Storythread

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Who else has submitted to The Bard?

>>49892774
>I'm planning to, but I'm looking for input to see how much I need to clean up before finalizing it.

The crashing star was the sort of activity that Nathaniel Sulley was looking for in this boring little hamlet. It had already been a month since he had a good fistfight, and this place had nothing else going for him. Crime was near-nonexistent, the people were all so nice and law-abiding that it put him on edge, and there weren’t any monsters out in the forest to beat up. Just approaching the crater had made him excited, the heat of the collision heating up his blood. There had to be something in here, even if it was just something valuable to sell.

The star was now little more than a smoking rock, glowing a pulsating dull orange. It was more than Nate could carry, but he didn’t care. The heat felt overwhelming, but his determination to get something out of this trip was all it took to keep going. As he approached the rock, he could only think about how many punches it would take to break it and if he’d be needing his gloves; to the latter question, he thought it only made sense to put them on anyway. To the former, however, he would find an interruption as the glowing grew brighter with each step. A hand extends, and to his surprise a fiery tendril emerges to match him. He approaches, and the tendril becomes more human in appearance. Their hands finally touch, and Nate jerks away from the fiery human before him.

“You do not show fear,” a strange, feminine voice reverberates. Nate jerks around to find who said that, but nothing else was there. Weird, it sounded so close.
“Why should I?” He asks. “My whole business is beating people up, why should I be afraid of some giant rock? Or a fire-person, but I’ve never seen one until now.”
The fiery figure remains still. “Do you think you stand a chance against me?”
Nate’s stance remains unchanged, poised for any action under a relaxed exterior.

>>49895187
“C’mon! If I knew the answer to that, then why the hell would I still be here?”
The fiery figure does not react to Nate’s attempt at levity. “You could die here.”
The thug replies, “It’s still be more fun than just sitting in this backwater little waste. Not like anything really goes on here.” For a moment, there is silence. The fire continues burning in front of him, and he refuses to move.
The voice speaks again. “Is this amusement all you wish for?”
He scoffs. “All I’m really good at. I’m not exactly what you’d call smart, I find being in the guard boring as hell, but I just couldn’t see myself ever going criminal. So, I decided to do the only thing available to me and become a wandering brawler. Sure, the pay’s utter crap, but I get to fight new things all the time and I’m not stuck anywhere.”

Again, there is only silence. This time, Nate becomes unnerved by it. His anticipation has been building with no payoff, and only now has it begun to bother him. “Well? What’re you waiting for? If you want something, bring it.”
“Your willpower…” it observes, “Your spirit… I feel a sort of kinship in it.”
“The hell are you going on about now?” Nate grumbles, his feet carrying him towards the cooling rock. “All I’m here for is the rock, whatever you’re planning, I don’t care.”
“We are alike.” The voice is now more direct. “The fire in your soul, it is the same fire that I have been seeking.”
This gives Nate a momentary pause. “What?”
The fiery figure’s arm stretches out, but already the flames are beginning to die down. “I cannot last long like this. Eventually I will cease to exist.”
“Sounds like your problem. So that means I can help myself to this?”
“What if I offered myself as well?”
“Wait, what?”
The fire approaches him, the fiery hand now reaching out. “I am the fire you bear inside you. My power can be your power; your life will be mine. Join me, and this can be yours.”

>>49895199
Power, as it turned out, was a far greater lure for Nathaniel Sulley than any amount of money.
“You mean I can set things on fire too?” He clarified. “And you’re giving this to me with no strings attached?”
“Yes.” Already, Nate’s mind was racing. This was power the likes of which was never seen before, the powers only gods had. The temptation of such power, to abuse it and become a king, was great. It was no secret from his barely-concealed grin that he was seriously considering such a use. There was absolutely no downside to this choice. “What is your decision, human?”
“All for the ability to be more than just some street bum?” he muses. “You know what? Why the hell not?” Nate extends his hand out. “You better not regret this.”
The fiery hand reaches, and for a moment, they connect. “We will be forever bound. The only regrets henceforth will be yours.”

The figure dissipates. The fire snakes its way up his arm and spreads through his body, the heat becoming greater than that of the rock, more than a man could bear. He could feel himself burning, even though he couldn’t see it. Then, the fire recedes. The heat no longer matters. All that remains is Nathaniel Sulley, now empowered by that fire spirit, and the rock. He tests his gift by lighting a small fire in his hand.

The dim rock cracks, it hisses, and then it collapses. There is nothing inside but smoke.

Nate walks away. The rock is so little now when compared to the gift of fire. Just knowing that he had the ability to burn anything was worth far more than what could have been in there.

>END

>>49895209
I really liked this! I'm genuinely interested in who this guy is and what exactly will happen to him now that he has this newfound power. Only thing I thought sounded a little weird was the part where he said that he was a wandering brawler, but other than that I think this sounds great!

>>49895209
Pretty good novella, though I felt some parts weren't described nearly enough to create a visual scene. As an example, the moment when Nate reaches towards the rock and a 'fiery tendril emerges to match him. He approaches, and the tendril becomes more human in appearance. Their hands finally touch, and Nate jerks away from the fiery human before him.'

From the audience's perspective, this seems extremely lazy. We know that you mean the fire is unnaturally forming the silhouette of human form because you say "suddenly there's a fire human there", but there's almost no descriptive writing whatsoever. A most disagreeable shortcut to narrative.

The only other thing I will gripe about the is the overwhelming use of present tense with terminology. It sets my teeth on edge, especially when used in ways like "Nate jerks around..." instead of "Nate jerked his head around..." which feels more natural. Admittedly however, this is more personal than objective.

Good use of separating key parts like character introduction then conflict/story elements, even though as mentioned already, Nate saying "I'll just be a wandering brawler" as if that's some kind of official title and not "i feel like walking around looking for a fight". Is it more significant than that? It doesn't seem like it, but Nate's motivation certainly makes it clear we should catch on to this. Confusion.

6/10, would continue reading.

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>>49890045
>it's back
Oh thank FUCK

>>49894922
Troc knows many things. He knows that this night is a full moon. And though he does not know why, he knows that full moons are important. He knows this because when he was a small boy he asked the old man, who told him that he must never leave the village during a full moon. He does not know why. And for years, Troc has heeded these words, and others. Small things. But important. Now Troc has a son, and the old man is dead. And he tells his son the same things the old man told him. Does this make him the old man? Troc does not know. But Troc knows the moon rises now, full over the trees and the mountains behind them and the sky behind them, more stars than Troc can count alongside it. And Troc does not know why, but he feels the urge to leave the village. Something in him, Troc does not know what, drives him to slip away from his family on silent feet, padding through mud and leaves. Something brings his shoulders down low, ready to spring and pounce. Something shakes his head, and it is not him. Something alert and hungry twisting from side to side. Troc knows where his body leads him, and he runs fast because he doesn't know what he'll find there and doesn't want to miss it. Troc feels the heat of the moon on his naked skin, taut over vines of muscle and trunks of bone. He slows, stepping on all fours out to the lakeside. He knows this is where he made his first kill, years ago when he became a hunter among his people. He feels something in his gut that he has felt before and never given a name to. He looks down into the lake, water still and flat like the full moon above. He knows why he shouldn't be out. He knows he can never go back. Troc sees a hunter. He sees a thing of pure intent. He sees the animal beneath the skin. Troc does not have the words for what he sees, but what he sees cannot be seen with words. He cannot look away from what he sees, as terrible and beautiful as the full moon. And Troc knows what he sees is himself.

>>49900233
"So miss Granger, care to tell me how exactly you've developed this "sleep paralysis?" Even though according to records, you've never had such condition in your early life."

The nervous woman answered wearily. "I swear doc, it's not some form sleep paralysis, its some actual creature that keeps messing with me in my sleep."

"And what does this creature do to you exactly?"

"..." She hesitates to answer for a moment. "...Nothing that much if I must be honest. This creature just stares at me... It just stares but it also tries speaking to me in my sleep sometimes, especially when it tries to ignore me-"

The psychiatrist cuts in. "Sounds like a classic case of Sleep Paralysis, miss Granger. To be honest I don't very much about it myself. But I simply know it involves a person seeing things and people that are not really there while trying to sleep at night, which are also hallucinatory. I have already relayed this problem of yours to people who are more specialized in this case of your's."

The woman then insists. "I'm telling you its not that. I'm already about to reach my fifties and never in my life have I ever had such a condition. This was an actual creature. Either I'm getting insane for some goddamn reason, or I REALLY am being tormented by such a beast and no one would believe me."

"I'm sure I and the professionals I know who also know about such cases like this can help out soon. But for the mean time, try sleeping with someone, as in try sleeping with a companion to keep yourself feeling safe. Maybe this creature you speak of will not pick on you if you have company... Sorry about that, but I'm certain there is a way to help you and be sure whether you do have sleep paralysis or not."

After this day's session, miss Granger left the psychiatrist's office, she would probably call a long time friend of her's to spend a night with her as the psychiatrist suggested.

>>49900617
But as she was leaving the building, she swear she saw the same dark-multi-limbed being looking at her. She swore it saw not an aggressive or aggravated expression, just looking at her.

She simply rushed off back at home to reach company, any company who can help keep her not alone. And maybe, just maybe this creature would leave her alone.

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>>49901604
>Oh hey another image that motivates me to write another short write-work that's mostly descriptive expo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNXzjB6MEb0

Welcome to Sci-Tech Labs. Here in Sci-Tech we develop technologies and sciences to help bring in a new age of scientific and technological advancements.

Our scientists, staff and other personnel are only one of the best in their field and profession and are graduates from the most prestigious of colleges, universities and academies.

We focus in the fields of General Science, Robotics, BioScience, and Advanced Systems and Mechanics.

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>>49901979
Here in advanced systems and mechanics we focus on building, developing and researching technology. Ranging from improving the usefulness and effectiveness home appliances to super computers and reactor cores to power entire cities, we work and research to constantly improve the effectiveness of such technological wonders to constantly power our future. And our lives and the future generations to come.

>to be cont

How would real-life governments and officials react to the Sun disappearing? (As in, it goes down one day, and then doesn't come up again.)

What would they say to the people?

>>49904759
They would say they're investigating and awaiting word from the bigwigs with NASA or equivalents.

>>49904759
>What would they say to the people?
They would probably get some fucking sciencist on the job and make a statement based on what those people would find. "Sun dissapearing" would be a MAJOR event a lot of people would probably be looking into how that fucking shit happened. it would not be THAT difficult to explain at least in rough terms how the largest and most important celestial object in our relevant vicinity somehow dissapeared.
It would also mean the end of life and end of the solar system, so there is that too.

>>49904968
What if the findings are "We have no fucking idea what's going on?"

>>49904993
That is quite literally impossible.
And even if that somehow was the case, the absolute complete terror of our society not only facing what is going be the inevitable end of civilization within a generation or two, and of all complex life on the planet in a matter of centuries COMBINED with the fact that we have just discovered that every single most fundamental nature of reality as we thought we knew it has been denied would result in situation where it would not matter what are the authorities saying.
They would probably try to calm people into promising they will be further looking into it, and meaninwhile everything else would be focused onto matters or immediate and pragmatic survival.

>>49905028
Well, yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.

I've got civil order breaking down pretty quickly, but first I need to show the progression of events as things get worse.

The part I'm finding the hardest is how they explain the very first "day", when the Sun doesn't rise. I mean, how would you start talking about that?

>>49905049
>The part I'm finding the hardest is how they explain the very first "day", when the Sun doesn't rise
Well for starters that makes no sense because sun is always up for SOME part of the planet. Some-one somewhere is going to see and probably document how the sun dissappeared. it's not about "oh my god sun is not coming up", it's going be "oh my god, Sun is vanishing right in front of our eyes, in front of thousands and millions of cameras pointed right at it."

>>49905091
I know, but the way I'm framing it is a morning news report on the radio. So, for people who are just waking up, basically.

>>49905111
There would be reports on what has happened running everywhere. That would be the major focus for the next few days, if not weeks. Outside of that, states of emergency declarations, "keep calm and stay home" pleas, re-runs of all available footage documenting the events, experts and authorities consistently streaming out endless chains of speculations of what could happen, more pleas to maintain social order, more promises that experts are looking into it, more pleas for patience and calm.
That is what would be going on.

In a few weeks, first semblances of new emergency plans would start to emerge. Army and police would probably be in the streets of major urban areas, rations possibly being provided in a desperate attempt to stop the inevitable panic and collapse of food and necessities markets, perhaps the first bright minds would start providing calculations of the upcoming climatic changes, making death toll estimations etc...

>>49905166
That's more like it anon, thanks.

What happens after civilization breaks down? How long would it be until things are completely unsurvivable?

>>49905283
>What happens after civilization breaks down?
That would be such a massive speculation that anything that I'll tell you is questionable. The real matters are problably problems of purely economical nature: how long before world-wide agriculture completely kicks, how long before food reserves start to dry up, how competent will be the governments with maintaining order... The most likely assumption is that there will be concentrated push to move at least small portion of humanity under ground with some reserves of food, perhaps with ways to produce more of it: synthetic sunlight and glass houses, that kind of shit.
Everything else is up in the stars, really. And also probably will differ from country to country. Japan will be dealing with this shit in a different fashion than USA or Germany, for an example.

>>49905436
Yeah, that's what I figured. Toying with the driving force of the plot being an attempt to reach a rumoured underground facility/shelter. Unsure whether to have it be real or not.

>>49905283
>How long would it be until things are completely unsurvivable?
Much sooner than you think without the sun the earth will go full iceball in a matter of days to weeks.

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Warhammer high story please. I have no shame or regrets

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>>49907990
What, like frozen solid or just Arctic conditions?

Pic unrelated.

>>49907990
>Much sooner than you think without the sun the earth will go full iceball in a matter of days to weeks.
You are deeply underestimating the thermal capacity of earth surface and in particular, of oceans. Not a matter of days or weeks: months or years. We are not actually living in an Emmerich movie.

>>49908030

I'm normally averse to fanfiction but I've been on a real 40k kick lately so I might play around with this.

Bear in mind I might go against "canon" and make some of the Primarch's Daughters into Primarch's Sons. Bobby Guilliman, Ronald Dorn, Connor Corax, that kind of thing.

[SPOILER]Is BobbyxHana incest?[/spoiler]

>>49911348

>[SPOILER]

Fuck. I've been spending too much time on KF

>>49912478
Looks like some sort of witch hunt for jack o lantern scarecrows.

Halloween was classed heretical, so they seek out the physical manifestation of halloween.

Guys, make stories out of/for this thread: >>49896116

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>>49902890
Here in BioScience, we study the human body, nutrition, medical health care, animal biology, food production and pathology.

While the further development, research and improvement of current scientific and technological fields is crucial. Nothing is more crucial than the well being of our race and species, especially the animals that help make our world go round. The people of BioScience work hard to create new medications, study current and future diseases to help combat infection, study wildlife biology and ways to help make us live longer.

BioScience is here to help make the world healthier for its future.

>>49911348
Write in Samus as a primarch and I'm in.

>>49897074

"Hey, guys so I met with the big guy up stairs and- OH FUCK NO!"

"What's going on- NOOOO!"

"We were tooo laaaate!"

>>49905194

"Greetings fallen titan! For how many years have you been trapped?"

"Ooooo, I don't know...What's the one with the 'm'?"

"...'m'? What do you mean?"

"You know, how we count stuff with years, and ten of those are a decade, and a hundred are a- MILLENNIUM! That's the word! Yeah I'd say I've been here for some millenniums."

"Ah, well I'm sorry for your entrapment."

"Well that's nice of you! But nah, milleniums of reflection made me realize we really had this coming. Like goddamn I was a shitbag. And there are some other guys out here that are even worse. Petrified but still spoutin shit. Spooking folks into worship does sound pretty sweet though."

"I wish you luck in that venture, should you choose to pursue it. However I must confess that my pleasantries have another motive."

"Oh yeah I figured as much. What can I do yah for?"

"I seek another woman much like myself, in similar garb but bearing a crossbow upon her horse."

"Oh yeah, I saw her. Went-wow still not used to not being able to point-uh...North? North or West."

"Those are two very different directions."

"Yeah, I never really kept track of my bearings. Had A LOT of reflecting to do so the direction of everything gets all muddled."

"Ah, well thank you for-"

"WAIT! THE SUN! There's a thing about directions and the sun! Wow, it's amazing what you forget when you do that self-actualization stuff."

"The sun? Ah! Yes! The sun rises in the south and sets in the north!"

"I'll take your word for it! West is left of north, yeah? Ok then she went North-Eastish."

"Thank you for your help, fallen titan!"

"Thanks for chatting! You have a good day!"

>>49908039
The moment they slinked into the club, Sam Wickham noticed three things about the girls:

First, and most obviously; they were 'dolls'; New-york slang for heavily modified women: Loaded up with both silicon and silicone, dolls tended to look too perfect and kind of... plastic-y; more like over-Photoshopped pictures of pretty, young girls than the real thing.

These two could've been twins, but more likely they just had the same surgeon. Apparently, if you were familiar enough with the modding scene, you could tell which clinic, or even which doctor had installed the mods just by looking the girl over. Sam wasn't that knowledgeable on the subject, but he could easily tell that the pair striding over to him were combat models: Something in the way they moved was too precise, showed too much strength for their dainty frames. He was almost reminded of footage of astronauts on the moon; terrestrial muscles untaxed by mere lunar gravity.

Second; he saw that they were armed. Not that such a thing was unusual in a nightclub this part of town; Sam himself had his trusty, antique, 20th century piece tucked comfortingly into his shoulder-holster, but these girls had their weapons in hand: One had a fancy, new, top-of-the-line PX 325 Gauss pistol, the other a stun-stick; hardly a classic self-defence weapon.

Thirdly; this pair were patently amateurs: From the way they seemed unused to their almost-certainly-brand-new mods, to the way they had completely failed to disguise their obvious predatory intent towards him, to the fact that they'd eschewed hiding their weapons until the last moment: All of it broadcast that these were a pair of bored rich girls who'd loaded themselves up with a platoon's worth of military-grade combat mods on daddy's dime to experience the wild world of bounty-hunting.

>>49925915
Sam had seen their type before; he knew well enough how much of a danger to themselves and others modded-up amateurs could be, and something told him this pair could be a real disaster-area if they went off bang. Still, if they were really as green as they looked....

The girls emerged from the writhing, sweaty, strobe-lit, darkness and throbbing noise of the dance floor, and into the relatively well-lit, sound-shielded booth Sam currently occupied.

"Sam Wickham?" The one on the left simpered.

Sam held up his finger in the universal gesture for 'just a minute' as he continued to fiddle with his phone in his lap.

"Bear with." He said, without looking up.

"Bear with." He repeated. The 'twins' exchanged looks for a moment.

"Bear with... right, okay." He looked up into the ever-so-slightly-uncanny-valley-perfect faces of his would-be captors with a raised eyebrow. "You two here to bring me in?"

"Oh." They both seemed a little crest-fallen that they had been made. "Uhm... yeah." Admitted the left-hand girl, chewing her exquisitely sculpted lower lip pensively.

The one on his right held out an e-warrant showing Sam's face with a sum of money underneath it which caused him to raise his other eyebrow. "Sam Wickham, we're The Dasilver Sisters, and we're here to bring you in." She stated redundantly; evidently sticking to some pre-rehearsed script.

"Uh-huh, mind telling me what for?" He queried, recovering from his shock at seeing just how much someone was willing to pay for his (hopefully metaphorical) head on a platter.

The girl brandishing the warrant whipped out the pistol from behind her back and levelled it at his head. "That's for us to know and you to, y'know; whatever. Just get your ass up and do as your told, scum!"

Ah, he thought, so it was one of those 'warrants'. He had hoped to avoid making a scene in the club, but he'd bet his own mother that if he left with these two, he wouldn't see another sunrise.

>>49925960
The gun currently projecting its little, red dot onto his forehead was one of many things which had given away the Dasilvers from the get-go: Sam had spotted that it was a PX 325 Gauss, specifically the SP 'Proffesional'(tm) model; cyber-linked, DNA-locked to prevent unauthorised use, could switch ammo-types on voice-command and featured the latest in aim-correcting functionality for maximum combat effectiveness. Brand new off the factory line. So new, in fact, that the manufacturer hadn't yet put out a rather important security software patch, leaving the entire 'Proffesional'(tm) range horribly open to malware and hacking, which is exactly what Sam had been doing with his phone since he saw the girls coming for him.

With the push of a virtual button, the gun started to emit a whine as the internal magnetic coils whent into to overcharge, heating the ammo untill it slagged the barrel, rendering the gun harmless. Or so it should have done. Sam was as surprised as the Dasilver sisters when the pistol erupted in a shower of shrapnel, peppering himself and the sister to his left with knicks and cuts, but reducing the left hand of the other girl to a bloody, ragged, stump; cyber-components sparking furiously in the spurting gore.

There was a second's stunned silence before the now one-handed girl began shrieking, and Sam yelled "EXPLOSIVE ROUNDS!?? YOU LOADED EXPLOSIVE ROUNDS FOR A CLOSE-QUATERS FIREFIGHT IN A CROWDED CLUB!?! ARE YOU FUCKING RETARDED!?"

>>49925985
In fact, Sam was so distracted that he almost missed the second Dasilver swinging the stun-stick at his head with inhuman strength and speed. However; no-one was a professional PI / bodygaurd / bouncer / general underworld scumbag for as long as Sam Wickham without acquiring at least a few mods of their own. Albeit that he had nothing as comprehensive as the Dasilvers' full-body stuff, he had invested very heavily in augmented reflexes, and it was these that allowed him to narrowly twist aside, missing a skull-caving blow by less than an inch. With time subjectively slowed, Sam saw an opportunity in the girl's over-extended position, and brought his foot up with all the force he could muster in a kick that would have shattered a normal, human elbow. Although her reinforced joint resisted breaking, she did at least drop her stun-stick, and Sam, using the momentum of his kick to back-flip out of his seat, snatched it out of the air, landing on his feet behind the pink, fluffy couch just in time to see it demolished by a wild punch from the enraged doll.

She let out a furious scream, low and rumbling to Sam in his slow-mo world: Again he saw opportunity and took it; flicking the stun-stick's activator to maximum and flinging it with an accuracy borne partially of cyberware and partially of long practice with improvised weapons, straight into her open mouth: Rage had just enough time to turn to surprise as hundreds of thousands of volts cascaded directly into her nervous system, causing her to seize and bite down hard on the metalo-plastic rod with such force that the hardened casing deformed; making it almost impossible to remove untill her jaw unclenched.

>>49926020
Before the shuddering girl even had time to drop to the floor, a twitching in his peripheral vision, combined with a lifetime of brawling experience and his boosted reflexes gave Sam just enough time to fling himself into a diving roll as half of the mangled couch flew through the air, nearly clobbering him. Either the first Dasilver sister was a hell of a lot tougher than she looked, or else she'd just remembered to activate a pain-block implant; whatever the case, she'd recovered her wits and was spoiling for a fight.

So far Sam had been afforded a number of advantages over his opponents; their inexperience, their unfamiliarity with their own implants and the fact that they had apparently been built for brute force over speed or finesse, but Sam knew it was only a matter of time untill he was on the receiving end of a lucky hit, and one solid blow from walking tanks like the Desilvers would put him on his ass at the very least. Time to end this.

Down on one knee, Sam reached into his jacket and drew his own pistol; old and lacking in bells and whistles it may have been, but, as Sam often pointed out to those who mocked his choice of gun; in terms of reliability they don't make them like this anymore.

>>49926064
Glancing up, he took brief stock of the situation; thanks to the near-weaponised volume of the club sound-system, no-one else had noticed the life-or-death fight going on mere yards away; the sister he'd made to swallow her own stun-stick was now on the floor; thrashing uncontrollably; smoke was beginning to escape from her mouth around the intruding stick as her lips and cheeks blistered and charred; the other girl, meanwhile had taken out a serrated combat knife from god-knows-where and was barreling towards him, unnaturally pretty face twisted up with anger. He aimed his weapon between her eyes and squeezed the trigger; her head snapping back from the force of the impact. She stopped her charge mid stride, dazedly dropping her knife as she did so, and raised her hand to her forehead. She peeled away the still-hot disk of deformed lead from the front of her reinforced skull, leaving behind an ugly, silver-dollar sized wound that began to pour blood down her face. She gazed at the object between her thumb and forefinger in bewilderment for a moment before seeming to shake of the stunning effect of the hit just in time for half-a-dozen more in rapid succession to slam into her face, ruining hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the plastic surgeon's art.

>>49926091
The last standing Desilver sister staggered, then fell to her knees as Sam stood. He strode over to her and grabbed her by the hair; she was too dazed to resist as he pressed the gun to her temple and emptied the rest of his clip into the side of her skull. Even at point-blank range the hollow-points lacked the penetration to break through the advanced sub-dermal armour-plating, but the shock of the impacts was more than enough to knock her spark-out. He unceremoniously dropped her to the floor, and walked up to the other sister: He saw that she had stopped shuddering and her eyes had completely rolled up into their sockets, the whole lower half of her face now a smouldering ruin of horrifically burned flesh. He reached down and turned off the crackling stun-stick before turning on his heel an heading towards the exit.

As the wall of noise that was the club sound-system in action washed over him he pondered several questions his little fracas had thrown up: How had incompetent amateurs such as the Desilvers managed to track him down? Who was even aware of his existence that had the kind of money to burn to place an illegal dead-or-alive bounty of that size on his head, and why? And, perhaps most importantly; would he ever be allowed back in the club, and, if so would he have to pay for the destroyed sofa?

>>49921816
"The, uh, the rules were simple, they were written on several billboards near the pier, they were readily available for reading on the ferry and I had given the children a verbal reading of the rules, once before entering the ferry, once after, as requested and mandated by the country. The rules read, as mandated by the county, in order: Do as the ferryman says, never take off your safety vest or safety harness, do not reach over the sides towards the water or any extended limbs from the water, do not disturb the water, if you break the earlier rule by disturbing the water with a pole of equivalent object and the said object is grabbed or becomes stuck you must let go of the object and under no circumstances attempt to help anybody caught by the extended limbs or if the person has gone overboard. During the ride over the lake I, in two minute intervals, reminded them not to break any of the rules, as mandated by the county. By the time we had reached around half way of the ride, one of the older children, age, uh, fifteen I believe? He was caught reaching over the side to take a close picture with their phone. One of the crewmen run and attempted to pull the child away from the side, causing him to drop his phone in the lake. Enraged the child then swung at the crewman with the nearest object in his reach, which was a full bottle of soda from one of the nearby children. Now those things may not seem like a weapon of choice, but they pack a punch of swung hard. This caused the crewman to lose balance and accidentally reach over the side himself. One of the hands grabbed him and dragged under the waves. The associated bell toll was heard. That was just the first we lost that trip."

>>49926569
"We continued on, ignoring the crewman who fell over. After some time, something clogged the engines and we came to a halt for fifteen minutes. During that time a couple of the children, both age fourteen I believe, got into a heated argument. The girl pushed her presumed boyfriend over the board during the argument. The boy managed to grab the railing and was hanging there with all his might. Visibly distressed and clearly struggling, the boy pleaded for help. He was quoted saying something along the lines of "Please help me, they are hurting me, I don't want to die, somebody, they are tearing off my leg, no no" and several expletives. The crewmen then held back the onlookers and brought a fire axe to....well.....it was necessary. By the time we managed to get back moving we found the girl who had pushed the boy over the board, crying and puking over the side. An extended limb caught her by the hair and dragged her beneath. It was less than ten minutes before the engines clogged again and we had to come to a halt for several hours, hence why the ferry was so grossly late. We heard the two bell tolls only at this point, oddly considerably after the...incidents. I, uh, I need to sit down for a second and grab something to drink, after which I will continue with this presentation. Is this fine with you? Very well, I will be right back."

Has no one tried to pull a Hypersphere and try to get StoryBook published? It'd be an anthology of all the classics

>>49926656
"Right, where was I? Ah yes, the second malfunction. The passengers were clearly restless understandably so. As the time went on, more limb- you know what, fuck it, I am calling them hands from here on out despite what the county said. The hands had multiplied, that is to say more of them had extended above the surface. All of them were waving and grasping as reported. In an attempt to take peoples' minds off them, the entire crew, me included, went inside the ferry and blocked the windows. The engineers had come to the conclusion that trying to repair the engines was futile as nothing was seemingly wrong with them and that only time could tell if we could move again. At first people seemed to calm down from not seeing the hands, but soon they started hearing scratching noises from the bottom. Soon there were also small knocking noises from the windows, which we later checked and deemed them to be small pebbles as thrown by the hands. Then we heard one slightly larger knock that cracked one of the windows. It was the cellphone of the teenager who had knocked a crewman over. More and more pebbles were thrown and the scratching intensified over time. We even felt the ferry rock more than what the weather would have rocked it. Look, they were all kids save for the few supervisors and the crew, ok? They went into a silent panic, eyeballing the child who had knocked over the crewman. Even some of the crew had their eyes on him. We had been stuck in place for hours and the tension was high. After three hours, I guess, some of the children and two of the crewmen assaulted and dragged the child outside. We heard a splash and a bell toll. They came back inside and they were, how would I put this, satisfied? They claimed that they had appeased the hands."

>>49926840
"We didn't even notice it before they had opened the door and we heard the pebbles hitting the deck clearly. We would've tried to stop them had we noticed, but it was too late. The panic toned down some, but the scratching and bombardment didn't stop. In fact, they had intensified. And now we heard the bell toll without anybody being dragged into the lake. I mean, the damned place has a concrete wall around it, nobody can scale it with that frequency. Anyways. The bell toll was getting louder and louder. The children were now in full blown panic. Some of them in their panic crashed against the windows and the pebbles started flying in. Soon the pebbles turned into small stones. But when we looked outside, the hands didn't seem to do anything other than grasping at empty air and waving about. Not throwing rocks at us. We have no idea where the rocks were coming from. But the rocks were more than real enough. At this point we had to go under the decks into the engine room to avoid the hail of stones. At that point we had no idea how long had passed, but it felt like an eternity. But now that we were in the engine room, the scratching had moved from the bottom to the deck above. Nobody was going to go check what was making the noise. And...and the rocks were back. They started pouring down the stairs, even though the door was closed. And now they were the size of a man's fist. They, uh, fuck, they started being thrown at the children again. The adults, the crew, me and the supervisor, had to stand in their way or we would've had fatalities. Some of the larger children also blocked the way. My back is still fucking hurting from that whole ordeal. Then it just stopped. The bells, the scratching, the rocks, everything just stopped. Even we stopped. It was deathly quiet. Nobody dared to go see what was going on outside. Then the engine started again. It startled us, but our small panic turned into a frantic race to the cabin."

>>49927027
"The little comfort that the overcrowded cabin had was enough to calm most of them down. They even rotated on who would get to lie down, which was surprising considering how panicked they still were. It was already dark outside, but I knew the lake well and I knew that we were close to the end of the trip now. At least....It was supposed to be near the end of the trip. The pier wasn't there. Thinking it a miscalculation I went on for a while, but there just-there just wasn't a pier to be seen. The passengers didn't seem to notice it, but the crewmen did. We even used the searchlights to look for the pier, but we didn't see anything. Not even the hands. Time went on, but we couldn't find the pier no matter how we looked. Everybody was tired at this point. So we just announced that we would be stuck in place for some more time and that people should sleep. I know we did. Some went to sleep right away, while others were still on the edge about all of this happening. I knew I was. I was staring out the lake while everybody else at least tried to sleep. I was still awake when even the hardest sleepers were dreaming of something more pleasant. My lids became heavy an-what? Why am I going into this much detail? Because it's part of the presentation, you drones. Again, my lids became heavy from the fatigue and I was blinking more and more. And then...after blinking a few times the hands came back. First there were few, but there were more and more after blinking. I shook off my fatigue and went off to wake up the grew to get back on the move. And that's when the pebbles came back. And the scratching. And the bell. Even louder than ever. It woke everybody up, startling one crewman who had fallen asleep outside. He tripped on the pebbles and fell over the side. Everybody retreated back into the engine room, with me remaining out with some crewmen to navigate the damned ferry. And then it started raining."

>>49927304
"Tolling bells, furious scratching, ceaseless bombardment of rocks and now the rain whipping everything else into a frenzy. Fucking Christ. A few passengers, a single supervisor with five kids took refuge in the cabin, saying that the engine room was too crowded. Ironic, as now the cabin was crowded.The ferry wasn't built for that kind of abuse, I was hard pressed to go on while the fuel got lower and lower, thank God that the ferry had a full tank and those damned malfunctions. No matter how much I searched, no matter how well I knew the lake, we just couldn't find any land. It's a goddamned lake, not some inland ocean, but it sure as hell felt like one at that point. It's not even that big. Yes, I am calming down now. Right. At this point I started noticing something. The hands had started rising from the wet surfaces. Nobody at any point has reported them doing that before as far as I have been debriefed. Even still none of the hands were throwing the the pebbles or scratching the boat. The bell was tolling even louder and louder and now it sounded like it was coming from the engine room. Then from the passenger cabins. Then outside. And then, finally. We saw the bell. The bell was hanging out of nowhere, tolling the loudest I had ever heard. And then the engines stopped again. And so did the pebbles. And the scratching. And the rain. And the bell. Total silence once more. I grabbed one of the emergency torches and went outside. The others opted to stay in the cabin. I could walk through the hands without them grabbing me for some reason. I shone the light towards the bell.....
.....
.....
.....
The bell was a dinner bell. Held by one gigantic hand. It was covered in scars, skabs and cracked skin. The smaller hands were all across it's length, scratching it, which sounded identical to the scratching sound from the ship's hull. While scratching, the smaller hands also picked the skabs and threw to fallen off pieces at the ferry."

>>49927576
"It just....I can't explain it further. It was..I don't know...it was something different. I kept staring at it until the rain stopped. I don't know why I stared at it. It didn't move, it didn't make a sound and it sure as hell wasn't pleasant to look at, but I did. The others were flat on their stomachs in the cabin, hoping for it all to end. The hands started retreating back beneath the surface. Slowly. Until the large hand was there alone. It then tolled the bell once, an all too familiar toll. And it too sunk back beneath the surface. The engine started again. We went on and reached the pier. The others came out of the cabin and I announced over the radio that we reached our destination. Three times. Nobody came from the engine room. No answer over the radio either. Just static. I sent one of the crewmen to check down there. I gave him a hand radio to tell me once he was there. I asked him to confirm if the people there were still alive, but the radio was too quiet and I couldn't hear his answer. I turned up the volume and asked again. All I heard was a bell toll from the radio. Then I collapsed from exhaustion, hitting my head on the floor. When I woke up in the hospital, the police told me that the engine room was flooded.
.....
.....
.....
.....
The point of this presentation? My point rather simple: Either you fucking pay me more or close off the God forsaken lake completely! And I am not going to be responsible for the disappearances of over fourty fucking people anymore, especially fucking kids! Do I make myself clear?!
....
....
....
....
....So what if it's the fastest way over? Tourist attraction? Fucking tourist attraction?.....
.....
.....
.....yes, the retirement sounds good too....."


It's shitty, but I haven't slept at all and I can't into horror, but I took a jab at this anyways. Somebody more versed in horror willing to tell me everything I did wrong? Other than things not being scary.

>>49927746
I really wish I could tell you more than "try to not ramble" because it's a firsthand account from a main character that isn't a trained orator. I don't normally do horror, and I classify this as creepy. I liked it, and saying THAT feels inadequate.

I want to write about cute animal girls but I don't want to be labelled a furry. How do I do it?

>>49929753

Write.

Fuck the haters.

They'll find something to complain about because that's all they do. It's easier to just ignore them.

>>49929753
I'm sorry, but I'm confused with what you just said. You want to be a furry writer but you don't want to be a furry writer. Is this some existential crisis kind of thing?

Regardless, start writing, and don't stop. You either find your audience, or you get so good at prose the audience will find you.

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>>49916384
Here in robotics, we specialize as in the namesake's; robotics and mechanical locomotion. As seen in here scientist are working to help improve a Perceptive War Domination Technician Military Robot to boost its combat and security capabilities.

The Robotics Division are just as diverse as we share our studies and findings to industrialists, builders, the military and law enforcement. And even entertainers on helping to build more effective and efficient robots and automative machines to improve the mechanized lifestyle. The people of Robotics also work to ensure Artificial Intelligence will forever be friendly and efficient and not deadly, hostile or inefficient.

Robotics will be there to make the mechanized lifestyle great.

Aside from just continuing to practice and practice and practice what tips do you guys have for prose?

I can't progress past introductions. My middles aren't good either but when I actually have to start something it just crashes and burns.

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Posting a short 40k story I wrote, feedback would be much appreciated.

--A hush fell over the waterside district of Port Oberforth broken only by the synchronized clap of sixty massive armored feet as Captain Hath Lycerius led three squads of Adeptus Astartes down one of the city’s main streets. Hath smiled inside his helmet as a young woman he would have once considered quite comely dropped the basket of tomatoes she had been carrying and stared at the column in slack-jawed awe. Though all living humans owed their continued existence to the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes less than a billionth of them would ever lay eyes on one and the vast majority of this planet's population had no idea why the most feared warriors of the Imperium of Man would be on their seemingly peaceful world so Hath could hardly fault the woman’s surprise or the look of horror it was soon replaced with. Horror because no good thing could have brought such warriors running past her.

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>>49932691
--Though most of the planet’s inhabitants were unaware of the fact, Moribus Pall the planetary governor had ceased delivering the planet’s tithe to the Administratum five years ago. When Basroil, the strike cruiser carrying Lycerius and his company, arrived in the system 48 hours ago it immediately received a transmission from the planet’s surface. Interestingly the transmission was not from the palace of the planetary governor but from what appeared to be the primary command center for the planetary defense force (PDF). Hath quickly arrived on the bridge to speak with their caller, a man who identified himself as General Pabil Estabil commander of Estin’s PDF. The man expressed surprise and obviously feigned happiness at what he termed “the Imperium’s swift response to this unforgivable treachery.” Hath and his company had only dropped in their system as part of an ongoing effort by the [Redacted] to asses the readiness states of the imperial worlds in their area of operation while on their way to rendezvous with Fruit of Truth after having completed an assignment nearby. It had taken the Captain a bit of creative investigation to find out what treachery the general was referring to without exposing the fact that he hadn’t actually been dispatched to deal with it. The situation, once Hath finally managed to piece it together, was almost laughable; the planetary governor had violated Imperial law and stopped sending the planet’s tithe to the Administratum. When the general, someone who would almost certainly had to have been in on the governor’s decision, learned that an entire Astartes company had arrived in the system he assumed they had been sent to restore the planet to compliance and panicked betraying the governor as quickly as he could.

>>49932460
Make the start and then make the end in your head. Then do the middle. Also don't try to stretch it. Make it only as long as it needs to be.

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>>49932717

--Captain Hath had been forced to change his opinion of the general almost immediately however when the man was joined on the vox screen by two other individuals whose loyalty to the Imperium he might have doubted individually, but never both together. Bishop Vance Hextor, acting head of the planets Eclisiasty claimed that since the Archbishop had been imprisoned by the governor for protesting the cessation of tithes. The third man in the room had ordered both Bishop Hextor and the general to feign obedience to the governor until help arrived. The third man only identified himself as Parador then revealed something that made even an Astartes like Hath feel uneasy, the seal of an Inquisitor.

...

The thirty power armor-clad warriors ran down the street in perfect lock-step until another broad street intersected the street ahead of them and, at a hand signal from Hath, they fanned out and rounded the corner. The cross street lead onto a long wide jetty that ended at a stone and mortar tower that looked like it belonged on a planet that had lost any technology more advanced than the wheel. On top of the tower however was an all too advanced piece of technology, a powerful long-range AA battery more than capable of downing even a stormhawk. When Captain Hath transmitted his demand for surrender to all of the PDF installations on the planet this was the only one which had yet to respond and General Estabil felt it was likely that the governor’s nephew, a Colonel in the PDF, had holed up inside with any other traitors he could find in the hope that the space marine transmission had been a fabrication.

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>>49932742

--Any doubts about the installations loyalty to the Imperium ended instantly as las- and autocannon fire began pouring out of the installation towards the oncoming marines. Hath gave the order to return fire, “In Emperor’s name! Leave none alive!”

--Hath’s marines roared in response and their pace increased even as their superhuman vision pinpointed the defenders’ locations and they returned fire, every traitor would feel the caress of their bolter shells. The traitors’ fire slackened to a trickle in seconds though not before one of the battle-brothers crashed to the ground most of his helmet and part of his head blown away by an auto-cannon shell.

--They arrived at the entrance and Hath nodded to Sergeant Bothari who activated his powerfist and blew the fortified door in. Looking through the vid-feed from the sergeant’s helmet Lycerius saw that the hallway was narrow and easily defended; his marines could succeed with a direct assault but they would likely suffer casualties.

--Unwilling to accept casualties for such a petty installation Hath looked around and saw a window only a single story above as well as a small ledge of stone ringing the tower, he leapt up, grabbed the ledge, and climbed around below a window. The window was not big enough to fit an armored marine but the captain shot out the window then tossed a grenade in through the window as other marines followed his example and swarmed up and around the tower.

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>>49932769
>pic related: Its one of my dudes

--The grenade’s explosion damaged the wall but Hath still had to ram his fist through the compromised wall and pull down a section of the stone before he could swing in through the opening. In the room were two dead guardsmen. Hath charged across the room to the door and sent it rocketing backwards off its hinges with a powerful kick before stioding into the hall where he came face to face with a clearly terrified guardsmen who looked like he was about fourteen.

--“Ast- Astartes.” The boy only mumbled the single word before Hath’s armored fist smashed his head in. The boy clearly hadn’t been aware of the situation and though it pained him Hath knew that no one from an installation that had fired on the Adeptus Astartes could be left alive.

--The anger awakened at the thought of the men who had placed that foolish boy in path of the Astartes spurred Hath to countermand one of his previous orders, “If feasible, capture the installation’s commander alive so that he may be remanded into the custody of the Inquisition.”

--As marines poured into the facility from every direction the discipline the defenders had shown disintegrated in seconds and the marines took no further casualties as they butchered the remaining traitors in a matter of minutes.

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>>49932813

--Parador scowled at the tower as he accepted custody of the former-governors nephew, “I needed that structure intact.”

--“It still stands.”

--“Barely; you might as well have leveled it from space.”

--“I can see this bothers you so we will rebuild it ourselves. Never let it be said that we harmed the defenses of an imperial world.”

--The inquisitor looked surprised, “You will? Adeptus Astartes will demean themselves with construction?”

--“Demean ourselves? What could you possibly mean by that? Man’s ability to build and alter his environment so that it better suits his needs is one of its greatest strengths. If you believe it would demean an Astartes to build fortifications then you have not made sufficient study of the Codex. To master every aspect of warfare is the holy duty of every battle-brother and the art and science of fortification is one of the oldest and most fundamental of these aspects.”

...

As Parador’s shuttle lurched into motion Lucan, his chief aid, couldn’t help but notice his master seemed troubled, “Something about the good Captain Hath bothering you sir?”

--“The presence of a space marine should bring me only joy and a sense of security yet the sound of their name, the sight of their armor, the thought of their power brings me only fear. That a loyal servant of the Emperor should fear his chosen warriors is perhaps the greatest sin of Horrus.”

>Well that's it, so far at least. What's good? What's bad?

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>>49929753
First off I second what >>49929786
this guy said.

Second, Spice and Wolf pulled it off so it is possible. Perhaps try exploring the ins and outs of currency speculation until anyone shallow enough to start shitposting about furries has wandered off.

>>49932460
In addition to of course practicing and practicing and practicing you need to be reading a ton of good writing as well. When you read something you really like read it at least one more time, this time not so much to enjoy it but to break it down and see how and why the writer is doing what he/she is doing.

and practice more.

>>49926680
I don't actually know what a Hypersphere is, but the problem with publishing a series of the best stories from Storythread is:

1: permissions from authors. Almost all the stories are posted anonymously, so tracking down the authors would be impossible. Even if a writefag said they were the author of a certain story, it would be impossible in independently verify it.

2: permissions from artists and copyright holders: the vast majority of stories are either attached to a piece of artwork, or a set in a copyrighted setting. So publishing would involve getting permission from literally hundreds of different people and, god forbid, dealing with the vultures in Games Workshop's legal department.

And all that applies even if there's no money involved. If it were to be published and sold for actual money, then it goes from being impossible to downright suicidal to publish anything, since any one of the hundreds of different writers, artists and companies with a legal claim on any of the works could sue the bejeezus out of anyone who profited from the sale.

>>49933808
>I don't actually know what a Hypersphere is
Every now and then /lit/ gets it into their head that they can write a book as a collective. Of course it ends up as an ungodly mess of memes and shitposting. After it's finished, no fewer than six editors will take the bits they like, cut the bits they don't like, and, undoubtedly, leave a massive chunk of their own writing in there. Each of these editors will then self-publish the book on lulu, setting the selling price 'at cost.' Despite setting the price 'at cost' many anons will still flame the editors for 'profiting from anons work' not realising that the $8.74 which the novel costs is nets the editor no royalties. As there were six editors, and each published their own version, there are then several months of edition wars, as each tries to prove that their slightly different version of the book is the authentic version. Eventually /lit/ gets sick of hearing about it, and the threads start getting ignored. Just as the dust settles, someone starts a new thread titled: "Hey /lit/, why don't we write a book?" and it all starts again.

See:
>Hypersphere
>The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra
>The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra 2: Miami Vice
>The Quagga Project

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>>49934071
Say what you will, I like their covers

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>>49934071
I think you're forgetting something my good man: our mess would have far better memes and shitposting

>>49934551
A collaborative sff novel restricted to this thread would be interesting, I'll give you that.

>>49926680
>>49934551
>>49934600
What about an anthology where every anon posts a story, and then the subsequent work is published? If it made any money that could be divided up like a group share thing.

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So I’m thinking of writing some short stories/flash fiction snippets inspired more or less by Ragged Edges (though it’ll almost certainly lack any of the occasional heartwarmingness and never achieve the same atmosphere of serious business). Anyway I wanted to run some character concepts I’ve been fiddling with past yall as sometimes /tg/ is a good sounding board.

--The core of the “unit” is an IG platoon deployed on a world where there has been an on again off again war going on for at least a decade. The rest of the platoon’s regiment and all their direct superiors were killed not long after they arrived on planet and in the several years since every other officer has assumed they simply belong to one of the other still-extant regiments which has left them free to do basically whatever they want so long as no one actually asks what their orders are or who their CO is.

Private Hestia: The lowest ranking of all the remaining members of the platoon is like the Napoleon of black marketeering and all other forms of “informal procurement,” she’s also the group’s undisputed leader. Thanks to her the unit is absurdly well equipped and she herself wears a full-blown suit of power armor. If her possession of the armor looks like it might arouse question she pretends to be a sororitas who has taken a vow of silence; she’s learned anyone will eventually go away and quit investigating if she just kneels and feigns prayer long enough.

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>>49942109
--A tech-priest who avoids work by pretending to be a servitor carrying out some sort of menial labor anytime an authority figure might have some work for a tech-priest to do. He spends most of his time with Hestia’s platoon as she learned his secret and preserves it in exchange for his occasional technical assistance

--Several guardsmen, while digging breastworks for the platoons camp discovered a vein of some valuable mineral [or whatever] and have since been working to exploit their find without letting any of those munitorium scumbags jump their claim and seize the mine “for its strategic value to the Imperium” Its THEIR claim and NOBODY ELSES.

--A high ranking general who figured out what the platoon was up to months ago pretends to be one of them whenever he wants to hide from his taskmaster executive officer. Scenes where Hestia sees him and is like, “Has that old grandpa always been in our platoon?” The platoon soon comes to the conclusion he’s actually one of the younger platoon members who in reality died, that has simply aged prematurely due to the stresses of war.

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>>49942355
Sister Briand: Though dressed in the same mishmash of IG uniforms and scavenged clothing and essentially indistinguishable from most of the soldiers in the platoon Sister Briand is actually a sororitas with a massive gambling addiction. Having lost her armor playing strip poker she’s been too ashamed to return to her unit without it. She’s not been declared a deserter as a medicae who owed Hestia a favor falsified some reports to indicate Briand went missing not because she snuck out of their camp one night having seen some guardsmen nearby playing cards but because she received a vision from the emperor that led her to one of the orbital defense gun batteries moments before dark elder raiders appeared from the night to attack it. In the ensuing fighting the heroic sister boarded one of the elder skimmers as they attempted to flee from her righteous fury and was whisked thousands of miles away as she fought with the deldar lord. Finally the hero struck down the xenos lord taking a grave blow in turn. According to the report the few remaining guardsmen who’d followed her onto the skimmer reverently carried her to the nearest medicae where she was receiving treatment. The very end of the report was very artfully garbled ensuring the sister superior would find out everything she might want to know about valiant sister Briand except exactly which of the thousands of field hospitals she’d been taken to. In the meantime the platoon fed and clothed Briand who hardly seemed to realize she’d deserted so entranced was she by the unimaginable variety of gambling offere by an unsupervised guard unit. Hestia soon had to ensure the sister was watched at all times lest she scamper off and wind up indentured to some even more unscrupulous group.

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>>49942373
--A space marine equipped with a narthecium and reductor (as he is the acting chief apothecary), rozarius and crozius Arcanum (as he is acting master of sanctity), psychic hood and force-axe (as he is acting chief librarian), full servo-harness (as he is acting Master of the Forge), chapter banner (as he is acting standard bearer), iron halo (as he is acting captain of I Company, II Company, III Company, IV Company, V Company, VI Company, VII Company, VIII Company, IX Company, and X Company), an ancient relic blade (as acting chapter master), and the chapter’s revered heirloom storm shield (as acting chapter champion). The marine’s chapter committed some grave transgression while he was undergoing the final stages of gene-seed implantation which resulted in the chapter being sent on a penitent crusade the very day he was inducted into the X Company as a scout. The crusade has gone so poorly that, aside from the chapter’s dreadnoughts who he isn’t sure how to wake, he’s the only remaining marine. An irrepressible optimist he feels the chapter should stick to the chapter’s standard routines and procedures as though nothing is wrong.

One consequence of this decision is that he feels obligated to don the specialized equipment for every office and position, he views them as badges of office and the Codex clearly states a chapter should be fielding all of these various officers and specialists. He’s only capable of wielding all this wargear at the same time because of the servo-harness and much of it (such as the psychic-hood and force weapon) won’t work for him anyway but to this astartes it’s the principle of the thing.

>>49908111
That said, it will still get noticeably cooler. And long term prospects in that regard are bleak.

And suddenly, global warming becomes something that people WANT.

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>>49942403

Space marine continued: Another consequence is the fact that he ends up submitting a whole lot of reports to himself, and spends an inordinate amount of time doing inventories (much of the chapter’s fleet, vehicle pool, wargear etc has actually survived unharmed, it’s a shame he can only operate one tank or flier at a time as he hasn’t gotten on very well with the machine spirits in many of the chapter’s vehicles.)

This 1 man chapter is some kind of recurring character the platoon knows

--An Ogryn whose a smooth cool-cat sunglasses wearing jazz saxiphone player/grenadier and talks like an old timey blues legend.


>I’m not sure which planet my IG platoon should be from, whether one of the developed IG varieties, to make them a generic IG unit, or if I should create some fluff for a custom guard flavor. Can any of yall help me with this? My lore knowledge is pretty marine-centric.

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>>49942602

A leman russ whose machine spirit installation was botched by the admech and as a result the administratum clerk whose brain was used is fully conscious and in control, furthermore the clerk doesn’t realize he actually died and has had his brain wired into a machine. He’s aware something’s not quite right from the start but it takes him a while to realize everything has seemed so strange because his body’s been replaced with a tank! He has the personality of the stereotypical nerdy clerk.

-a veteran guard sergeant, who decides “da paff o da ork warboy be da strongest and da bestest.”
--maybe instead of an old vet its some aristocrat lordling who got drunk one night and ended up enlisting and who’s first battle was a disasterous defeat by an orc WAAAAAAG! Since then the overeducated young man has decided to model himself after that which he most fears (batman begins style) only he’s really bad at it. He can’t help but use really elevated diction and he fights like a three year old girl. But even as he closes his eyes and looks away cringing before firing a scary gun he’ll confidently proclaim, “I am the superior combatant because I have the greatest mass and my character is the most unsavory.” He refuses to follow any order or suggestion without first being beaten up by the orderer (he’ll frantically and totally ineffectually try to win all of these “fights”

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>>49942403
I'd like to see someone model this, maybe add a jetpack to the ensemble

>>49916248
damn, i want this to be a story.

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>>49942373
>Can anyone think of a better reason for a battle sister to be traveling around on their own?

Moar Briand--In spite of her being a hard-drinking gambling addict they keep her around because when in actual combat she becomes a certifiable (though foul-mouthed) religious zealot murdermachine. They once saw her strangle a nob to death then kill two of ‘is boys with his metal jaw. They’ve been in combat with her several times and she’s never even seemed to notice the lack of her power armor though she has muttered darkly about what she’d do for a hand-flamer; mostly she’s killed things with her hands though on two occasions she proved herself a poet with a flamer. She shit talks the blasphemous limp-dicked heretical little bitches who’d dare grow the balls to defy her beloved emperor. Has on several occasions loudly pronounced that the Emperor is “the tits.”

>>49937613
Hardcore for the win!

>>49927746
i liked the tone a lot. i could see this guy, still dressed in one of those fishermen sweaters so thick not even the boniest fingered nun could poke you through. a cigarette burning forgotten in the ashtray as he stairs off into the middle distance during most of it. yeah it could have been more atmospheric, less casual about the deaths. but then we might have lost the "after action report" feeling of the whole thing, which i for one enjoyed.

please do continue gracing these threads with your writing.

>>49944108
I must be bad at 40k recognition. I only see one human and there's an elf in the corner.

What the fuck am I looking at?

maybe I could write something?

>>49946511
top row: Adepta Sororitas Hospitaller and Eldar Farseer
center: Imperial Guardsman
Bottom Row: Howling Banshee and Sister of Battle.

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>>49946596
The Imperium really is a grimdark shithole, still calling them guardsmen instead of guardpersons. This isn't what my emperor sacrificed himself for.

>>49942109
Now that I'm working on this I see the genius of dark heresy, by working for the inquisition the party/space-posse can include fucking anything. No one else can really do that, certainly not my poor band of merry heroes.

How a guard platoon lacking any officers and containing an increasing contingent of men who've essentially deserted from their own unit get a funtimes psycher? (I could just say fuck it artistic license but I don't want to blow my license on that)


Are there any good stories/depictions of ratlings?

>>49944108
I would be shocked if 1d4chan doesn't have at least one smutty story with this exact fantasy.

>and for my next trick my manhood will turn an adeptus sororita hospitalier, eldar farseer, imperial guardsbabe, howling banshee and a sister of battle into... 5 howling banshees!

Okay I finally got a working plan for the next bard comp. Anyone else going to enter again? Did you get any good feedback last time?

>>49947494
I got feedback from three readers. It was nice - it comes in the shape of a form, where they each reader answered a bunch of agree/disagree questions and then wrote about a hundred words specifically about my story. The feedback helped me to see a problem with the story that I didn't see myself, but I feel like they were a little bit generous.

The editor also sent me an email encouraging me to submit again this time, so I've got a little steampunk airship blood magic ditty up my sleeve that I've just got to polish a little more.

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>>49931212
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhEwU3vPEcU

In conclusion.

We the fine people of Sci-Tech Labs wish to make the world a better place and lead into to the future and the next century. While still valuing certain traditions and ethics that make us all human.

We all wish to make our lives, our friends, families, the animals that live in our and our species be better and to move to the next step life. And we are doing it one scientific step and achievement at a time.

If you are an aspiring scientist and or doctor yourself, then come join us. We are accepting your applications, for we can always use a new brilliant mind to achieve our goals.

Sci-Tech Labs: Leading the world to the next century, the next future, through science.

###

So ladies and gents, how did this expository and or narrative-like snippet go?

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>>49947494
Bard comp?

Feedback?! You mean to say such a thing exists? What do you take me for, a child?

>>49942602
Is it just me or has way in the hell less time, thought, and creativity gone into fleshing out a variety of different IG forces than has gone into developing SM chapters. I mean I expected it but not anywhere near this much.

Also what are the different IG forces called? They're not chapters but there's not standard nomenclature some are the such and such corps. other are the whatever guard, others are the so on and so forth legion. These cannon fodder mortals need their own Sillyman codex because their current naming conventions quite literally give rise to Chaos.

>pic related: what do the lords of terra give a guard army when its proven itself worthy of progeny?


I'll bet older marines secretly suspect that IG medicae must have some kind of narthecium./reductor for salvaging spluge from fallen guardsmen

...

I was joking but upon reflection that seems like what kriegers might actually consider a standard stage in the reproductive process.

>>49948055

Oh were you not here in like, august?

http://thebardquarterly.wixsite.com/home

Guy advertised here a bit, basically they do a mini-fic story magazine that's free and each entry was only like 800 words long. All entries got free feedback from a group of readers regardless of if they were accepted or not. Apparently it was pretty useful and popular, their next entry is closing Nov 11 i think.

>>49948122
>800 words

*sobs*

>>49948201
Yeah that 800 words kills me, I can't remeber the last time I was able to articulate a short story in that small amount of words

>>49948201

I found it pretty good practice even though I didn't get in. Helps you learn to edit and cut effectively.

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>pic related

You all know this story right? Even those you you who aren't down with the Warhams aught to appreciate it.

>>49905194
The knight went on, uncaring of the rare sight beside him. The horse took no notice and was continuing at a steady pace. The giant was mired in place, the southern wind offering contrast to its steely pose. Once it might have been an abomination, a warrior, a creation of age-forgotten wizard. Now it is only a reminder.

>>49948201

Try it anyway, read some of the stories from the first issue and see how they did it. You'll get something out of it.

is there a storythread IRC?

>>49946694
>I would be shocked if 1d4chan doesn't have at least one smutty story with this exact fantasy.
I think it does...

>>49949453
Succinct, descriptive, a little short perhaps but not bad. Maybe now try something a little longer?

>>49950097
There is not a lot of story there, friend. You would do well to do it yourself. I do not write good long stories.

>>49905209
The Greycrag Mountains echoed not, for once with thunder, though the leaden sky hung low and pendulous overhead; nor with the cascading fulmination of a shale landslide washing around its wind-sharpened peaks and rock-spires; but with a voice, commanding and imperious:

"M'ok-gaar, are you playing with your toys again? I need you to set the table."

M'ok-gaar glanced up from the figurine to which he was in the process of attaching the sword:

"Moo[i]ooo[/i]oom, I've told you before; they're not toys, they're [i]collectable miniatures[/i]!"

"Well, whatever they are, put them down and come set the table; it's dinner time."

"Just a minute, okay? The glue's still wet."

"No, now! Or else no ch'yck-ken ten-d'ees for you!"

"But moooo[i]oooo[/i]ooom...."

"NOW, young man!"

"This is bullshit..." M'ok-gaar muttered to himself as he heaved his bulk upright: "Dad never makes me set the table when I'm at his place."

"What was that?"

"Nothing, mom; I'm comming."

Unattended, the model's sword drooped, then plopped to the ground.

>>49950667
Huh I guess /tg/ doesn't support italics. Bother.

>>49893771
The cave was austere, the waterfall solemnly falling as the scene began. The warrior was unmoved by the demon before him. In another time, he would have proclaimed himself many titles, but this was not common. After moments which moved like ice, the demon spoke. He spoke of his triumphs and strengths and commanded the warrior to tell him his reason for coming here. Moments passed before he spoke. It was in tongues not known to him, and thus displeased him. He struck at the warrior, only to whiff at air. He had no time to move as he struck at his good arm, causing him to recoil in shock, then hate. A battle followed, and the demon was soundly defeated. The stranger wondered where this path would take him before he would have a chance of seeing his home.

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>>49950710
Despicable isn't it? People shouldn't be forced to live live animals.

>>49942109
If nothing else I'm gonna have/get to learn a lot about those plebian non-spess marine imperial factions the bolter-bitches and the galactic federation of flashlight and whup-ass tank enthusiasts.

>is bolter-bitches hyphenated? (I wouldn't want to offend)

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>God I wish I had a picture of this scene

Hest looked up from his cards towards the entrance to the prefab warehouse a moment or two before the two other, noticeably more inebriated, men at the improvised card table heard the ominous regular thumping. The three only had time to stare apprehensively at the doorway before the power armored figure strode through the doorway and right up to the table where the three had been gambling and consuming illicit substances. After a moment spent gawking at the power armor-clad white-haired woman, or more specifically at the fleur de lis brand just below her left eye, the other men and woman in the warehouse made themselves scarce as the towering, bolter-armed, sister of battle held the three men around the card game with a gaze that confidently broadcast their status as insects.

Hest soon regarded the woman’s considering gaze, though without the same air of challenge and menace. A large detachment of Sororitas had become the latest in the steady stream of units to arrive on the surface through the Belkin spaceport and Hest had anticipated that the sisters’ commander might show more interest in inspecting his platoon’s position than the run-of-the-mill Guard officers they’d seen so far.

>>49957338
In spite of having more or less expected a visit the warrior-woman’s sudden arrival still seemed strange. For starters, though he was no expert on bolter-bitches, this looked like a rank-and-file battle sister instead of an officer and why had she come straight into the warehouse in the dead of night instead of addressing her business to the guard who had doubtless tried to stop her at the edge of the platoons position? If she had come straight here intent on surprising them at their less-than-regulation social assembly he would have expected her to spring the full wrathful-commissar routine on them immediately instead of looking around the table with that thoughtful expression.
Then, just as Hest debated breaking the silence himself, the sister plopped down on the pile of shipping palates strategically placed as a seat in front of the unoccupied fourth side of the table, grabbed up the large glass bottle the three had been passing around and tossed back a swaggle.
“So what are we playing? Five card?”

>>49957359
“Uh… yea.” Hest began to wonder if Filver hadn’t perhaps made that bottle stronger than intended; the starched uptight air of a sororita had vanished from the woman almost completely. “Do you want me to deal you in?”
“What, is this a boys only game?”
Chugg the quartermaster for the 7th Urien Infantry Regiment, also temporarily camped nearby, gestured to the pile of cigarettes, meal vouchers, and semi-precious baubles in the middle of the tables with an obese sausage-fingered hand. “What’s a nun got that’ll buy into a pot that big?”
The woman non-chalantly drew her bolter-pistol, ejected the magazine, and slapped both down in the center of the pile. “Deal me.”
Chugg scowled, “Ten shells? I thought you holy-types were supposed to be honest?”
Hest snorted, “If any of us need that bolt pistol it’ll be because the orks too close for lasgun-fire, can you really put a price on making that ork go away? Unless you think you’re laspistol’s up to task of stopping one of those big ugly bastards before he can get to chopping?”
The private had painted a sufficiently vivid picture that the doughy middle-aged man settle for relying with, “I ain’t givin it back now, y’hear?”

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>>49908030
>>49911348

After several days here it is. Might not be what you expect though.

**************************************************************************************
Hana awoke, sunlight glaring through the blinds. She sat up and scratched her stomach. She looked at the clock: just past noon. She was going to be late if she didn’t hurry. Hana stood up and walked to the window, navigating the loose clothes scattered all over the floor. She pulled the blinds and looked down in the backyard. Dad was sitting in his rock garden, ink brush and parchment in hand. She sneered and stepped towards her closet, grabbing her armor. She fastened it on, and made her way out the door.

***

“Hi welcome to DeathWings, I’m Tactical Sister Hana,” she grumbled. “Would you like to try our Boneless First Company Combo? You’ll…Unforgive yourself if you don’t…” Hana almost gagged. The rotund sweaty Techpriest ignored her suggestion and still squinted at the menu above her head. She rolled her eyes.

“Uh, yeah,” the Techpriest finally said. His voice scratched through his face grill. “Yeah I’ll have the RavenWing meal with extra melta sauce.”

“Anything else?” Hana asked. She picked at her fingernails.

“Yeah, can I also get an extra large Purga-Cola?” Hana entered the order on the register. “No, wait, Diet Purge.” Hana grit her teeth. She cancelled the order, and entered the code for a small drink. The priest paid, and waddled over to a table. She thought of a great remark about how the Techpriest would eat his meal. She thought against it.

>>49957837
Hana sighed. She looked back behind her. The Watchers in the Kitchen were already starting the order.

Hana looked around the restaurant. They weren’t busy. “I’m on break,” she shouted back to the kitchen. She pulled off her apron and plastic shoulder guards and walked out from behind the counter to a table. She pulled out her vox-screen, staring at it. She wanted to text someone but couldn’t think of who. Hana dropped the screen on the table sank into the chair.

“Hana,” a voice said. She looked up at the stern face of Azrael. His arms were crossed over his chest, partially obscuring the “Manager” tag on his cheap dark green button-down.

“What’s the issue, Mr. A?” Hana asked. “Thoreau got the register…” she flicked her chin towards the counter. The younger El’Jonson sibling grabbed the register as soon as she took off her apron. He fiddled with his curly blonde hair.

“Hana, remember our talk about attitude?” Azrael kept his arms crossed. Hana scowled. “What are the words of DeathWings?”

Hana took a deep a breath. “Enjoy, for tomorrow you die,” she groaned.

“Exactly,” Azrael said. “Enjoy. People can’t enjoy their meals if they don’t think you enjoy serving them. Come on, show me that smile.”

Hana forced a grin. Azrael scowled. “I mean it, Hana. You don’t shape up I’m gonna have to let you go. This reminds me of when…” Hana started to tune him out. She saw the door open behind him. She snuck a glance.

It couldn’t be.

>>49957854
Bobby Guilliman, back in town. He stood there, clad in bright blue power armor. He held the door open, and Roger Dorn marched in. Hana’s eyes widened. Azrael’s brow furrowed, and he turned to look behind him. He lit up and immediately stepped over to greet them. The two Junior Primarchs stood at attention for her manager.

Hana’s eyes stayed fixed on Bobby. Memories from years ago flooded her mind. A Rhino rocking back and forth. Bolters n’ Roses blaring on the stereo. A torn zipper on a prom dress. Nervous hands fumbling with a bow tie. The smell of perfume and cologne and sweat. Her cheeks flushed with heat.

He stood half a head taller than when she last saw him. His jaw seemed thicker, his features sharper. But his eyes were still the same. That beautiful clear blue… Hana’s heart tied itself in knots.

She had to get out of here

Azrael seemed done with the men, and he led them towards the counter. He shook hands with both, and walked back to his office. He shot her a look. Her break was over. Hana scrambled up, and started sneaking to the back room.

“Hana!” She felt her stomach drop. She turned, and there he was, not two feet from her. “Hana, is that you?”

>>49957873
“Bobby,” Hana said. “Emperor, it’s been so long, I barely recognized you.” She looked over his pauldron. Roger was still ordering. Thoreau looked awestruck at him. “So uh, you’re back from Macgragge? Got your academy done?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bobby said. “Graduated just a month ago. Did pretty well there.” He looked down at his armor. “You can probably tell.”

“Hah ha, yeah,” Hana said. She wished a Warp storm would open under her feet. “I-uh, you look good.”

“Yeah, uh, so do you,” Bobby said.

“Thanks,” Hana said.

“You still living with your dad?”

“Hah, yeah.” Hana’s feet itched.

“Uh, so hey I’m back in town for a while now,” he said. “Maybe we can meet up some time?” He pulled a vox-screen from a holster on his belt. He fiddled with it, then held it up to her. “This still your number?”

“Yeah,” Hana said. “Yeah let’s do that. I’d love to catch up.” Why did she say that?

“So uh, I’ll let you go then,” he said. “Talk to you soon?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah I’ll drop you a vox when I’m free.” She scurried away, back behind the counter and into the kitchen. Roger was still ordering.

>>49957925

***
“I’m telling you man, just leave it,” Roger wiped some melta sauce from his face. They walked out the door. “She’s nothing but trouble.”

“She seems different, Rog,” Bobby said. “C’mon, it’s been four years. We’ve changed. So has she.”

“Yeah, we changed because we were at the academy,” Roger said. “We were learning how to be generals. Crusaders. She’s been cooking chicken wings. You really think she’s any different?”

“I mean, why not?” Bobby asked.

“Because there’s nothing good about her,” Roger said. “Take it from the one friend of yours who didn’t sleep with her—“

“The one friend who couldn’t sleep with her,” Bobby said.

“You know you’re just making my point,” Roger said. “She’s a dead weight, Bobby. You got too much going on for her to just mess up your life again.” They reached the big yellow Landraider. “Look, you may have forgotten Hana-fied Bobby but I sure as hell didn’t. You were a total drag, especially at the end. And that’s coming from a Fist.”

“Yeah but—“

“But what?” Roger asked. “She consumed you, Bobby.” The men boarded the Landraider, Bobby riding shotgun.

Some of the nastier thoughts were definitely coming back. The cold shoulder. The time she showed up drunk at his door in the middle of the night. Maybe Roger was right. “I can’t just blow her off, Roger,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Well because I just don’t want to,” Bobby said. “Look I’m not gonna start dating her again or anything. But why can’t we be friends? She looks like she needs one right now. She’s gotta be lonely.”

“That’s not your problem,” Roger grumbled.

“I’ll be careful, Rog,” Bobby said. “And if you’re right, well, you know. ‘Told you so’ and all that. You Fists like being right, after all.”

“Coming from the Smurf,” Roger laughed. “I read your dad’s book, you know.”

>>49957938

Hana lay on her bed, her vox-screen in hand. She stared into her navel. Old Terran music blared on her speakers. The ancient instruments of this “motley crew” screamed like a Thunderhawk.

Her vox beeped. She looked at it. “OME rlly? He rlly showed bck up?” Farah’s message burned across hundreds of thousands of light years.

She started typing into the screen. “ya it was him. I cudnt bleeve it either”

A minute passed. Hana closed her eyes and listened to the music. The vox beeped again. “he still cute?”

Hana blushed. “totally”

Another minute. “u should go 4 it”

“i dunno it was kinda awk. he might still b mad at me”

She waited again. Beep. “how do u kno?”

“i wasnt the nicest 2 him”

The next song came on from her playlist. Her vox beeped again. “then make it up 2 him”

Hana bit her lip. She pulled up Bobby’s contact page and stared at. She typed up the message, and stared at that. Then she closed her eyes and pressed send. “hey stranger”.

Another song started. Then the beep. “Hey”

Hana chewed on her tongue, and thought of a response. “im totally down to meet up tomorrow if ur free”. She sent it.

The vox beeped again. She looked at his response. Then she forwarded it to Hana. “OME GO 4 IT!!!”

She heard a loud knock on her door. Dad was going to bed. Time to turn down the music.

>>49957978
***
Bobby looked up at the sky. Codex Grey. Rain was coming soon. He shifted in his seat and it creaked beneath his armored form. He looked down at his chronometer. She was pretty late. No surprise. He already paid for her coffee too. Looks like Roger was right again…

“Hey Bobby!” He looked up, and there she was. Her hair was a little neater than yesterday. But she still looked tired. She smiled and took her seat across from him.

“Hi Hana,” he said.

“So glad you said you were up for talking,” she said. She didn’t even apologize for being late.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Yeah of course. I was kinda surprised you voxxed me. You didn’t seem too excited to see me the other day.” Accusations already. Off to a great start. He had to get Roger out of his head.

“Oh,” Hana said. She looked a little crestfallen. “Yeah I’m sorry about that. I guess it’s just been awhile. You caught me off guard.”

“Uh, just forget I said that,” he said. “I didn’t think what it must be like for you.” They sat in silence for a moment. They couldn’t make eye contact. Finally he said, “So uh, you’re working at DeathWings now, huh?”

“Oh, uh yeah,” she said. “Yeah Lyra helped set me up.”

“So uh, do you like it?”

“Emperor no,” Hana chuckled. Bobby smiled a bit. “Money’s alright but Azrael’s a total dick.”

“Well what did you expect?” Bobby asked. “He’s a Dark Angel.”

“I dunno. Lion’s alright,” she said. “Like at least he’s polite. I think Az just hates me.” Bobby shrugged. “So, you were at Macragge?”

“Yeah, yeah for a bit,” he said. “For the first half of the academy. Don’t know why Dad was so keen on it. Just desert. And the people were so boring.”

“Sounds like your kind of place,” Hana smirked. Bobby tried to return the gesture. She cleared her throat. “So where’d you go next?”

>>49958010
“Oh, you know, around,” Bobby said. “Crusading and all that. Purging, conquering, building.”

“You hook up with any of the guys?” she asked.

“Just Roger,” Bobby said. Hana rolled her eyes. “Though I also ran into Connor Corax and Petra.”

“Connor still a fruit?” she asked. Bobby scowled. She always liked to pick on the Raven’s son. Before he could answer, the servitor arrived at their table. It dropped off their drinks, and said a few prayers of gratitude to Bobby. He nodded, and it wheeled off. He looked over at Hana. She sniffed her drink. Her eyes widened, and she took a big gulp.

“Dark roast Catachan blend!” she said. “You remembered!” He did. That was always her favorite.

“Yeah, I figured you’d like that.” They talked for another hour. He told her about the crusades he led. The xenos he purged, the worlds he brought into the Imperium. He felt he was a natural at it. And she told him of her life. How she got her job. How she made a few extra thrones repairing things around town. How she’s still figuring out where to go next. She even gave him a few real smiles too.

“So how’s Jaghatai?” he asked. The Khan had been absent from the Crusade for several years now. Her brow furrowed.

“Oh, you know, he’s alright,” she said. “You know my mom walked out, right?”

“Yeah, I heard awhile ago from Farah,” Bobby said. “Look, Hana I’m sorry. I meant to vox you when I heard but I—“

“Don’t,” Hana said. “Don’t apologize. Not your job to make sure I’m okay.”

She was right about that. “Still,” he said. A fleck of water dropped onto his head. He looked up. Rain was starting to fall. “We might want to get indoors.”

>>49958073
“You still wanna hang out some more?” Hana asked. “Dad’s actually leaving for the night. Going out with Magnus. We can go back to my house. Watch some voxcasts,” she smiled coyly. “I dunno, maybe make out a little?”

What? Bobby pursed his lips. “Whoa, hold up Hana,” he said. “What did you think this was?”

She frowned. “Well I dunno, I thought it might be something more fun than just catching up,” she said.

“Wait, you serious?” Bobby said. “Hana, we broke up. Like, a long time ago.”

“Aw c’mon Bobby,” she said. “I’m starting to remember why I liked you. Let’s go have some fun.” She started chewing on her lip. “Or are you just gonna be a big drip like always?”

“Wow, okay,” Bobby said. “I guess Roger was right. You really aren’t much different.”

“Roger’s an ass,” Hana said. “He’s a bigger wet blanket than you, and that’s saying a lot. Why do you always listen to him?”

“Hana c’mon,” Bobby said. Why was she acting like this? “He’s my friend, and I trust him.”

“More than me, I guess,” she said. “That’s why we broke up, right? Cause he said we should?”

“I’m not getting into this, Hana,” he said. The rain was coming down now. “We’ve talked waaay too much about this.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said. “If you’re just gonna be like this then fine, I guess that’s it. Sorry for wanting to give it another shot.” There she was. Making him the bad guy. Again.

“Sure Hana,” he said. “Whatever you say. Look, I’m gonna head out. Take care of yourself.” He turned and made his way to his Rhino.

“Fine, later,” she said. “Jerk.” Bobby turned back. She was walking away. He scanned the parking lot. Something was missing.

>>49958091
“Wait, where’s your bike?” he asked. She stopped.

“My what?” She wheeled and stared at him.

“Your battle bike,” he said. It was pouring now. “The one your dad gave you.”

“It’s broken,” she said. Her hair was already drenched. She tried to cover her head. “Yeah I’ve been trying to fix it. So I walked here.”

“You walked?” he asked. He stepped towards her. “Don’t you live like three miles away?”

“Yeah,” she said. She stared at her boots.

“Hana you coulda just asked for a ride,” Bobby said.

“I didn’t want to start things like that though,” she said. “Mooching off you again, I mean.”

Bobby frowned. He grit his teeth. “It’s pouring, let me drive you home.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, fine. Thanks.”

Bobby sighed as they walked together towards his Rhino. This could go nowhere good.

***

They pulled up in front of her house. Hana put her hand on the hatch handle. She looked over at Bobby. “Hey thanks for the ride,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he said. He didn’t look at her. She opened the Rhino’s hatch.

“Hey,” she said. “Hey I was being a real bitch. You are a good guy, Bobby.” She smiled at him. He gave her a weak smile back.

“Yeah, yeah you kind of were,” he said. That stung. She tried to throw it back at him, but she thought against it.

Then she remembered something. “Hey, can you come in for a bit?” she asked.

“Hana…”

“No nothing like that I swear,” she said. “I just remembered I wanted to give you something.”

“You can’t just bring it out?” he asked.

“Dude it’s pouring rain,” she said. “Just come in for a sec. Please.”

>>49958149
He stared at his dash for a moment. “Aright, fine,” he said. “Just for a few minutes.” He turned off the Rhino and they both climbed out. They walked up the pathway to the front door. Hana fished through her pocket for her keys, and they stepped through.

“Wipe your feet,” she said. Water was rolling down his armor. “Wait in here in the living room, I’ll be right back.” She peeled off her boots and left them with him at the doorway. She trudged up the stairs to her room. Hana opened the door to her bedroom, almost tripping on a pile of clothes on the floor. She cursed and walked to her dresser.

She started opening drawers. It wasn’t in any of them. She went to her desk. It was covered in crap. Where did all this come from? She rifled through it. Not on the desk. She opened some of its drawers. Finally she found it. The little box, with its little “Emperor’s Children Jewelry Co.” stamp. She pulled it out of the drawer and hurried back downstairs.

Bobby was still standing at the doorway. At least he’d been polite enough to close the door. She plodded down and jumped the last few steps. She stuck the box out to him. “Here you go,” she breathed.

“What’s this?” he asked. “Wait, is this…”

“Yeah,” Hana said. “I figured I should give it back.”

“Hana it was a gift,” he said. “Why would you try to do this?”

What? “Hey, I just thought if we weren’t together anymore…”

“Yeah but there’s no reason to start pulling this stuff out,” he said.

“Unbelievable,” she said. “Dude I don’t want it—“

“Then throw it out or something?”

“Look it obviously cost a lot,” Hana said. “I just figured you might want to give it someone else.”

>>49958171
“ Whatever, guess that was your mistake,” she said. Why did she say that?

“Yeah I guess it was,” he said. He handed the box back to her. He went and opened the door.

“You were my first too, Bobby,” Hana said. He stopped and turned back to her.

“I,” he said. “I didn’t know that. You said I wasn’t.”

“I just wanted to look cool for you,” she said. “Make you think you were really making it.”

“I thought you were plenty cool enough, Hana,” he said.

“Figured you’d say something like that,” she tried forcing a smile. “I’m sorry, Bobby. I’m sorry for everything.”

“Me too,” Bobby said. He shrugged. “Goodbye Hana.”

“No wait,” Hana said. “Stay. Please.” He stared at her.

“No, Hana, I need to get going,” he said. Hana’s eyes started watering.

“Fine,” she said. Her voice cracked. “Goodbye Bobby.” He walked out and closed the door.

Hours later, Hana sat up in her bed. She played her music again, softer stuff this time. Her window was open, the rain spattered and roared against the sidewalk. Hana stared at the box. Finally she opened it, and pulled out the necklace. A bright silver chain, ending in a large silver heart. An Ultramarines Blue “U” was engraved in the heart. And through it, a delicately-tooled golden White Scars lightning bolt.

Hana’s lips trembled, and she buried her face in her knees.


END.

Originally it was gonna end with them fugging but for some reason I didn't like that as much.

>>49957371
The sister’s only response was to clap a hand over the cards Hest dealt, take another enormous swig of the guardsmen’s moonshine, and belch before looking at her cards.

Four and a half hours later, with the air-traffic controller long returned to his housing block and Chugg snoring mightily from where his chair had dumped him when it overturned, Hest watched through bloodshot eyes as Sister Briand stared in horror at the cards laid before her, if she was going to drop the hammer she would do it now.
Instead of turning over her bolter with a curse, or condemning him for a heretic and attacking the battle sister looked up at Hest with eyes very much like those of a zealot regarding the object of their adoration.
“Gimme a chance to win my gear back, My armor for all my gear.”
“What?! No! Sister, I think you should cut your losses and get back to your order.”
“Oh, come on don’t be like that. Listen play me two hands and you keep it all if you win either of them, you can’t ask for better odds than that.”
Now Hest was more than surprised, he was a little disturbed, “Listen you’re pretty shit faced, I- I couldn’t live with myself if I took advantage of you like that. Plus what the fuck am I supposed to do with your power armor? There’s no way in hell it would ever fit me and any commissar who saw me wearing sororita armor the day after a sister of battle returned to her order buck naked would strike me dead on the spot power armor or not.”

>>49957371
The sister’s only response was to clap a hand over the cards Hest dealt, take another enormous swig of the guardsmen’s moonshine, and belch before looking at her cards.

Four and a half hours later, with the air-traffic controller long returned to his housing block and Chugg snoring mightily from where his chair had dumped him when it overturned, Hest watched through bloodshot eyes as Sister Briand stared in horror at the cards laid before her, if she was going to drop the hammer she would do it now.

Instead of turning over her bolter with a curse, or condemning him for a heretic and attacking the battle sister looked up at Hest with eyes very much like those of a zealot regarding the object of their adoration.

“Gimme a chance to win my gear back, My armor for all my gear.”

“What?! No! Sister, I think you should cut your losses and get back to your order.”

“Oh, come on don’t be like that. Listen play me two hands and you keep it all if you win either of them, you can’t ask for better odds than that.”

Now Hest was more than surprised, he was a little disturbed, “Listen you’re pretty shit faced, I- I couldn’t live with myself if I took advantage of you like that. Plus what the fuck am I supposed to do with your power armor? There’s no way in hell it would ever fit me and any commissar who saw me wearing sororita armor the day after a sister of battle returned to her order buck naked would strike me dead on the spot power armor or not.”

>>49958639

“The armors adjustable to an extent and most of the parts are interchangeable. Inquisitors and generals and the like who can afford their own suits of power armor are always desperate for parts. Astartes and the orders have our own stockpiles and access to new made replacement parts but anybody else with one will surely give much for a full suit worth of spare parts. Some highborn wannabe-Yarrick is out there right now just waiting to shower you with praise and reward.”

“Oh my god you’re a sister of battle with a gambling problem. How in the hell can that even happen?”

“Fuck you, you gutter-dwelling cur. I am a sworn sister of the adeptus sororitas and I have spent my life in the service of the direct instrument of the Emperors will in the world. I think I will win both hands. I think I was called here this night to show you the error of your ways wayward child. You won’t play those hands because you know it is the Emperor’s will you lose both hands and with them all your spoils and you would rather deny the Emperor himself rather that lose those meaningless trifles of the material world. I think you’re a fucking heretic and that is why you refuse such a generous challenge!”

>>49958658
His jaw clenched in furry, Hest started shuffling the cards; fucking church crazies, he should have known something like this would happen. The second these pompous eclesiasty puppets felt the least bit thwarted they started torturing and killing others for heretics. It looked like Hest was damned either way at this point. He might as well show the bitch just how holy and blessed she really was.

The two furiously scooped up their cards slammed down their discards, snatched the next cards dealt and slammed them down face-up towards one another. Dumb shock overcame both of them at the same time. Sister Briand’s hand was a pair of two and Hest’s was a perfect royal flush, something he’d been to angry to grasp the significance of until just that moment.

Sister Briand stood up, pushed the shipping palates aside, dropped back down to her knees, and began to pray. Hest realized she’d begun sobbing.

>>49958672
“Uh, listen how about you just take all you shit and go? Its mine to do with as I please and the only thing in the world I want to do with all of it is give it back and bid you farewell.”
The white-haired young woman looked up at him, even as tears poured down her face unchecked she was smiling, beaming even, her eyes actually sparkled, “No Private Hest you do not understand. I do not weep from despair, I weep with joy for we have both seen a true miracle here today. I presumed in my arrogance to speak for the Emperor, I actually thought our great and loving protector would punish you simply for having made me face my own failings and rather than strike me down or allow me to continue on lost in the darkness of my own soul he reached out and spoke to us. I see now I had failed in my vows as his servant and in his infinite mercy he has chosen to set me back on the right path, he felt that I was worthy of his intercession and I shall not fail in my devotion to him again!”

“Well hey… that’s fantastic. You must go and tell your sister this wondrous new right this very instant. I will pray for you.”

>>49958691

The woman’s tears of rapture seemed to dry intently and with jarring suddenness she was the rigid, perfect-postured force-of-nature battle sister she had been when she first walked into the warehouse.

“Nonsense, we have witnessed a miracle and it has proven that you have been blessed with the wisdom to know right even without receiving signs of his will. I have been called, you are fated to be his champion and I cannot abandon you when I might instead serve as your shield. The emperor has showed you your importance and it is my task to safeguard you from all the evils that will rise against you hoping to foil you in your great works.”

“You can’t be serious right now…”

Briand just smiled at him reassuringly, she actually looked like a normal sane young woman when she did it too. Then she began removing her armor insisting he had won it and she was a proud servant of the emperor who need not accept charity from any man. She would win it back or she would endure without. It only took the increasingly frazzled feeling guardsman ten minutes to convince the woman to put on at least a mix and match uniform containing bits and pieces of uniform from several different regiments. That was when the Canoness arrived at the platoon’s position.

File: 1414083482645.gif (177KB, 400x450px) Image search: [Google]

177KB, 400x450px

>>49957837
While I think it is technically incest you can be sure the big E got rid of any dangerous recessives when he was making them all primarchy so they can shag like bunnies without a care in the world.

also I salute you my brother in long posting!

>"Oh look at me I proofread things so my posts aren't saturated with typos and grammatical mistakes"
That's you salty

>>49892739
"You would have my life?" The man sat upon the asked of his assailants.

The man on the throne was garbed in resplendent armor. Thick, heavy plate cascaded from the man's shoulders to his feet. Rises and folds in the armor designed lent an otherworldly appearance. As if the man or the armor was forged by hands, not from this world. Heated in conflicts beyond comprehension, shaped by titanic forces, and cooled with the passing of innumerable ages. Even the sudden appearance of blood stains upon what was once the purest of silks led to an even more imposing figure. One that spoke of power.

A figure belonging to a king.

"No. I would have my throne." Spoke the leader at the head of his assailants. Most wouldn't dare to speak in such candor before the enthroned man. Most would kneel, and prostrate them to the point of starvation in hopes of mercy. Most would not stand with their backs ramrod straight, clothed head to toe in dirty commoner clothing, conviction burning in their eyes, and hand upon the hilt of a simple longsword.

Most people certainly were not Prince Nemrin II, the Prince of Rags. Firstborn of King Nemrin, first of his name, King of Anar, Louin, and Ghen.

But this man wasn't King Nemrin. Not truly anyway. Indeed he had the King's handsome features. High cheekbones, a chiseled jaw rivaling that of the many statues adorning the hall, onyx black hair covered by the Crown Thrice-King Crown, and an immaculately trimmed beard. But his eyes. They were not Nemrin's. In them burned a disease, a hatred, an evil. Was it fostered by outside sources?

The Prince could not but help think as he recalled the many nights his father would read him stories of the many myths of their kingdoms, the days and afternoons they would practice without end in the courtyard, the day they rode through the kingdoms as a simple farmer and his son. The light that never seemed to dim as he smiled at him.

A light replaced by something else entirely.

(I got too invested)

>>49962285
"You have much to learn, boy." The prince winces as the man sitting upon spits out at him. No. He would not acknowledge that creature as his father, nor his king. To do so would insult his father. The creature rises.

"To a king, their throne is their life." It takes a heavy step down as the prince's companions take a step back. The prince would not falter. Not now. Never again. "To take a King's throne is to take their life." The creature draws it's sword. "Are you prepared to take that step, boy." The final word drips with venom, with the heavy ichor known as contempt.

A king's throne is their life. No. A king's throne was a responsibility. To the people who would kneel and swear allegiance. To the men and women who would die defending the one upon it. To the child who would stand at its side while a father speaks.

The Prince of Rags draws his blade. Compared to the blade of the king it is an incredibly modest affair. The King's blade decorated in runes and engravings as old as the kingdoms themselves and even then older. If the stories ringed true it was a gift from the gods to their champions, if others are true then it was found planted deep into the earth where the first crown was crafted, or it as simply pillaged from a ruin as the bard are oft to sing. His blade was forged by a simple Blacksmith and paid for with the work of several weeks.

The creature smiled at an unspoken joke as ethereal energies floated around its hands. The Prince's companions now stood at the entrance of the hall. He would not blame them. In fact, their distance was a relief and he spoke a silent thanks to them as the creature called upon it's power.

"Ha! Then come then, my child." The Creature grinned in anticipation of the battle to come.

>>49962319
The Prince could hold himself no more. A rage simmered in his heart since he stepped into the castle. Growing hotter and brighter with each desecrated room, tortured subject, and defiled memory he passed. His own arcane energies were summoned. A brilliant, warm gold to contrast his filthy clothes and the dark, cold blue of the creature's.

The Prince threw himself at the creature shouting his torment, and throwing pain, anger, and love into a viscous slice aimed directed at the creature's neck. His arcane energy sharpening his blade and reflexes such that all that could be seen was a flash of gold and the keening sound of metal slicing through the air.

A strike of blue.

A thud.

A crash.

The Prince is sent flying while the creature lowered its armored boot. Laughing all the while. The prince jump to his feet and in another flash of Gold he was returned to the creature's forefront. The prince rained blows with such intensity that a shockwave of magical power emanated from every meeting of blade upon blade. The creature's blue simply moved to counter and deflect the gold. Where the prince's movements were wild and vicious his was calculated and cold. Was it not befitting of a king to show the least amount of effort to his lessers?

>>49962350
Light brilliantly played against each other in a twisted dance. Gold shone like the sun and crashed like lightning on the shores of blue. To the men and women watching this bout, it would appear as if God's had returned to them. If not the demi-god's of myths they thought stories. There were no forms only their magical light, the sound and heat of powerful magics crashing upon each other, and the furious shouts of a suffering soul.

What seemed like an age was mere moments to the two locked in moral combat. The prince would lead with a low thrust. The King would leap above it only to have a spear of pure golden light thrown it him. With a simple gesture a shield woven of blue sigils formed in front of him, completely negating the spear as tendrils of the darkest cerulean shot forth.

The prince became a dervish of light as he severed each and every profane tendril only to receive a downwards slash that sent him skidding across the stone covered in dried blood. Bones ached and creak as he fought against a monstrous strength. The Prince would whisper an incantation and go;den replica's of himself would burst free to engage the creature.

While the creature laughed and dueled with the doppelgangers the Prince would recover for another attack. The creature shifted like an apparition between each doppelganger. Fighting them as if he were two men himself. He would parry a slash from his right and instantly be prepared to deliver a thrust to his left. When arcs of arcane energy were shot from the end of the left doppelganger's blade the creature would jump into the air as he just finished striking the other doppelganger with the pommel of his blade. The stunned Doppelganger exploded into furious light while the other had it's head lopped from his shoulder's with a simple spinning motion.

"Is that all, Boy?" The creature asked in disappointment. One that faded to fear as it laid eyes upon the Prince.

>>49962361
His blade was held in two hands pointed at the creature vertical to the ground, one leg in front of the other, mouth reciting the words to an incantation that were barely remembered by him. Should he miss a single syllable, a single word then all would be lost as he was left completely open.

The creature roared in frustrating, desperation, and fear. It began to spout words that dug deep into the minds of all present. Words that no mortal mouth had any right to speak. A cold gust of wind rose as each combatant stood before each other speaking ancient and forgotten words in hopes of overcoming a new obstacle.

With a final word golden light exploded into existence and clad the Prince head to toe. The light formed a spectral armor before disappearing into the tip of his blade. Darkness coated he Creature's form. Two orbs of baleful blue peering at his foes.

Each leaped at each other commanding primal energies.

They clashed and once more a shockwave of color exploded violently. The castle shook from it's foundations to its apex as magic thought long sealed from this world returned in a thunderous display of power.

The creature stood fast. It's form holding against the point of gold as it had before his incantation. It almost dared to smile before it felt a slight shift. To the spectators of the battle, it would appear as if the creature was simply impaled by a point of brilliant gold. To the creature, it would feel as if its nerves were set alight. A fire would burn through the creature's body, twisting it's limbs as it fought to be free from the pain within. A violent shriek would be torn from its lips as the fire danced inside of it, seeking to burn all that made it whole.

When the creature's eardrum shattering shriek was reduced to a mere whisper and its spasms finally ended a lifeless body crashed to the floor.
The prince would limp towards the body and examine it.

"Sleep well... Father." He wished as the light finally faded from the body.

FIN

I got way too invested in that and wrote in a style I've never done before. Tell me how shit I am and my fault for the trip

>>49962434
Its not great, but not bad either. You're too wordy, taking too much time to describe the details yet fucking up the flow. I would focus on the small details as the scene unfolds, and let the reader fill in gaps. You are not writing a book. You are writing a short story. Learn to simplify.

>>49962434
>>49962285
I assume you mean this King versus Prince write up, since you didn't reply in your post?

It was good, though certain things stood out like a sore thumb.

First and foremost I was constantly confused as to whether this was a neutral narrative (i.e. spoken from a 'third' party as it were) or a narrative driven by the prince and is thoughts primarily, as indicated by comments such as "Was it fostered by outside sources?". I kept going back and forth thinking it was a narrative, then no, a story from the perspective of the prince, but then... Very disconcerting.

Furthering the meta, while I don't think prose in the present tense is illegal, it was also confusing to read some words as past tense in action form, then further on words as present tense being acted out.

>The man sat upon (the throne?) *asked* of his assailants.
>The prince *winces* as the man sitting upon (the throne?) spits out at him.
Just to give an example where present and past tense appear to be conflicting. By the way, people don't spit out at things. They just spit at things.

Other than the meta, I can really only point out awkward phrases and bad wording. It really wasn't too bad.
>... and prostrate them to...
should be
>... and prostrate themselves to...

Certain places get carried away with repetition. "the Crown Thrice-King Crown", "Prince Nemrin II, the Prince of Rags."

'it's' where there should be 'its'', and vice versa. Runes and engravings that are apparently both as old as the kingdoms themselves, and older at the same time. Not simply older than.

cont

>>49963187
conting

In essence, I am disappointed with your habit of indicating that a significant even occurred, but only describing the aftermath.
>A crash.
>
>The Prince is sent flying while the creature lowered its' armored boot.
Something clearly happened, but for all we know the possessed King very well may have lifted his leg up to do a bloody ballet movement, then lowered it in the aftermath while the prince tripped over and crashed his head into the ground, never actually getting anywhere near his opponent.

Having an entire line break devoted to "A crash." is also remarkably lazy and doesn't quite denote much of anything. Try to avoid this, add more detail and ask yourself questions like 'What is crashing?', because the reader wants to know as well.

Several places where the word 'gold' is both capitalized and not capitalized. Are you signifying the 'gold' as an important title of the princes' power, or just describing the colour? Make up your mind. Same goes with "Boy" and "Prince".

Last but not least, because it's an itch I can't resist scratching. What's up with the weird escalation? So much time and descriptive writing used to set out these two men who are armed and armored, only to tell us how they fight more with raw manifested energy than actual blades, all the while making it very clear that the possessed king over matches the kid in every single way... until the kid pulls out his royal flush that he should he opened with instead of risking it mid-combat, and it's a clear victory anyway. I liked the interesting twist, but not the escalation and the way you handled it.

Keep writing! tripfags need not apply.

>>49962367
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T32wHN98yjg

"SHIT SHIT SHIT! WHY DID I HAVE TO BUMP INTO A MONSTERGIRL??? I JUST WANTED SOME TAIL." A frightened man questioned himself while running frantically. The man in question was strolling out on the night time streets to try his luck on finding a willing whore who'd come home with him, it was both a "yes and no", type of answer.

While the man did find a pretty looking woman with long hair and a good smelling scent and was willing to come home with him for free apparently. But then it turned out the "prostitute" was no human woman, but one of those Monster Girls the moment her hair started moving towards, a "Keijourou" specifically.

And now he was running away for his life, he heard the stories of those monster girls violating, abusing and raping men, and the young Craven Man also feared he might even end up getting killed at the process.

"Come back deary, I thought wanted have some fun!"

The Keijourou was chasing him and he could she was catching up.

"HELP!!! SOMEONE HELP ME! SOMEONE CALL THE COPS!" The Craven Man tried screaming for help to anyone who could hear him. But as he ran and ran, no one, not a single soul around the neighborhood heeded his cries for help. It was as if no one dared try to intervene at the chase, perhaps people around could hear his cries but knew the man was being chased by a Monster Girl and dare not get in her way. Or perhaps no one really was around but the Craven Man and the Monster Girl.

The Craven Man made another turn for an alleyway, big mistake as it was a dead end and saw a chain-link fence which he considered to climb only to see razor wire above it. He saw one person sipping a drink on a terrace of an apartment building above.

"Hey you! HELP ME I'M BEING CHASED-"
"Aha, caught you in a corner cutie boy~"

The person on the terrace looked down to see the Craven Man cornered by the Keijourou but went back inside the apartment that person was not going to interfere.

>>49963590
>BGM from >>49963590 continues

Just when the Craven Man thought someone would help him out, he was wrong as it was possible that person did not want to fear out of the fear of facing the wrath of a Monster Girl.

"PLEASE GO AWAY, STAY AWAY, I DON'T WANA DIE! I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING JUST SO YOU CAN LEAVE ME ALONE!!!"

"Aww what's the matter cutie boy? Don't you find me pretty? I thought you wanted to have some fun?"

The Keijourou began walking slowly towards the Craven Man. "is there something wrong?" She asked in a playfully pained voice.

"YOU'LL KILL ME! YOU'LL RAPE ME, YOU'LL DEVOUR ME! I DON'T WANA DIE JUST YET, I GOT SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR! PLEASE I DON'T-"

The Craven Man suddenly noticed something grab his leg and it was soft and silky. It was the Keijourou's hair.

The Keijourou smiled as she extend her hair tendrils to reach the man as the other strands that was holding his leg now held his other to keep him in place.

"NO! NO NO NO NO NO!!! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP!!!" The Keijourou's hair continued to wrap around his body as the the Keijourou herself was now personally infront of him.

The man tried to grab an adjacent metal pipe as a weapon to swing at her. "Uh-uh-uh-UH. Naughty boy, don't you know its rude to hit girls?"

The Keijourou's hair no bounded the Craven Man's arms and he was now held still be her menacingly soft and silky hair. The man now prepared for the worst as to what she was going to do and how'd she "devour him". But what she did shocked him next.

She held his face up to face her's, wiped away his tears, smiled and then. She kissed him.

The Craven Man tried to struggle free but it was no use yet slowly but surely, for some reason the kissing felt so good and his struggling died down as he now let her take him. It just felt so good.

>>49904968
Pigs, mushrooms, anything else that we can think of that can survive on those things and an underground, defensible, lockable space.

And guns. Lots of guns and cold weather gear of the kind that they use in the arctic.

We can scavenge supplies when the rest of the planet starts dying off en masse and use the frozen, preserved wood (once we dry it of course) to keep ourselves warm, provided we have some way to cycle the air. If the sun suddenly disappeared, that's completely fucking impossible and my next response is "Fuck it. Aliens will hopefully be coming to rescue us as a biological oddity" because what the fuck, man. Something else has to be going on.

>>49963713
After about fifteen minutes of her kissing her prey in a passionate make out, she pulled her lips back and the Craven Man no longer felt so scared and just looked at her. She really is good looking, then again she was a Monster Girl and that's how and why many human men fell for such beings and became a Monster Girl's husband, their beauty pretty much exceeded far than that of a regular human woman.

"Now young man, tell me why were you sooooo scared?" The Keijourou asked in an almost motherly manner. "Because I'd 'violate' you? Now now, I know there're monster girls out there who could be a bit rough in finding a man, but that's still just so brash and crass. Not every Monster Girl; such as myself, is like that. Also who told you or where did you hear that silly notion where Monster Girls 'eat and devour' human males?"

The Young Man answered back nervously. "The-the police, the military a- and government officials... I- I guess... I guess its not at all true so much? ...I'm sorry if I thought you were really THAT monstrous... I guess... You're OK..."

"Awwwww there, there. Its OK, everyone thinks Monster Girls are just like those ACTUAL monsters that kill and eat people. But in time I think both our species can get along. Now why not you and I get to know each other better, okay?"

The Keijourou now released the Young Man from her hairy grip, but some of her long hair-tendrils still held to his lower body and his left arm.

"By the way, my name is Amelia, and you young and cute mister. What's your's?"

The Young Man looked back up the Keijourou, he was a young adult man who towered over juvenile teens, but she was taller than him. She practically towered over him, he then answered back wearily.

"...Timothy. My name is Timothy Danvers, age 21. I work as a waiter in a restaurant."

"Nice to meet you Timothy, sorry if I scared you, but lets get to know each other better. Also whats the time right now?"

>>49963820
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTCYm0h95kQ

Timothy put his right hand on his pocket to check the time on his cellphone.

"It's seven-thirty o' clock."

"Oh wow! The night's still so young! So Timothy, how about we head back to your place? Do you live with your parents?"

"Wuh? No, I live by myself. I live in a decent apartment unit... Why?"

Amelia the Keijourou playfully answered back.

"Well the night's still so young I say. AND you wanted to 'catch some tail', right?" That flustered Tim. "So why not we get to know each other better, AND head back to your place and have some fun?"

Timothy thought about it: being in a relationship with a non-human, a Monster Girl. Would his parents approve of it? Would his friends and co-workers still accept him, he was living in a county state where the presence of Monster Girls is tolerated so long as they obeyed the law. He made his decision.

"Okay... Yeah I do feel lonely living alone sometimes. Yeah, lets head home."

"Okay Timmy my dear. Lead the way."

Timothy and Amelia then walked to his apartment, she wrapped her arm around his waist as strands of her hair-tendrils still held to his body and left arm. Timothy then held Amelia's hand firmly and she to held firmly in turn.

Tonight was quite a night for the young man, at the very least. He's got someone to be with him, and he felt quite good having her have a hold on him.

>Finishy Endy

>>49959731
the great wizard malroy was not having the best of days.
it all started with him misplacing his alembic. a fairly simple thing for a wizard of his caliber to fabricate via magic but this was was given to him when he was an apprentice and the sentimental value of it would not let him rest until he'd found it.
so after a basic scry turned up gobbldygook thanks to his protective enchantments he rolled up his impressive sleeves and started looking the old fashioned way.
several houses of rooting through cabinets, drawers, and extrademitional rooms filled with more of the same he was about to give up for the day, he had other things to do and the storefront would open soon, it wouldn't do for his customers to see the home of the great wizard Malory in a state of such dissarray.
"bad for business." he muttered to himself, lamenting in all his years he'd never created a spell to hasten such organizational tasks. he sighed and got to work cleaning the storefront, the back rooms could wait until later.
as he gathered up a stack of unbound papers and scrolls something fell from it. instinctively he moved his foot to at least cushion its fall before it hit the floor. whatever it was rolled under his desk, prompting another weary sigh as he stowed the papers unceremoniously. he leaned under the desk to see what it was, beckoning it with a spell. it rolled to his hand and he scooped it up only to recoil in pain as the black spear instantly melted and began to flow up his arm. he mastering his will he tried to disenchant the black goo to no avail. the pain became to great to focus at it reached his liver spotted chest. he collapsed in the middle of his study screaming in agony. as the goo covered the last of him the pain stopped suddenly as it had started. he pushed him self up and saw to his horror that the black good sloughed off him, leaving only gleaming clean white bones. none the less he stood and examined himself in the mirror.

>>49964141
he was somehow able to gasp despite a complete lack of flesh. well not complete, he noted looking into his own lidless eyes. oh this would not do, this would not do at all. he glared at the black sludge on the floor that had once been his flesh accusatorilly, or at least tried. with a weary sigh and rattling of bone he gestured at the carpet, causing it to roll up and scoot itself off to the side. he'd deal with that later, he needed his hat. yes the hat that could make him look like anyone he chose. yes a nice quick fix and a day of work to clear his head before he tacked the issue of his missing flesh. he walked over to the door beside which rested a chest full of useful things he might one day need to grab on his way out the door. to his surprise he saw movement through the window and immediately flattened himself against the wall. he scooted close and whispered a scrying spell to see outside and it worked as intended, letting him see and hear the two local boys outside.
"i ain't lieing! i saw it, i really did." said the one dressed in blue.
his companion pressed his face to the glass and shielded his eyes from the sun. "a skeleton just walking around all by itself?" he said scornfully.
"i did! it was just strollin towards the door lookin down."
"don't be dumb, everyone knows old Malroy don't dabble with the dead." the boy in red said, the handle rattling. "not locked, sigh says open."
"don't do it! i got a really bad feeling about this!" the boy in blue said, tugging at his friends arm.
the boy in red shrugged him off. "then stay out here, if i don't get my old mans gout cure he'll tan my hide." he said as the door handle turned. Malroy dropped the spell and tried not to let his old bones clatter to much as the handle turned and the door opened, ringing the little chime above and triggering a mental alarm spell.
yes, this was turning into a very lousy day indeed.

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>>49964141
>>49964243
go ahead, rip me apart.
i need constructive criticism if i'm ever going to get better.

Wana make things clear first. I'm the author of previous stories; the White Scarf: https://1d4chan.org/images/5/5b/TheWhiteScarf.png

~and the Richardson-Aemaris Family in previous thread: >>49694083

And I wrote the following for this week's storythread:
>>49963590
>>49963713
>>49963820
>>49963890

Just wanted to inform lang as I've now figured a namefag name for myself and anyone can now recognize moi.

So any thoughts and feedback for the story I wrote for this week or even my previous ones?

>antagonist is a 3000 year old demon that made the legends of succubae
>Became immortal when she made Solomon succumb to idolatry
>Has persisted throughout history driving various leaders to their downfalls
>Notably, gave Hitler Syphilis during the blitzkrieg and caused the holocaust
>Fast forward to the cyberpunk future
>Infiltrates the upper echelons of "American" politics
>Is trying to destroy the country again
>Along the way she has a daughter
>The idea was to use the daughter to occupy anyone that might stop the machinations
>Plan backfires horribly
>Turns out the only guy able to stop her wouldn't have even noticed if not for the daughter
>MC ends up with a cute cambion girl

I think /tg/ has corrupted me. Because part of me knows that there's really nothing wrong with this story (giving me the benefit of the doubt that the full thing works better than a greentext simplification). But the part of me that is on /tg/ every day says "Oh my god you can't just write about your magical realm like that man!"

Here's the story I wanted to post last week.

The Mannerheimschoss was one of the newest castles made since the time of the three emperors. Despite an unbroken succession of emperors, sometimes small battles and skirmishes would break out between Reikland and it's less urbane neighbors. Sometimes it would be more zealous Middenlander mobs trying to 'purge sigmarite heresy' or uncommonly bold bands of pirates that plied on the river Reik. At those times the castle would be a welcome shelter for the farmers and herders who were tenants of the Von Mannerheim family. As a result, despite it's small size the castle was well fortified and kept modern and well stocked with blackpowder weaponry, both great and small. As a result, the castle had a reputation of being impregnable, local tavern patrons joking that it would take an army of demons of take the well supplied and equipped castle.

Despite the military sophistication of their castle, the Mannerheims were not a particularly militant family. They had come into prominence after the coronation of Emperor Magnus the Pious and the restoration of Altdorf. End of wars led to times of peace and prosperity, and the Mannerheims had prospered indeed. In the two centuries of stability the empire witnessed they loaned, schemed and eventually married into a impoverished noble house, thus ascending and making their blood just that bit bluer. Eventually, through three centuries of having their own seat of power, they became accepted into the noble society of Altdorf around the time Luitpold became emperor.

>>49968705

Early one morning, before the sun rose and mannsleib was visible in fact, a very early farmhand or a very late drunk might have seen a carriage much leave the castle. A very attentive farmhand or a very sober drunk might have also noticed that the person driving the carriage was not a page in livery, but rather a wild eyed youth who looked just like the young Wilhelm von Mannerheim. The youth was the heir to the Mannerheimschloss and by all accounts a average noble youth, happy to serve in the pistolkorps but not too keen on driving carriages. Furthermore, the carriage windows were all shut which would entertain those of a suspicious nature.

The occupantants of the carriage were Lord Valter von Mannerheim, his wife Lady Marie Mannerheim, and their daughter Wilhelmina von Mannerheim, who was crying and holding a squealing baby. She was betrothed to a certain Von Glatzhoff, and much to their horror, Lord Valter had found that Wilhelmina was with child. Their attempts to terminate her pregnancy had failed and so they had come up with the next best alternative. They would abandon the child with a small purse of coin. If Shallya was merciful the people who picked up the boy would take care of him.

Valter stared darkly at his daughter. It was her duty to make sure that she wasn't compromised before she was married and the slattern had done that. Too impulsive by half like her twin brother. Only she at least had the good sense of keeping her philandering less known. Valter had spent an inordinate amount of coin to make sure that her daughter's pregnancy was unknown. Now the time had come to end this sorry tale. Marie was holding a basket that was covered with felt and would be doubtless a more comfortable bed that the little bastard deserved. Hopefully the basket capsized and he could be rid of this trouble, but the gods were seldom that merciful to men of his stature.

>>49968715
His eyes shifted from the puffy eyes of his daughter and to those of the bastard. Their faces looked the same. A shock of black hair and dark eyes just like the Von Mannerheim portraits in their great hall. He looked a bit like Wilhelm and for an instant Valter felt a pang of regret about what he was to do. Then he quickly smothered it. Being a noble left little time for mercy of any sorts, and certainly not to bastards who had the temerity to look like their noble forebears. No, it was better the little bundle of trouble went far away upstream and drowned far away from sight.

The sun had begun to rise when the carriage stopped. Wilhelm opened the door and the little party stepped out and walked briskly to the riverbank. No one spoke a word. No matter how necessary it was to preserve the honour of the Von Mannerheim name, what they were doing was still not worth talking over. Wilhelm walked a little behind them all, making sure they were not being followed. The only sound apart from birds and the wind was Wilhelmina cooing softly to her baby as she held it tight. Marie held the basket and Valter von Mannerheim held his cane and a loaded pistol. Secrecy was of the utmost importance. If some poor shepherd or farmer got in their way, the fool would die.

After a few minutes, the party reached the riverbank. The sun was rapidly rising and the color of the sky had changed from a dull orange to a bright blue. It was a cheerful day to be outside, completely at odds with the task the Von Mannerheims were set about. To her credit Wilhelmina didn't falter when the time came to set the baby adrift. She kept her composure as Marie held the basket and lowered the baby into it. The baby said something in its gurgling way and began to clap excitedly as the makeshift boat was lowered into the water. Doubtless, the little boy thought it was just a game that his mother was playing with him.

It was only when the basket began to drift away that Wilhelmina lost her composure. She began to cry slowly and silently initially, and her voice broke into heart-rending sobs as the basket disappeared around a bend in the river. Marie held her daughter close and gripped her in a bone gripping hug for a few minutes. A cough broke them out of their reverie. Wilhelm, ever the focused man, was aware that the sun was high in the sky and they needed to be back at the Mannerheimschloss soon.

After a few more minutes, the family returned to the carriage and set off for their seat, without an inconvenient and scandalous baggage and with a heartbroken bride-to-be.

The basket kept floating down the Reik for most of the day, with only the baby's cries to keep it company. While the river did rock the boy intermittently to sleep, it was not without it's dangers. The river would wind it's way through the eaves of the Drakwald and the Reikswald, where wild animals and other, more obscene horrors lay in wait. As the day begin to die down, the baby woke up with a cry. It was past it's feeding time and it needed it's mother to feed it. She had always come running when he had cried and so he did. Tired and hungry, eventually the baby fell asleep as the sun drew to a close.

If the Baby had been awake it would have seen a great mass of light in the distance, much bigger than it had seen in it's short life. As it was, he was asleep when his basket got caught in the shallows of the riverbank. The next thing he did was wake up with a scream, calling to his mother because he was hungry. He found a hand giving him something to suckle on and he drank greedily and after a few moments gave a little burp and fell asleep. The last thing the baby remembered was the clatter of hooves on cobblestone and a sense of immense speed as he, finally satisfied by his late meal, returned to his dreams enjoying the rocking motion as he fell asleep.

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So, uh, Czechfag here. Translated one of my older ones.

>The Hunt
The sun looms over the city like an commemorative dish on the wall of an old, rustic kitchen. The streets are scorched by the sunshine, bone-dry paving in the streets crackle beneath the shoes like dried grass. Every now and then, exotic flightless birds carefully tread through the back alleys, tilt their heads to the side and watch the pedestrians or pick seeds from between the cobblestones. An emu has stopped the traffic on the main street when he took a nest between the crossed tram rails. It’s noon of a hot summer day and the shadows of the city have scattered to all sides, cowardly hide their faces from the sun, cover in archways and beneath the bonnets of the cars, praying for the Summer to come to an end. The students grew lazy in the haze and now they all sleepily bask in the warmth on benches in the library courtyard, raising cold glasses of beer in toasts to the summer. Their voices are hushed and quiet, when they disinterestedly talk about exams and life, smoke, or hold each other around the shoulders.
I keep to the shadows though, like a ghost I slip from doorway to doorway, from corner to corner. Because I know: You are on the prowl through the city like a lioness. My guts swirl with fear when I think of leaving my room in the mornings, and I look four times in all four cardinal direction before I cross the street. And even then, I feel naked when I make my way hastily through the open street. Your smile - like a hunters knife, Your soft voice, like a harpoon, threatening to hook me up and reel me in again.
And so I sit in this pitiful shadowy corner between the library’s backdoor and the bicycle stand, and watch the city slowly succumbing to overgrown yellow grass, turning it’s boulevards and squares into wild savanna. I dread stepping into it’s tall grass, I dread taking refuge in the shadow of the mighty acacia trees.
(1/2)

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>>49968859
Anxiously, I watch the horizon for any traces of You. It has been more than an eternity since I last saw You in the smoke-filled jungle of a tiny student flat, stuffed with human voices and hands, raising their hands in loud New Years toast. Time and smoke wiped out the contours of your face. All the more reason to fear every figure with soft walk, every skirt of the same color as You once used to wear, every brown streak of hair, every glint of familiarity, every reminder of You.
I wish I was not just a prey in this city. Especially because I know - and fear the most:
You have absolutely no interest in hunting me down anymore.

>>49968762
uh, I will continue this later.

>>49963108
Thing about me is I obsess over the small detail;s. I have a tendency to want to paint a picture as specifically as I can.

>>49963187
>>49963234
Yeah. I major problem I have never been able to address is my escalation. I have this thing where I'll just randomly decide to escalate things beyond necessary.

The narration was different for me as I'd usually do it from one person's perspective. I tried to take the voice of an outsider in the case and kinda failed as I kept shifting between outsider and a character's

As for the combat.

I purposely decided to go full anime. pls no bully

Well, it looks like I may be clinically incapable of writing anything shorter than a novella. I don't expect anyone will read this - it isn't particularly action packed - but I liked writing something softer in tone and more character driven. Although it does get more exciting in parts near the end. Anyway, I hope someone enjoys this.


Dawn blossomed in the east. Jayyo felt the gentle warmth of the sun's rays caress the back of his neck, before the growing light subtly but inexorably prised its way between his eyelids. Night, it seemed, was over, but Jayyo was still unwilling to give up on sleep as well. He began to wriggle his way out of his sleeping bag even before he opened his eyes, holding onto those last few moments of half-consciousness for as long as possible. Finally he lay upon the only slightly dewy ground; as the morning chill nipped at him he sat up and, at last, opened his eyes.

The sun looked back it him.

The village around him was starting to wake too, and Jayyo heard the throaty cries of an old cockerel break the morning stillness. The splash of a chamber pot being emptied into the yard, the thud of shutters being flung back, the lowing of a cow as her calf started to suckle. Ordinary sounds; Jayyo imagined the village sounded like this every morning - probably every morning for the last hundred years - but he wasn't really paying attention to them. He was looking at the wind tower, a little collection of poles and rope rising over the village at the top of which fluttered a long flag. Or rather, he wasn't quite looking at it, because it was east of him and the rising sun lay... just above it, now, like a flower on its stem. Sun flower; Jayyo smiled even as he squinted, trying to make out the top of the tower. Was the wind blowing from the south, or the north?

South. Jayyo grinned.

>>49975908

Blinking away the blotches in front of his vision, Jayyo jumped up. Around him lay four other sleeping shapes; he looked down at them, and carefully put the tip of thumb and forefinger in his mouth - then he paused. After a second, his eyes had fully adjusted to the daylight and he could properly see the sleepers around him. Then he whistled, shrill and loud with the aid of his fingers, and held it for as long as he could before he dissolved into laughter. The sleeping bags were now wriggling like a group of caterpillars on a hot tin plate.

'Hey, wakey wakey.' Jayyo shouted, laughing. 'In case you hadn't noticed, it's morning. Time to get up.' He gave another whistle, just a short burst.

'Alright, alright Jai, just shut up.' said one of the sleeping bags, grumpily. 'Seriously, stop it. I'd like to get breakfast before we go, and that's not going to happen if we get run out of the village because of your damn racket.'

'The villagers are already up,' said another sleeping bag. 'because they have actual work to do. Still, Jayyo would do better to shut up, if only because I'll punch him if he doesn't.' Threats of violence didn't seem to phase Jayyo, however, because he was still smiling as he said,

'You know, I could just leave without you. I could probably make pretty good time if I didn't have to drag you lot around after me.'

'Ha.' one of the sleeping bags grunted. 'As if you're the one carrying us.' The sleeping bag paused for a moment to yawn, before adding, 'You know, you're always insufferably bouncy, but even you aren't usually this annoying. Why are you so cheerful?' Jayyo replied, simply:

'The wind's changed.'


* * *

>>49975946

An hour later, the sleeping bags had transformed into Hasso, Gunna, Mai-kiyya, and Orco. Hasso, like Jayyo, still looked like he'd need to gain a little weight before his elders would stop calling him 'boy'; and like Jayyo he also kept himself clean-shaven his brown hair close cropped. Orco was taller and heavier, wore his black hair slightly longer and sported a neatly trimmed beard. Strangers always said they were surprised that the three young men were the same age, for Orco could pass for ten years older than he was, while Jayyo and Hasso barely looked their age. The similarity between Jayyo and Hasso ended there, though, for Jayyo had high cheekbones and a sharp jawline which might make him look severe if he weren't constantly smiling, whereas Hasso's face was round and naturally benign, even though he generally wore a serious look on his face.

On the other hand the two girls, Gunna and Mai-kiyya, could almost pass for sisters, with their matching corn-blonde hair; both petite with delicate features. Gunna spoke softly and was as sweet as she looked, while Mai-kiyya had a more acerbic wit, although she was never cruel.

Breakfasted and packed, they said their goodbyes to the villagers. The five youths had been stuck in the village just long enough to get to know most people well enough that they had to say goodbye to practically everyone, though not so long that the parting was particularly sorrowful.

The road out of the village stretched before them between the corn-fields, smooth and white as marble in the early morning sun. Each of the young travellers waved back at the villagers one last time as they climbed the steps to the road, but when they were finally on it and walking, they didn't look back again, glad to be back on their way.

>>49975963

The petals beneath their feet were as unyielding as rock, though softer, and they made good time through most of the morning. Their boots were quickly clogged with pollen of course, but the soles were chemically treated to prevent clumping and it was hardly much of a price to pay for such an easy-going road. The companions had already walked stretches of dirt road where the flowers wouldn't grow - after leaving behind the more urbanised roads of the central Commonwealth where cobbles and brick could carry carts and the new traction engines. They were more than happy to trade stones and potholes for smooth petals along with a bit of pollen.

And after all, wasn't it the entire point? The Yalli flower wanted to be walked on, because as people - or animals - walked across the petals they inevitably brushed against the little clusters of stamens in the centre, picking up pollen and carrying it on to the next flower and all the others after it.

Laden down with their packs, they crawled along like so many snails as the sun rose ever higher. Marching across the soft but steady petals, each one the length of an arm and two hands in width. Each flower, though, interlocked its petals with it's neighbour for support, so that you could scarcely tell where one ended and another began; they formed a surface flatter than the finest cobbled road. Only the yellow circle in the centre of each flower made them distinguishable as separate organisms rather than one vast structure.

Noon came, and the five sweltering travellers decided to stop for lunch at the next stile they came to. The road only came up to waist height, low enough to jump down from but still a bother to get back onto without the stiles that were spaced every half-mile. They were lucky they were still on managed roads, for in the wild the Yalli flower more commonly grew to chest height or higher.

>>49975980

'Do we have a blanket?' asked Hasso. The road was still bordered by the wheat fields. In the summer the road would be a white ribbon in an endless sea of gold, but the year was young and the crop had barely sprouted; they laid a blanket atop the sprouting shoots by the edge of the road and settled down for cheese and bread.

'So.' said Jayyo, munching thoughtfully. 'How long do you think before we reach the mountains?'

'Four days.' replied Hasso. 'Maybe five. There are at least two more villages along the way before we officially leave civilisation.'

'Civilisation?' exclaimed Mai-kiyya. 'As far as I'm concerned we left civilisation behind when we passed the last public bath-house. A barn and a bucket of river water do not constitute my idea of civilisation.' She gave an exaggerated shudder.

'I don't know. I kinda liked Parruun.' said Orco pleasantly, referring to the village they had just left. 'Country living isn't so bad. Clean air, fresh food, and you don't have to watch your step and watch your pocket like you do in the city.'

'More time to watch the milk-maids, eh Orco.' Jayyo grinned.

'No idea what you're talking about my friend.' said Orco, rolling his eyes. Gunna giggled.

'We all saw you sitting over by the Jofi family's barn every day.' she said.

'Man's got to sit somewhere. Not like there was much to be doing.'

'Iffi was watching you back, you know.' continued Gunna. 'In fact, I talked with her once or twice and ... but you're not interested so there's no point in me continuing.' she giggled again. Orco opened his mouth, but then seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say, and instead said to Gunna:

'Since when did you take an interest in my love life?'

>>49975995

'She's a scientist like the rest of us.' said Jayyo. 'She takes an interest in rare and extraordinary things - and a girl who's interested in you, Orco, definitely qualifies as that. Bet you're wishing we'd stayed there a little longer, eh? You never know: with an extra week or two you might have been able to progress from staring at her to actually talking to her.' Orco ignored him with patient dignity, and concentrated on his cheese and pickle sandwich.

'Eh, don't even joke about that.' said Hasso. 'We wasted enough time in Parruun as it was. Two whole weeks - we'd should have been over the mountains and onto the plains at this point. Think of all the data we could have collected by now. I was about ready to suggest we stop waiting on the weather and just go.' Mai-Kiyya scowled at this.

'Don't be stupid, Hasso. You don't take chances with the mountains.' she said sharply. She tossed her golden-blonde hair back and looked intently at Hasso.

'I know, I know, I was just saying...'

'You don't know.' Mai-Kiyya cut him off. 'That's the whole point. You asked me to come along because none of you have ever been this far east and I have. People die in those mountains, Hasso. I, personally, have know people who died in those mountains. You don't travel in them while the winds are still blowing down from the north, and even when the storm season has passed you don't travel in them without being prepared. You don't take chances with them. I want to be certain we all understand that, because otherwise I'm not taking you guys up there.'

After some muted assent, the group was silent for a few moments. Mai-Kiyya had a habit of killing a conversation dead; either she said something so outrageous everybody's jaws dropped (or were left trying to stifle laughter), or she got really, really serious. No one disagreed with her, though - she was completely right, she was the only one with experience of travelling through the mountains.

>>49976017

It was Jayyo, as usual completely undaunted by other people's seriousness, who bridged the awkward lacuna in the conversation:

'You know Kiki, I never asked you: why did you agree to come along? You don't seem too fond of the highlands, and there's nothing much up there for an engineer to study.' Jayyo said, and then he added 'Ow!' because Mai-Kiyya had reached over and flicked his ear.

'Told you not to call me Kiki.' she said. 'But if you want to know, it's simple: I never got to see the plains. The Academy only ever contracted my parents to study the geology of the mountains. I always wanted to see the Yalli fields, but my parents never left the high passes in fifteen goddamn years of dragging me around with them. So, when Hasso begged me to come along and stop you all from freezing to death or falling off a ledge or whatever, I thought I'd take the opportunity.' She shrugged. 'I may yet regret it, but what the hell. How about you, Jai? Are you just surgically attached to Hasso, or do you have your own reasons for coming along?'

'Well, if anyone asks - especially my parents, should you ever happen to meet them - I'm like Hasso: an obsessive careerist who would do practically anything for alpha-first grade from his professors.' This time it was Hasso's turn to take a swipe at Jayyo, but Jayyo dodged, laughing. 'Too slow. Maybe get Mai-Kiyya to give you lessons. Anyway, if you want the truth...' he paused, and shrugged. 'I'm doing it for the adventure.'

>>49976038

'I guess I am too.' Gunna spoke up. 'I mean, the Yalli is very interesting for a botanist, obviously, but I could study it in a lab. That's just it though - everyone thinks I'm the sort of person who's better off in the lab, not in the field. Quiet little Gunna. I don't want to graduate and find I've been typecast in the role of lab researcher, processing specimens collected by /real/ scientists. I know this sounds a bit cliche, but I want to get out and see the world.' She looked like she wanted to explain more, but she stopped there, looking slightly embarrassed that she'd said anything.

'Take it from someone who's seen a lot of the world,' said Mai-Kiyya, 'the world isn't always happy to see you.'

'I know, it's silly.'

'It's not silly. Haven't I been telling you for two years that you need to be more assertive? Just... just don't get it into your head that if you're unhappy where you are you can solve it by going somewhere else. When I see what I'm coming to see, I'm going to be very happy to go back to the city - nice, warm bath-houses and all - and the Academy.'

'Just ignore her, Gunna' interjected Orco, coming to Gunna's defence. 'I think you've got the best reason of any of us. Mai-Kiyya just has a chip on her shoulder because her parents made her spend her childhood out in the wilderness. Don't look at me like that - it's hardly a big secret.'

'Alright mister psychoanalysis,' said Mai-kiyya grumpily to Orco. 'what's your deal?'

'Me? I'm just in it for the elephants.'


* * *

Ten days later, the five students were stepping gingerly across wild Yalli flowers. For some reason they took more care and paid more attention to their footing than they had on the roads, perhaps because the flowers grew significantly higher that the cultivated variety; the difference between a child's height and a man's. Falling through could hurt.

>>49976057

The snow capped mountains were at their backs, narrow roads and high cliff walls behind them now, and before them opened up from horizon to horizon the Yalli fields. Perfectly flat, perfectly white, like a desert of coral sands or a frozen lake under a full moon. Mai-Kiyya's first comment on looking down on it from the mountains for the first time had been, simply: 'Wow.'

It was cooler up on the highland plains than it had been back in the wheat fields of the lowlands. The first night they spent sleeping on the Yalli, in their thick sleeping bags, but none of them were exactly comfortable. In the mountains they had kept a fire going through the night, but that obviously wasn't possible on a carpet of plants; without the small oil burner they had brought they wouldn't even be able to cook. So on the second night they agreed to sleep under the petal canopy.

'Easier said than done.' remarked Orco. 'Difficult enough to make a hole in the first place, harder still to get out of it again.'

'We've got plenty of rope.' said Hasso.

'And nowhere to tie it to.' responded Mai-Kiyya. 'Damn. Should have occurred to me earlier. There are no stiles out here. Although... hey, Jai, give me your stick.' Jayyo had found a hefty branch that he'd whittled down into a walking stave to take through the mountains. Mai-Kiyya had declared it completely useless, just extra weight, but he'd held onto it anyway.

Jayyo tossed the stave to Mai-Kiyya and she dug a few climbing pitons out of Orco's pack, thin spikes that could be driven into solid rock. She started hammering them into the wood, gently so as not to split it. It only took her a few minutes. 'There, one improvised stile. Guess your stick did have a use after all, Jai.'

>>49976472

'I'll take that as an apology.' said Jayyo, grinning, 'and in return I'll say that all that junk you made us carry over the mountains - sorry, "climbing equipment" - apparently has a use after all.' Mai-Kiyya rolled her eyes. She'd been getting jibes about how easy going the mountain passes were for a few days now.

'I took you on an easy route, at the best time of year - obviously I'd never have brought you four along a path that required actual survival skills. But things can always go wrong, and if they had you'd be glad of both me and my "junk". Just because you hope you won't need something doesn't mean you don't bring it, just in case.'

'She's right, you know.' said Hasso said to Jayyo. 'I hope I won't need to blame a failed research trip on an incompetent junior researcher, but I brought you along anyway.'

'Mai-Kiyya, could I have my stick back for a moment.' said Jayyo levelly, 'I think I may have thought of another use for it. Especially since it's now all spiky.'

'Give it a rest, would you guys?.' said Orco. 'I'm tired. Let's get on with this, shall we?' He removed a large knife from his hip-holster, lay prone to distribute his weight as much as possible, and started carefully cutting away at the petals.

Orco made a hole just big enough for the largest person in the group - him - to squeeze through. After a brief argument it was decided that Gunna, being the lightest and easiest to pull back up, was the logical choice to go first. The rest were careful to stay away from the edge of the hole - each flower relied on the support of its neighbours; without that the petals were still strong enough to carry a certain amount of weight, but they weren't the immovable floor they were otherwise.

Gunna slipped into the hole, feet first, holding onto Orco's outstretched hand and then dropping down when she was mid-way in. The second or two after she disappeared seemed longer to the four left waiting up top, but then she called out,

>>49976486

'I'm okay. It's not much of a drop and the ground is really soft. Gimme Jayyo's stick.' The makeshift stile was passed down to her. It took a few good thumps for Gunna to wedge it into the ground, but shortly she appeared through the hole again, and stood there waist deep, hands out on the surrounding flowers to steady herself. 'It's a little wobbly on the way up, but it works. Come on down.'

Gunna disappeared through the hole again, and the rest of the party soon joined her. It was quite light under the canopy, even in the closing sun of dusk. Although the Yalli petals looked white from above, from below it was clear that they were much more translucent. In rural villages it was actually not uncommon for them to be used in windows, as a cheap substitute for glass. The veins in the petals were also visible from beneath, and cast an intricate network of shadows into the secluded under-canopy. It was as if the five young men and women had stepped into a different world. Gunna and Mai-Kiyya were able to walk upright, but the three young men had to duck slightly.

Beneath their feet, the soft carpet of the Yalli leaves. Not unlike grass, except slightly softer and more mossy in texture. Here in the wild they were, like the rest of the plant, longer than the cultivated variety, for the cultivated plants only grew in narrow strips winding their way across the countryside of the Commonwealth. This though, was the natural ecology of the Yalli - a vast, completely covering canopy of petals which protected the delicate leaves against the elements and provided an almost greenhouse-like environment. The translucent flowers let in enough light for growth, but insulated well against heat loss; the underside of the canopy was several degrees warmer than the surface.

>>49976510

Carefully, the five students lay out their sleeping bags. The thick stems of the flower grew densely enough that moving around was something of a challenge, especially for Orco, but not so densely that it was impossible to find enough space to lay down.

'Well this is cosy.' said Jayyo. 'Warm, soft underneath. We should have done this last night.'

'Maybe.' said Gunna. She looked - not quite worried, but thoughtful. 'Do you feel any different?' she asked them.

'Well, I feel warmer.' said Hasso.

'No, I mean - take a deep breath.'

'Why?' asked Orco, 'I don't feel...' but Jayyo cut in:

'Wait, I think I see what you mean. There's a slight rush.'

'Is the Yalli giving off some sort of toxin or something?' asked Hasso, worried now.

'No, I don't think it's that.' said Gunna. 'I think it's just oxygen. I've heard a couple of references to "Yalli-head", but I never put two and two together before now. You don't get it down in the lowlands because the flowers don't grow thickly enough - same with heat, it's all lost out the edges of the roads. But up here the petal canopy must trap enough of the plant's byproducts to raise the oxygen levels on the underside. I should have read deeper into the scientific literature on the highlands - not many people come up here, which is why it isn't common knowledge, but it must have been mentioned somewhere.' She sighed, clearly annoyed with herself. 'If only I'd had more time before we left, I could have...'

'Don't worry about it, Gunna.' interrupted Hasso. 'None of the rest of us knew about it either. I didn't, and this was my idea. The point is, is it dangerous?'

>>49976527

'It shouldn't be.' answered Jayyo. Like the rest of the party except Mai-Kiyya, his field was biology, but whereas Hasso and Orco were zoologists and Gunna a botanist, Jayyo's studies dealt more in biochemistry and physiology. This made him, more or less, the group's doctor. He continued: 'High oxygen levels might actually do us some good. I've seen it used as a treatment for a couple of chronic breathing conditions. The only danger is that if we get acclimatised, we'll end up having trouble when we go back up top. But I doubt that'll happen after one night.'

'So can I get some sleep now?' asked Orco.

'Sure, I guess. I know I am.' said Jayyo, sinking down into his sleeping bag.

'There is one more thing to think about.' said Mai--Kiyya, seriously. 'Be very, very careful about lighting any fires.'


* * *


'Finally.' said Orco.

It was the fourth day since they had come down from the mountains. Hasso had spent the last few days perfectly happily collecting samples of insects and the small birds that fed on them, hoping to write a paper on the overlooked ecologies of the highlands. Gunna had been busy measuring and assessing what seemed like every flower she walked over. Mai-Kiyya and Jayyo had occupied themselves with incessant verbal (and occasionally physical) sparring, which irritated everyone around them but which they seemed to enjoy. And Orco had, well, been Orco, walking along quietly or occasionally talking to Gunna about her work. On the evening of the third day, though, Orco had spotted something in the distance that he thought looked like movement, and insisted that the group head for it, walking another hour until it was all but night. This hadn't made him particularly popular, since none of the other four could make out what he was pointing at, but by the time morning came it was obvious what Orco had seen.

>>49976558

The pygmy elephant herd spread across the plain, a hundred strong at least. They had come closer to the party during the night, and once the five excited travellers had woken to find the herd in the near distance it only took them an hour or two to reach it. The herd made no reaction to their approach, even when they were standing just a few meters from the leading edge.

Orco looked at the herd, chest visibly swelling with happiness.

'Ain't that something.' was all he could find to say.

The pygmy elephants were perhaps as tall as a large horse, though bulkier. Apart from their size they looked basically the same as a normal elephant, although the tusks of the males were far stubbier, almost vestigial. The most significant difference, however, was the trunk. Instead of the broad snout, the trunk of the pygmy elephant tapered off to a delicate proboscis. As the elephants walked in their constant lumbering march across the Yalli plains, they dipped their trunks into the centre of each flower they passed over and then brought their trunk to their mouth to sip at the nectar. Though the sugary-sweet liquid was energy dense, each flower provided only a little nourishment. But the vast highland plains contained countless flowers. The pygmy elephants moved only at a slow walking pace, but they moved continuously, and the herds roamed across hundreds of thousands of square miles of territory.

'Okay, this time I think Orco's really in love.' said Jayyo.

'Shhh, Jai.' whispered Gunna. 'How close do you think we can get, Orco?'

'Let's find out.' he said, and began walking - not quickly but without hesitation - towards the herd. Gunna looked for a moment as if she was going to call him back, but as soon as she'd opened her mouth she closed it again.

>>49976596

The pygmy elephants ignored Orco. As he walked in amongst them, they continued placidly harvesting nectar without the slightest concern for their new observer. Gingerly, Orco reached out and placed his hand upon the flank of one of the elephants. It snorted, and turned it's head to look at him, one yellow eye looking curiously at him. But after a few seconds, it went back to its business and moved on. Orco just stood there, entranced.

The other four walked up to the herd now, joining Orco. Orco was tall enough that he could see over the backs of the elephants, as were Jayyo and Hasso if they strained their necks, but Mai-Kiyya and Gunna were smaller, and stayed conspicuously close to the two men as they went among the milling animals. The herd was not particularly densely packed though, and they had no trouble reaching Orco through the gently advancing grazers.

'Well, Orco, is it everything you hoped it would be?' asked Hasso.

'Oh yeah. Definitely worth coming all this way for, I reckon.' said Orco contentedly. 'What do you guys think?'

'Come on, do you even have to ask?' said Jayyo. 'Who doesn't love a pygmy elephant?'

'Yeah, they're cute and all, ' said Mai-Kiyya, 'but do you really think we should be this close? What if they stampede, or something?' She appeared to be trying to use Jayyo as a shield. 'It was pretty reckless of you to just walk up to them like that - for all you knew they could have charged you.'

>>49976618

'They're pygmies. They don't really do charging.' answered Orco. 'Come on, they are part of my specialty, I do know something about them. They aren't as aggressive as the full-sized species of elephant. Their herds are polylineal rather than matriarchal, so the males aren't as competitive, and they don't really have any natural predators up here as far as we know. Besides, there's no reason they'd object to our presence. People just don't come up here all that often - I doubt any of them have ever seen a human before. They have no reason to fear us - do you? He addressed that to a calf, about waist high, who was apparently more curious than the adults and had come up to snuffle around Orco's boots. 'What do you want little guy?' he said, and patted the calf's head.

'He's probably confused.' said Jayyo, laughing. 'After all, you stomp like an elephant, but you only walk on two legs. You must be completely blowing his mind right now.'

'You know, I know you're joking but you might have a point.' said Orco. 'Look at my boots, and look at the legs of the elephants. Notice anything?'

'The pollen.' said Hasso promptly. Each leg of each pygmy elephant, up to the knee, was covered in pollen, even more thickly than the boots of the five students. 'It looks like the hairs on their legs have specifically developed to trap pollen.'

'Exactly.' said Orco, as the young calf gave him a final poke with its trunk and then trundled off, presumably to catch up with its parent. 'I don't remember reading about this in class. The wider foot pad was mentioned - look how the petals strain under each elephant as it passes. They must need to be very careful about weight distribution not to go through.'

'I sort of wish you hadn't pointed that out Orco', said Mai-Kiyya. 'The way those petals are bending sort of puts me in mind of thin ice, cracking.'

>>49976629

'I don't think there's any danger of one falling through. The Yalli flower and the pygmy elephant have clearly been co-developing for a very, very long time - the flower is adapted to the elephant's weight and vice versa. I don't actually think the full extent of the symbiosis has been realised until now. As I said, I've never seen the pollen catching mentioned, and I've read pretty everything the academy libraries have on the pygmy elephant. Maybe no one's ever done a full study on the wild animals in the actual habitat. I know most research is done on zoo animals; ever since they became popular in carnivals there have been plenty of specimens down in the Commonwealth. Maybe the in-situ reports were all collected from the notes of non-specialists who came up to the highlands for other reasons. Oh man, this is exciting. I could publish this, in an actual journal. And just think what else we might not know about them.'

'Well my friend, I won't say I'm not a little jealous.' said Hasso. 'I'll probably get enough up here for an alpha-first, but you could get an entire career off this. In fact, never mind the career - this is why we came all this way, isn't it? We know something right now that nobody else in the whole Commonwealth - maybe the whole world - knows. Damn it, well done.' Hasso took Orco's hand and shook it vigorously, and clapped him on the shoulder. Apparently he didn't know where to go from here, for he concluded simply with: 'Science, eh?'

'Yeah, science.' echoed Orco, a grin across his face from ear to ear. Around them the elephants were continuing to move on, oblivious to the little human moment going on beside them. In fact, the herd had mostly passed them by at this point.

'Well, Orco - we going to follow them or what?' asked Jayyo.

'What? Yeah, sure.' Orco said. They started walking, not so much chasing the herd as going along with the gentle flow of animals.

>>49976669

'So, what's the plan?' asked Jayyo. 'Are you going to try and bag a specimen?'

'No.' said Orco. 'I think the problem with all the research done up until now is that it was mostly done by commercial hunters who came up here to capture animals they could send back to the Commonwealth. It probably wouldn't be too hard to get a hold of that little guy' - he pointed at the calf, which was still visible through the fairly spread-out herd. 'But bringing him back to the academy wouldn't tell me anything about how these animals behave in their natural environment.'

'So, we just follow them?'

'Yeah, I guess. They don't seem to mind us. I suppose we just watch and see if there's anything more to learn.' Orco said. He then added, 'If that's okay with you guys.'

'Far be it for me to stand in the way of science.' said Mai-Kiyya.

'There's no reason why we can't do our own research while we're following the herd.' said Hasso.

'I think it sounds really interesting.' Gunna said.

Jayyo just shrugged.

'Thanks guys.' Orco said enthusiastically. 'I wish I could say how long I'll need - probably longer than we can keep following them, but we can take it a day at a time, right? Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to follow me all over the plains. There's just so much to think about, I don't even know where to start.'

Jayyo drifted over to Orco, and - not in a whisper but in a conversational tone not quite loud enough to be heard by the whole group - said: 'It seems to me that the most important aspect of the pygmy elephant is its relationship with the Yalli flower, am I right?'

'Yeah.' said Orco, looking at Jayyo as if he was wondering where he was going with this.

'So you want to know as much about the Yalli flower as possible, right?'

'Yeah, I guess I should.'

'So... ' said Jayyo, looking pointedly at Gunna. 'you know we have a botanist, right? Maybe you should spend some time with her.' He smiled, raised an eyebrow, and drifted away again.


* * *

>>49976685

They followed the herd for the rest of the day, trudging along beside the grazing elephants for hour after hour without a break, until most of the group were having second thoughts about trying to keep up with them, or for that matter walking any further at all. The elephants were slow, but they didn't stop. Orco, however, was in his element. He moved tirelessly between the animals, which seemed entirely content with his presence, cataloguing the different physical characteristics and behaviours.

Gunna walked with him, at his request, telling him about the Yalli flower and its unique adaptations. By the end of the day Orco had formed a theory about how the flowers might vary their nectar production in order to guide the elephants along the optimum path to spread their pollen as great a distance as possible. He'd also observed some basic social relationships, with high ranking members of the herd taking positions at the front and centre of the group.

Night fell, and although Orco was happy to continue and observe the pygmy elephants' nocturnal behaviour, his travelling companions made it clear that unless Orco felt like dragging their sleeping bags along behind him as they slept, they weren't going any further until morning. Still, he sat up for another hour or more with Gunna, whispering over the details of the flowers' relationship with other animals, and whether their seed dispersal mechanism functioned in the same way as their pollen dispersal.

The next morning they found that the herd had travelled several more miles, although pygmy elephants evidently stopped at some point for the herd was not as distant as it would have been had it continued throughout the whole night. It took the five of them until mid-morning to catch up with the herd again, Mai-kiyya complaining bitterly about her feet the whole way, and Hasso stopping every few minutes to examine a particular insect species that seemed to follow in the elephants' wake.

>>49976724

Being on a nectar only diet, the pygmy elephant left far less of a trail than their larger cousins, but Hasso hypothesised that the insects had evolved to live off the sugar-rich urine the elephants excreted. Orco didn't begrudge Hasso the study time, but it was clear that he was eager to catch up with the herd. He walked at the front of the group; Hasso, Jayyo and Mai-kiyya lagged behind, but Gunna stayed at Orco's side throughout most of the morning. They found the herd much as they had left it the evening before, grazing on the Yalli nectar, and once again the pygmy elephants showed no particular concern at their presence.

Lunch came and went, eaten on the move. Jayyo and Mai-kiyya, having nothing better to do, had wandered a little way from the herd to investigate a small rocky outcrop that punctured the endless carpet of Yalli flowers. Jayyo climbed to the top, then Mai-kiyya joined him; Jayyo asked Mai-kiyya what sort of rock it was, on the basis that her parents had been geologists. For a little while they sat and talked about Mai-kiyya's nomadic childhood, the first time in days they had said anything to each other that wasn't a joke or a jibe. Ten minutes into the conversation, however, Jayyo's attention became distracted by something else. He asked Mai-kiyya:

'Hey, do you see that?'

'What?'

'Over there.' Jayyo pointed. 'To the left of the elephants. Or north, or whatever. That patch of flowers.'

'What about it?' Mai-Kiyya said. Then she looked closer. 'Hey, I think I see what you mean. Is it that bit - it's a different colour, isn't it?'

Since they had come down from the mountains, the five travellers had become used to the Yalli flower's endless white carpet, laid across the highland plains like a spotless tablecloth. However, the patch of flowers Jayyo had seen from his vantage point atop the rock didn't seem to be as white as the rest. Instead, they seemed to have a reddish tint.

'Let's take a look.' said Jayyo.

>>49976741

Jayyo and Mai-kiyya shuffled down off the rock and went to investigate. The patch Jayyo has seen was maybe two dozen meters across, and a little to the north of the eastwards heading herd. It didn't take long for them to reach it, and when they did the found something neither of them had ever seen before.

These Yalli flowers had white petals like every other Yalli flower, but they weren't the uniform white that was normal. In this small patch, every petal was covered in red whorls and veins.

'Have you ever heard of anything like this?' Mai-kiyya asked Jayyo, who was poking at one of the flowers with his foot. Neither of them stepped onto the red veined patch; after a week walking across the canopy it was easy to treat it like an ordinary surface, but it still hadn't quite slipped their minds that there was a meter and a half of empty space beneath them.

'Nope.' said Jayyo. 'As far as I know the flowers are only ever white. Maybe they're sick. Or maybe they're a different variety.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, what do I know? Gunna's the expert.'

'Good point.' said Mai-kiyya. 'I'll go get her. Stay here, and don't do anything stupid.'

'Like what? It's only a flower, it's not going to...' Jayyo began, but Mai-kiyya had already run off in the direction of the herd.

It took her about fifteen minutes to come back with a slightly breathless Gunna; Hasso and Orco jogged up at a more leisurely pace a few minutes after. Gunna started by examining the flowers at the edges of the patch, moving around the perimeter of the roughly circular area. After a little while she announced:

'It definitely looks like its a pigmentation difference in the petal itself, not a fungal growth on the surface or anything. Apart from the colour there doesn't seem to be any physical differences from an ordinary Yalli plant, although I'd need to get underneath to examine a specimen properly.'

'Are they safe to walk on?' asked Jayyo.

>>49976769

'Well,' said Gunna, 'like I said there doesn't seem to be any difference between these flowers and an ordinary Yalli apart from colour. So...' she paused, then began to step forward onto the nearest flower. Then she drew her foot back, like someone who'd just dipped their toe in cold water and thought twice about jumping in. Her hesitation only lasted a moment, though; she bit her lip pensively, and looked towards Orco. Then she stepped out onto the nearest red flower. It didn't even shift under her weight. 'So it should be perfectly safe.' she concluded.

Gunna didn't stop there. She walked towards the centre of the patch - fairly confidently, although testing each of the flowers before she put her full weight on it. She'd got quite far before any of the other four thought to join her.

'Hey, this is interesting.' said Gunna. 'The red markings seem to get more extensive towards the middle. These ones are basically just red with a few white patches.'

'Could it be something in the soil? A patch of iron-rich earth underneath us?' asked Jayyo.

'Maybe; that would make sense.' replied Gunna. 'I don't know.'

'Have you ever seen or heard of anything like this before?' asked Hasso.

'No. As far as I know the Yalli flower always grows white. I think there have been a few attempts to selectively breed for different colours - quite a while ago the Parliament actually contracted the Academy to produce varieties of different colours so they could colour-code the road system. You know, blue roads for routes that lead to the capital, orange for rural routes, that sort of thing. But I don't think anything ever actually came of it.'

'So these are unique?' asked Jayyo.

'As far as I know.'

>>49976790

'Well then, ' said Jayyo, 'I'm getting a souvenir.' he drew a large knife from his hip-holster, knelt down, and started cutting away at one of the petals. It only took a minute, and when he pulled it free he held it up, letting the sunlight pass through it, highlighting the intricate red veins. He turned it this way and that, admiring the patterns in the translucent petal. The others had spread out across the patch, and he called out to them: 'Hey guys, this is really beautiful.'

The canopy exploded beneath him.

Later, Mai-kiyya said that it reminded her of a whale breaching the surface of a fjord as it chased a seal. Except that instead of a spray of seawater, a cloud of petals burst into the air. And instead of a whale, what came through the canopy was... something else.

Jayyo, knocked off his feet, didn't have time to turn around before it lunged at him, and things happened so fast that neither Hasso, Orco or Gunna saw much, but Mai-kiyya happened to be looking directly at Jayyo as the creature rose up into the air behind him. It plunged, seized hold of Jayyo's leg, and dragged him back into the hole. By the time the others realised what was happening, all there was to see was a cloud of red-white petals, falling back down like giant, bloody snowflakes.

Mai-kiyya stood, frozen.

'What the hell was that!?' yelled Orco. He ran over to Mai-kiyya. 'What happened!?' he asked her, but she didn't even look at him, eyes still fixed on the hole. He took her by both shoulders. 'Mai-kiyya, what happened? What happened to Jayyo?'

'Jayyo?' she said, dreamily. And then her eyes seemed to refocus, onto Orco. 'Oh god, it was...' but what she was about to say was cut off by a yell. It was muffled, clearly coming from beneath the canopy.

'Jai?' called out Hasso. 'Jai? Hang on!' he started running towards the gaping hole in the canopy. There was another cry of pain. 'He's moving - this way.' Hasso shouted, running past the hole.

>>49976801

'Wait!' called Mai-kiyya after him. 'It was a centipede!' Hasso looked round, confused, but he didn't stop. Mai-kiyya began to ran after Hasso, and Orco and Gunna followed her.

'What?' exclaimed Orco. 'Mai-kiyya, what the hell...' Mai-kiyya cut him off:

'Orco, I swear, I know a centipede when I see one.' She gulped down a breath. 'It must have been twice as tall as you but I swear... I ... I ... oh god the legs. It just latched onto Jai and dragged him in.' Orco looked as if he was going to say something, but there was another cry of pain from beneath the canopy.

'Never mind. Whatever it was, we have to get Jai out of there.' Orco and Mai-kiyya had caught up to Hasso, who had slowed down. Hasso stuck out his arm to stop Orco going past him.

'Hold it. She may be right.'

'What? Hasso, we...'

'Oxygen, Orco. You must have done a section on entomology - what limits the size of something like a centipede?' Orco struggled to get around Hasso for a moment more before realisation visibly dawned: arthropods didn't have developed respiratory systems like larger animals, relying on diffusion from pores in their exoskeleton to bring oxygen to their internal organs. This could only function on a small scale in ordinary circumstances, but with higher concentrations of oxygen, such as found on the underside of the Yalli canopy...

Orco stopped dead for a moment, but in that sudden silence Jayyo cried out again.

'It doesn't matter. We have to get Jai.' Orco said, sprinting past the others, who accelerated to keep up with him. 'We need to get ahead of it... and ... and... ' A pained look gripped Orco's face as he realised he had no plan for what to do next.

'Fire!' shouted Mai-Kiyya. 'We need something flammable.'

'Oil lamp, in my pack.' grunted Orco. The others had dropped their packs as they ran, but Orco's was still strapped firmly to him. 'Bottom left pocket.' he slowed, just a little, to allow Hasso to reach in and get the lamp.

>>49976821

'I have some spare oil as well.' shouted Mai-kiyya, slipping a can out of a pouch on her belt. 'Get me some rags. And bottles.'

Improvising a fire bomb while running at full speed was hardly easy, but a few moments later Mai-kiyya was tossed a large glass bottle with a oil-rag stuffed in the neck to Orco.

'That's great - what do I do with it?'

'Get ahead of whatever has Jai,' shouted Hasso, 'make a hole, light the rag and throw the bottle in. Hopefully it'll be scared enough to drop Jai and run away.'

'Shhh - where is it?' said Gunna. 'I can't hear Jai.' The four of them fell silent except for their panting breaths and footfalls cushioned by soft petals. Then, a cry.

'That came from behind us - now, Orco, now!' shouted Mai-Kiyya. Orco skidded to a stop and drew his large knife from his belt.

'Get clear! GET CLEAR!' Orco warned; hacking open a hole in the petals. Hasso veered off and Mai-kiyya dragged Gunna aside.

Orco lit the rag, and in the same motion threw it through the hole and dived out of the way. In the blink of an eye, the world went white.

The next thing Mai-kiyya heard was Gunna shouting 'Orco! Are you okay? Orco?' Mai-kiyya got to her feet, head spinning. Where Orco had been standing there was a crater two or three meters across, burning plant debris and smoke. Gunna was beside herself. 'ORCO!'

'I'm okay!' It was Orco's voice, but Mai-Kiyya couldn't see him. Then she realised he was lying prone, just at the edge of the still fiercely burning hole, obscured by the smoke. He rolled away from the edge, and tried to haul himself, shakily, to his feet. 'What about Jai!' he shouted, and would have said something else but for the smoke. Coughing heavily, he made his way to Mai-kiyya and Gunna.

'I can't hear him.' answered Hasso. 'We need to make a hole and get down there.'

'How do we know the thing that took him is gone?' said Mai-kiyya. She finally let go of Gunna, who ran towards Orco just in time to catch him as he sank to his knees.

>>49976839

'We just have to...' Hasso began, but he didn't get to finish that sentence.

The centipede erupted through the canopy, a few meters behind Hasso. As Mai-kiyya had said, it seemed like an ordinary centipede - one that would normally be no bigger than a forearm - that had been scaled up until it was three or more meters long, and it's body as broad across Orco's chest. It's segmented armour was dark grey on its underbelly and black on its limbs, and it had two long antennae that swayed two and fro above its head.

It was hissing, angrily - a pulsing, staccato hiss. But it didn't attack, not immediately. It rose above the Yalli flowers, legs waving in agitation.

It was Mai-kiyya who acted first. She had a second fire bomb. Fumbling with her lighter for a second, as Hasso practically fell backwards in shock and Gunna froze in terror, she finally got the rag to light.

She threw it.

The bottle shattered against the centipede's underbelly, and it was immediately engulfed in liquid fire. Hissing angrily, it retreated beneath the canopy, but this fed the fire further as it descended into the oxygen rich air. The flame turned from red to white, and Mai-kiyya could see this because, with a light source beneath the canopy, the translucent nature of the petals meant that the centipede was still visible through the normally white surface.

The giant centipede writhed in pain, even managing to break the famously tough stalks of the Yalli flowers around it, causing what looked from the surface almost like a cave in as flowers fell. This only added to the creature's agony, for as the flowers fell into the flames they also combusted, fuelling the fire on its carapace further.

Even injured as it was though, it was resilient enough to flee, scuttling away. A bright white streak rapidly diminishing into the distance, leaving a trail of smouldering vegetation like a worm from the very pits of hell was burrowing beneath.

>>49976866

Mai-kiyya breathed a sigh of relief. Hasso got to his feet, and said:

'Jayyo. We need to find Jayyo.'

This was made somewhat easier by the secondary fires burning beneath the canopy. The carpet of leaves at the base of the plants didn't burn as well as might be expected given the oxygen rich atmosphere; one of the other functions of the greenhouse-like conditions was to keep the underside of the plants moist. Still, there was enough flammable material that there were plenty of small pieces of burning debris scattered around. Fuelled by oxygen they gave off a clear, white light, illuminating the underside of the canopy.

'There.' It was Gunna, still beside Orco, who was pointing at a spot a few meters to the left of where the centipede had burst through. 'I can see Jai.' Mai-kiyya began running towards it, calling back to Hasso:

'Rope. Get some rope.'


* * *


The four of them, working together, managed to get Jayyo back up onto the surface, despite the fact that the canopy was dangerously unstable given how many of the supporting stems had either been burnt, or broken by the centipede. None of them felt safe sleeping either on or below the canopy, so they decided to spend the night on the rocky outcrop Jayyo and Mai-kiyya had been sitting on scarcely an hour earlier. Mai-kiyya and Hasso managed to carry Jayyo between him, while Orco followed, supported by Gunna.

>>49976887

Orco was burned, not badly, but enough to make his left side look like he'd been sitting in the sun for a few days too long. More serious was the smoke inhalation, which meant that as they walked he rapidly tired, and was struck by coughing fits several times. He still insisted on dragging his pack back with him, though, on the logic that a lack of food and water would be just as deadly as anything else out there. Gunna retrieved her pack as well, and even managed to carry Mai-kiyya's, but there was no way the other two could anything but Jayyo, and once they'd got to the rock none of them felt like going back for the other two packs.

They lay Jayyo right on top of the rock, on Mai-kiyya's sleeping bag. He was burned too, but even less severely than Orco. Still, Mai-kiyya bitterly regretted not thinking before she threw the second fire bomb, until Hasso told her to shut up about it because she'd probably saved their lives. They didn't have anything else that could have saved them from the giant centipede, and Jayyo's burns were superficial.

Jayyo's leg was another matter. The giant centipede's gnawing mouth-parts had badly mangled it, crunching through right to the bone; the half-chewed limb had almost separated at the knee as Jayyo had been dragged along. Hasso tied a tourniquet around Jayyo's thigh, but even that didn't stop the bleeding completely, leaving Mai-kiyya scrabbling for any spare piece of cloth she could use to staunch the blood flow.

>>49976905

It was clearly futile. Jayyo's leg was so badly destroyed that Hasso suggested amputation, reasoning that it would be easier to bandage a stump than fight a losing battle to save a leg that was quickly killing him. But as the others pointed out, even if any of them had been qualified to perform the procedure all they had to do it with was a few knives, and not particularly sharp ones at that. Nor did they have any practical way to cauterise the wound. In the state he was in, there was no way Jayyo could possibly survive the procedure.

Orco slept, fitfully, and Gunna sat next to him to keep an eye on his breathing; she woke him once or twice, making him to sit up and breathe deeply. In the end, he half dozed leaning on Gunna's shoulder. Mai-kiyya and Hasso were left to tend to Jayyo through the night, keeping pressure on the wounds and tearing up another sleeping bag for fresh bandages. He was semi-conscious at times, alert enough to make fun of Mai-kiyya's skills as a nurse. Mai-kiyya's retort was that he was a good deal squishier than the automata she was used to fixing. Jayyo laughed, or tried to, before slipping into unconsciousness for a few more hours. He woke a few more times throughout the night, and Mai-kiyya even managed to coax a few more whispered sentences from him; if he said anything lucid, Mai-kiyya never told any of them.

Jayyo died just as sunrise broke the horizon.

>>49976924

Mai-kiyya watched the rising sun illuminate the Yalli fields, white as the clouds above, unending as the sky. Hasso was snoring; she didn't remember him falling asleep. Gunna and Orco were likewise blissfully unaware of what they would find when they woke, or rather, who they wouldn't find. So, brushing away her tears, she let them sleep as the sun rose up into the clouds. For most of the morning the sky was overcast, as the cloud cover thickened into a alabaster sheet almost as unbroken as the plains below. Once or twice, the golden spring sun broke through, and Mai-kiyya was struck by the resemblance to the Yalli flower - the yellow circle surrounded by white.

While the others slept, she edged down the rock, and cut a single flower head. She first considered laying it on Jayyo's chest in the manner of a lily, but in the end she settled for placing it under his head, like a pillow, giving him a halo of white petals.


* * *

>Epilogue<

It took the survivors three days to make it back to the mountain pass they had come through, and another five to make it through the mountains to the nearest village on the other side. They had no way of taking Jayyo's body with them, so they left him on the rock where he died.

Orco recovered quickly, helped by the fact that on the way back they slept under the canopy again, where the oxygen helped him breathe. They all walked across the petals aware at every moment that there was unseen space beneath, but unless they wanted to stay on that rock beside Jayyo they had no choice but to cross them. They figured that as long as they steered well clear of any red flowers, the chances were that they would be safe; indeed, they saw no sign of anything larger than a small bird on their way back to the mountains.

>>49976940

Once they were back in what could loosely be called civilisation again, it took them five weeks to reach the capital of the Commonwealth, by foot and by riverboat. Their return to the Academy was subdued. Their first task was to inform their relevant authorities of Jayyo's death, but the investigation was perfunctory. Their travel plans for their sabbatical had been filed beforehand, and approved by the relevant committees in the understanding that it was not unheard of for accidents to occur on such expeditions. In the vigorous, adventurous educational tradition of the Academy, taking a field-sabbatical was a common thing, and every expedition, however well planned, had its dangers. Jayyo's death was tragic but not shocking.

Almost immediately upon their return, the four of them took up their rooms in the dorms again, and started attending lectures and submitting papers and going through all the other routine business of the academia that they had run through without even thinking only a few months before. There were changes, though: Hasso, Orco, and Gunna all managed to get themselves published in reputable scientific journals on the strength of their findings in the highlands.

Orco submitted a paper on the physical and social adaptations of the pygmy elephant to the Yalli flower, co-authored with Gunna, to a journal of zoology, and Gunna likewise coauthored a paper on the Yalli flower with Orco which she submitted to a botanical journal. In it she included a theory, backed up by experimentation in the Academy greenhouses, that when an animal carcass was left to rot at the base of a Yalli flower it induced the flower to change its pigmentation, warning potential pollinators that there were predators in the area.

>>49976961

Hasso published two papers: one on the ecology of highland birds, and another on the giant centipede. The first was politely accepted by the scientific community, if with somewhat less interest than Orco or Gunna's work, but the second one produced more controversy. Beyond the ten minute encounter that had led to Jayyo's death, there was no real record of such a creature in the Academy's archives. In researching his paper, Hasso did find scattered references to something that was said by hunters to prey on the pygmy elephant, but the collected evidence didn't amount to anything near hard fact. Still, the concept proved tantalising enough for some editors to allow him to publish a small monograph on the subject.

Between the three of them, Hasso, Gunna and Orco were credited with igniting a minor flurry of interest in the hitherto neglected highlands. Orco's sketches of young pygmy elephants in the wild were very well received by the general public, even among those with scant interest in zoology. Meanwhile artists impressions of the giant centipede were also popular, although in the cheaper, more sensationalist publications. The next year several expeditions - more professional, better equipped - set out from the Academy and other institutions of learning in the Commonwealth, heading for the highlands in search of knowledge.

For all that, though, it was probably Gunna's work that had the most lasting impact - in time, she would publish extensively on the cultivation of the Yalli flower, particularly in respect to colour and size. She would be credited with revitalising both the cultivation of the Yalli flower, and introducing the ornamental use of it's petals in windows and screens, among other things (which quickly became ubiquitous to the point of cliche).

>>49976980

After publishing the findings of their expedition, Hasso, Gunna and Orco concentrated on passing their final exams. Having returned from the highlands at the end of spring, they spent the summer studying and elected to take their gradation assessment in the early autumn. They passed, of course, and were awarded their honours. Their positions for post-graduate study were guaranteed by their publications, and they settled into academic life, expanding on their published work and processing the results from the follow-up expeditions. The following spring - almost to the day that they left the village of Parruun the previous year - Orco and Gunna married. As Hasso said (at their wedding) they were spending so much time working together these days that it only seemed practical; like the pygmy elephant and the Yalli flower, they had developed a certain symbiosis.

Mai-kiyya continued her studies at the Academy until the end of the summer, like the other three, but unlike them she published nothing, and when she had passed her final exams elected not to continue her education. She left the Academy as soon as she had received her honours.

Mai-kiyya kept in touch with her friends - Hasso, Orco and Gunna, and the others from her engineering course and elsewhere - long enough for them to know that her first stop was Jayyo's hometown. What she did there, she didn't report, and from then on contact became more and more sporadic. She returned to the capital for Gunna and Orco's wedding, and even stayed for a few weeks after that, but soon she left again, and although she never disappeared from their lives entirely, for a long time she was barely more than a memory, little more present in their lives than Jayyo continued to be.

>>49976997

Where Mai-kiyya went, and what she did when she got there, are subjects for another time. It was rumoured on the academic grapevine that she met with her parents several times, having previously been more or less estranged from them - although this was never confirmed by her friends back in the capital. However, she often said to them that if you could sum up what she had learned from her experience in the highlands - and the months that followed after they returned to the academy - in one sentence it would be this: home wasn't where you were, it was who you were with.

Mai-kiyya went back, at least once, to the rock where Jayyo lay. But that journey is another story entirely.


--- The End ---

Goals for next week: write something more cheerful, and write something that isn't tl;dr.
Pretty much the same as last week, actually. Which isn't encouraging.

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fellow fat/gu/ys I have a question, haven't been here for almost a year, aside from storythreads what is the general consensus on storytimes in general? are they still welcomed?

>>49977482
Yes. Especially if it's for Shoggy.

>>49977531
speaking of, I PMed him and he said he'd post sometime soon, keeping my fingers crossed

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>>49975908

>"Well, it looks like I may be clinically incapable of writing anything shorter than a novella. I don't expect anyone will read this"

Brother! You have so succinctly summarized something I think so often I vow to read all of whatever you post and give you feedback till you vomit

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>>49977561
Ah, so your why Failer was calling me in the middle of work. Yeah, I'll just be dumping what I got this weekend. Probably Sunday night. I'll update the site tomorrow morning.

I really miss the days when I could lay shit down all in one go instead of obsessively re-writing the same thing over and over.

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>>49977987
>Shoggy sempai has noticed me
>and finds me wanting

>>49964547
Well guys, still waiting for some feedback and or criticism for this week's story of mine and my previous ones if possible.

>>49973163
Witness preparing to testify at modern day witch trial.

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>>49978728
I hate to be course but I'll do yours if you do mine.

>>49957338

>>49969337
Yeah, no. The combat twist being more about harnessed energy and ripping off shit like naruto and stuff is cool. It just wasn't grounded at all. Felt super cheap and right at the end a classic deus ex move where the Good Guy Protagonist is getting his ass kicked for ages and ages with no end in sight, and just spontaneously pulls a victory card out of his ass and the audience is left wondering "why is this even a fight if you can just slam that down and win immediately?" and then after that they wonder "why not just open with that, 100% no reason to even have a conflict in the first place".

But I digress. Don't give up on your themes and ideas about your writing. Keep using them and refining them, trying to be a little more grounded and internally logical. It will turn out increasingly better each time you try it.

>>49964547
>>49978728
I read the monster girl write up yesterday so I apologize if I miss-remember something. I'll go reread it if you want further elaboration later.

The story elements are pretty good. You touched on having a culture that gives the characters reason for being there and reason to have these reactions to each other (partially), and even more the reaction the surrounding environment has to the characters directly. The internal struggle that the guy faces representative of the usual reaction to monster girls. This properly set up the idea that they are something to fear and was well done.

I could have enjoyed more descriptive writing about the character's appearance and the immediate environment, but it was passable.

I did, however, feel that the story drive and the motivation for the decisions each character made were poorly thought out. To bastardize a summary for you: MonsterGirl catfishes a guy, then chases after him once he shows genuine terror and scarpers *with no change from perfectly calm politeness* and insistence, quite literally begins holding the guy down and sexually assaulting him whilst claiming she wants a nice and potentially consenting relationship, no rape necessary. It is overwhelmingly inconsistent and bland. If you were going for an personality that engenders a powerful monster who doesn't need to fear the reactions of a guy and just goes through the motions to get her food, it might make a little more sense, yet still why the fuck give him a peck on the lips instead of hauling him home when she already had him in her grips? The personality doesn't track from my perspective.

For the protagonist, Timothy Something, again I'd say he was suppose to be showing genuine terror for this monster girl chick, and after trolling the streets looking for prostitutes to quench his *lust*, gets his heart won over in a matter of seconds after just a *kiss*, no more terror, feeling lovey dovey, and says "sure why the fuck not". Doesn't track.