe, star-eater. My daughter would too, I think, if she were alive. Someone on the television had initially suggested that the sound of the sun being swallowed would take some thirteen years to arrive. Some questioned whether this would hold true in the vacuum of space. Most didn’t care because we would be too dead to find out. I was in the not-care camp. What would it sound like, they had asked. Plop! he had said. One day, all who were alive if there were any alive would hear a collective Plop! One consequence of the black hole artifact is that it seems to have implications for the fabric of our universe: namely, that the whole shebang seems to be going to strands. The seams are coming apart in our little corner of time and space. Timelines are intersecting, bending, criss-crossing. Space itself is hop-scotching around the plane of time while Father Time holds the rope of itself that Time itself is tightroping on. If you think that sounds confusing, it is. Sometimes it’s slow. Sometimes it’s fast. Sometimes you walk into the kitchen and your daughter is in her Batman pajamas and she’s eight and looking through the fridge and not dead and you cry and hold her and ask her if she’s real and how is she alive but she just squirms away and wants to eat her cereal and watch cartoons. So you’ve got a giant bowl of Lucky Charms in between the two of you and you just make a day out of cereal and Powerpuff Girls reruns huddled inside a blanket fort because it’s fun but also because it’s cold and outside it is death and we don’t have long. And I was right. We have our little afternoon and she is there and then she is gone. I look up at the sky where I figure He must reside shaking my head. Not cool man, not cool. I saw an anchorman quit live on television. He wanted to spend the final days with family. I merely wondered if he had family to spend final days with what on earth took him so long. The kindly white-haired gentleman on the tv who so nicely explained his fairy tale of where the sun went must have not had family, for he did not quit. Maybe he just loved science. Or cameras. Or speculation. He was now speculating and spinning a fascinating fairy tale of what was causing these rifts in space-time, and his educated but mostly-still-a-guess relied heavily upon the deus ex machina of alien gravity artifact artifacts. Artifacts caused by intense gravitational disturbances inside a black hole. I thought maybe we might already be dead, and in the afterlife. As to the sound of it all, in the end they were all wrong. It wasn’t thirteen years. It wasn’t a plop. It was a steadily rising cosmic hum. Imperceptibly rising moment by moment and I knew in the moment that objectively it was a mere hum, but contained therein were the echoes and refrains of all the music of all humanity, and I knew there was no light and outside the world was dark but the world is light all the same, and it rose, and rises, and in periphery my daughter, thirteen-years-old in a universe where I had done the right thing, and she's in the hospital but smiling and turns, looks right at me with those blue irises containing our world, blue and bright and the sun still shining upon it and grace.	A baby was born that day. The day the darkness started. A child opened its eyes, not to see light. Ever. The only source we had was heat lamps. And she grew. She grew to become a lovely little girl, constantly drawing. And she drew the sun. Pictures upon pictures tacked to the door with little magnets shaped like the star. We wonder how she lives. How she knows. How she survives in this world. The minute the screaming started, the entire world Burst into tears. Soon, the soft weeping turned into a great howl of anguish. A howl that rivaled that of the dying, no. Dead star. Like little children, we cried and howled, yet not a sound escaped her mouth. She only listened. Listened to the crying and screaming. Listened to the walls of her parents as the world lost its hope. Listened to the stories that her parents used to tell of the sun, hoping that one day, she’d see it. She used to fall asleep to the wailing star, but not before looking out the window, at the stars around us with no sun to light us. She’d look at the sky, and use the star chart that her parents had bought her to find the sun at that exact moment. “Don’t cry.” Her already soft voice was barely a whisper. “I’ll be there to see you soon.” And the roar came. We felt it in our bones, as the star flushed its full power at the planet it once cared for enough to help it produce life. The little girl looked at the sun. She stared at it. And she went blind. Her hopes of seeing the bright light were fully crushed now, if they haven’t been already. Yet still. Every night, she would feel around for her windowsill, and shed her tiny, salty tears as she smiled. “Don’t cry. I’ll be there to see you soon.”
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	### 13 Years of silence We’d known for many years what would come - the sun would fade out in a manner of minutes. We prepared tirelessly. Millions invested into getting energy from the ground, to grow plants, filter water and to cling to life like a very stubborn weed that manages to thrive no matter how much the grass around it has withered away and die. Turns out a lot of the technology planned for Martian missions and beyond proved quite useful. Only a fraction will be part of this brave new world since we simply don’t have enough resources to go on. In a matter of a couple of hours, the bright white turns to a dark dull orange, like a streetlight seen through sunglasses. I watch as it sets. It never rises again. Some years pass. Not that the concept of days or nights matter. Two thirds of people on the planet couldn’t survive the change and some simply perhaps didn’t want to. The plants are all dead, and hence the animals. But somehow, surprisingly - life goes on. Me and about 80 people live on a small base. I met someone and we got married after the dark came, but nobody wants to start a family. Nobody wants to bring life into a world that’ll never know light. It’s only a matter of time then. It started happening when I was having dinner. Spinach and lentils. I could hear each bite more clearly as if suddenly everything was louder, and yet it was uncomfortable. In a few minutes the discomfort grew, and I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. Eventually my head started spinning as the tiniest sound was torture. I covered my ears but it didn’t help. The annoyingly loud ventilation fan kicked in and was the only thing that seemed to provide a little relief. I put on headphones and played a white noise signal at the highest volume and the headache went down. I found some other people and helped them get back on their feet and we blared some white noise from the PA system. Eventually we figured out the sound was from the sun which took a while to reach us. Turns out our ears always adapted to ignoring the hum, but went crazy when something was missing. We played loud noise in the background and reduced it slowly, until we shut it off completely. For the first time we heard silence and we actually liked it. We felt more calmer and at peace than ever before. A decade has passed since the sound stopped. Less than half the people who started this base are still around. Suddenly, the sun rises one day as bright as ever. Nobody understood why or how. Nobody knows what to do next, but we know we only have thirteen years of silence left.	Night 1: Darkness. Panic. Night 10: It is clear this event is not going to stop. The news reports show scientists praying and preachers positing their hypotheses. Whatever happened to the sun, it is completely gone. The scientists have measured the earth relative to the echoes of the other planets. We have been flung outward into deep space, the Sun's gravity no longer holding sway over the planets. They say we have 13 years at most. This is not the blazing glorious Judgement Day we were promised by the cold war fiction. This is a slow, suffocating apocalypse. The Earth has been plunged into an unending night. Humanoids will be forced to rely on echolocation alone. Night 1000: Being an apex omnivore has its perks. The photosynthesising plants went first. The bees are fucked. The sonosynthesising plants have taken over. In a few short years, Nebraska transformed from a big cornfield to a giant cultivated greenroot forest. I remember being force-fed greenroot as a child. Now, with no other plant left to eat, I hate them even more. The lowest of vegetables, despised by children from time immemorial, the vile greenroot is all we have left. It is the only semi-edible sonosynthesising plant. At least it has a lot of vitamin C. Since most livestock can’t live off of it, Beef and Chicken are now delicacies of the super-rich. Pigs will eat anything. Pork is the only good thing left to this cold, cold world. The world is in complete economic and political collapse. As the biosphere dies, it drags everyone else along with it. Riots, assassinations, and war are now a part of daily life. The earth is dying and we humanoids are just a bit jealous that we weren’t able to reap the benefits of it killing it ourselves. Life goes on, even if just for a while longer. I step outside my door into the darkness. I turn my antennae to the sky and hear the cries of a long-dead star. Wherever she went, we will all follow soon enough. Night 10,000:
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	### 13 Years of silence We’d known for many years what would come - the sun would fade out in a manner of minutes. We prepared tirelessly. Millions invested into getting energy from the ground, to grow plants, filter water and to cling to life like a very stubborn weed that manages to thrive no matter how much the grass around it has withered away and die. Turns out a lot of the technology planned for Martian missions and beyond proved quite useful. Only a fraction will be part of this brave new world since we simply don’t have enough resources to go on. In a matter of a couple of hours, the bright white turns to a dark dull orange, like a streetlight seen through sunglasses. I watch as it sets. It never rises again. Some years pass. Not that the concept of days or nights matter. Two thirds of people on the planet couldn’t survive the change and some simply perhaps didn’t want to. The plants are all dead, and hence the animals. But somehow, surprisingly - life goes on. Me and about 80 people live on a small base. I met someone and we got married after the dark came, but nobody wants to start a family. Nobody wants to bring life into a world that’ll never know light. It’s only a matter of time then. It started happening when I was having dinner. Spinach and lentils. I could hear each bite more clearly as if suddenly everything was louder, and yet it was uncomfortable. In a few minutes the discomfort grew, and I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. Eventually my head started spinning as the tiniest sound was torture. I covered my ears but it didn’t help. The annoyingly loud ventilation fan kicked in and was the only thing that seemed to provide a little relief. I put on headphones and played a white noise signal at the highest volume and the headache went down. I found some other people and helped them get back on their feet and we blared some white noise from the PA system. Eventually we figured out the sound was from the sun which took a while to reach us. Turns out our ears always adapted to ignoring the hum, but went crazy when something was missing. We played loud noise in the background and reduced it slowly, until we shut it off completely. For the first time we heard silence and we actually liked it. We felt more calmer and at peace than ever before. A decade has passed since the sound stopped. Less than half the people who started this base are still around. Suddenly, the sun rises one day as bright as ever. Nobody understood why or how. Nobody knows what to do next, but we know we only have thirteen years of silence left.	You have to put your ear to the wall to hear it, and no one ever bothers. Children, perhaps, after some science lesson or little lesson taught by a parent. Up on the surface, you wouldn't be able to hear it at all, the atmosphere is long, long gone. Or rather, it's still there, sitting like snow, if snow had ever piled up a hundred meters thick. No one's made the attempt to tunnel through, not yet. All the old surface shelters have long ago been crushed, unable to bear the combination of obscene weight and brittle-making cold. They say it's still audible, all the time, but the brain edits it out. So you hear, but you don't really, not without an ear to the wall. Much louder are the sounds of the thermal generators, hissing steam, creaking huge turbines round in endless circles, sucking up the very fires of Creation to extend our species' lifespan another year. And another. And now a decade, without much changing. We die, we're born, we tend the hydroponics, we scheme at ways to escape the bowels of our own world. In three years, the noise will stop, but no one really cares. Or perhaps we will, perhaps it will be a relief to some shuddering, battered depth in the mind, pulsing softly with its own ancient heat. Perhaps we will sigh, like the steam through the pipes, pouring heat into the walls where you can hear it, if you listen, hear it for true, without the mind getting in the way, that frowning relentless censor. Hissss....thrummmm...clang. We know the noise had something to do with why our star went out. We know it had to do with some experiment, but most of the why and how is lost, along with the brains of the researchers splattered all over by the mob. For ten years, the noise. We analyzed it, decided it spoke of instability, and as many as could burrowed here. The rest died up top, but we were many fewer then, because we are very very good at killing each other, when things look grim and scarce and our children look to us with future hungers in their eyes. Some of us down here, we can't look at each other any more. Plenty of us don't like mirrors. So three years will come and three years will go, and perhaps a small burden will be lifted, and we'll live on, eating, sleeping, fighting, fucking. Making children, leaving corpses. Scheming to leave. To someday find a place to go, a place with a sky, and a wind, and a great burning star. This one, we'll take some care. Discover what went wrong. We have time to think. The core, deep beneath our feet, it's not the just the trapped fire of formation, it's nuclear, plenty of interesting elements decaying tik-tik-tik. Pushing their heat into our turbines. Hissss....thrummmm...clang. Hissss....thrummmm...clang. Hissss....thrummmm...clang. And another noise, one we can no longer hear, soon to go out forever. &#x200B; Come on by r/Magleby for more elaborate lies.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	### 13 Years of silence We’d known for many years what would come - the sun would fade out in a manner of minutes. We prepared tirelessly. Millions invested into getting energy from the ground, to grow plants, filter water and to cling to life like a very stubborn weed that manages to thrive no matter how much the grass around it has withered away and die. Turns out a lot of the technology planned for Martian missions and beyond proved quite useful. Only a fraction will be part of this brave new world since we simply don’t have enough resources to go on. In a matter of a couple of hours, the bright white turns to a dark dull orange, like a streetlight seen through sunglasses. I watch as it sets. It never rises again. Some years pass. Not that the concept of days or nights matter. Two thirds of people on the planet couldn’t survive the change and some simply perhaps didn’t want to. The plants are all dead, and hence the animals. But somehow, surprisingly - life goes on. Me and about 80 people live on a small base. I met someone and we got married after the dark came, but nobody wants to start a family. Nobody wants to bring life into a world that’ll never know light. It’s only a matter of time then. It started happening when I was having dinner. Spinach and lentils. I could hear each bite more clearly as if suddenly everything was louder, and yet it was uncomfortable. In a few minutes the discomfort grew, and I could hear my heart thumping in my ears. Eventually my head started spinning as the tiniest sound was torture. I covered my ears but it didn’t help. The annoyingly loud ventilation fan kicked in and was the only thing that seemed to provide a little relief. I put on headphones and played a white noise signal at the highest volume and the headache went down. I found some other people and helped them get back on their feet and we blared some white noise from the PA system. Eventually we figured out the sound was from the sun which took a while to reach us. Turns out our ears always adapted to ignoring the hum, but went crazy when something was missing. We played loud noise in the background and reduced it slowly, until we shut it off completely. For the first time we heard silence and we actually liked it. We felt more calmer and at peace than ever before. A decade has passed since the sound stopped. Less than half the people who started this base are still around. Suddenly, the sun rises one day as bright as ever. Nobody understood why or how. Nobody knows what to do next, but we know we only have thirteen years of silence left.	Day: 1 it’s gone, the light. It got bright, then nothing, scientists say it ran out of fuel, and were lucky it didn’t blow up. Riots are everywhere. I’m keeping a record, I’m currently in Nashville TN, the music city is filled with the cacophony of fights and brawls. I’m fleeing I’ll write when I get ready to leave. Day:4 I’ve gathered supplies, the moon is empty and the city’s lights are the brightest things for miles, I’ve waited so I don’t have to deal with traffic. It’s also gotten colder it’s 28 degrees, Fahrenheit, it’s never gotten this cold before, not here atleast I’m going to look for a place to getaway, there is no law anymore. Day:276 I had to rip out pages of this diary to keep warm, this old bunker will hopefully save us for atleast another few years. Our wood is getting low though. Radio broadcasts from the New Global Adaptation Effort (NGAE) stooped, the last warning was one that in a few years, a sound would stop and we all would get crippling tinnitus due to lack of sound. I’ve decided not to write until then. Day:4748 It hurts and it’s only getting worse, I’m the only one left that I know, it hurts! There is no sound, we haven’t even the slightest thing to help, NOT EVEN MY FOOTSTEPS! It HURTS, I’m ending it, forever, goodbye.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	The ancient stargazing nutjobs had been warning us for a while about it. It took the best part of thirty-two centuries to organize society for the big move underground, where humanity learned to adapt to being independent of the sun, leaving behind the light of day, our cities and our mountains and forests and oceans. Sure, we still maintained contact with the surface and its solar observatories and our solar observation satellites, gazing intently at the sun, awaiting the moment it would go out. For the longest time, we weren't even sure if it would. With each passing sidereal day the conspiracists argued more and more passionately that the scientists had duped us, the greatest prank in history, one that had cost billions of lives and changed the entire course of human history. The rest of us, we clung on to that hope. Maybe the scientists were wrong. Maybe one day some whiz from Princeton (now located ten kilometers beneath the old campus) would pop up and tell us the ancient astronomers had missed something, maybe miscarried a digit in their calculations or something, and we could all recolonize Above. Geothermal energy meant we didn't need to rely on more temporary sources of energy, and 3200 periods meant scientists had plenty of time to work their magic and create wickedly ingenious ways of harnessing that energy, but come on. Compared to the warmth of sunlight on skin, the heat of the lower lithosphere is nothing. I would know, since I've been to the surface. Once, when I was twenty. It started as a typical internship to the solar astronomy department at Cambridge. I entered data about solar maximums and minimums into programs for six sidereal months for Professor Lucia's work on the heliopause. But apparently I asked the right questions around the right people, and soon I was working as a research student by her side, parsing solar irradiance fluctuation models into the quantum supercomputers and publishing the results. And somehow They had noticed us, and They gave us a ludicrous amount of money to go Above for two periods and work at the Saharan Large Array. And so sidereal months of security inspections later, I was working under the sun, one of five hundred people in the entire world on the surface. Make better models with the data, They told us. We need to understand our own star better. Our models were apparently not that good, because while they predicted another two hundred periods of sunlight, six sidereal months into the experiment, the sun started to go out. It didn't go out immediately, you know. You probably learned that in school anyway. Professor Lucia and the rest of us research students (there were five of us) first noticed the irradiance anomaly and waved it away as just that - an anomaly. But it wasn't that. It was the beginning of a trend. And so three sidereal months later all non-essential staff were evacuated back underground. By then the average outside temperature had plummeted to 185K and our instruments had started to fail anyway, not being designed for those temperatures. A sidereal month later, we followed them underground, the last humans to see the light of day, ever. We didn't have the best data from underground, but all data from our nuclear-powered autonomous observatories suggested that solar minimum occurred 3224 periods, 4 sidereal months, an 22 sidereal days after Tare Day. And it hasn't risen since. That was thirteen periods ago. Today, I woke up to the most astounding silence I have ever known.	Day: 1 it’s gone, the light. It got bright, then nothing, scientists say it ran out of fuel, and were lucky it didn’t blow up. Riots are everywhere. I’m keeping a record, I’m currently in Nashville TN, the music city is filled with the cacophony of fights and brawls. I’m fleeing I’ll write when I get ready to leave. Day:4 I’ve gathered supplies, the moon is empty and the city’s lights are the brightest things for miles, I’ve waited so I don’t have to deal with traffic. It’s also gotten colder it’s 28 degrees, Fahrenheit, it’s never gotten this cold before, not here atleast I’m going to look for a place to getaway, there is no law anymore. Day:276 I had to rip out pages of this diary to keep warm, this old bunker will hopefully save us for atleast another few years. Our wood is getting low though. Radio broadcasts from the New Global Adaptation Effort (NGAE) stooped, the last warning was one that in a few years, a sound would stop and we all would get crippling tinnitus due to lack of sound. I’ve decided not to write until then. Day:4748 It hurts and it’s only getting worse, I’m the only one left that I know, it hurts! There is no sound, we haven’t even the slightest thing to help, NOT EVEN MY FOOTSTEPS! It HURTS, I’m ending it, forever, goodbye.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	You never quite know what you have until it’s gone. We never quite found out why the sun went dark, society having collapsed long before we could, but some of us were lucky. Some of us were able to be saved, to have the slightest hope of survival as our world slowly turned to ice. We thought we missed the light the most, missed walking on the surface, missed feeling radiance on our skin, but we didn’t know how much more we had to lose. It had been thirteen years after we entered the shelter. Thirteen years since we burrowed into the earth, as the Earth’s mantle provides the only source of heat and energy in this frozen world. It was an otherwise ordinary day, and we were all going about our tasks to keep this small bastion of humanity alive when we heard it. Well, heard isn’t quite the right word. It was more something we felt inside our bones, an intense vibration, filling us with agony and pain. It lasted for minutes, and then it was gone. But with it went something else, and now that it’s gone all we have left the The Quiet. Now all we are left with is our own thoughts, and the sense of despair that comes with the last outcry of our dying star. Our Sun is truly gone, and our hope with it. Already it’s started, people driven mad by The Quiet, who would rather kill themselves than go on. I am ashamed to admit that I was almost one of them. But I will hold on. For my Wife and Child, I will hang on. Even if it’s so quiet. Even if it is so dark. -I hope this is what you were looking for. If anyone enjoyed this admittedly short Prompt piece feel free to leave a response below.	Day: 1 it’s gone, the light. It got bright, then nothing, scientists say it ran out of fuel, and were lucky it didn’t blow up. Riots are everywhere. I’m keeping a record, I’m currently in Nashville TN, the music city is filled with the cacophony of fights and brawls. I’m fleeing I’ll write when I get ready to leave. Day:4 I’ve gathered supplies, the moon is empty and the city’s lights are the brightest things for miles, I’ve waited so I don’t have to deal with traffic. It’s also gotten colder it’s 28 degrees, Fahrenheit, it’s never gotten this cold before, not here atleast I’m going to look for a place to getaway, there is no law anymore. Day:276 I had to rip out pages of this diary to keep warm, this old bunker will hopefully save us for atleast another few years. Our wood is getting low though. Radio broadcasts from the New Global Adaptation Effort (NGAE) stooped, the last warning was one that in a few years, a sound would stop and we all would get crippling tinnitus due to lack of sound. I’ve decided not to write until then. Day:4748 It hurts and it’s only getting worse, I’m the only one left that I know, it hurts! There is no sound, we haven’t even the slightest thing to help, NOT EVEN MY FOOTSTEPS! It HURTS, I’m ending it, forever, goodbye.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	When the sun extinguished, the world worked quickly. Setting up Artificial Day/Night cycles for major cities, and then expanding outwards. The refugees poured in, of course, and life got worse, but that was years ago. Hardly anyone even remembered natural sunlight at this point. But the screaming continued. The loud, ever-present, piercing pitch that the sun emitted seemed to continue, almost forever. Until today. Today was the day. Scientists, with all their calculations, had figured out the exact moment that the sun's screaming would stop. Like New Years Celebrations in New York, the world was coming together for this precise moment. Globally, each city was treating it as Daytime. They'd planned for the exact moment, to recreate the extinguish, by turning all lights off, at the exact moment the screaming stopped. The countdown begun, echoing globally. A countdown from 10. Everyone waiting with bated breath. For the first time, in the history of human life, we would finally know the sound of silence. The countdown continues. You could see how excited people were. 5. Children, who had never even seen sunlight were getting excited now. What would the world hear? Time seemed to slow down. 3. 2. 1. The lights went out. A global night, just like that first day. But this time, the screaming stopped. A moment of pure silence. Deafening. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and made us accustomed to the screaming. Imagine your brain adapting to hundreds of millions, if not billions of years of evolution, then experiencing a sudden, dramatic change. Like the human race adapting to breath Oxygen, and suddenly being required to breath Lead. That's what it felt like. It wasn't long before the screaming started again. Not from the sun. But from the pain. Such a great pain. Many killed themselves. Even more died of "natural causes." But those that tried to continue knew the truth. The cities tried to adapt, by setting up speakers, but it was never enough. It won't be long before the human race dies out. No one can live with such a great pain for long. I guess this is how the world ends. Not with a bang. But with deafening silence.	Day: 1 it’s gone, the light. It got bright, then nothing, scientists say it ran out of fuel, and were lucky it didn’t blow up. Riots are everywhere. I’m keeping a record, I’m currently in Nashville TN, the music city is filled with the cacophony of fights and brawls. I’m fleeing I’ll write when I get ready to leave. Day:4 I’ve gathered supplies, the moon is empty and the city’s lights are the brightest things for miles, I’ve waited so I don’t have to deal with traffic. It’s also gotten colder it’s 28 degrees, Fahrenheit, it’s never gotten this cold before, not here atleast I’m going to look for a place to getaway, there is no law anymore. Day:276 I had to rip out pages of this diary to keep warm, this old bunker will hopefully save us for atleast another few years. Our wood is getting low though. Radio broadcasts from the New Global Adaptation Effort (NGAE) stooped, the last warning was one that in a few years, a sound would stop and we all would get crippling tinnitus due to lack of sound. I’ve decided not to write until then. Day:4748 It hurts and it’s only getting worse, I’m the only one left that I know, it hurts! There is no sound, we haven’t even the slightest thing to help, NOT EVEN MY FOOTSTEPS! It HURTS, I’m ending it, forever, goodbye.
Inspired by a comment on r/AskReddit *edit: removed link to comment	[WP] You can hear the sound of the Sun from Earth, it is loud but the planet has adapted. Suddenly the light goes out. 8 minutes after it died the last bit of light reaches Earth. It'll take 13 years before the roar of the Sun the moment it died reaches us.	When the sun extinguished, the world worked quickly. Setting up Artificial Day/Night cycles for major cities, and then expanding outwards. The refugees poured in, of course, and life got worse, but that was years ago. Hardly anyone even remembered natural sunlight at this point. But the screaming continued. The loud, ever-present, piercing pitch that the sun emitted seemed to continue, almost forever. Until today. Today was the day. Scientists, with all their calculations, had figured out the exact moment that the sun's screaming would stop. Like New Years Celebrations in New York, the world was coming together for this precise moment. Globally, each city was treating it as Daytime. They'd planned for the exact moment, to recreate the extinguish, by turning all lights off, at the exact moment the screaming stopped. The countdown begun, echoing globally. A countdown from 10. Everyone waiting with bated breath. For the first time, in the history of human life, we would finally know the sound of silence. The countdown continues. You could see how excited people were. 5. Children, who had never even seen sunlight were getting excited now. What would the world hear? Time seemed to slow down. 3. 2. 1. The lights went out. A global night, just like that first day. But this time, the screaming stopped. A moment of pure silence. Deafening. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, and made us accustomed to the screaming. Imagine your brain adapting to hundreds of millions, if not billions of years of evolution, then experiencing a sudden, dramatic change. Like the human race adapting to breath Oxygen, and suddenly being required to breath Lead. That's what it felt like. It wasn't long before the screaming started again. Not from the sun. But from the pain. Such a great pain. Many killed themselves. Even more died of "natural causes." But those that tried to continue knew the truth. The cities tried to adapt, by setting up speakers, but it was never enough. It won't be long before the human race dies out. No one can live with such a great pain for long. I guess this is how the world ends. Not with a bang. But with deafening silence.	You never quite know what you have until it’s gone. We never quite found out why the sun went dark, society having collapsed long before we could, but some of us were lucky. Some of us were able to be saved, to have the slightest hope of survival as our world slowly turned to ice. We thought we missed the light the most, missed walking on the surface, missed feeling radiance on our skin, but we didn’t know how much more we had to lose. It had been thirteen years after we entered the shelter. Thirteen years since we burrowed into the earth, as the Earth’s mantle provides the only source of heat and energy in this frozen world. It was an otherwise ordinary day, and we were all going about our tasks to keep this small bastion of humanity alive when we heard it. Well, heard isn’t quite the right word. It was more something we felt inside our bones, an intense vibration, filling us with agony and pain. It lasted for minutes, and then it was gone. But with it went something else, and now that it’s gone all we have left the The Quiet. Now all we are left with is our own thoughts, and the sense of despair that comes with the last outcry of our dying star. Our Sun is truly gone, and our hope with it. Already it’s started, people driven mad by The Quiet, who would rather kill themselves than go on. I am ashamed to admit that I was almost one of them. But I will hold on. For my Wife and Child, I will hang on. Even if it’s so quiet. Even if it is so dark. -I hope this is what you were looking for. If anyone enjoyed this admittedly short Prompt piece feel free to leave a response below.
	[WP] You are a nearly dead god, so forgotten, so old, that you hardly remember what you are. You barely agknowledge your own existence in your eternal wait for the word to end. This all changes, when a small arceological group enters your last intact temple.	Heavy eyelids cracked open to a cobweb filtered light. The ache of lying in one position for too long began to be acknowledged as a sleepy thought drifted through my mind. Why was I awake? I had lain so slumbered for a long time, how long I do not know as immortality seems to blur the edges of days to decades. There! A sound. Like a pebble rolling down an uneven rock. Gently, I brushed away the spiders work and peered down into my temple. The Dusty hall was darkened save for a single spotlight of sunshine. This poured through a hole on the wall where yet again a different sound, that of tearing plaster, rang again. I watched, my hazy dream addled head unable to think properly just yet. Soon, what seemed to be two people crawled through the opening. Their clothing was strange to me, but their faces stranger. One seems to be dark as the night while the other is pale as a moon. They speak,but it is a language I have never learned. Stretching, I waited as they walked my halls, sweeping dust away from the walls. With every disturbed mote, I gain clarity. They have come to my altar and sweep it bare. Finally I begin to understand. My people are gone and this temple my last. What these new people intend is uncertain but I am hopeful. "Hestia, mother of hearths and virtue, we ask for your blessing" the pale one calls to me. This, this I understand and knowledge spills into me once more. I step down onto my altar and smile at the scared humans before me.	It's impossible to ignore what a sorry state I've been in these last few millennia. I was powerful once. A king among a forgotten people's gods. My power stretched beyond the limits of what most knew of the world around them. But my people fell. Their chief city annihilated by disaster they created. Today there is but one place where my temple survives: Atlantis. A sprawling, decaying mass of stone and metal and lost knowledge buried in the deepest pit of the ocean. Humanity has been searching, digging, finding old things and taking them back to their cities for several centuries. Sometimes I hope they'll find me. Bring me back to the peak of my power. Mostly I just wait to fade into the weave of the cosmos. One of these days where everything is cold and grey, and I feel the ever closer draw of non-existence, I feel them. Rumbling and cracking closer to the heart of my temple. With a great shudder and boom, my vision is filled with a spray of color and light. A group of humans dart through the murky waters of my grand tomb. Their excitement is palpable, and awakens in me a desire to continue. I muster what little power and control I have left, repairing and revitalizing my texts and Artefacts. With this last surge of effort, I know no more.
	[WP] You are a nearly dead god, so forgotten, so old, that you hardly remember what you are. You barely agknowledge your own existence in your eternal wait for the word to end. This all changes, when a small arceological group enters your last intact temple.	Though timeless and eternal, memories are still fondly toyed with in my weakened state. I laugh and convulse merrily when recalling the times my name was paraded blindly in the name of war. These same memories evoke the sense of pride I once had when the dominant species of this planet killed and died to appease their interpretation of my desires. Reiterations and self interested translations of my original word have all been reviewed countless times by myself and I chuckle often to think how wrong they sometimes were. Entire nations, millions, propitiated me profusely with offers of their kin and their enemies, and how the pious prospered was no deed of mine but a result of their ultimately selfish efforts. In fact, my hand rarely left my side as I watched the height of my hegemony, the heretics were never harmed and the devout rarely rewarded. Perhaps this is why those derivative Abrahamics had the influence they did, perhaps my meddling could've been much less minimal. My voyeuristic tendencies have left me less venerated than I'd hoped. It would seem smiting the sacrilegious would've scored suitably among of course the orthodox and maybe it would've scared the less thorough of my flock and caused them to don the robes of the ascetics that used to populate that which is now likely my grave. My deathless disposition is not as definite as is often described. I will never truly perish, and I am correctly perceived as the perennial being that I am, but infecting the hearts and minds of the populace keeps me in play. Without this worship I will wither and approach a state of hibernation not unlike those predators that spend their winters prone. This cycle sends me from a state of submission to forces even I do not recognize to a rejuvenation born from a growing congregation. I hear the prayers and hymns across dimensions immune to time and space. I hear each one as a request for my rehabilitation and I almost feel myself renewed, each softly spoken word applying flesh to bone. I have seen my 'end' before and I will see it again, though I must admit even eternity is tiring. This process is not instant, for the timeless have a peculiar penchant for dragging things out. I feel myself fade and I find my formless limbs ache from the flight of my influence. My oblivion is a transition I am all too familiar with and after eons it is even agreeably anticipated. Though now it has been disturbed, disrupted by devotees I truly hadn't considered. They cross forgotten bridges with a brilliant buoyancy that has been inspired by their discovery of my domain. I count a party of 21, I feel their faith like open palms to a flame. I feel every fingertip graze each of my carved walls, and my perpetual presence is propagated as their footsteps form a familiar resonance among my various tunnels, each of them finding their way to the ears which I do not have. There is but one of these believers whose backing I am not wholly convinced of. As they approach I contemplate how I will present myself, if I decide to at all. &#x200B; Finally my devoted descend my final steps dutifully and I ascertain an apostate is in their midst for only one of the group is bound and gagged, struggling pitifully against her binds. It would appear old habits die hard, though that phrase means very little to lasting lifeforms such as myself. Their organisation is admirable as they allocate themselves along my hall, their offering is laid between two equal columns of my adherents. Customary chants that have survived generations of my followers begin to create a cacophony in dispersion through my chambers and care is taken in their ritual as they complete their communication to my presence of which they cannot see. An ancient ritual blade is produced and soon plunged into the chest of the non-believer, and my response is eagerly awaited. &#x200B; But I say nothing, for I am tired of my adoration. My accolades over this recent revolution have been enough to sate my hunger for why else would I have retired to this, my resting place. Once you observe centuries uninterrupted, replaced by graven images and celebrities, you prepare for your intermission. For these latecomers, their fanaticism comes before my fatigue and I will not facilitate their forthright greed. Instead, I will sleep, and disregard their desperate descant for even gods must rest.	It's impossible to ignore what a sorry state I've been in these last few millennia. I was powerful once. A king among a forgotten people's gods. My power stretched beyond the limits of what most knew of the world around them. But my people fell. Their chief city annihilated by disaster they created. Today there is but one place where my temple survives: Atlantis. A sprawling, decaying mass of stone and metal and lost knowledge buried in the deepest pit of the ocean. Humanity has been searching, digging, finding old things and taking them back to their cities for several centuries. Sometimes I hope they'll find me. Bring me back to the peak of my power. Mostly I just wait to fade into the weave of the cosmos. One of these days where everything is cold and grey, and I feel the ever closer draw of non-existence, I feel them. Rumbling and cracking closer to the heart of my temple. With a great shudder and boom, my vision is filled with a spray of color and light. A group of humans dart through the murky waters of my grand tomb. Their excitement is palpable, and awakens in me a desire to continue. I muster what little power and control I have left, repairing and revitalizing my texts and Artefacts. With this last surge of effort, I know no more.
	[WP] You are a nearly dead god, so forgotten, so old, that you hardly remember what you are. You barely agknowledge your own existence in your eternal wait for the word to end. This all changes, when a small arceological group enters your last intact temple.	Heavy eyelids cracked open to a cobweb filtered light. The ache of lying in one position for too long began to be acknowledged as a sleepy thought drifted through my mind. Why was I awake? I had lain so slumbered for a long time, how long I do not know as immortality seems to blur the edges of days to decades. There! A sound. Like a pebble rolling down an uneven rock. Gently, I brushed away the spiders work and peered down into my temple. The Dusty hall was darkened save for a single spotlight of sunshine. This poured through a hole on the wall where yet again a different sound, that of tearing plaster, rang again. I watched, my hazy dream addled head unable to think properly just yet. Soon, what seemed to be two people crawled through the opening. Their clothing was strange to me, but their faces stranger. One seems to be dark as the night while the other is pale as a moon. They speak,but it is a language I have never learned. Stretching, I waited as they walked my halls, sweeping dust away from the walls. With every disturbed mote, I gain clarity. They have come to my altar and sweep it bare. Finally I begin to understand. My people are gone and this temple my last. What these new people intend is uncertain but I am hopeful. "Hestia, mother of hearths and virtue, we ask for your blessing" the pale one calls to me. This, this I understand and knowledge spills into me once more. I step down onto my altar and smile at the scared humans before me.	Many believe that to be a goddess you need followers, a common misconception. You see, one does not need believers in order to exist. A bird does not fly because you believe it can fly, it flies because that is it’s natural born ability. The sun does not shine because of some ill informed beings belief that shining is it’s only purpose. It’s shines for that is how it was created and as everything else in our multiverse of universes, I too was created. Of the beginning I have minimal memories. Such as a newborn only remembering certain moments of it’s life. Almost like blots of sunlights shining through treetops. What I do remember is that there was nothing, and quite abruptly there was everything. I myself can not take the praise for the creation of everything, for I came with it. I watch over this galaxy, particularly one solar system with an odd little planet near its center. I believe there are other galaxies with other protectors, or gods, if you so please to call them. Some protectors and their galaxy are far more advanced, others still learning to create fire. Our purpose has never been made clear, perhaps it is to grow with our people, to teach them and help them with evolving and hopefully exploring. I am omniscient in some standards, I choose what I want to know. I learned long ago knowing every detail of everything is somewhat unnecessary and consuming. My powers have a wide range, powers even I am not always fully aware of. Things started out slow with the humans. A few key discoveries could have been made sooner. Fire, hunting, riding the animals then boats and temples and civilizations. I was proud to say the least, things were looking great up until different nations decided to do their own thing. See I chose to walk alongside them and some of humans didn’t like the idea of a female goddess. And So came the other gods and goddesses with their own nations, but as i said just having followers doesn’t create a new god. I didn’t mind their silly beliefs, it didn’t harm me and after all I did all this with love and not for praise. In the end, I failed, I lost tract. I focused on becoming one of them so much, that I forgot who I was. I didn’t want to fight back to the growing number of non-believers, if I hurt them even in defense of myself, they would only hate me more. And so the time came, after centuries of slowly and carefully growing with my people, they all forgot of my existence. Here and there a spoken word of a new goddess by a different name for a different religion. Then a world wide hunt for all those that I had given a gift of knowledge. Witches they called them, these poor women whose only sin was learning a different truth than the one that was accepted. They buried me too after supposedly “drowning” me. I played along, I stayed in my coffin, for centuries, thinking about where my mistakes were and how to correct them. Ultimately I gave up, seeing no hope. I just observed as they took over the planet and then... the wars began. Somehow in the midst of a battle one day, I was freed from my coffin. Instead of assuming my role as protector a new thought occurred to me, and so I turned the other cheek, I lived a mundane life. I traveled frequently, staying in one place for a fee years. I could change my appearance as I pleased: old, young, male, female. I often opted for something similar to my original female presence. This was a different kind of living, learning new technology, lending a helpful thought to some scientist, seeing them grow and only occasionally listening to the news of natural disasters. “It’s their own fault.” I would think. “Why should I give rain to the Serengeti for them to give some other god the praise.” The world is getting worse now, a guilty conscience still wonders if perhaps they deserve another chance, even after all this evil. Then one day, on a particularly uneventful day of minimal significance, I felt it. My senses telling me to pay attention to a particular group of people. I found this odd as it has been centuries since I felt something like this. So I focused my omniscient powers. What I saw has given me hope, hope in humanity. In a small mountain in vast forest, where everything began. There was a Temple, archeologists moving slowly inside. Statues of my older self, gold jewelry, scrolls with stories of my adventures and many more treasures. The humans so long ago... they cared enough to build a shrine without my knowledge. I boomed with joy, this was my chance to turn things around. The news of a new forgotten possible civilization briefly passing people’s lips... and as quickly as it came it disappeared. No one cares for forgotten knowledge, people claimed it was staged, or a false discovery for it’s the only of its kinda. My heart sank... why couldn’t they acknowledge me? Furious I decided I would make myself heard. I sent a message to all of them at once: “I’m your long lost forgotten goddess Joy-souls, I have had enough of your wars, your hatred for one another and disregard for the planet. From now on there will be peace and love. Together as a one nation we will live on. I want to see the love and the good ‘karma’ from everyone or you will suffer the consequences.”
	[WP] In 2009 someone uploaded a heavily encrypted video with supposedly Earth shattering consequences online. Known as the Sword in the Stone challenge many people had tried to crack the code to no avail leaving experts to claim it a hoax. Yet today is the day you pull the sword from the stone...	I had never excelled at hacking. it was a hobby. A near party trick for me. I knew it didn't match what was seen in movies and TV, so it was a lot of tedious work. Well in 2009, the well known "Hoax" the sword and the stone challenge was released. Everyone hacking collective has taken a crack at it over time. I knew immediately I was out of my depths. I didn't even try. After years it was chalked up to a hoax. That's when my interest was finally piqued. I spend the next 6 years learning everything about hacking. I learned every programming language I could, I attended Blackhat, Defcon, and B sides. I got deep in on the dark web. I eventually forgot why I started down this path. Then one day an algorithm I was working on reminded me. I pulled up sword and the stone, and I realized the coding on the outter shell was similar to the piece of code I had just altered. So I wrote a reverse shell script that when I applied it to the system removed the outmost layer of security. What I found inside was a series of puzzles, which when solved gave me hints. 3 weeks later hundreds of solved puzzles and the strangest piece of code I'd ever seen. I turned that code into a program, which unlocked the stone. "Congratulations Arthur" blinked across my terminal window. "Do you want to change the world? Y or N" My cursor was blinking. By default N was on the screen. I typed Y. My finger hovering over the enter key. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to see it. Enter Another terminal window opened up, and began running a number of programs. Did I work this hard to release some uber virus on my computer? A few moments later a video pops up. It seems like one of those weird youtube conspiracy videos, but the more I watch the more it makes sense. The more I realize that everything I am seeing isn't even questionable. I have secrets that can rock the very world we live in. Now I have to decide if humanity as a whole is ready.	It has been nearly a year since the first Challenge. The world has thrown its best, its brightest, and anything lesser, and yet made no headway. The first and most promising sectors of the internet to be issued the Challenge were the eggheads, the people who worked with files and codes and similar things every day. But the Challenge had no matches with anything yet seen by the men of wires and numbers, for it matched nothing they had ever seen. And so, the Challenge went unanswered for a time. They had been Challenged for a month, with no progress, when the Invitations were sent, almost at random, to people across the globe. It was a link to the Challenge, alongside a simple message: “Truth lies within. Remove the Sword and the world shall be yours.” Of the millions of messages sent to inboxes across the internet, how many do you think accepted the Invitation? How many were thrown out alongside the promises of enhancement pills and lost inheritances? And so the Challenge went unanswered for a time again. Three months after the Invitations were sent, there came a Voice proclaiming the wonders of this Challenge. Spreading news and information about the wondrous and world-changing power that awaits those who accept and complete the Challenge. And yet, the Voice gave no answers to any questions, only ever responding to pleads for guidance or answers with but a simple phrase: “The Challenge awaits those who would face it. The Sword will be pulled from its stone by one worthy of it.” And so, the masses who heard the Voice were turned away by the Challenge, for none could face it and make progress, and the Voice faded from their attention. And the Challenge remained unanswered. Six months have passed now since the last message from the Voice. It is almost time for another Call to bring the Challenge, and still no progress has been made toward finding the Traitor. Time is running out, for the Challenge shall surely be our undoing. And so, as every time before, we must discredit the Traitor and discover them, before the Challenge is completed and our secrets exposed to the world.
	[WP] "You-You're not human..." they say with sudden realisation. Before you can say anything the person you have just rescued faints into your arms.	Faye rolled her eyes at the man's reaction. She had hoped he would have a different response than most, having seen the lengths she'd go to in the name of the people of this realm. Alas, one look at her oversized, yellow eyes and elongated limbs and he'd panicked like all the rest. She used one of those arms, thick with corded muscle and covered in the blood and scars of this battle and many before it, to lift him onto her shoulder. She was certainly a sight to behold; This beast of a woman, too tall at first glance, gripping a longsword made small by her hand. Her gaze was the first thing anyone noticed about her. Her eyes were huge, enough to warp her skull to fit them, and a brighter yellow than is seen in even predatory cats. At second glance, it became clear that she wasn't tall so much as her limbs were simply too long, and tipping them were hands and feet that would be much better placed on an ape than a human. Adding to the visage was the thick, matted hair tied back in a ponytail. It likely hadn't seen a brush in as long as she'd been alive. Add to that the grime of weeks with only natural water sources for any kind of bath, and you had what most people would simply call a monster. But as much of a sight as she was to behold, Faye was nothing compared to the sight she'd left in her wake. Behind her, a village burned. The sanguine skinned beasts that had been responsible, short and stout and spitting fire and venom, lay strewn across the dirt and grass that once marked the commonly walked paths of the village. Their summoners were dead. This hadn't been Faye's doing; she hadn't needed to. When it came down to it, they were just stupid humans that didn't understand what they were doing. Gripping her longsword in one hand, using the other to keep the sole survivor of this attack stable on her shoulder, Faye left the scene behind her. She didn't blame the man for fainting, nor did she do this for recognition, or expect praise for saving just one person in an entire village. A part of her, though, yearned for someone to recognise that she was trying. After all, a part of her was only human.	The look on Tim's face could best be described as "offended". He understood that his tattoos might give a sort of demonic air when they were activated, but he never liked people thinking he was less or more than a man. It was also true that he was currently sporting a pair of Ram's horns, but that was no fault of his own. Training a young elemental mage always had risks, and his young apprentice had made a slip-up while trying to summon a creature. She wanted help to help her get her ball out of a tree. She had done a good job of the prep work, but was still too young to focus exactly on what she needed. She wanted someone tall like Tim or nimble like a mountain goat. What she got was an exasperated Tim with goat horns and banned from his personal library. He sighed as he eased the rather large man down onto a bench. He would have to have a talk with Baba Olga. Far too many residents were not fully wiped of their powers. Mr. Leeds could still cast detection spells. He often did at Tim, then would freak out at what he saw. Ms. Periwinkle could still call song birds to her hand. Said hand was behind bullet proof glass windows, and Tim was getting tired of cleaning up their corpses. Now Mr. Gorrum had seen through Tim's glamour. He knew it was working because the new girl, Ms. Kelsy, had not yet run screaming from the room. She did, however, look horrified at what Mr. Gorrum had just said. She began apologizing for the man, but was stopped by a raised hand. "No worries, Ms. Kelsy." Tim stopped her. "You might not see me around here much, but I was an orderly here for almost ten years before Ms. Olga snatched me up for the outreach program. I am used to the little eccentricities our patients have." She still stammered out an apology while Tim took Mr. Gorrum's vitals. His was one of the saddest cases he had worked on since joining Walker's Home and Baba Olga's Outreach. Thoigh the man before him looked about eighty, he was actually only seventeen. He had tried summoning something, and it had gone wrong. Tim frowned, and just managed to stop his hand from feeling the horns on his head. Lily was quite powerful, and if she wasn't careful she might end up like Mr. Gorrum one day. As he and Ms. Kelsy finished up, a thought hit him. He would have to get permission, but he thought a visit to Walker's Home might be just the thing to get Lily to understand how dangerous summoning could be.
	[WP] Your name is Tim Berners-Lee. You’ve been working on the World Wide Web for years, and now it’s finally complete. You turn it on, and as it starts you begin to see an internet with tons of social media’s and news outlets that hadn’t been used for years. The last posts talk of an apocalypse.	*Reddit: Front Page, 926.2 million Upvotes - July 22, 2052* &#x200B; "This is it, fellow humans. We're all going to die. China, Russia, Japan, and Europe have been completely wiped out already. Africa is in the midst of chaos. India was the most prepared of all, but even they have started to see thousand of deaths every day.. we are all done for." &#x200B; *Facebook: Trending Hashtag #endofhumanity, 533.6 million posts - July 27, 2052* &#x200B; "India has officially gone silent. They are no longer running news reports on the disease and there is no evidence of internet activity from anywhere in the country. #endofhumanity" &#x200B; *Twitter: Highest Trending Post, 96 million Re-Tweets - July 29, 2052* &#x200B; "Only America and Canada remain. All other countries dead." &#x200B; *Reddit, Front Page, 199 Upvotes - August 18th, 2052* &#x200B; "I don't know how many people will see this.. In fact, I don't even know if this will even reach anyone. Some how, my phone still appears to have service, so here I am. Everyone I know has died. New York City is a wasteland. I haven't seen a single person in 6 days and I don't even know why I'm still alive. If there is anyone out there, please reach out to me. I need companionship.. I am losing my mind." * "Christ. Tati, come here! I think I've just found the last international communications of our ancestors! You have to see this!" &#x200B; Tati put her notebook down and walked over to Darrel. "Okay. What am I looking at?" &#x200B; "I don't know exactly what this all means, but this is clearly a giant archive of different conversations and communications from before our ancestors were nearly wiped out by the red plague." Darrel was nearly in shock. His whole life's work was to rediscover the use of the 'internet.' He knew he could get it working some day, but he had no idea he would be able to find data from over 750 years ago. &#x200B; "Wow, really?" Tati exclaimed, beginning to understand what Darrel had found. "Holy crap! Is that one from August 18th the final entry? There had to be more somewhere, right?" &#x200B; "Maybe.. it looks like these three websites are the main ones people used. Perhaps with a little digging, we can find something else." &#x200B; Darrel decided to navigate the 'Reddit' page, because it appeared to have been the last one ever used by mankind. &#x200B; "It looks like that post on August 18th was the final one to ever appear on the front page, but.. hmm.." Darrel scratched his head, considering what to try next. &#x200B; "Oh, what's this? It looks like I can filter "New" posts instead of "Hot" posts. Let's give that a shot!" &#x200B; "Wait, Darrel! Look! That one says it's from October 13th! Did someone really live that long?!" Tati was practically jumping up and down from excitement. &#x200B; "Whoa! It looks like it. Let's check it out." &#x200B; Reddit, r/PipSkweex, 1 Upvote - October 13th, 2052** &#x200B; "I fear I am one of the last people alive now. There's probably no point in writing this, but maybe it will do someone some good. Hell, maybe there are tons of people alive out there and they just don't have internet. &#x200B; Anyway.. I believe I've found out what has been the cause of this utter destruction of humanity. After everyone in my city began to die, I struggled to find life elsewhere. I ended up traveling to Silicon Valley and visiting the Google headquarters. &#x200B; Well, you won't believe what I found there. For years, they have been working on a biological weapon that can be released via Ethernet connection, somehow. Please, don't ask me how. I don't know. &#x200B; What I do know, is that they accidentally released the weapon to all connections in the world, all at once. This was the cause of the end for humanity. &#x200B; Chances are, if you are reading this, you are now infected, just like me. &#x200B; Cheers, PipSkweex" &#x200B; *** &#x200B; Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to check out my other stories at r/PipSkweex	They are at the gate. If by any chance some future generation prevails and recovers from this calamity, learn from these words. Don't let history repeat itself. The scales had tipped too far and collapsed. The people could be placated no more, they called for change. Drastic measures were required. The curtain had finally been drawn back for all to see and no amount of media could convince them of our narrative. We had lost control. All across the world, humanity demanded power be restored to the many. Not the few. People protested peacefully at first. Unimaginable numbers, a sea of signs and slogans, oceans around the world, spread out below the skyscapers and those of us in our glass towers quaked. Reform was demanded. Money had to be taken out of politics. Representation systems overhauled; powers limited; only facts allowed, not empty rhetoric; monopolies broken up; shares divided amongst employees; madness. It would have all been lost. The protesters remained peaceful even with our plants sent to cause trouble in their ranks. They were pulled from the roots and expelled. Carried to the doors of the institutions they surrounded. All the plays in the book failed, as the human collective soared up to penthouse suites and smiled their righteous victory. Desperate, some private security companies opened fire. Hundreds were killed before they were quelled. Other sectors watched on and despaired knowing all was lost. The government, though, had one last depserate hand to play. A neuro-toxin, Agent Grey, that dulled the synapses and made those exposed extremely susceptible to suggestion. The attack was coordinated across America. Plans sent worldwide to allies under the same threat. The gas agent was disseminated worldwide through bombs placed underground in sewers. The gas rose up steadily and over time people stopped chanting and waving their signs. They just stood. Faces empty, not even moving to relieve themselves. Loudspeakers were placed around the gatherings and the message was carefully crafted and ready to go, but disaster struck. The signal distorted and when it was broadcast a vile feedback screech sounded like Cthulu itself had yelled in rage. People stood blinking. Then faces changed. Anger grew. Rage spread. Death blossomed. Human offal piled the streets. Then the boardrooms. They couldn't be kept back. They tore themselves and us apart. Now, I sit in my barricaded room and oxygen is running low. Outside the world, their minds opened and filled with empty screeches, rages and no longer wants equality. Only death. Learn from me now. If anyone ever reads this, remember
	[WP] Whenever a child is born to Earth, God appoints a Guardian Angel to follow that child until his/her soul arrives in Heaven. You are one such Angel, and you have just arrived to your new assignment, only to find a 5 years old boy who had 10 previous Guardian Angels before you.	Ralyniphael was confused at her new assignment. She was a warrior angel, so what was she doing as a guardian? Guardians were considered rather peaceful positions, rarely needing to do much more than expend a feather on occasion to help their charge notice an oncoming car, or something similar. It wasn't even permanent most of the time, regrowing from a simple act of kindness in the vicinity. &#x200B; Did she displease her Father to be taken from the battlefield? &#x200B; When she landed, a sense of unease washed over her. This place was shrouded in darkness and despair. It was so thick she could see it with her divine sight. There was definitely something not right about this place. When she walked into the home there were crosses on the wall and a bible on the stand near the doorway. &#x200B; Ralyniphael walked through the wall to Sean's small room. He was asleep for an afternoon nap on a small mattress on the floor, a thin blanket covering him. Through the blanket she could see he was malnourished, with bruises on his thighs and torso. The shock she felt upon seeing him in this state was quickly replaced with anger. Who would do this? &#x200B; Sean woke while she was lost in thought, and looked straight at her. It was unnerving. &#x200B; "You should go before bad things happen to you too. Don't worry about me... I can take it. Please stop coming here and getting hurt." &#x200B; Not only could he see me, but he was more concerned about me than he was about himself. Truly a blessed child. &#x200B; "Here Sean, take this feather. It's one of mine. I'll go for now and take a look around. If you ever need me just pull out that feather and call for me." &#x200B; She passed her hand over his face to lull him into a peaceful slumber, then stood to think. Her train of thought was interrupted by the faint musical chime of a cry from across the wall. &#x200B; She stepped through into a scene from Hell itself. Slumped in a corner was another Guardian, barely able to stay upright, his wings ragged spikes of bones, only a few feathers remaining. His sobs enough to break the heart of any mortal. In the room was his charge, being brutalized and violated by her father. By Sean's father. His mind clouded in a miasma that seeped into his soul. She was chained to a cage in the other corner of the room. The Guardian looked at me, at pointed outside, towards the back yard. The tears still rolling down his face. &#x200B; "I couldn't stop him. See for yourself. Be careful." &#x200B; Ralyniphael passed through to living room to get outside, noticing Sean's mother sitting on a couch, eating ice cream from the tub with a large spoon, watching a sermon on the TV. Outside in the backyard the evil was like a blanket, coating everything, despite the relative beauty of the garden growing back there. Buried beneath the fountain was a large trashbag, stuffed with the body of a girl, it had been there for months by the state of things. &#x200B; She knew his calling card. Corruption in the garden. No matter how many times she had slain him he always returned from the pits of Hell. Volundrex, the Faithful. A mockery of true faith. He spends a lifetime corrupting those who profess faith in the Father, tempting them to unspeakable evil, driving out their Guardians and claiming their souls. This was his work. &#x200B; Her sword came out of its sheath on her back. She pulled a feather and passed it over her eyes. &#x200B; "Let the veil part and evil know the light." &#x200B; "Hahahahaha! Ralyniphael! It's been a while has it not? Do you like my handiwork here? Come to give a critique?" &#x200B; His entrance was punctuated with a slash to her outstretched arm. The wound closed and a feather fell off, turning dull and lifeless as it fell to the earth. &#x200B; Volundrex was a horror to look at. The head of a rotting wolf, with the lower jaw splitting vertically to have two parts of razor teeth, the red skinned body of a gorilla, reptilian talons for feet, and gaunt mummified lion claws for hands. &#x200B; "Fitting, that I should be the one to cast you back to Hell once again is it not?" &#x200B; "I think not. Not this time. This is my home now, my shrine to myself. You've bitten off more than you can chew! We're in the mortal world now... you know the rules. No flashy explosions. I'll be the one to cast *YOU* out." &#x200B; The battle waged unseen by mortal eyes, the swift swing of the sword and the clash of claw against blade taking place in a space between spaces, just outside of reach of the earthly realm. The demon's skin was too hard to penetrate, while each swipe into Ralyniphael was accompanied by another closed wound and another lost feather. &#x200B; "You see now? You do not belong here. This place is mine, you have no claim. They empower me with their lust, their wrath, their despair." &#x200B; Ralyniphael had been disarmed of her sword. It lay behind Volundrex, closer to the house. There was nothing stopping him from tearing into her, sending her back to Heaven to reform, however many years later. &#x200B; "Ah, there it is. The realization. You've lost! HAHAHA! I WIN! Though, I think I'll do to you what I did to your friend back in the house. Leave you with just enough strength to hang on, but not enough to do anything. Your tears will be so... delicious." &#x200B; He bent down to sniff her kneeling form before plunging his claw into her chest and lifting her up off the ground. Ralyniphael's feather dropping off one by one to sustain her in this realm. &#x200B; *"Just how it should be... I have so much fun planned for us to \GURK\"* &#x200B; Volundrex vomitted up the vile ichor that passed for his blood when Ralyniphael's sword plunged through his midsection from the back. Sean's shaky hands grasping the celestial weapon on the other end. &#x200B; "Leave her alone!" &#x200B; The only one both pure enough to wield a heavenly object, and still have a claim on this home as his. The guarded saving the Guardian. Volundrex disintegrated into ash. The feather Sean clutched in his other hand faded and the sword dropped from his grip as if made of nothing but light and mist. &#x200B; "It looks like we'll have to guard each other Sean. Thank you, you are very brave." &#x200B; Ralyniphael smiled at Sean before standing back up, her chest renewing at the cost of yet another feather. More than she had ever spent before. The oppressive veil covering the home lifted, though the dark miasma of evil remained. &#x200B; "Boy! What did I tell you?! Get back inside NOW! Do you want another beatin'? Don't make me tell your mother 'bout how you been disobeyin' her. What ever happened to honorin' thy father huh? You daft boy? Seein' angels again? That's blasphemy. Ain't no angel give a damn about you. Yer a sinner is what you are." &#x200B; Sean's father came out after him, berating him as he slapped his face hard and dragged him back inside, out of view. Sean would have a bruised eye for a week. &#x200B; Ralyniphael looked on in righteous fury at the abuse she witnessed so casually. She plucked another feather and blew it to the wind. &#x200B; "Find thyself a righteous servant to bear witness against the dark." &#x200B; \\\\\\ &#x200B; Derrick was walking down an unfamiliar neighborhood street trying to find his way back to his car when a feather flew into his face. he stopped to brush it off as it stuck to him from a breeze that had kicked up out of nowhere. His gaze shifted to the house next to him, where there was a piece of cardboard that fell off, allowing him to see inside. He could see a boy and a girl stuffed in a cage, beaten black and blue. The sight sickened him just to have witnessed it. He glanced at the address of the house. &#x200B; Derrick pulled out his phone and looked up the number he wanted before dialing. &#x200B; "Hello? Yes... Is this CPS? ... Yes, I'd like to report an instance of child abuse... I think you might want to call the cops too." &#x200B; Inside, a feather grew upon an angel's wings.	Whenever a child is born on Earth, God appoints a guardian angel to follow that child until his or her soul arrives in heaven. I am one such an angel, a guardian angel, and I have just arrived to my new assignment. However, as soon as I arrived at this new assignment, I find, to my great surprise, a boy who not only is already five years old, but has also had ten previous guardian angels before me. How did I know the boy had had ten previous guardian angels before me? Both the world and heaven may never know.
	[WP] Whenever a child is born to Earth, God appoints a Guardian Angel to follow that child until his/her soul arrives in Heaven. You are one such Angel, and you have just arrived to your new assignment, only to find a 5 years old boy who had 10 previous Guardian Angels before you.	“So, Reggie, how was your day?” “Stupid.” “Is that all you have to say, or is there something else you want to tell me. Perhaps, something about your sister Ellie, or school, maybe something about mom and dad.” “Ellie is fine. Mom and dad are arguing again and school is stupid.” The young boy nodded firmly as he said it. He sat in the big red chair, on the other side of the table with a ‘I am angry’ look on his face. He had his arms crossed and was damn sure not going to tell me anything. “What are mom and dad arguing about Reggie.” I tried to establish eye contact but his blue eyes were all over the place. They looked at the painting, at the flowers, at his feet, anywhere but me. ... “Reggie, I won’t tell them, I promise.” ... “It is okey Reggie, I swear, no-one will know besides you and me.” He quickly looked at me just short enough to see that I wasn’t lying. Then, out of his beautiful blue eyes a tear came. It rolled down over his cheeks to his chin and then fell on his blue jeans. Shortly after a second fell, a third one and then he looked up to me. His angry face started to crumble and a sad one took its place. This boy, who had been described as ‘a devilish boy’ or ‘a little monster’ started to cry. “T-t-t-they, are, a-arguing, ab-about me. They say that I destroyed their plans, that it is all my fault, that I destroyed their lives, that it is my fault that they are still living in that tiny house. That I am to expensive.” Then he really started crying, tears ran down his face and dripped down on his pants. I stood up, walked around the table and hugged him. He rested his chin on my shoulders and wept. “It is all my fault.” “It is not your fault Reggie.” I hugged him tighter and let him cry. Those stupid parents, what were they thinking! “They don’t want me.” “Reggie,” I interrupted the hug and looked in his eyes. “It is not your fault.” “But, but it is my fault, they said it themselves!” He started to cry louder I hugged him again. I held him in my arms and continued to tell him that it wasn’t his fault. His parents were to blame and oh boy, I might be an angel but I am going to make them pay!	Whenever a child is born on Earth, God appoints a guardian angel to follow that child until his or her soul arrives in heaven. I am one such an angel, a guardian angel, and I have just arrived to my new assignment. However, as soon as I arrived at this new assignment, I find, to my great surprise, a boy who not only is already five years old, but has also had ten previous guardian angels before me. How did I know the boy had had ten previous guardian angels before me? Both the world and heaven may never know.
	[WP] Whenever a child is born to Earth, God appoints a Guardian Angel to follow that child until his/her soul arrives in Heaven. You are one such Angel, and you have just arrived to your new assignment, only to find a 5 years old boy who had 10 previous Guardian Angels before you.	I sigh as I take in my newest assignment, Griffin Hellion, and I think for a moment: with a name like that of course he’s a little shit. I bet my sensitive whiney ass brothers and sisters didn’t even last more than a few minutes. I bet this kid spends gaps of times with no one watching out for him. I watch as Griffin punches the boy that’s about twice his size straight across the jaw and the big oaf falls down, out cold. I then watch as he charges the other 3 boys and flails wildly. His cheeks are bruised and his lip is split and there are scratch marks down his arms. He purposely breaks one of their arms when the kid is down already and I think for a moment that maybe Dad’s lost a marble or two, this kid seems to be in more need of a fallen-demon-guardian than an angel. The boys scamper off and Griffin yells a string of obscenities at them, words no five-year-old should know. Maybe his tongue is what sent my brothers and sisters running. I mean he does curse Dad quite a bit...but I’m the guy Dad sends in when no one else can handle a job and I’m not about to let the old man down without a fight. I’m about to appear to this kid and literally put the fear of God into him when I hear him say, “You can come out now.” I freeze for a moment wondering how the hell he knows I’m here...if this is another Seer situation I’m quitting, even if that means I get stuck on boring old Golden Gate duty for the next few centuries. Seers give me the creeps. I watch as a scrawny boy with light red hair and freckles all over his face crawls out from under a nearby car. Griffin scowls at him and goes over, not so gently dusting him off and adjusting his hair and putting his thick framed glasses back on his face, “I told you not to leave without me. You need to listen.” The boy looks down at his feet and doesn’t say anything and Griffin sighs, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you, you were just so dirty and looked as sorry as a kicked pup. Are you okay?” The smaller boy gives a quick nod but doesn’t meet Griffin’s eyes, I hear as he sniffles and whispers, “S-Sorry.” Griffin growls, “Don’t be sorry idiot. I just want you to be safe.” The boys voice asks, “Are you mad? You usually get mad.” “Of course I’m mad! ...but not at you.” “They said they were going to help me learn how to not be weird anymore. They said if I left with them they would teach me how to not be weird.” Griffin’s face contorts with tiny fury before settling back to calm, “You can’t believe what they say. They were probably being, um, what’s that word...” “Sarcastic?” “Yeah! That. They think you’re stupid cuz you don’t get when they’re being that word and so they take vantage-“ “Advantage.” “Right, and so you can’t trust them. They’re not like you. They lie.” “You don’t lie.” Griffin scoffs, “Not to you.” “Because I’m your best friend?” Griffin grins this lopsided grin, “Exactly!” This time the red-headed boy does meet his eyes, only for a small moment, but then he grins at the ground as he clasps and unclamps his hands repeatedly, like he’s been doing this whole time, “Okay. I won’t believe them anymore.” “Okay. And you’re not weird. You’re awesome. Okay?” The boy repeats, “I’m awesome.” “Yeah! You know so many words and you read super fast, it’s like your super power. So you’ll be the brains and I’ll be the lies and the muscle.” “Okay.” I feel a surge of anger for a moment wondering why the little red head doesn’t have a guardian angel of his own, usually the Innocence Experiment kids have at least two.......but then as Griffin hands the other boy his bike and says, “Here take mine, I’ll get your tire fixed when I get home and bring it to school for your tomorrow.” I realize he does. ....He does and I get to guard his angel. * (Wanted to go longer but gotta get back to work lol)	"You're braver than I am, man," said Avendel, walking off into the night. He'd reached his limit. I couldn't blame him, and taking the task seemed like career suicide. After Ghengis, though, I'd had my name tarnished enough that this prospective client couldn't possibly do more damage - or so I thought. I gazed down upon the sleeping child. His innocent breathing belied his sinister potential. "How easy it would be," I whispered, "to end this small life before me." That choice, however, was literal suicide. I'd always mused the idea of finally extinguishing the life of a charge for the greater good, but selfishness always stayed my hand. I was so damn selfish. I retained my vigilant stance, dedicating every moment to ensure the sound sleep and safety of this boy. Dawn broke through the clouds, and a golden light fell upon the child's peaceful visage. His eyes slowly opened, crust falling from his eyelashes onto his pajamas. Little Adolf was awake.
	[WP] Whenever a child is born to Earth, God appoints a Guardian Angel to follow that child until his/her soul arrives in Heaven. You are one such Angel, and you have just arrived to your new assignment, only to find a 5 years old boy who had 10 previous Guardian Angels before you.	I sigh as I take in my newest assignment, Griffin Hellion, and I think for a moment: with a name like that of course he’s a little shit. I bet my sensitive whiney ass brothers and sisters didn’t even last more than a few minutes. I bet this kid spends gaps of times with no one watching out for him. I watch as Griffin punches the boy that’s about twice his size straight across the jaw and the big oaf falls down, out cold. I then watch as he charges the other 3 boys and flails wildly. His cheeks are bruised and his lip is split and there are scratch marks down his arms. He purposely breaks one of their arms when the kid is down already and I think for a moment that maybe Dad’s lost a marble or two, this kid seems to be in more need of a fallen-demon-guardian than an angel. The boys scamper off and Griffin yells a string of obscenities at them, words no five-year-old should know. Maybe his tongue is what sent my brothers and sisters running. I mean he does curse Dad quite a bit...but I’m the guy Dad sends in when no one else can handle a job and I’m not about to let the old man down without a fight. I’m about to appear to this kid and literally put the fear of God into him when I hear him say, “You can come out now.” I freeze for a moment wondering how the hell he knows I’m here...if this is another Seer situation I’m quitting, even if that means I get stuck on boring old Golden Gate duty for the next few centuries. Seers give me the creeps. I watch as a scrawny boy with light red hair and freckles all over his face crawls out from under a nearby car. Griffin scowls at him and goes over, not so gently dusting him off and adjusting his hair and putting his thick framed glasses back on his face, “I told you not to leave without me. You need to listen.” The boy looks down at his feet and doesn’t say anything and Griffin sighs, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you, you were just so dirty and looked as sorry as a kicked pup. Are you okay?” The smaller boy gives a quick nod but doesn’t meet Griffin’s eyes, I hear as he sniffles and whispers, “S-Sorry.” Griffin growls, “Don’t be sorry idiot. I just want you to be safe.” The boys voice asks, “Are you mad? You usually get mad.” “Of course I’m mad! ...but not at you.” “They said they were going to help me learn how to not be weird anymore. They said if I left with them they would teach me how to not be weird.” Griffin’s face contorts with tiny fury before settling back to calm, “You can’t believe what they say. They were probably being, um, what’s that word...” “Sarcastic?” “Yeah! That. They think you’re stupid cuz you don’t get when they’re being that word and so they take vantage-“ “Advantage.” “Right, and so you can’t trust them. They’re not like you. They lie.” “You don’t lie.” Griffin scoffs, “Not to you.” “Because I’m your best friend?” Griffin grins this lopsided grin, “Exactly!” This time the red-headed boy does meet his eyes, only for a small moment, but then he grins at the ground as he clasps and unclamps his hands repeatedly, like he’s been doing this whole time, “Okay. I won’t believe them anymore.” “Okay. And you’re not weird. You’re awesome. Okay?” The boy repeats, “I’m awesome.” “Yeah! You know so many words and you read super fast, it’s like your super power. So you’ll be the brains and I’ll be the lies and the muscle.” “Okay.” I feel a surge of anger for a moment wondering why the little red head doesn’t have a guardian angel of his own, usually the Innocence Experiment kids have at least two.......but then as Griffin hands the other boy his bike and says, “Here take mine, I’ll get your tire fixed when I get home and bring it to school for your tomorrow.” I realize he does. ....He does and I get to guard his angel. * (Wanted to go longer but gotta get back to work lol)	A small boy stood in front of me, staring at the TV which had it's volume turned up way too much. Frowning, I looked around to look for the baby that was probably being traumatized by the cartoon violence the boy was watching. When I didn't see anymore children in the room, I ventured down the hallway to my left where I figured I'd find a nursery. Glancing back once more at the brainless child, I wondered where his parents were. Probably with the baby, I told myself as I pushed open doors. An uneasy feeling came over me when I found no nursery, but instead two thirty-somethings sitting in an office looking concerned at their computer screen. "Another note from the daycare," the man said. "We can't keep putting Marcus in new ones. If we don't get him under control he'll get kicked out of this one as well. It's the last one in the area that we can afford." The woman breathed deeply. "We can try for another nanny." The man cut her off sharply. "Not a chance. Linda probably spread the word. We'll never find someone willing to take him." I left the room, wandering back to the boy, wondering where his Guardian was. And for that fact, where the parents' Guardians were. We were never supposed to wander far, so I knew they were here. My stomach fluttered as I dug into my bag for the information packet was. I hadn't thought to fully read it, only finding the address and flying here. Name: Marcus Redding Age: 5 Parents: Sydney and Peter. I blinked, thoroughly confused. I thought back to when Number One handed me the file. He had a look in his eyes that I couldn't place, but I was beginning to understand. They'd simply handed it to me with the words, "Good luck," before ushering me on my way. I'd never received those words on an assignment before. Usually they said something along the lines of, "Have fun," or something like that. "Good luck?" I whispered to myself. "You're gonna need it." I jumped at the voice. Whipping around, I saw the parents' Guardians leaning casually against the counter. "What do you mean?" I asked. "There's been 10 before you. The longest lasted a year and a half. The shortest three days." I leaned around the corner to look at the boy. He was still staring, gaped mouth, at the TV screen. "What's wrong with him?" The Guardian on the left swept their long, blue hair over their shoulder and glanced at the watch on their wrist. "You'll find out in three...two...one." The other Guardian pointed at the doorway where Marcus' parents had appeared. The woman nudged her husband forward. He cautiously approached the TV and switched it off. "Marcus," he began tentatively. The boy sat still before turning his gaze to his parents. His face switched from calm to angry to boiling with rage. Then, the loudest scream possible came rushing out of his mouth that would put the Banshees to shame. He threw the remote at his mom, who dodged it. Then he began throwing anything he could get his hands on as well. Pillows, candles, books. I stared at Marcus in shock before turning back to the other Guardians. They just shrugged and muffled the boys screams so they wouldn't have to deal with them. I cleared my throat and stood tall, remembering my training. Even though I'd never personally had to deal with a child that threw massive tantrums like this, I knew what to do. "Marcus Redding!" I yelled. "Stop right now!" Fully expecting him to stop, my jaw dropped when he kept on screaming and throwing things. It wasn't working! My power wasn't working. A Guardian was able to command their Soul in extreme cases. This was extreme. I'd used my power. Nothing had happened. I tried again. And again. I turned desperately to the two Guardians behind me who ignored me. After one more try, the boy looked straight at me. "I don't have to do what you say." I was stunned. Children could see their Guardians and forgot them when they stopped believing in fairy tales, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny. But usually we were written off as imaginary friends. I'd never been talked to like this. "Go away!" Marcus yelled. Overwhelmed I retreated back to the kitchen. The parents had given up and turned the TV back on. The boy sat back in front of it and stared like a zombie. The mother was reduced to tears as the father consoled her. Tentatively, I approached the boy. A wicked smile appeared on his face. "I'll get you to leave too. I'll get all you to leave. I'll destroy all of you." I looked back at the packet and flipped a couple pages, trying to get any information on Marcus as I could. Why had his 10 previous Guardians left? What made him like this. The very last words on the last page stopped my heart. Dear God, no. Not me. Not now. Not this boy. On the last page in bold and underlined letters I read: MARCUS REDDING: SUSPECTED ANTICHRIST.
	[WP] Whenever a child is born to Earth, God appoints a Guardian Angel to follow that child until his/her soul arrives in Heaven. You are one such Angel, and you have just arrived to your new assignment, only to find a 5 years old boy who had 10 previous Guardian Angels before you.	“Oh, God....” muttered through cigarette-fumbling teeth, “...damn it,” I finish, the curse punctuated by the spark of the striker. The young boy isn’t yet aware of my presence. He sits alone, quietly on the floor of his group home, playing with his toys. I take a long draw on the cigarette, wondering to myself, “what is it with these boys? They burn through guardians like I do cancer sticks.” The boy pauses, looking around momentarily with his nose twitching. Like he can almost smell my cigarette. The kids are always more keen on our tricks than the adults ever could be. Something about the way the Big Man made them. I want to reveal myself, but I can learn more about my new assignment this way first. Some assignments, it’s better if they never knew you were there at all. His attention returns to the toys. “Tractors,” I observe, “rural kid, most likely.” I hear other children just in the other room, talking and playing, but evidently he would rather keep to himself. Sometimes that’s ok. Sometimes it’s not a good sign. I decide to take a listen, focusing on the voices just beyond his earshot. “...I heard that his daddy didn’t like him,” the eldest little girl in the room explains to a group of younger kids, “And I heard that he’s crazy, too. He said he saw a ghost his first night here, and...” I immediately tuned the rest out and refocused on the room surrounding me. My fears were confirmed. This child was likely abused. This made him susceptible to becoming the prey of an Oni, the demons of old that feed upon the souls of lost children. And my predecessors were likely consumed in the struggle for his defense. To draw the demon out, I had to reveal myself. The world around the boy sounded like it was shattering, but only to him. He looked at me, nearly paralyzed in disbelief and awe mixed in with the most subtle hint of fear. He’d experienced this before. “I”m your guardian angel,” I announced awkwardly. I never was good with kids. “But you just look like some guy,” the boy replied, the shock of my booming entrance already fading. I sighed. I was dealing with a child here, after all. I unfolded my wings of brilliant white light, letting them shine at their fullest for a quick moment. His face lit up. “You really are!” He leapt up to hug me but I quickly evaded his advance, and cut straight to the chase. “Kid look I don’t have time for the regular thing. I’m not the usual guardian angel. I’m your last resort. Not exactly the ‘number one guy,’ here. You’re in danger.” He gave me a knowing look, and his face became grave with concern. “Ive seen it. The monster. It got my last friend,” he whispered. “Does it scare you? Does it chase you in the dark?” I asked with menacing intent. He looked taken aback at the idea that I would intentionally instill fear in him. I needed this to draw the Oni out of hiding. It would smell his fear. Prey on it. Try to drain his soul further. “Y-yes. It’s very scary. His eyes....” A cold and howling shriek echoed throughout the home, shaking the walls. The children in the next room screamed, and then it appeared before me and the boy. A starved, partially translucent man with rotten flesh revealing his bones stood in the shadowed corner of the room, his teeth chattering in anticipation of the meal. “Run!” I commanded the boy. The demon ignored me in favor of it’s ancient hunger, but it was too slow. My heavenly weapons were drawn and I was firing. Struck by the first two bullets, the demon howled in rage and anger, turning his attention to me. The boy escaped the room. The demon still focused on me, I finished him off. “All in an hour’s work,” I grinned. I saw the boy peering around the doorway. “What is it?” I asked. “That wasn’t it,” he said, his face pale. I sighed a heavy sigh and took another cigarette from its place in my coat.	My first day on the job. I admired my photo of my graduation from Guardian Academy as I put on my outfit and attached my silver wings. They were a bit gaudy, but my parents had paid for only the best for me. They came with all the latest features, could connect to any heavenly network, and even had an mp3 player! I'd be ready for anything today, bring it on! I flew through the clouds of heaven and arrived about 10 minutes early to the head office where I would receive my assignment. The door opened and a balding angel in a business suit opened the door. Looking over his round-rimmed glasses at me, he gave me a quick look up and down. "Ah. A new pretty boy. Your mommy and daddy buy you those Silverflights?" "I, ah, uh, yes? Is th-th-that okay?" I stammered. "You're gonna get eaten alive down there." He muttered under his breath. "Well, right this way." Walking through the office, it was a little less grand than I had imagined. Compared to the gold-glittered halls of the academy, the scratchy carpet with coffee stains and tan flower print wallpaper just seemed... mundane. I could hear yelling in the background. "Look chief, business is just really bad right now. There aren't many kids being born, and our prayers and devotion are at an all-time low. Atheism is growing and we just aren't sure what to do." "All right. Just do what we've been doing, follow the multiples program and I'll think of something." "You've been saying that for a century! The guardians are part of the problem, and that's in large part thanks to the multiples!" "FOLLOW. THE. MULTIPLES. PROGRAM." Turning to my guide I asked "Not to eavesdrop, but what the multiples program?" He pinched the bridge of his nose as he turned and said "You'll see soon enough. It'll be easier than explaining it." He turned to an elevator and pulled out a punchcard and shoved it in the slot and hit a button. "Here ya go. Have fun on your first day." "Wait can I ask a question?" "No." And with that he shoved me in as I plummeted through the clouds, hit the exosphere and warped to my assignment. I arrived just in time to see Henry, a five-year-old boy, jumping up individual steps while holding butcher's knives. Realizing he is my target, I immediately took action, activating my silverflight wings, I could see what was about to happen. He tripped on the top stair, and with the knives pointed at his face, he was about to bite it. I quickly turned the blades so he landed on the flats instead of the tips. It's what they taught us in the academy, sublte, small, and effective. Let them learn, don't let them die. "Yo man, he woulda been fine, don't be so prissy about it. Let the kid do his thing. If he dies we get to go home, right?" Looking towards the sound of the voice, I was a little surprised. This child was MY assignment, right? Who is talking to me? When I found the source of this flagrantly callous statement, I was surprised to not find just one, but 10 other guardian angels sitting around a celestial table playing cards and smoking some devil drugs. Weed. "Ah, take it easy on 'im, he's new, see them wings on 'im? Some kinda rich pretty boy gettin' 'is feet wet. 'e'll get cozy soon 'nuff." "Hey man. You wanna hit?" One of the angels reached out, holding a blunt, offering it to me. I looked over and saw Henry attempting to put a fork in an outlet. Somehow I've got to keep this kid safe and get these slackers back on schedule. This assignment might be bigger than I can handle.

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