The definition of a drabble: one-shot fic in response to some challenge or theme, theoretically exactly 100 words but may be longer or slightly shorter. Post your finished ones here for us all to enjoy! :D

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If you're running short on inspiration, look at the challenges thread and pick any one you like to get the creative juices flowing.

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): Ashley's class at school, Sparx, must include drawing chalks and the word "television"
Words: 300

She’d used a lot of red. Bright red for the background, in a waterfall erupting from the central figure’s head, and an even brighter red for the…fence post? Sticking through the character coloured in black and blue.

The symbolism, Miss Adrienne Jenkins knew, was disturbing, to say the least. She’d topped her psychology classes in teacher training. She understood what she was seeing.

“It’s…very nice, Ashley,” she said in her most gentle voice, tidying the drawing chalks for the child. She knew what you were supposed to do in a situation like this. “Is this you?” Clearly an unhappy home life, she thought, struck by the dizzying realization that this was her responsibility. The red, the black-and-blue, the tormented figure with the fence post…there was only one possible meaning, and it wasn’t a nice one.

The child shook her head firmly. “No,” she said. “It’s Sparx. Can’t you tell? I chose that colour ‘cause that’s what everyone thinks she’s like, and ‘cause it’s her hair.”

She was obviously using the television character or whatever it was as a metaphor, Adrienne thought. The poor child.

“And the…fence post?” she asked, half-dreading the tale of abuse she was about to hear.

“It’s not a fence post, it’s a sword,” the child said petulantly, folding her arms. “Can’t you tell?”

A sword. Violent impulses. This was trouble.

“And…do you like Sparx?” Adrienne asked cautiously. “Do you ever like to imagine you are her?”

“She’s my friend,” Ashley said. “She came to Chika’s funeral with Ace.”

A funeral. This child has been traumatized.

“Who was Chika?” Adrienne asked. “I know you miss him.”

“I don’t. Not since I have a new hamster,” Ashley said. “His name is Chika the Fourth.”

I’m making her an appointment with the school counselor, Adrienne decided. She needs help.

--

TITLE: ALIENS
WORDS: 100
CHALLENGE: AU
RATING: PG-13 for nudity

He found a naked woman in one of the cages that morning. Ordinary-looking—brown hair, fairish skin, easy to miss, easy to forget if it hadn’t been for the naked part—and he’d gaped in shock before running for his boss.

Werewolf, they’d decided, weredog, the one they’d chased yesterday. She’d waited calmly—inhumanly—for them to let her go.

They’d lent her old clothing they’d had around, a too-baggy coat and pants, and she’d fled. It didn’t take her long to completely disappear, in the vague direction of the junkyard, and they’d stared at each other in fear.

Aliens.

--

Challenge (LightningFlash): Hippies.
Words: 150

“I shall forever abandon Heroing and join a commune!” Ace said, flinging his arms wildly.

Sparx looked up from the paperback she was reading, featuring the adventures of Clea von Age and Hugo Gigantica. “Why?”

“Because…of peace, and love, and friendship, and a sincere desire not to die in battle!”

“No thanks. Too boring.”

Sparx returned to her book.

Ace looked at the novel’s cover. A buxom redhead was being lifted from a river by a blonde man, entitled “Passionate Adventure”.

“That guy looks like me,” he said. “You think so?”

Sparx examined it critically. “Nah.”

There was a pause.

“So. Apparently exotic substances are involved. You want to sample something?” Ace pulled an odd-looking pipe from his jacket, in a curiously furtive gesture.

“I’ll pass,” Sparx replied. “Romance novels. Kat says they’re the new crack, apparently.”

She went back to her book, and Ace started knitting a daisy chain.

--

Challenge (LightningFlash): Ace gets his boot stuck in any hole.
Words: 100
Title: End Of Mud

There was mud, everywhere, and she saw Ace bend down to pick his boot out of it for the sixth time.

She’d never thought it would be like this. Wasn’t saving the world meant to be good?

She’d expected glory. Excitement. Fun.

She hadn’t expected to destroy her dimension. Hadn’t known that to destroy the evils would do so.

“I should have listened to you, Ace,” she said bitterly.

“You’re right,” was the only reply.

He’d lost more than her from the program, she realised, and tried to keep placing one foot over each other, before oblivion would take her.

Ooh I wanna play! :D Love those drabbles, Sarah. Specially the Aliens one.

Challenge: (myself) Pairing Rick/Heather.


She kicks off her shoes on the end of the bed. She knows he’s not a sleep and he’s not really faking it either.

‘You’re early.’

‘You’re in bed.’

‘And that’s a surprise?’

‘…You’re not the type. You don’t sit there waiting for people to come home at work when you could be purging the peculator.’

‘What can I say? I’m getting slow in my old age.’

‘No kidding.’ She turns around and stares at the back of his head. ‘And you’re wrinkling too. You have to do something about that.’

‘Oh sure, it’s not like I waited around for ten years for you, that’s enough to give anyone wrinkles.’

‘Like hell, you didn’t even know me ten years ago.’

‘I knew who you were.’

‘You and everyone else,’ Heather thinks silently. ‘I made sure of that.’

Silence. Two beats. The sound of a shoe hitting the floor. ‘Did you find her?’

‘ Who?’

‘Your little designer. The one you were trying to contact about some videogame...'

‘Li? Yeah. She still uses the screenshots she made when she was working for the company. Lady Illusion’s plastered all over the screen.’

‘Very attractive.’

‘It was, actually.’

This is what I get, she thought, for hooking up with the videogame designer.

‘I’m sure you had a great time together in your day.’

‘Possibly, there was this time when…’

‘I never said you could TALK about it, Hummel. Keep your seedy other-women to yourself if you don’t want me to rip your throat out.’

‘…Oh, you took that well.’

‘Did I?’

‘The fact I was eyeing up some computer character? Yeah.’

‘Lets not push the jealously subroutines, Rick. Even if she was real, you won’t do anything.’

‘What makes you so sure of that?’

‘Because I know you, Rick Hummel. I know that you’re a liar, and a jerk, and a backstabber, and you’re committing online fraud on some so-called “business manager” in Milwaukee even as I speak, but you’re not a cheat. Anyway, she’s so above you on the social scale.’

‘…’

‘…Besides we all know you’re no going anywhere.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, because I got you first, I'm the boss round here and you know you love it, Hummel, so lets not argue the obvious and go to sleep. I have an early start tomorrow.’

…

‘And keep your hands to yourself.’

‘…Touchy.’

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): A coin on the pavement, Sparx sniggering, and a rainstorm.
Words: 560
Warnings: crack!fic, ice cream

One coin. That’s all it was. One single coin, dropped on the pavement in front of the ice cream stand, Zoar’s symbol engraved on it, and it was enough for Sparx to tell who was under the mortal shape.

She looked up at the other woman, who wasn’t a woman right now, and burst out sniggering. She couldn’t help it. This was funny.

“Ma’am? You all right?” the guy at the stand asked. It only made Sparx lose control all the more, bent over herself with the uncontrollable laughter.

“You need help?” He walked over to her to try to assist, and she attempted to wave him away.

“Fine. Really,” she gasped in between her giggles. “Hands off!” she yelled finally, when he raised a hand to pat her back, and sharply pushed him away from her with more force than she’d intended.

“Thought that was against your Knightly creed,” Lady Illusion said calmly, watching him crash into his stand, his products spilling all over the road.

“’S not. Anymore. Doesn’t exist.” Sparx shrugged. “We both know it’s just you and me.” She took a step closer to the man with the unmemorable features. “Guess that coin was one of the last things left from our world, wasn’t it?”

He nodded, once and sharply.

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” Sparx said suddenly. “I might have the leftover power. But I’m trying to use it properly. And you know I wouldn’t have found you if it wasn’t for the coin you were trying to pass off as mortal currency.”

“I’m almost surprised,” he replied, and paying no attention to the ice-cream seller’s sudden scream transformed into her normal shape.

“It’s just us,” Sparx said, and impulsively leaned forward to kiss her as the ice-cream seller ran for help. The spark between them was literal, sizzling into action, and whatever else was between them any bystander could have told them they had something most mortal couples would have killed for.

Above them them, the dark clouds broke and rain started pouring, but neither of them paid it any heed until Sparx finally broke the kiss. “I found you. Can’t get over that. Tell me you want to stay?” The rain running down both their faces seemed not to affect them in the least; it was mortal, and they were not, though the dripping moisture was starting to smooth down Sparx’ hair and turn Lady Illusion’s top transparent.

“I would hate to have to go,” Lady Illusion said coolly, raising a thin brow.

Sparx stared at her, then broke into a grin again. “Not letting you go so easy. We keep it alive.”

The rain could have been tears. But there’d been enough of those already, and they were over it.

“I didn’t even know you liked ice-cream,” Sparx said, still grinning madly. “I like the rainbow ones. They’re fun.”

Lady Illusion stared at her in shock. “Plebe. Everyone knows the chocolate ones with the hazelnut topping are better.”

“Inbred aristo.” Sparx started laughing again. “I can’t use that one any more, though. Have to remember that.” She stooped down to pick up a couple of the ice-cream seller’s discarded items, shoving them into Lady Illusion’s arms. “You can think of something inventive to do with these once we’re home.”

“And the coin?”

Sparx whistled for the Lightning Flash. “Forget the coin.”

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): Fireworks let off in the daylight, in the rain. Something broken. Word "incorrigible".
(Note--v. similar to your "Rainfall", Scarab--muchos apologias.)

The lights of the fireworks reflected off the droplets of rain, lighting up the sky even through the damp.

It shouldn’t have worked that way. The real world didn’t. Flame didn’t bloom in water. Rain wasn’t this strange colour.

He’d gone to church when he was a kid. Heard the stories, about how one day God would come back and take up all the good people to heaven in fire and smoke and dead rising again.

This didn’t seem to be happening now. Something else, something worse, Brett knew—and not in the same way as he knew facts or understood people, in the gut-instinct way that was like something from a nightmare, but this was real—and whatever it was, he had to run.

He didn’t even know where the police station was. If Conestoga Hills even had one. He’d never had reason to look for it before—Brett Ramirez, good boy, quiet and well-behaved and nice.

Somehow, he thought, that wasn’t going to help him.

The school, he thought, picking up speed, closer than home, that was where you went when things like this happened, strange shapes in the sky…

The street lamps loomed around him like gallows, and the cracks in the pavement were dark enough to swallow him up. He didn’t step on one, playing the old childish game.

The sounds around him reminded him of an old horror movie, low-pitched wailing that was just soft enough to disappear when you started to look for its source. He couldn’t see anyone about on the street, but with the way fog was gathering—he could imagine the mists grasping him, slimy tendrils taking him like some swamp monster from the wilds—that wasn’t surprising. In the air, the fireworks were still going. He hoped for their light.

The school was finally ahead of him, familiar brick walls rising above him. It was a relief. Somewhat.

He pushed open a door, blindly scrabbling to keep his footing on flooring that couldn’t have been that slippery yesterday. Ran along the rows of lockers.

Was everyone gone?

The sound of tinkling glass. Something had broken in the lab he ran past. He wasn’t going to look.

A scream. His, or another’s? He’d almost made it to the sporting equipment stores. He’d have to do something.

The weight of the hockey stick felt comforting in his hand. Something real and everyday. If this was a nightmare, it would have immediately morphed into a snake or something equally threatening. It wasn’t a relief that it didn’t.

He ran out with it, looking for the source of the scream. There was a time to be…heroic. Maybe. Face fears. Do whatever he could before whatever-it-was happened to him too.

Smoke pooled around him as he looked for whoever had screamed.

“Brett,” he heard, female voice, was it Heather sounding so hysterical, “Brett, freaks in the school, NO!”

He aimed with the hockey stick at whatever was behind him, but he failed to make contact.

Something gripped the back of his neck as though he was a pet puppy. Shaking him. The pain was sharper than any dream he’d ever have. He tried again to hit something, anything.

“Mortals. Truly incorrigible,” someone said dryly, and he felt the stick wrenched from his fingers. “So enjoyable to destroy.”

And after that, Brett knew nothing at all.

Challenge: (Sarah) rouge machine, Random Virus mentioned but not present, Mark's garage door.

Mark was up in his bedroom when he heard the noise. The first thing that came to his mind was the sound of Random Virus sending the junkyard haywire. Anyone who wasn’t unlucky enough to have had this noise engraved on their brain along with the fear it brought would have immediately recognised the sound as someone standing on the gas pedal of their car too hard.

“Simon!” Mark heard his mother yell from the front of the house, seconds later there was a crash.

Mark ran downstairs, afraid that his father had finally gone and hurt someone with one of his ‘efficiency devices’, but instead found the family car parked up into their garage door. The weaker metal hadn’t been able to hold up and was warped and wrapped around the front end of the car.

Fiona walked up to the driver’s side door and pulled it open, fully intending to tell her husband off for nearly knocking her down, and destroying their garage. She was stopped short, however, as she saw Simon stuck in a nearly impossibly position, bent over with his arms down in the bottom of the car, and practically wedged under the steering wheel.

“I dropped my wallet…” he tried to explain to Fiona’s stunned expression.

----

Gah... I need more drabble practice... and the car counts as a rouge machine if Simon ain't driving properly. :P

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): "Snyder must be in charge of the volunteer safety program for Halloween this year" - Buffy, word: "ultimatum" and "Dream"
A/N: This is less drabble than full-blown ficlet. I can only hope you forgive me for it.

It was a dream, he said to himself, caught inside it, but it was dark and he was alone and his parents were about to die. He instinctively aimed his wrist cannon, but it wasn’t on his wrist after all. His phone was in his pocket, and he desperately flipped it open; the batteries were dead and nobody would know he needed someone. He screamed for help then, but nobody came.

And then, he woke up.

The ghost costume was huge, little more than an oversized bedsheet wrapped around him and pinned to his palest pair of jeans. Mark had wanted to dig out the knight costume and use that again, but he’d grown too much for that, and his mother had helped him create the replacement at the very last minute.

High-voiced giggles surrounded him.

“Okay,” he said, trying to calm them down, “okay, we’ve got Ashley—” he knew her, jumping around in the fairy costume, “Emily…” A blonde girl dressed as an unusually stylish witch waved. “Nicole, Taylor, Andrea, and…” What was the last one called again? “Kristen.” He did a head count again, just to make sure he had them all. He may have battled minions and saved the world, but a group of giggling little girls trick-o’-treating was just a little bit much for a teenage boy to handle. He looked around one last time—a fairy in a pink tutu, three witches, what looked like a pumpkin, and a skeleton he told himself didn’t remind him of anything else. “Are we all ready to go?”

“Trick-or-treat!” the red-haired witch called, twirling around on one foot. They all started giggling again, and Mark sighed inwardly. “Great, we’re all ready. Let’s go. Just stay close.”

Why couldn’t any of his so-called friends have been around to help? Mark wondered bitterly as he slowed down his walking speed so the children could keep up. Chuck deserting him to go trick-o’-treating with Jessica in her hometown, Brett at Heather’s oh-so-exclusive Halloween party, and Kat. The worst betrayal of all. Granted, not many girls would rather spend time helping their boyfriend babysit a tween brigade than go to the so-called party of the year, especially if they’d volunteered to write a neutral perspective on it for the school paper, but she could still have shown some loyalty, Mark thought.

They were loud, and giggly; the adults seemed to love it, giving them rich hauls of candy, and Mark started regretted not bringing a bag himself; it had been a while since he’d eaten.

“Want a toffee apple, Marky?” Ashley asked, waving it in front of him.

“Mark,” he corrected her, too late.

“Marky, can we go over there next?” Taylor-or-Andrea said, tugging at his arm and pointing to a house with a pumpkin-shaped window decoration.

“Mark,” he said, not as firmly as he’d have liked, and took the toffee apple. “Thanks, Ash.”

She only giggled, and Mark ushered the group over to yet another house, making sure he hadn’t lost any of them.

“Okay,” he said, after what felt like the fiftieth time they’d rung a doorbell and been rewarded for it with candy and exclamations of “such nice costumes, girls”. “I think we’ve had enough, haven’t we? It’s time to go home, isn’t it?”

“No!” Andrea-or-Taylor squealed. “We’re not going home ‘till we finish filling these!” She showed him her bag, which was around three-quarters full.

“That’s enough candy for one night,” Mark said. He’d never gotten that much as a kid. He’d never have been able to eat that much, either.

Their faces fell.

Mark couldn’t handle this.

“Just one more,” he said in resignation. “Or…two. Or three. Okay?”

“Yay!” the pumpkin cheered, waving her candy bag in the air with enthusiasm that would have given Mark a severe bruise on his cheek if he hadn’t ducked.

Ashley took his hand. “Good, Marky. Let’s go.”

He took them in the right direction to get back home, stopping in as few places as he could get away with. Mark would have sworn, though, that Ashley and her friends possessed some supernatural ability to spot the few remaining houses they hadn’t visited.

They finally reached the Thompson place, their last stop. Mrs Thompson offered him some cocoa, too, and it almost seemed that he was actually going to get a chance to sit down, if one of the witches hadn’t pointed out that his house had gone completely dark since they’d left.

Mark’s throat suddenly went dry, and he couldn’t force down his mouthful of cocoa.

And his wrist cannon was in the garage, wasn’t it?

And his parents had been at home waiting for some friends to arrive, hadn’t they?

Crap.

“Look, I’m just going to…check that out,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t sound too shaky. “Just in case. Sorry, ma’am,” he said to Mrs Thompson. “I’ll be right back. I promise.”

He ran out of the house, distracted from the impracticability of his costume by bigger problems.

There weren’t any audible sounds coming from his home; that might have been a good thing, or it might have been very bad. On the alert for any enemies, he crept into his garden, trying not to attract any attention. The ghost costume would only make him more visible; ripping it off himself as quickly as he could—it didn’t matter if he ruined it, not with this going on—he deposited it in the middle of a bush.

The garage had to be unlocked, didn’t it?

He reached a hand for the knob on the door, and twisted it. It’d have to work, please work…

It wouldn’t budge.

He applied more pressure to it; his father rarely locked the garage, it was just stuck…

It creaked, but otherwise refused to move. He could try to break open the door, but that’d mean noise that would attract attention, the wrong kind and the right kind that would see the wrong kind. Or he could find out exactly what was going on, call Ace…

He reached for his phone in his pocket, and then realized that he’d left it in the pants he’d changed for the costume.

Nothing for it, then, but to go in with what he had. He wasn’t going to leave his parents with whatever evils had come.

He cautiously approached the house, to try to hear what was going on inside. It was almost completely silent in the darkness.

There was some faint noise, though, coming from the dining room; Mark pressed an ear to the wall and froze.

“…ultimatum,” he heard a man muttering.

A reply, in an unintelligible female voice.

It was the dream, he thought wildly, Ace not here and my parents in danger...

There was a sudden light on him, and he turned to see a pair of car headlights. If it was the ice cream truck, he was dead.

“Who’s there?” he called, as bravely as he could. They’d already spotted him; there wasn’t a point in trying to hide. He’d just have to fight this as best he could.

There was silence. The car lights switched off, and there was the sound of the car door opening.

“Excuse me,” Mark heard. He blinked twice to help his eyes get used to the darkness, and saw a male figure in a coat walking along the path. “Excuse me, is this the Hollander house?”

One of Dad’s party guests. He can’t come in here.

“No!” Mark said in a fierce whisper. “No, it’s not! Sorry!”

It didn’t seem to stop the man. “But I’m sure this is the address. And I saw Elizabeth’s car further up the road,” he said.

His voice sounded horribly loud, and his bumbling innocence was more than Mark could bear.

“It’s dangerous, you can’t come in here!” he called.

“Is this a Halloween prank?” the man asked. He walked closer to Mark. “You’re Simon’s son, aren’t you? I’m Toby Halligan. I think I met you at the office picnic in July.” He laughed, too loudly for Mark’s tastes. “Halloween prank, eh? Not a bad idea, but I don’t think your father would be too pleased. Where’s the front door?”

“Something’s wrong,” Mark said, running to him. He tripped over in the darkness, and couldn’t restrain a curse word as his elbow scraped over something hard. “Don’t knock on it, don’t…”

Toby simply reached over him, and knocked loudly on the door.

“It’s dark!” Mark said. “I think there might be…strange people in there!”

Toby shook his head. “I honestly don’t think so.”

“Toby, it’s…”

The door opened.

“Come in,” he heard his mother say.

Mark gasped. “You’re…real?” he demanded. She could be Lady Illusion, laying some sort of trap…

The hall light shone from the doorway, lighting her from behind; everything inside was normal, as far as Mark could tell, though the windows had been blocked up with something.

“Mark. Are you all right?” she asked. “Come in, Toby. Sorry to keep you waiting like this in the dark.” She turned. “Simon!” she called. “I told you to put the light out! You already know our son Mark,” she added to Toby, fixing Mark with a gimlet stare. “Simon’s in the dining room, with Coleman and Elizabeth. Our little niece has friends over, but they shouldn’t be any trouble.”

She sounded perfectly herself.

“Thank you, Fiona,” Toby said. “I think I’ll show myself through, thank you…” His voice faded away down the hallway.

He could still be going to face carnival-freaks, Mark thought, and raised a hand as though to summon him back.

His father came walking out then, a lamp in his hand. “Sorry, darling,” he said. “I completely forgot to bring this out…my word, it’s dark. Apropos for Halloween, though, isn’t it?”

Relief flooded through Mark.

“Where are the girls?” his mother asked, no mercy in her tone.

“The Thompsons’,” Mark said. This did not seem to appease her. “I just left them there for a second, the house was all dark and I thought…”

“Go back and get them, Mark,” she said. “Now.”

It was enough to send him running, for a better reason this time.

His father was still there on the doorstep when he returned with six still-giggling girls; did they ever stop? Thank Zoar for Mrs Thompson.

“Mark, stay back for a minute, Fiona will look after the girls,” his father said. “I just can’t get this blasted thing to light.”

“Why not just leave the curtains open?” Mark said, examining the lantern’s bulb.

His father looked shocked. “It’s the atmosphere, son. Darkened house, one old lantern on the steps—it’s a real American Halloween.”

“So you blocked up all the windows after we left?” Mark flicked the switch on and off. “Great idea. Real safe for harmless visitors. What kind of safety approach were you hoping to take, Snyder’s?” His elbow hurt, he realized; he reached a hand to it and noticed it was bleeding.

“Well. It was a sort of spur-of-the-moment idea,” his father said. “You were gone quite a while; your mother was starting to worry.”

“They didn’t want to go home.” Mark shuddered slightly. “Did you plug this in? And switch it on?”

“Not sure.” Simon popped his head back into the hallway to check. “Yes.”

Mark passed him the lamp. “Then I’ll get a new bulb,” he said tersely, stepping into the light.

“Son,” his father said, “is there anything you want to tell me?”

Mark sighed. “I thought…something had happened to you two. I couldn’t see any lights on. I left Ashley and her friends at the Thompson place so I could find out what it was. And I was a bit rude to Toby. Sorry.” He couldn’t let it all out, but it was something of a relief to be able to say something to his father.

Simon’s eyes widened. “Oh. I’m sorry about the lights. And about your elbow. Go put something on that.”

It was a lot easier searching than the time he’d been alone at home when the villains attacked, Mark reflected as he rummaged through the laundry cupboard to find the bulb. Much better lit, for one. And he guessed it wasn’t so bad, after all, aside from the still-hurting elbow.

“You locked the garage. You never lock the garage,” Mark said to his father, screwing the bulb into the lamp.

“Your mother reminded me. Safety. Just in case. You get some strange people around on Halloween.” Simon tapped the side of his nose. “Never be too careful.”

“Okay. So who was discussing ‘ultimatum’?” Mark asked. The lamp worked as he switched it on this time; placed on the little table put outside the door it highlighted their sign reading “Trick Or Treaters Welcome” with light turned pale blue by the lampshade.

It’s a villain word! “Ace Lightning, this is my ultimatum: surrender or die.” Everyone knows that!

Simon looked confused for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Oh. That’d be our ultimatum for the upcoming merger with Hankarde Systems. We offered them two hundred k plus expanded premises, the best deal we can give them…Anyway, what did you think we were saying?”

Mark sagged. “Never mind, Dad. I just got worried.”

As they walked inside together, into a warm kitchen inhabited by loud children, Simon gave him a pat on the back. “Never mind, son. You did the right thing to keep the girls out of the way. If something had been really wrong, you’d have handled it well. I’m proud of you.”

Tell that to my elbow, Mark thought, but he managed a smile at his father. “Thanks, Dad.”

Ashley grinned at him. “You were silly,” she said. “There wasn’t anything to be scared of.”

Mark sighed. “I know. It just…made me think of a dream I had. Like the time you met the Radioactive Guy, remember?”

She tapped him on the nose with her wand. “Well, I’m the Dream Fairy, and you’re going to have better dreams tonight,” she said.

“The Dream Fairy’s not real,” one of the witches said. “C’mon, Ashley. Let’s finish the marshmallows before our parents come.”

It was a relief to have the children off in the lounge with his mother, Mark thought, and went outside to retrieve his costume. The house did look spooky, he noticed, one single pale lamp shining from his doorstep while the other windows were dark.

Perfect for Halloween.

Drabble challenge (Sarah Frost) Quote: "If the Lord of the ascendant be Lord of the twelfth, and Combust, you must observe of what house the Sun is Lord, and in what Signe and quarter of Heaven he and the Lord of the ascendant are, and judge the Witch liveth that way; describe the Sun Sign as he is, and it represents the person." – William Lilly. Word: dagger, bonus points for "athame".

**********

Heretic.


‘Witch’, they all said, in muttered whisperings that ran throughout the complex after the rebel leader (if you could call her that)’s capture. That and ‘heretic’ and ‘Insurrect’. One or two who still remembered the old days had even called her ‘knight.’

She kept her eyes on him as she entered the control room, her gaze far different to how he remembered it –not that he’d spent much time in the past memorising her exterior. When he recalled the event much later, he would most likely conveniently “forget” just how… amused he had been to see her, standing there, like a crackling beacon under the unnatural glare of the lamps. She looked like no Knight now.

This was the time of the Twelfth Dimension. (And the Third, and the Sixth… There were scattered fragments of the Eight, Tenth and Eleventh scrawled in there too. The integration of the realms had been a highly unfortunately –and rather messy– incident, and one for which nobody had ever really taken the blame. He, for one, was keeping his mouth firmly closed on that subject. Not that it honestly mattered –Too many had been destroyed for there to be much concern left for culpability anyway.)

At any rate, their codes and rules were all but forgotten, but certain members of their kind simply refused to go quietly. She was one of them. Old habits died hard, did they not?

‘…Mortals, however,’ he said. ‘They are infinitely easier to dispose of. As you have no doubt seen, Lightning Knight.’

‘Go. To. Oblivion!’

Her hands were still bound but she didn’t seem to care, pink lightning lanced between her fingertips as she aimed for his face. He stepped easily out of the way. She wasn’t as adroit as she used to be. Always a passionate girl, but never quite a leader, or one for thinking before she acted. (The state of the rabbles storming his Fortress earlier had been evidence enough of that.) Without the programs that they had always relied on to instruct them, the Lightning Knights had been easy to pick off.

That was right. He remembered her. He had faced and defeated her several times, in the past.

He turned to the mortal who brought her in, hands still clutched around the conductive chain binding the Knight’s wrists. ‘Leave us,’ he ordered, and the mortal should have moved immediately.

The mortal didn’t move. Her lip trembled as she stared at the Knight in trepidation. For a long moment Fear fixed his eyes on the Knight. There was something rather “mortal” about her too, these days. Perhaps it was the absence of her uniform –except for the wrist guards: Half smashed but still clinging to her wrists, and the regulation boots, otherwise her garments were distinctively second-hand mortal in fashion. Or perhaps it was the fact that her face was older than it used to be, even though they were supposed to be immune to such mortal curses as aging. Not that he’d personally ever had to worry about that.

When he looked up again the mortal woman was still stood exactly where she had been before: shaking and uncertain. He didn’t tend to remember their faces these days, but still, he recalled that this particular one used to work within his complex, before she was demoted to grunt labour for associating with the enemy. She had been one of the lucky ones.

‘Let me rephrase that order,’ he says, impatiently. His bony hand clenched around the stick in his hand, brandishing it towards the door. ‘Wait out there, you ridiculous mortal. Or is there something you wish to say?’ he deliberately phrased it as the kind of question you’re not supposed to respond to. The mortal took her chances.

‘I…I…’ she stammered. She glanced continually at the prisoner, but the prisoner didn’t look back. Her eyes were still locked firmly on Fear, and the mortal seemed to have no idea which way to look ‘I warned you… them. We did… we didn’t want this. We didn’t want to be involved in—’

‘Apparently you have no understanding of the term “rhetorical question”.’ He interrupted. “For final time, mortal: Do as I say,’ he spoke without raising his voice. He didn’t need to intimidate her. Just opening her mouth had taken all her nerve, and she had nothing else she dared to say. He suspected she feared the prisoner almost as much as she did him. To them, all power was witchcraft. It was an amalgamation of the fears bred into them by the Third Dimension –which has been ripe in its fair share of witch burning and heresy in the distant past, and the suspicion and volatile nature bred into them by the beings of the Second –where everything’s goal was to kill everything else. Survival of the fittest taken to extremes.

The door slammed shut behind the mortal after several attempts to draw the lock.

‘You have a name, of course, Lightning Knight. I’m sure you’d much rather I called you by it.’

She still didn’t speak. Stubborn as ever. ‘…But now that I think about it, you have several names, don’t you? You went through quite a history before you joined the Knights. And before you ended up here.’ She gaze flinched slightly. He knew he’s struck a nerve. ‘So who is it that you are NOW, Lightning Knight? Is it Sparx? Or Witch? Or Amandine, perhaps?’

‘There’s no Amandine,’ she said quickly. ‘Amandine died a long time ago.’

‘Then perhaps we should stick with heretic,’ he said. One bony digit touched her cheek and she flinched again, more visibly this time.

‘That is what many of them are saying, you know, “Rebel against the program”. They’re calling you all manner of things in the streets… heretic, demon, witch… to name but a few.’ There were other rumours he didn’t tell her about. He recalled a little of mortal legend from the third dimension and could see where the misconceptions had sprung from. He also recalled a human tale of a fiery haired swordswoman, rising up against king and country. She was murdered too, of course. As were most mortals who attempt to make a difference in their time.

The Knight before him gave a snort, which might have been laughter, or disbelief, or scorn, or all of those.

‘And the joke would be?’ he asked her, more curious than anything else.

‘Those… those mortals…’ she gasped, wiping her lip against her shoulder. He could see thin, blue energy leaking from a gash above her jaw. ‘They’re a messed up bunch, aren’t they? They don’t know what’s true and what isn’t. They… they don’t know what to believe.’

He wonders if this is some freakish attempt at conversation of if she is merely trying to buy time. If so, he knows it’s useless. The loyalists she still had had all been dug out by now and were already rotting in the basements where they were keeping the old freaks company. Perhaps she was simply losing her mind, the way a lot of them did, after the programming incident… Maybe it had merely taken her longer to break than the others.

‘What IS there to believe? The truth is a far overrated thing, my dear.’

‘Yeah… you made sure of that, didn’t you?’

‘In a manner of speaking, of course the amalgamation of the worlds was not entirely my fault. We all had a say in it. If you recall rightly, it was from us that the problem began. The mortals merely… finished the job, as you say?’

‘Shut up!’ he wasn’t even sure if she understood half of what he said or if she just can’t stand the sound of his voice. Never the sharpest sword in the armoury, if he remembered her rightly.

The athame still lay on the desk behind him, where he left it after they brought it to him. It was a basic weapon. Not at all like the Knight’s usual standard affair that she used to use. A simple, steel blade but the handle was decorated and elaborate. It didn’t suit her, but then, perhaps it was the only weapon she could find. Perhaps she stole it off one of the minions she managed to destroy. He picked it up and brandished it in the Knight’s direction.

‘She calls herself a Knight, and yet I see no sword?’ He feigned surprise. It was a pity, really. He’d come very close to destroying her on the point of that very blade once before, a long time ago, in another dimension. Still, he wasn’t sure that she was still worthy of such a poetic end as that anyway.

He is the master of this place, and he won’t allow anyone –particularly not stubborn old enemies who just refuse to die– to forget it.

She muttered something. He didn’t catch it, but then he didn’t need to.

‘You have no allies now, Sparx. Perhaps it is time to finish this.’

‘Perhaps it isn’t.’

He chuckled, and felt safe in turning his back on her. In momentarily directing his attention through the window into the world of green skies and shattered hills. The last of her followers were still being hunted out of the old rundown mortal shacks. He sees someone running only to be ripped from his or her feet by the claw rising up out of the dirt. From this distance it was impossible to tell whether they were mortal or not.

This meant that he never saw her changing. The pale pink skin melting into green. And it was the laugh – her old, sharp edged laugh, which first alerted him that something wasn’t right. When he turned around again, she was there. Brown hair trailing about her shoulders making her look spectacularly mortal. Green skin pale and drawn.

It wasn’t what he had expected. Had he been mortal, he expected he would have felt the overwhelming urge to swear in fear.

‘W-where…’

‘Destroyed,’ the Lady says, quite calmly. ‘For many cycles, I should think.’
Her new wrists were too thin for the binds and they slipped away easily. The energy of the constraints died as the chains hit the floor. Somewhere down the hallways he could hear the shattering of glass.

No. It isn’t possible.

‘And all this time…’

‘All this time,’ she nodded. ‘Well… since the Eighth merging, at least. She was alive before then. I fought with her.’ he doesn’t bother to ask who won. The doubts of a past dimension start to seep into his brain as he sees her – alive, despite it all. More alive than he, at any rate. And standing before him. Had she been toying with him? For how long?

‘…Why?’ he found that his usual eloquence had abandoned him. She was as beautiful as ever, as dangerous too. He remembered the time when she had been his ornament and now she was standing in his chamber once again. She was always a master of illusion. Yet why had he not realised?

‘A Knight would be trusted by the mortals,’ she said calmly. ‘To an extent, at the least. Even amongst those unaware of our existence, the image of a Knight is one of a hero. Some of them even recognized the figure of Sparx. Or Amandine,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Depending upon their dimension of origin. The mortals…’ she softened her voice slightly, almost in consideration. But then, she’d never been the type to have sympathy. ‘…They’re a mixed bunch. They didn’t know what to believe.’ She spoke her last sentence in the voice of the Knight, and laughed like her too. Perhaps she wasn’t who he thought she was, but she had still probably lost her mind. It was more than likely. ‘They were replaced too, when I found members of my own kind to take over. Then the mortals –my followers and yours– weren’t needed anymore. They were easy to dispose of where needed.’

Yes. Definitely more than likely.

She didn’t offer him any more explanation than that. Nor did she need to. He was starting to understand. The door behind her opened again and the mortal woman stepped back in, no longer trembling or crying or fearful, and Fear knew now that she was not mortal at all, but was in fact, a highly accomplished actress in an elaborate disguise.

Actor, as it turns out. Fear sees her mortal body morphing into that of a shape shifter with an evil leer, long hair and a handsome face.

Okay brace yourselves this is where I really start to slip.

The alarm bells were ringing, cerebrating back and forth throughout the complex, but the shapeshifter took no notice. She didn’t need to. She snatched her dagger from the table before he could reach it. It wouldn’t work. Not if he wasn’t bound by the rules of what used to be a game and didn’t have a life to take in the first place, but she didn’t seem to care. She wanted her weapon. She wanted SOMETHING. He wondered how many of his followers have been replaced with shape shifters. He wondered when it was that murdering others became an option she was prepared to entertain. If only she had been so capable whilst she was on his side of the war.

‘You always did play a shrewd game, Lady Illusion. And yet still you insist on fighting the lost cause. Is that what you’ve been doing all these years? Skulking in the shadows, hiding in one form or another, disguised as mortals and rodents and minions… and as the Lightning Knight you hated? You were worth more than that, once over.’

‘What Lady?’ she answered quickly. The other shape shifter whispered in her ear and Lord Fear heard muttering about back entrances and hidden vents. She nodded slightly and the shapeshifter vanished. ‘Thanks for the invite.’ She drew back the knife, for some reason, it seemed, in resignation. ‘This is the way it was meant to be, you know that, don’t you?’

‘It is this way because we make it so,’ he sneered slightly. Now that he thought about it this was really not such a shock after all. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen fiery hair become dusky brown and pink skin warp into green. ‘You of all people should know the value of free will, snookums.’

‘Oh I do,’ and she lunged again. She wasn’t as weak as her last morph made her appear and the dagger is snatched from her belt. It passed straight through his ribs, and her hand followed it, forcing him back against the complex wall. There was nothing to damage but it held him there, sticking through his chest.

‘Do you still think you’re so different to them?’ she asked.

‘Why not? I still exist.’

‘…It’s not that you’ve gotten any stronger, or smarter, Lord Fear,’ she said, smiling slightly. ‘It’s the rest of us that are breaking down. But of course, you knew that.’

He did. He also knew that there were not as many shapeshifters in the realm as there once were. Down the corridors he could hear screaming and bellowing and the sounds of minion attacking minion and shapeshifter attacking mortal. He got the distinct feeling that she was losing already. For all her ideas the plan was hopelessly flawed. She was no leader either, it seemed.

A second later he’d forced her away, an extended arm gripping her throat and tearing her off, ripping the fabric of her shirt. She was gasping in pain but she stayed on her feet.

‘You… you knew,’ she kept talking. ‘You knew that not many would have the structural capacity to keep their sanity when their programs started to break down. Ace didn’t. And neither did Random Virus. Neither did many of your minions. Kilobyte… he would probably have lasted…’

‘Ah yes, but don’t we have so much to thank the insignificant little key that is the delete, my lady?’ Fear almost laughs.

‘Perhaps it was our complexity which made us different,’ she stood as tall as she could, she didn’t want to fear him any longer. ‘But we’ll break down too, eventually.’

‘Then what is the import in this battle?’ he laughed. ‘Old times sakes, perhaps, my lady? A blast from the past?’

He expected she was starting a characteristic roll of her eyes, but had to leap away from a torrent of green energy before the gesture was complete.

‘You know the reason!’

‘Don’t try and pretend you care for the mortals, my lady,’ he snapped. ‘Not when you kill so many to get yourself here. My, I never had you tagged as the retribution type.’ There were shouts and echoes beating through the complex walls. The sounds of slaughter. ‘I shall give you a chance to retreat, Lady Illusion. There are still exits open, if you can make it past the minions. Call it an escape route, if you wish.’ He wasn’t entirely sure why he made her the offer because it was pointless either way. The complex was already sealing itself shut, every exit and entrance blocked and supported by anti-teleportation magic. ‘Unless you prefer death… which of course you don’t.’

‘Empty threats,’ she said. The dagger burned white hot in her hand and she refused to retreat.

Then again, he supposed he was quite used to her disobedience by now.

Drabb;e challenge (Sarah Frost) Quote: "What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut with diamonds? or to be smothered with cassia? Or to be shot to death with pearls?"--Duchess of Malfi. Words: brush, sibyll.

***********

She never related well with other people. In school the children in the playground used to tease her. Kick her in queues, hide her Alice-band and rip away her beads. After a while she stopped wearing jewellery to school, so they started pulling her hair and stealing her brush instead. But when they saw that they wouldn’t get a reaction, people started ignoring her, and that was how it was, through most of her childhood. To those who saw her and knew who she was, Sybil was nothing more than a problem. An inconvenient handful bustling in on their lives. At least that was how Sybil saw it.

Sybil, her name was. Sybil Corder. Though nobody ever bothered to remember that. Until she started working for Unity Incorporated™, that was. She was one of their writers. It was an important role and she took a lot of pride in it. In them. Particularly the female characters. Maybe that’s because she thinks they haven’t made enough of them.

She works from home this evening, typing up her scripts for the opening sequence. Each character invoking their own place in the plot, and it’s her job to write them in. She’s even tried her own hand at character design – she’s made her own persona: a female NPC, and Zeke has told her that he’ll see what he can do.

‘There’s no royal road in videogame design,’ their boss had said to them. ‘And that goes even for the storyboards. We have a week and we want these characters worked into setting. I want to see plots, prequels and storyboards up by the end of Friday evening. The more exciting the better, that’s what we’re looking for, people. Lets have some originality here.’

Sybil knows how to work under pressure. She and the team already had most of the sequences worked out anyway. It’s all a question of fitting them together. So now she sits typing in the silence of her room.

She’s writing the past. They all have a past though some are worthy of more than others and this is one of the worthy ones. It’s why she chose to work on her. She types about feet slashing in virtual rain and grey clouds and a city on the brink of war just before the amulet is stolen and the whole world falls into chaos. In all of that, Sybil finds her focus on a single little girl, and writes her story, from the beginning.

It’s scenes like this that she enjoys the most: the brief flickers into the past. The bits where you get to view the characters as they used to be. Children. People with a history. Though she’s not entirely certain how they’re going to structure it in with the game play. To be honest she doesn’t think that the designers are paying enough attention to this plot. Oh sure, give the guy a spunky tomboy sidekick and a best friend with identity problems and an endless quest to save humanity, never mind that she’s the one who has to devise all the back stories and the plots for the cut scenes and story for the final sequence videos, and she has to do all this without getting so involves that she ruins the momentum of the game play.

Nobody ever watches the cut scenes anyway, she thinks, feeling annoyed. Not many people understand the story like she does.

She looks up from her keyboard and finds herself staring into darkness. When had it gotten so late? She’s always doing that, losing track of time and losing track of herself, but at least she’s got the spec done. There’s not much left to do with it now except for save and send it straight to headquarters and wait until the morning.

Sybil gets to her feet and heads for the kitchen. She doesn’t expect to be followed into the darkness.

The ground begins to clatter under her feet, she’s wearing her best shoes when moments ago she swore she was wearing slippers. What’s more, she had a laminate floor, not the heavy stone slabs she now finds herself walking on. And the windows are closed, so why is there a breeze?

Sybil looks around, but there isn’t much to see, other than endless silver-black skies and the trembling structures of what’re probably supposed to be buildings. Every slab she treds on is the same as the previous. It’s all repeated patterns and it seems as if in this place details like variations in the paving slabs really don’t matter.

Rainfall touches her face and splashes under her feet. Though it doesn’t feel like rain, not really. It breaks and crackles on her skin and yet it feels just as cold as the real thing. Knowing that she’s probably not going to find the kitchen, she continues walking anyway.

‘Hey! Come back here!’

She pretends not to hear the child calling, but she can see her reflection in the puddles on the ground, chasing to catch her up. Sybil isn’t fond of being chased. She isn’t fond of people coming after her in the dark. She remembers hair pulling and joking laughs and the mark of beads rubbed against her throat. Sybil quickens her pace, trying to get away. Her footprints start to sound repetitive and deafening on the concrete slabs that can’t really be made of concrete.

The girl catches up anyway, and then she overtakes her, tugging her skirt and splashing her feet in the puddle. The water throws itself across the “pavement”. And the girl looks up at her smiling. Grinning, in fact, even though it’s raining and her “clothing” is getting wet. She must have been running and yet she isn’t short for breath. Maybe that’s because she has none.

‘I called for you like a hundred times!’ the child wipes the rain out of her face. ‘You dropped this.’

No hair pulling Sybil thinks, cursing herself for being so silly. Only now does she realise that she towers over this small girl’s head. The child has metal-blue eyes and copper hair. Sybil she realises who she is. And so she should. She’s already finished most of THIS character’s story. Past, present and future, beginning, middle and end. Especially the end. The girl pushes something into Sybil’s hand and Sybil looks down to see a wooden hairbrush lying in her hand. Her own, she remembers.

Martha Jerkin’s ripped them from her hand in second grade and threw it into the toilets. And Sybil got it back, but now it seems as if it'd been lost for a long time. She clutches it tightly in her fist and realises her hand is shaking.

‘You all right?’ the girl asks, looking up into her face. She seems… confused. And for the first tie, she’s not smiling anymore.

‘You… you found this?’

‘Lying on the pavement. What’d you go and lose it for?’

I didn’t lose it, it was stolen, she thinks. But now it hardly seems to matter, she makes herself smile back at the girl.

‘It was a silly mistake, really,’ she said softly.

‘If you’d left it there one of the minions would’ve gotten it,’ the girl points out. ‘And then you’d probably never get it back. They’re around here somewhere.’ she looked around, frowning at the landscape. It’s rather… cute. The look of an angry hunter. ‘That’s what I’m looking for. Someone’s got to get rid of the freaks.’

Sybil laughs, she can’t really help it, because that just sounds so right for this character. ‘Yeah? And I guess when you find them you’ll kick their butts?’

‘Yeah… You think so? That’s what I want.’

Sybil nods slightly.

It’s what you’ll get. And more besides.

And then, Sybil remembers the future that she planned with the other writers.

A burst of green energy rips violently out of the young girl’s chest, tearing through where her heart should be and throwing her off her feet, across the concrete slabs and into the dirt. Sybil opens her mouth to scream but there isn’t any sound.

A hand without skin –just bones reaching up to grasp her neck– and then she too is thrown to the dirt just as it threw the body of the girl. She sees the leer of crimson eyes and artificial thunder as she hits the concrete slabs. It would have been cliché, had she not been right in the thick of it, and terrified to boot.

She staggers to her hands and knees and turns to where the little girl was thrown, bleeding. Only she’s not a girl anymore: she’s a woman, or almost at least, (they never really decided upon her final age, Sybil thinks, grimly) a woman in a grey uniform, clutching an invisible wound in her chest while whatever she has instead of “blood” pours out of the lighting-bolt symbols attached to her uniform. Sybil tries to plug the leak with her hand, and snatches her arm back, crying out as her hand is pierced by ones and zeroes that feel as sharp as knives.

The girl – woman – flickers violently, a last scream of pain and she’s vanished all together, leaving Sybil clutching her clenched fist and crying until something hard and bonelike grips her throat a second time, wrenching her back, ripping the brush from her hand. Somewhere in the distance she can hear a cackle, manic and dangerous, and another voice yelling out and pain and rage. She knows the voices and who they belong to and where they come from – because she’s the one who wrote them. And she’s the one who did this, and she’s the one who wrote the girl and killed her.

‘There’s no royal road in videogame design… the more exciting the better, that’s what we’re looking for, people.’

‘Mortals,’ a voice mutters tiresomely, as bony hands are wrenching her back by the throat. The chain of beads around her neck breaks and spills purple plastic all over the identical stone paving slabs. ‘Quite the inconvenient handful…’

Sybil opens her eyes and sits up faster than she meant to. Purple beads are scattered all over the desk and the bench and she realises she’s ripped them off her throat.

Nightmare, she thinks, clutching the edge of her seat. Scene eighty-three… God, I knew I shouldn’t have put so much… energy into that one. Should’ve gone with Geoff’s idea.

She stays there for quite a while, sitting at her laptop –screen dark and the screensaver dead– and clutching her throat as she tries to forget about it. Knowing she won’t.

Anyway, the players will probably go with that scene. To them, how they kill the sidekick off really won’t make much difference.

******
‘What’re you stood here waiting for, kid?’

He approaches the about-six-years-old girl from behind and she doesn’t expect him, so she turns round sharply with her hand drawn back ready to punch.

‘Hey, hey hold it there!’ Refugee, the officer thinks, sympathetically. She’s probably used to fighting to stay alive. No wonder she’s so on edge, and out here in the rain. That reaction’s only to be expected.’You’re not in any trouble, kid. Just wondered what you were doing out here. You should be back in the complex, you know it’s dangerous out in the rain.’

‘I can take care of myself,’ the girl responds indignantly before looking back into the dark. ‘I was looking for that lady. She ran away from me.’

‘Lady?’ he peers out into the darkness. The pavement ends a few feet from here and drops straight down into the swampish water of the river. Nobody could just walk out there.

‘You… probably imagined it kid.’

‘No I didn’t… she was there.’

******

Less than a week into the final production, Sybil receives a call from Zeke.

“Sorry Syb. The idea was cool, and in another situation it would’ve worked just right, but we just… don’t think she’s going to work. The problem is, you see, this seer character of yours, the one who gets all the character vision? She just seems to know too much…’

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): " To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?” W. H. Auden". Words: portal, nightmare

If she looked just right at the small hand mirror, half a wink and half a squint, she could reach fragments of past and present of future. It was a form of magic passed down by the other daughters of illusion, the so-called ancient and noble line that she had been told so often about. It had seemed a weak way of passing the time, she had once thought, but these days the mirror-magic was one of few reminders of her past. And she could see, now, the pages of an old journal she remembered, spider-scribed lettering flying across the mirror’s surface in fragments, war in Magery City, atrocities of minions, danger for all humans. Herself, climbing a tree as a child, surrounded by heavy fog. An image of Ace standing at their window framed in sunlight, at which she smiled.

Then thick smoke, and cold laughter. She couldn’t look away, not from him, and a memory of pain trapped her for a moment.

She couldn’t hate him.

Fear him, yes. Very much so. Because she would have been stupid otherwise, and she had little choice in the matter. But it wasn’t the hate, or the outrage, that she would have felt had it been any other hurting her.

Not, of course, that she would ever confess to such a thing.

The mirror showed a more recent journal article, then, with that picture of the four of them on the front page; it was a good shot, she had to admit. Well-posed.

They were heroes, she supposed, after all that had happened; or rather, they were cogs in a political machine that had fastened upon them as the likeliest figureheads for their glory. She had been quite impressed at the way they’d twisted her story around in order to make her into the victimized angel who had finally struck back and destroyed the man who ruined her.

The portrayal should not have irritated her as much as it did; she had often traded on underestimation in the past, being seen as a frill on a ruler’s arm rather than as a warrior in her own right. It was probably the assumption of morality that bothered her; one of the few things she had prided herself on in the past was a lack of hypocrisy. Either way, it seemed she had to keep herself out of trouble for now.

Fog, now, in the glass; and then a picture of herself jotting down details in a small notebook, in between two mildly damaged vehicles.

She dealt with petty thefts and traffic jams these days; it was far beneath her. They knew well enough she had greater skills, but as a Knight only recently-joined who had not yet brought herself to memorize that heavy rulebook, she was confined to the more tedious tasks. Sparx she was not, but even she had her limits of tolerance, and her memories of enjoying the adrenaline rush from a challenge.

Five days out of six, she came off duty and returned home at the fifth hour as the Zoltran bells chimed, and three out of the five Ace would be there to ask how her day had been; he was methodical in a many ways, predictable in how he would behave according to human rules of romance. She refused to think the word ‘bored’, and tried not to imagine how much she would enjoy simply to run off to the Blacklands, steal something valuable, and proceed to re-establish a profitable villainous career.

And in those three days “fine” would be her reply of choice, and if she sounded hesitant or miserable about it Ace would ask her more. But she was fine, in any sense of the word; she loved Ace, loved someone who was kind and decent enough to care about who she was rather than what she could do for him, and she was not interested in repeating minor details of careless accidents and pickpocketing.

Following her train of thought, the mirror showed her a snapshot of herself and Ace, only a day ago, with them both bent over the sink for the mundane purpose of washing dishes; she sighed, and laid it aside for the time being.

Ace did not tell her the full details of the lastest mission to which he and Sparx had been assigned; it was confidential information, no doubt, even to those with fully trustworthy partners. He tried to be discreet about it, so as not to hurt her, but she was good at reading others.

Bored might have been the word, indeed. She had thrown the one who had tormented her into the nightmarishly whirling portal, to rot in the Datastream for good, and saved her world. Saved herself, rather; if she wasn’t careful she would buy into the propaganda too. And after that, there was no longer a foe to battle.

He had been shocked, more than anything, that it was she who was raising a hand against him; he knew very well that she could not have attacked him by her powers. And, she supposed, there was the assumption that since she was trying to be moral she would not harm the one she had betrayed while he was vulnerable. Foolish of him. He always had underestimated her, and morality had never been one of her strong points. She refused to feel guilt over destroying him.

He would have voiced something before departure, if it had not been for the shock and frenzied rush of it all; she could imagine in half-guilty parody that he had regretted the lack of a chance at a grand exit above the fact that she had forced him to die to save her world. No doubt he would have been gratified, though, to hear of the occasional nightmare she still faced, and that she still had not found it in herself to offer Ace more than a kiss.

Two more entries on the list of reasons-to-be-grateful, then; Ace was patient on the subject of the nightmares, and had a rather endearing tendency to blush when it came to certain subjects.

She sighed, and stood up; she had wasted enough time. Life had been simpler as a villain, and trying to make it as a Knight was not something she enjoyed.

But she at least owed some duty to help to pick up the pieces after the war in which she had participated, and she had what she had wanted.

Happiness, after a fashion.

It would be best to smash that mirror, she thought. It was only a remnant of a past she no longer possessed, after all, and she knew very well that most Knights would disapprove; even Ace had looked askance at her when he had walked in on her practicing it.

Her phone beeped, and she raised it to her ear to discuss her shift schedule with her commander.

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): "There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth."
- Maya Angelou
A character has an encounter with religion.
Involve the 6D=RW theory. Minorly or majorly, it doesn’t matter.
Words: alphabet, system

“But it’s not true,” the child said, running a hand in irritation across the lettering scribed into the cellar wall.

“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth,” the woman said with a sigh. She knelt down, and sorted through the pile of onions to pick twelve suitable for her bag. “Learn this as much as any trick of illusion, girl.”

The child shrugged. “And is the Goddess going to curse me if I say her name now?” she asked. “Meleshiva, Virgin and Whore, smite me where I stand!” She twirled around as though in some parody of religious ecstasy.

“Behave,” the woman told her, fixing her with a stern glare. “You know well that you can make others believe what is not real. Could not other Powers of this world make you do the same?”

“And at the same time I know what is real and what is not. I have no need of old gods,” the child replied in a voice and choice of words recognizable as that of her father.

“They may have need of you.” The woman reached down to take the child’s hand firmly, and placed it over the first letter on the wall. “Do you know the meaning of this?”

“Arachne, first of the spider-runes,” the child recited impatiently, “beginnings and powers and subtle web spun. Then Bethlehem,” she said, moving her hand to the second one carved into the wall, “food and fullness, Chimera, strange and puzzlesome… It’s like the mortal alphabet,” she added. “Or close enough.”

The woman shook her head. “It means more than that,” she said. “Knowledge is more than glib recitation. Try learning that one before asking me for more tales.”

“I’m listening, Lyse,” the child said impatiently. “Speak what you wanted.”

“Perhaps it is best I do not.” The woman hefted her bag over her shoulder, and began walking up the long flight of stairs. “Bring some wine for tonight’s supper,” she commanded the child in an afterthought.

She scowled at her retreating back, but not willing to disobey walked over to the other side of the cellar to pick out a dusty bottle.

“What was it, Lyse?” she asked, scampering up the stairs behind her. “Tell me.”

“Life, and fortune,” the woman replied, “and you’ll hear no more from me for now.”

“The Knight system doesn’t have descriptions and gods to go with their scribing,” the child said, keeping pace with Lyse’s longer strides. “They only have Zoar-the-Damned, who they like to think was mortal. It’s simpler that way.”

“To think something false? How shortsighted.”

“No, to just have words without the gods behind them. I like knowing what’s real and what’s not, even if other people don’t when I’m around.”

They had reached the kitchens, and Lyse put down her bag and started removing the vegetables from it. “Chop these up,” she said, handing the child an onion. “Your father is expecting visitors late tonight.”

“I know, Carnival-folk. Gar told me at the gates. Do I get to go to this one?”

“If I had my way you would not,” Lyse said. “But your father will tell you in his own time.” She walked over to take a spoon inside a large pot and stir whatever was inside.

“Why? I’m old enough, and I have powers.” The child grabbed a knife and spun it in the air before starting to peel and dice the onion.

“Some of them don’t pay as much attention to the Old Powers as they should, not to speak ill of anyone in particular,” Lyse said.

“I’ve never seen proof that they exist.” Another onion went under the knife.

“Describe Arachne for me.” Lyse reached to the shelves, and added a pinch of some purplish dust to the mixture.

“Like a spider. Three sets of parallel lines, slanting outwards, joined by four lines in a parallelogram, and a central circle.” She raised a hand to her head for a second.

“The creature, a web woven, with a hidden circle inside.”

“And…?” She pushed the chopped onion to one side, and grabbed another.

“The spider is your heritage. You know how to deceive. And the self-contained circle is the shape of your powers.”

“What if it is?” She shrugged. “It changes nothing.” She sniffed as the onion fumes started to hit her, and wiped a sleeve across her face. “Yeuch.”

“And that was not Bethlehem you saw, but its inverse.”

“It was the wrong way around,” the child said, trying to hold back the onion tears. “I thought someone made a mistake.”

“It means war and trouble. Lean years to come.” Lyse picked up a knife of her own, and took an onion from the bag. “You know a storm’s on its way.”

“Mortals and Knights and people like us. Father’s been talking too.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve again before grimly continuing to slice apart the onion. “And Chimera for strange things, right?”

“Close enough,” Lyse said. “Something fragmented and something reborn from it.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.” The child grinned. “Can I go back down and check if the enchantment’s reformed the wall again? I want to see if it’s still saying something you can make sound useful.”

“No, you may not,” Lyse said forbiddingly, “and in my presence you will make pretence at respecting the Powers.”

The child paled as she looked up at her, and the knife she held wavered; it seemed the familiar-looking servant had changed into something older and more dangerous for an instant. “I will,” she said, and briefly formed a circle with the forefinger and thumb of her left hand. “If you tell me what it’s supposed to mean and what it actually does.”

“You crave too much knowledge,” Lyse said, but the moment had passed, and they both had many tasks to prepare for this evening.

Challenge from Sarah Frost: Quote - "Genius means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." Words: computer, bully.

**********

‘What the hell is all that about?’ Wayne squinted at the screen, wearing that same look he always had in algebra class, only less bored. Barely. ‘Looks like gibberish…’

‘Yeah, gibberish to a grade schooler,’ Chuck muttered, just low enough so Wayne couldn’t hear him.

Course Fisgus was sort of right, really. It was gibberish. It was SUPPOSED to be gibberish. That was what made the whole thing work. He’d looked it up on the net and Morse code was supposed to have been this marvel of its age. Quick, simple and passed straight through any radio waves that got in the way. Random dots and dashes were pretty tough to spot, whether you were dealing with the communications on some old battle ship or the mainframe of a computer. No wonder the Lightning Knights ended up using it too. Before, Chuck had always thought that the designers had just been too lazy to come up with a brand new type of coding. Turned out they weren’t lazy about anything. They just went with what worked.

First rule of programming – you’ve got to go with what works.

Course when you looked at it in the right way it sort of became obvious. But then, he was the only guy in the room who actually knows any Morse code. And how to network the PC’s without it being picked up on an outside line and alerting the whole damn Complex to what he’s doing.

Complex… it sounded weird, calling it that. Like Kilobyte did. Thing was, this “Complex” was supposed to be his high school. Didn’t look much like that now. It was always kind of creepy in the dark, with the lights down and everything. It looked creepier still with a bunch of students scattered around on desks and tables looking… well some of them are looking kind of freaked, actually. Others just look as if they’re wondering what they’re missing on television back home. Come to think about it, they WERE airing a ten-hour marathon of HACKERZ on Fox tonight. Or they were supposed to be anyway. He gets the feeling that something is probably messing with the TV schedule right now.

No. Focus, Big Byte. NOT the time. Not the time at all…

In fact the only reason nobody had actually walked out yet was because they didn’t dare. Nope, they were freaked. Most of them, anyway. Anyhow the doors were locked. No way in or out of the building and the last person who tried to leave… well… she was probably still wandering the corridors trying to find an exit.

He HOPED she was still wandering the corridors.

The rest of them were stuck together. Which was a relief, in one way, and a pain in the ass in the other. How the heck was he supposed to work with half of class 4A staring at the back of his neck and wondering what the hell is going on? Like he could tell them, even if he wanted to.

Wayne –he’s at the back now, wandering back and forth between the seats and other students and looking like he wants to do something nasty to the next kid who opens their mouth. Mark… he’s not there. That’s not good, but Chuck was working on it.

He was scared.

He’d never been up against a genius before. Not like this. Not with practically every computer program in the whole city against him. Not with the school bully breathing down his neck. Not without his best friend in the background telling him not to lose it when he starts stressing over bad connections and viruses. Not with a bunch of kids stuck with him and wondering what the hell was going on and nobody having the brains to actually ASK. Which was lucky, sort of, because he didn’t know how he’d answer if they did.

“Oh nothing, dudes, we’ve just got an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it thing going,” or “nothing major, sit tight while I hack into this encrypted database and try to shut them down,” or maybe “dudes can you not distract me when I’m working…”?

Nah. These were school kids. They wouldn’t buy it.

He looked back at the screen, struggling to work out the puzzle. It wasn’t easy, and the schools dodgy website-blocker-system wasn’t exactly helping. Oh sure, they stopped the “bad kids” getting their kicks from the online games and activist-hate-sites and online scans of playboy and all that stuff, but when you’re trying to hack through hijacked government ensembles, they keep getting in the way.

Yet another web-block popped up warning him of potentially illicit content in the page he was accessing (what the heck was so illicit about the public Pentagon video-connection, anyway? Stupid school blockers…) Chuck overrode it easily, but all the same it was… annoying. Kilobyte had pretty much all the obvious places closed off to start with. He wouldn’t pretend he didn’t know jut how dangerous it was, what he was doing here. Playing around with something that, for all he knew, Kilobyte had complete control over.

‘Stupid videogame tycoons… Oh sure, expand your horizons, put the Ace Lightning sequel game online, great idea, you… big… UnityCorp Business dudes. Sure! The kids’ll love it, great for business… Course YOU don’t have to deal with the mess when you let some cyber-freak get control of the entire internetwork… Damn it, I knew I shouldn’t have let Mark run that disc but ohhh no…’

Someone in the back was muttering about their parents getting worried. ‘Why haven’t they sent anyone out yet? They know we’re here. They know we’re stuck in the school.’

Chuck tried to pretend he couldn’t hear her, but he knew who it was –he had no ideas just what Marissa Clark was doing in detention in the first place. He’d bet cash that it was her first offence. ‘Got on the wrong side of Hammard I bet. Had to be him. He hates everyone. He’s worse than Chesborough was...’ Maybe it was the fact that she’s one of the “good” girls who isn’t supposed to be here anyway, but she seems to be starting to click that something’s not right. In fact it wasn’t just her. They all were.

‘Uh, yeah, if you’re doing something like, illegal back there you’d better say we’ve got no part in it, Mugel.’

‘I… um… Illegal?’ Chuck could feel his ears burning.’ What’re you talking about?’

‘Oh, please. You think I don’t watch TV? Whatever you’re doing there you’re not just browsing. So whatever show-off hacking stuff you’re doing I’m not apart of it, okay? I’ve got a record to keep up.’

Chuck swallowed. ‘There’s nothing… illegal going on, okay?’ Not from me, anyway… does taking over the world via Internet sources constitute as illegal? Pretty sure they won’t have a jail term for it or anything. ‘ I’m just… just checking out some stuff. It’s all cool.’

Carefully plucked eyebrows raised, creasing the girls’ forehead. ‘What-ever.’

Okay, so maybe that girl was smarter than she acted. And looked. And pretty much everything else. So maybe she actually did know something about computers and what he was trying to do.

‘Gotta stop underestimating my classmates… Damn I don’t wanna have to explain this…

‘Wait. Cool it. Just Chillax, Chuck. Okay, so they’ve figured something up, but they don’t KNOW what they’ve figured out. They dunno that there’s some mutant cyber stalker virus playing whacko with the Internet, shutting down access to all possible networked-systems on the planet INSIDE this computer, a bunch of mutant freaks taking advantage of a disintegrating economy to run total riot OUTSIDE of this room, and that it’s all only been going on for an hour…

So she knows what a hacker looks like. It’s not like I’m beating down the TV stereotype…’

He tried to pretend she wasn’t watching, isolated the encrypted files and finally started to get somewhere. Now he knew what he was doing. He knew there was something he COULD do. He started sifting carefully through each of the files popping up on the screen as he gained access to one Ace Lightning Online data-file after another, keeping his fingers half-crossed as he typed. This would be a really bad time to get his signal spotted.

And then he found something. A barely noticeable hyperlink that stood out amongst the others. He unzipped it’s coding and there was another fault underneath it –Another series of numbers that didn’t fit. And another. And another. Chuck started to think he was onto something. He hesitated, the way he always did at this bit trying to work out which codes were actually important and which of them were dead ends set up by anti-virus programs to try and ward off hackers. Sometimes it all came down to eeny-meeny-miny-mo… like now. He activates his own worm and sends it scurrying into the network.

‘Sheesh… Click-click-click-click, could you be anymore annoying?’

…That was if certain jerks in this room would just sit down and put a goddamn sock in it. And quit playing lasso with a loose computer cable and the back of another classmate’s head.

‘Wayne you erm…you’re gonna cut off my Internet connection if you keep doing that.’

‘For freaking hell’s sakes, dweeb, do I LOOK as if I freaking care? This is stupid,’ Wayne kicked a chair out of his way rather than move it sensibly. ‘We’re stuck in a freaking school building and you still have to find something completely dorky to do with your time.’

‘About time you started packing some new insults, Wayne…and learned some different words so you don’t use the same swear word three times in one vernacular paragraph.

…Hey he’s been cooped up in a classroom for about five hours without beating up any dweebs,’ Chuck thought sarcastically. Sure he’s getting stressed. He’s probably going through withdrawal.’

‘Wayne will you just… sit down and quit kicking stuff for another five minutes? I’m trying to work here…’

‘Well, if by work you mean drive us all nuts with your click-click-clicking then it’s working. Who do you think you are that… Brock guy on Hackerz?’

‘David Steel.’

‘What?’

‘The guy on HACKERZ, the Mainframer with the specs? His name is—’ Chuck cuts off when he turns to notice that Wayne’s towering over him and looking kind of intimidating from way up there. ‘…Is… David Steel. You’re thinking of Brock Wayne, the guy who’s always beating on Dav…’ his sentence trailed off. He turned away from Wayne resolving to keep his mouth shut. ‘I… I’ll just… type quieter. Yeah.’

‘Good. Just try to keep it down, dweeb. I’ll let you keep your fingers if you do.’

Great… great this is what I get for trying to save the world, a—

Chuck whirls back to the screen realising he’s left his worm burrowing into some supposedly non-existent website which turned out not to be so non-existent after all. He saw new, previously invisible sheets of coding appearing before his eyes – access files to the most secret areas of Kilobyte’s operation, Ace Lightning coding files, possible sources of virus, all churned out right in front of him. His face split into a grim. ‘Bingo!

Bingo, I’m in!

Stephen Hawkins eat your heart out, dude!’

He let himself have a moment to bask in the triumph, but that was all he had time for. A little grey box popped up on screen asking for password, and he knows he doesn’t have to give one –He’d already worked through all the password protocols. Just one little click and he’d be in…

…Or not.

‘No password specified. Please type in correct access password.”

The warning chime thumps and makes him start in his seat. Wayne snorts and lets go of the volume control of the speaker. Chuck ignored him. He also ignored the look on Wayne’s face BECAUSE he ignored him. He had bigger calamari to fry around here. He clicked the OK button a second time. Still the warning chime and the request for access password. He tries again. The same warning chime. The same annoying little grey box.

‘Damn… damn it, not now! You stupid, useless—’

What’d you call me?’ The next thing Chuck knows his chair is being dragged back across the room and Wayne has a worrying grip on his shoulder with one hand. Only now did Chuck realise. He had to stop thinking out loud like that it wasn’t good for health.

Three hours without a fight… yeah. He was bound to snap sooner or later.

Wayne’s grip tightened on Chuck’s shirt, his fist was raised at a really worrying angle. ‘We’ll see who’s stupid when I bash out a few of your brain cells, Mugel!’

‘Hey! Watch that!’ Chuck knew he should probably be panicking about the threat of being smacked in the face but he was too busy trying to grab the computer cable out of Wayne’s hand. If he lost Internet contact now he’d have way more to worry about than the loss of a few teeth. ‘Wayne don’t—’ he scrambled to break Wayne’s hold and he must’ve been stronger than he thought he was, because Wayne let go of him in surprise when he whacks him on the wrist ‘Can… can you beat me up later? I’m busy here if I… leave this thing we could get into big trouble!’ ‘Not that we’re not already in way more trouble than you’d understand…’

(‘There. I knew he was doing something dodgy,’ one of the girls muttered.)

‘Man you really are a geek…’ Wayne muttered, as if he’d only just worked that out. He let go and Chuck dropped back onto his chair. ‘And will you cut it with the damn clicking already, before I break your fingers!’

Chuck stared up at Wayne uneasily. Not so much unnerved by the threat to disable him as he was by the major error in what Wayne had just said. Thing was he hadn’t even seemed to realise yet.

‘But… Wayne I…’

‘Zip it, for the last time upchuck, before I rearrange your fa—’

‘W-Wayne?’ The snotty girl from before piped up, her voice was higher than usual. In fact she sounded kinda scared. Wayne followed her gaze to the computer where Chuck had been working. The keys still click-click-clicking in a steadily quickening mantra.

Chuck could feel both of his own hands, still clenched tight around the computer cable; his fingers were nowhere near the keyboard. Wayne swallowed as he finally noticed it too.

‘What? Who the freaking hell is typ…’

Seeing Wayne go all freaked out and whimpery like that would probably have been the highlight of Chuck’s evening – no, highlight of his life, in fact – only thing was, he was just as scared. And when he turned around, and saw the screen of his computer the evening got about a thousand times worse.

’Bad day…’

>intrusion located.
> identified > unsolicited access to database. .
> system administrator > alerted.
> rationale > no specified explanation given for access.
> possible options > terminate intruder’s connection. Terminate all bugs in file. .
> system > shutting down.
> access being terminated at 18-hundred hours.

The clicking was getting louder now. A girl flinched away from a computer terminal as it lit up besides her, and then the screen besides that lit up too. And the next. And the next. Internet connections were whirring and screeching into action en masse, sounding like a scream. Chuck flinched away from his chair and it clattered to the floor. It’s was probably just his imagination. But he swore he could hear someone –something– laughing.

Very bad Day!

Chuck stood up, even though his legs sort of didn’t want to let him. Wayne was staring at the screen and sounded as if he’s choking on something, the voice of someone at the back, who was in the middle of complaining about missing Celebrity Sleepover, trickled away into stunned silence.

‘What’s going on

[Oh, yeah like NOW they ask me when there’s no way I can lie about it!’

Chuck isn’t one for swearing but this seems as good a time as any to start. ‘Oh, Crap…’

He pushed between two students to get to his back and scrambled for his mobile. Phone lines and outer-building communication were all down, Rick had said. Did that include mobiles? Chuck didn’t think so. He started beating out Mark’s number, praying he was around to answer.

A dull light in varying shades is shining out of the monitors, turning the faces of his classmates a bunch of weird colours. Like they were reflected in a prism, like the ones they used in science club. The machines were still screeching and scrabbling, even though the Internet connections had already been established.

‘The screens are melting!’ a girl suddenly wailed, trying to snatch her arm back from the computer monitor and the sticky, partly transparent gloop that is gripping onto her. The screen flickered with black and purple. Melting? Nuh-uh. That’s not any screen meting, that’s a portal letting something out…

Somewhere down the hallway he could hear the sound of smashing glass. A schoolgirl’s scream. Like something out of Silent Hill.

He knew it was too late.

>Options at this point.
>Eliminate source of discrepancy Y/N?

>Y.

And then a new message, something not written in regular speech, starts appearing on every monitor in the room. Yellow symbols on a vivid green background: A dot, a short line, like a dash, two dots, three dashes, back to a dot. Dash, dot, dot, dot, dash, dot, dash, dash…

The message on the screen popped up in Morse code, so Chuck was the only one who understood it. And everyone was looking and him waiting for him to tell them what it said. He didn’t speak. He couldn’t.

‘Morse code,’ he thought dryly, wondering vaguely why he was even bothering to think about it. ‘Yeah… human marvel of it’s age… and he knows how to use it too. Kilobyte knows what scares us. WE scare us. Our own technology does. That’s what he’s going to use again us…

I shouldn’t have tried this… Suicide. And I knew it.’

Now he started to draw comparisons between the stuff that humans love and the stuff they fear, he saw just how tuned to each other these two different worlds were after all. Funny. He’d never thought of it that way before.

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty): “I love my family” - Michael Bergin Must involve character death Words: Titanic, left, lecturer
Words: 150

“But time travel isn’t possible!” Professor Charles Mugel cried, hanging over the side of where they were trapped on the upper deck.

“You hung around with Ace like me,” Mark replied gloomily. “Okay. Calm down, Chuck. You’re the Senior Lecturer in Physics at Philadelphia Tech. What do you suggest?”

“That the Titanic is sinking, against all laws of physics that stupid portal left us here, and we’re about to die.”

“We saved the world and survived evil overlords when we were just kids! There has to be something we can do.” He gripped the side of the boat tightly. “It can’t end here! I mean, I have a family. What do I say, ‘Sorry honey, I was trapped on the Titanic when it sunk and that’s why I never made it back to Emily’s graduation?’”

“I think you don’t say anything.”

The ship continued to slide ominously into the waves.

Drabble Challenge (Sarah Frost): "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with". Macbeth, blood, and floor.

Urgh. This is not my best, I tried to resuscitate it, you tell me whether or not it was worth it.

********

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly.” –Macbeth, Act I, scene vii. Macbeth considers his means of murder.

Felicity had read a little of those texts while in disguised as a housekeeper here. Her employer had kept a paperback version in their living room. She realises Macbeth’s point. It would’ve been best if this were finished quickly, also. Without fuss or struggle.

In the end, it doesn’t quite work out that way. She’d expected as much, had expected at least an attempt at a fight. ‘ Things never seen to go to plan where these brats are concerned,’ a voice says in her head, and she knows it’s not her own.

‘It’s done. What are you waiting for?’

There’s no more reason for her to stay here, and the mortals are bound to kick up one white-hot-oblivion of a fuss about this. She doesn’t plan on being around to face the consequences.

‘Get out of there, now. Or do you WANT to be caught with that thing?’

The tone almost betrays concern, but she knows better than to expect that from him.

The body on the floor is someone she used to know, vaguely, anyway. There was another time when she let him escape. A part of her remembers this, but it’s of no consequence. This is what her master asked of her. And she’s always done as he wishes. He depends on it. Or perhaps it works the other way round. “Eliminate him” was all he had said. If how wasn’t relevant to her program then it shouldn’t be important.

But then, she realises vaguely, neither should be the assumption of some fictional character in an ancient text that most mortals can’t read.

Macbeth had spoken of blood too, but she’d never seen it until now. Not like this, anyway. Not mortal. There’s surprisingly little of it in compared to the energy a real Knight might lose while still alive, but she still tries not to touch him, remembering the stains on a fictional mortal woman’s hands that never went away.

Perhaps she’d read more of that play than she’d realised.

Anna, this one's for you. :P

Challenge (my own; apologies, Scarab): "Women are all female impersonators to some degree.”~ Susan Brownmiller, word: eye.

Outfit, check.

Blue top, with frills she was coming to regret, stylish black jeans, thick-heeled shoes that increased her height by an inch. She’d survive.

Handbag, check.

Leather—or plastic, whatever—so new it squeaked. She hadn’t thought of anything besides wallet that she’d need to put in there.

Perfume, check.

It had been a Magetide present from some grateful save-ee, and smelt of flowers and reminded her of something you’d put in a bathroom to mask the other smells.

Makeup. The real test of endurance.

Lipstick, on the lips; easy enough. Rather a good shade of red, that. Then—what was it, face powder? Obvious enough. Better to put a lot on; that way the bare areas of her face wouldn’t contrast. It hid her freckles and made her look pale. Which was what blush was for—stupid, to redo something natural—and she dabbed it liberally onto her cheeks. It’d do. And the black stuff, for eyelashes—Zoar, that was awkward. She wouldn’t bother with much; she didn’t want to look slutty anyway.

And check. Finally. Done. She wasn’t doing this again, even if it was what all girls did on dates.

Ready to go, and the time was…oh, oblivion.

Race downstairs, stumbling over new shoes, check.

Date not yet castrated by overprotective teammates, check.

Said teammates and date suitably stunned by appearance, check. Depending on the precise shade of the meaning of the word.

Observe boyfriend’s apparel, check. Good-but-definitely-not-nice, quite a lot of chest revealed under a shirt that strongly resembled equipment more commonly used for capturing creatures of the piscine variety—and that had to be mascara, didn’t it, and some red-and-gold design highlighting his eyes. Great.

Pretend not to hear Random muttering something sounding dangerously close to “gay hooker,” check.

Lightning Flash ready to go, check.

And gone. On a date.

“You look…interesting.”

“Thank you.” A slight pause. “Have you…much experience in facial decoration?”

“It’s icky and annoying.” Penetrating stare. “You? Um, you know most guys don’t, right?”

“Most are not as confident as I.”

“Right. I’ll just leave you to it, then. Stick to natural me. Zoar, this stuff’s annoying.”

“I dare say we have a chance at getting rid of some of it prior to reaching our destination…”

Nearly crash the Lightning Flash into a building following a mid-air kiss, check.

Drabble Challenge: (Feardantane) Mark finds out that Kat has secretly been having a relationship with Sparx.

See link here.

(If the link fails to work, it’s here, in Datastream Apologues.)

(In case you haven’t already guessed, I should probably tell you that this fic contains femslash. If this squicks you then don’t click the link. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

Challenge (Scarab): "No. If your jaw were broken, you wouldn't be able to talk... and my life would be much easier" – Oracle. (From Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, Batman 110). Must include: a ghost, a torn book and one of those little umbrellas you get in cocktails.

She hurt. All over. Her eyes were squeezed tight shut under swollen bruises, it felt like several ribs were broken, there was a sharp pain in the back of her neck from something sticking out from the floor which she couldn’t move to avoid, her right arm was at the wrong angle, and she couldn’t even feel her legs.

And someone—or something—was with her. She could hear the rustling beside her.

This was bad.

She couldn’t fight, could barely move, but she tried to force words through dry and mangled lips.

“…Where am I?” It didn’t sound right, and she wondered if she’d lost the power of speech for good along with her sword.

The whispered reply came a long minute later in her ear. “Pity. I thought your jaw was broken. It would have made my life easier. Be as quiet as you can.”

It sounded familiar; she sorted through the possibilities in her head, though her brain felt just as pained as the rest of her.

“Nod if you heard me,” the voice continued.

Sparx managed to move her head slightly to the right.

“Good.”

And then she realized who was speaking, and opened her eyes suddenly in shock.

The speaker was squatting beside her, green features gradually coming into focus in the gloom. Sparx first thought the darkness of the room in which she was lying would clear, but then she realized that she was seeing it as well as she could.

it was some sort of attic, both sides of the roof slanting upwards; dark things crawled across them, and she could see spiderwebs in the gloom. There were old books piled on top of a chest across the room.

Sparx remembered, and twitched her left hand to see if she was still holding the page she had torn from Lord Grimal’s Compendium of Sorcery.

Lady Illusion shook her head, and stood up, shaking the edge of her skirt free from dust. She was elaborately dressed, as though for some celebration, Sparx noticed; she even had a wineglass in her hand, complete with strange-coloured drink and umbrella. But the evils would be celebrating now, wouldn’t they?

“An attic in the Haunted House, with its own rumored dangerous ghost,” Lady Illusion said quietly. She gestured with her free hand, and a large spider emerged from the shadows to be petted. “Arda will keep others away. But you will not make noise.”

She had phrased the last sentence as a command rather than a request, but Sparx managed another nod. Better stay here than in that dungeon, no matter what the Lady was planning…

….and what was she planning, come to think of it? The evils had won.

“…Why?” Sparx managed to get out.

“I…have to.” Lady Illusion paused. “Your text fragment was wrong, do you understand? But few others think so. Your friend…” She bit her lip. “I must go,” she said, and teleported away to whatever party she was due at.

Sparx could have found the energy to hate her, but she would have to survive first. This might have been a chance, or it might have been another trick from an evil. Either way, as a Knight—no matter if they were defeated, no matter if evils ruled the Sixth Dimension—she wasn’t going to give up.

Challenge (Scarab Dynasty):“Nightwing: "One: As long as you're with Batman –or me– you're safe. Neither of us would ever let anything happen to you. Two: We don't quit. Not once has anyone who knows Batman's mission failed to get up again after being knocked down.... And three: Batman doesn't kill. Not ever. "
Robin: "One: Jason Todd. Two: Jim Gordon. Three: So far."”
Include: a glass door. Smashed, open, un-smashed, closed or whatever you wish it to be.
Words: Doubling, outsider


Code of the Lighting Knights, Section Three, Regulation One: In the course of a mission, due and proper care should always be taken to ensure the safety of mortals as a priority.

The kid became Ace’s sidekick. They had appeared outside his bedroom window, and hence, Ace had assumed, he had powers; and Ace needed the help to survive. The kid had to be a version of a Knight from his world. He was young, but Ace had little choice. He needed help to protect the mortal world, and the kid was it, whether or not he liked it. And after the first few battles, the kid had really started to get into it, and had saved the world.

Then there had been another kid. Chuckdude. Keener than Mark, and with programming skill that the Knights needed to complete their mission. How could he have not asked for that skill and assistance? No choice there, and Chuckdude had been more than willing, even after he had been shot. No. After Ace had shot him.

And now. Doubled up in a surprisingly small pile, lying in the debris of the broken glass door of the computing facility.

Once he stops, he stops for good.

Ace remembered that line, and waited.

Code of the Lightning Knights, Section Nineteen, Aspiration Three: Through storm and flame, through cyclone and darkness, a Lightning Knight will never give up.

But what if you discover that the whole Code is a lie?

It was as though an entire structure had crashed down around him. It was everything he had ever believed in—fight evil villains to reassemble the Amulet of Zoar and save the world. But if they all were controlled, who was good and who was evil? Kilobyte was evil, no question about that. No choice but to fight him. But when it came to Lord Fear, who hadn’t had a choice and who wasn’t nearly as competent as he thought, and whom he’d helped betray, it wasn’t quite as clear-cut as he’d wanted it to be in that first rush of anger after seeing the person he loved fall.

And without that, what else was there left him to do?

Code of the Lightning Knights, Section Five, Regulation Six: Lightning Knights imprison, not kill.

Another one he’d broken. Because mortals could be just as evil as any villain from the Sixth Dimension, and because they were more fragile. Because he had human emotions, and far too much power to go with them.

Because the situation had worsened, and they and the human friends had had no choice but to go on fighting.

Or because he was a murderer, and wanted an excuse. A human creation gone as insane as the story suggested he should, forever an outsider looking in to a world that did not want him.

He wasn’t sure he believed any of those.

Hard to be sure about anything, when your world changed so.

Drabble challenge from H: words: potato, item: a hub cap that has fallen off a car wheel, quote: "i can't find it, alright?!"

Bit rushed but I have a karate lesson to get to :P.

*******************

He hadn’t expected this. Not any of it. Never in his worst nightmares had he thought—

Odd then, that the local news broadcasters were passing it off as an earthquake.

Ha.

Yeah, this was an earthquake. The sky was turning violet and the whole city crackling with static energy because of an earthquake. The locals of Conestoga Hills probably weren’t going to buy that one for much longer…

Something round and made of metal flies past him and near takes off his weapon hand. The jolt throws him backwards. He didn’t hear it coming. He didn’t even feel it until it had already gone past and he was on his back in the dirt.

‘Ow!’ he pulled back, swearing. “Ow” was an understatement. The metal was sharp and sliced through muscle, close to the bone. He felt the skin tearing.

‘Kid, are you all right?’ Ace pauses and stares at Mark’s shoulder, and then Mark remembers that he’s never seen human blood before.

‘It’s okay, Ace…’

He tries to move. He knows pain, but he’s never felt anything like this.

He remembers cutting his hand on a potato knife once… how old had he been, seven? Eight? Young enough so that the pain and the sight of blood scared him as much as it’s freaking Ace now. As much as it’d freaked him when it was binary code, deep and blue and liquid-like and draining out of Sparx, one painful digit at a time.

‘It’s not alright, you’re hurt…’

‘I-it was probably a hubcap or something. Ace, don—’

He cuts off, swallowing in pain; Ace takes a hand away from his shoulder. There’s a mark of red on his palm.

Sparx is swearing, sword clutched in her hand, held out horizontally before her like a shield. The air crackles with energy, bright pink and burning. ‘Chuck, please, tell me you made a mistake…’

Chuck’s face looks white, reflected in the light from his computer. ‘It’s a no go… I… I still can’t see anything.’

‘What?’

‘I said it’s not there, I can’t find it, alright?’

‘No, we tracked it down. That… that Datastream rip… thing or whatever it was! It was here!’

‘Well it’s not here now!’

Sparx stabs at her surroundings. ‘Look around, Chuck, does THIS look like an accident to you?!’

‘I know what it looks like but… but I’m not reading anything. This isn’t the source, it’s just a reflection a… a spin off a secondary growth!’ he turns round, and blinks. And it seems that in all the chaos he actually somehow MISSED seeing his best friend getting sliced open by flying metal. ‘Holy… Mark what the–’

Mark doesn’t hear the rest of his question. It hurts so damn much he can’t focus on anything. The knife hadn’t gone as deep as this, had it? He can’t remember. He was just a kid. Just some stupid…

‘Kid?’

'Dude, you’re a mess!'

‘Chuck, just find it!’ Mark snaps, pushing him away back to the laptop.

‘I-I’m looking, man, I can’t get—’

Sparx is still using her sword to shield from debris and the blade is cutting into her palm. Blue energy mingling with pink. She's shaking, and it must be from pain because since when did Sparx react to fear? He knows how she feels. His shoulder’s pounding. Everything is shaking and trembling, with the metal bones of the junkyard falling apart all around them and blue and silver energy racing over the earth. It feels like somebody’s ripping the city apart from the inside out. Mark decides they’d be more likely to get out of here alive if he tries to ignore that.

‘No, not here! We have to get out!’

Ace’s face changes from agreement to dismay in less than a second. Mark barely notices it. ‘Random…’

He’s looking over Mark’s shoulder and into the junkyard. The energy is raging. Like a storm’s been dragged down to earth. Everything’s dark and black and cold. Or maybe that’s just him. Everything’s bursting with electricity and he can’t tell where the sky ends and the junkyard begins.

Random Virus… the junkyard. Okay NOW he makes the connection…

Oh, hell.

‘Too late for that, Ace,’ Sparx’s voice is oddly quiet as she gazes back into the chaos that used to be the junkyard. Not even ca cyborg could get out of that… mess. She sinks back behind the car wreckage they’re using as a shield against the elements. She grabs Chuck’s shoulder and wrenches him back a few feet just before the blinding blue energy takes over the vehicle they’re using as shelter. ‘And if we don’t get out of here soon we’ll be in the same mess…’

‘Um... Run?’ Chuck suggests. His voice squeaking.

‘Run WHERE?’ Sparx snaps, she sounds angry at the very thought of it. ‘You know anywhere in the city that’s NOT doing this?’

‘A-actually yeah…’ he taps a button on the laptop. ‘The… the carnival.’

‘What?’ Everyone yells at him simultaneously. Including Mark.

‘Kilobyte,’ Sparx spits the name, like it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. ‘Oblivion, I should’ve known!’

‘The whole source is echoing from the carnival,’ Chuck shielded his face, metal shards were going everywhere. ‘It’s not a major signal so I didn’t pick up on it before but now it’s the only hole in this whole system. We have to get there!’ He glanced at Mark. ‘Um…then again a hospital would probably be a better idea…’

‘No hospitals,’ Mark swallowed. ‘Not with these two.’

‘Then you’re just going to have to leave us, Kid,’

‘Dude, you’re bleed—’

‘I know, just… it’ll stop,’ he lied. ‘Look this is the only thing keeping you two from being ripped up,’ he held up the amulet. ‘If we separate—’

‘Give one of them the amulet, then!’

‘You think we haven’t tried?’ Sparx reached out and tried to take the amulet from Mark’s hand to demonstrate. It didn’t work, her hand was pushed back.

And then she hit the dirt, crumbled on her side before anyone could breathe. And there’s pink sparks flying everywhere, and the screen of the laptop was exploding, and Ace was yelling, but Mark couldn’t make out the sound. His hand touched his shoulder and gripped the material, soaked and red.

He makes out one word though. Something someone is yelling over the racket. The air’s burning, alight and blue and filled with shadows and a thin stretch of light is ripping through the junkyard, cutting it in half.

‘Random!’

And that's when it sort of clicks that this is nothing to do with Kilobyte. Well, not much...

********************

There was a mortal saying in this world that you never heard the bullet that killed you. In truth, it was a fallacy. The fact was that the gunfire sucked the sound out of the air. The explosion that you supposedly never heard when it was aimed at you was a mixture of chemicals and the sound of the bullet smashing through the sound barrier.

Perhaps the same is true for the resonance of a portal, ripping a hole between two worlds at speeds of Ten Kryllian metres per second. With Random smack bang in the middle of it.

‘Not good…

It makes no sense. Why this… why now?’

He knows better, really. He’s fooling himself, pretending he has no idea what’s happening when deep down he knows exactly what it is. Eternity told him. Two worlds mixed together and then ripped apart again, literally, at the seams. And all because he changed the rules.

Because I had to I had to destroy it. My evil half…’

The sentence never finishes.

It’s been a long time since he felt this kind of pain. Metal is resilient like that. But now even the metal is searing white-hot. Breaking apart.

The rules of two worlds broken. One world that isn’t even supposed to exist in the first place. He knows that now. And that’s what made him so angry. That’s what made him decide to act. Finally. To stop questioning. To DO something.

Six years ago. It was the same, back then. The dark and the pain. Only then it was just him. Now the whole dimension is feeling it. And this is only an offshoot. He's one of many who made the mistake.

It can’t be allowed. It won’t be. They’ll be destroyed first. Metal creaks and shatters and the world turns black and violet and trembles.

Was that the only choice?

He was never very good at answering his own questions.

Choose a character. Have that character describe another. Then have that character describe the next one, and then they describe the next and so on.

Involve the four seasons, one season for each character. These fics MUST be drabbles within 300 words each. Any genre, any type. Use the word grass in every “ficlet” without it being too obvious.

……………………………

Mark on Chuck--]Chuck on Sparx--]Sparx on Ace--]Ace on Mark. (Nice circle.)

Mark on Chuck (winter):

‘Um…Chuck, what’re you doing, mate?’

‘Huh? Oh, catching snowflakes on my tongue?’

‘…Why do you want to catch snowflakes?’ He winches. It’s getting cold out here. They only came outside to get away from the Knights’ chess match. (Sparx could be dangerous when she was being competitive.)

‘Oh just… I used to do it when I was a kid or something. It’s like always taking the left turn when I come to a bad guy in Grassy Plains: Level ten, dude. Its force of habit.’

‘Force of habit isn’t always a good thing though, is it?’

‘Why’d you say that?’ He ducks his head and still misses the flake.

‘Well, there’s a chemical plant over there… how do you know some of it didn’t get into the snow?’

Chuck grins at him. Mark kind of likes that, probably because it’s real. Chuck’s like that. He can’t smile unless he means it. It makes a nice change from the “I’m-not-really-okay-kid-but-I-can-try” and “stand-still-so-I-can-annihilate-you” type stares he gets these days.

‘I’ll take my chances, man. Try it, the snowflakes won’t bite. OR poison you,’ Chuck adds.

‘Chuck, it’s just snow…’

‘Exactly. It won’t hurt to try. It’s fun.’

‘That’s what you said about the chess.’ He points at the door. There’s the crackling, hissing sound of Sparx blowing up another bishop and Ace complaining.

‘This from the guy who had a cyber freaks energy draining tentacle wrapped around his throat last week. It’s not the snow I’d worry about killing you, Mark.’

…He’s got a point. Once you work round all the weird stuff he goes on about, he usually does. That or he gets bored with the conversation and they go read comic books.

Mark smiles a little. ‘Okay, what the heck…’

He sticks out his tongue. And pulls it back in again a second later, because the snow really DOES taste like chemicals.

Chuck on Sparx (autumn):

‘It’s cool, dude, it’s cool. Everything’s cool!’

Okay, so everything’s NOT cool… but she doesn’t need to know that. He figures she’s about, what… twenty feet up in the air right now? Yeah, he’d guess about that. apparently she couldn’t see for all the leaves when she flew through the patch of trees surrounding the back of the college campus. And the Flash is all smashed up after leaving her there hanging from the top ledge of the building, so it won’t be going back for her. Even she can’t jump that far.

Plus, there’s a leaf in her hair. They’re falling from the trees nearby and keep on catching on her.

Damn… where’s Ace when you need him?

‘Chuck, man, this really is NOT feeling cool right now!’ she yells. ‘Get me down!’

She really doesn’t look that… right, hanging up there. I mean, she’s Sparx. It’s completely… weird, seeing her hanging off a roof.

Shame the ivy on the walls must be all weak and brittle at this time of year, or she could’ve gotten down using that.

‘Um… okay I… I’m thinking, Sparx, don’t worry, I’ll get you down.’

‘Well, make it quick, Chuck.’

She can probably see him adjusting his glasses even from all the way up there. ‘Look I… just… try letting go.’

Blink, blink. ‘What?’

‘Just… let go, and I’ll catch you.’

‘…Oh, Zoar…’

‘Chuck, you can NOT catch me, I’ll… probably flatten you!’

‘Who, me? Nah I… I took some karate lessons last week.’

‘You took… what the white-hot oblivion is THAT gonna do?’ she struggles, her grips slipping.

‘You know… I know how to… keep my balance and stuff. I even had that wheat grass stuff this morning. See? Arms of steel. Just trust me, okay, I won’t let you fall.’

Yeah. Real smooth, Chuckinator.

‘Uh… I don’t think you have any choice there, Chuck…’ she’s wincing. Her arms must be really hurting by now. She can’t stay up there.

He braces himself and holds out his arms.

‘Look, I’m gonna count to three, and when I say three you let go, got me?’

‘…DON’T drop me, Chuckdude.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Promise?’

Is it just him, or does she sound… nervous? What about? It’s not like she’s never fallen before. And there’s not always someone to catch her.

‘Promise. One. Two…’

‘Three!’

The next thing he knows he’s on his back in a pile of noisy brown and orange leaves. And he’s trying to catch his breath –hard, since a certain someone has practically squashed all the air out of his lungs. A red head with a leaf in her hair who’s most definitely NOT a human stares at him, grinning.

‘…Well, you didn’t drop me. I’m impressed kid. But I’d ask for a refund on the karate.’ She punches his shoulder lightly.

‘Ow…’

‘Hey, that was fun! Can we do it again?’

Sparx on Ace (summer):

Sparx kicked the chair, kicked the transformer, kicked the pile of scrap Random had left by the door, kicked the door and nearly kicked the Flash. She stopped herself there. She’s not QUITE angry enough with him to do that. Yet.

‘Stupid Ace… stupid, stupid Lightning Knight, who does he think he is?

Oh, yeah, that’s right… He thinks he’s a hero.’

She sighs. She knows Ace is right, sort of. Well, if he really does think that, anyway.

It’s hot out. Red-hot. She doesn’t like the heat. It reminds her too much of that killer of a level she got stuck in a few cycles back, White Hot Oblivion. And this place is getting dangerously close to that, these days. The sun never stops beating. The grass is scorched outside.

It was because of all the power-floes in the air, Ace had said to her. Apparently Random had told him that all the excess energy that built up when the worlds collided had generated all this friction. Which meant static. Which meant heat. She doesn’t bother with the science of it, all she knows is she hates it, and she doesn’t know why Ace handles it so well.

It snowed here, once. And Chuck had been in the doorway, catching it on his tongue, which had been kinda funny, especially considering the look on Mark’s face when he tried the same thing. She can’t taste, though, so it doesn’t really matter.

No snow these days. She kind of misses it. And she knows Ace does too, though he doesn’t want to admit it. He’s sort of resigned himself to the fact that this is the world they’ve got now. They have to deal with it.

Yeah. He’s dealing with it all right. And it’s starting to freak her out.

Because running off to find the bad guys and kick butt in some way that’s defiantly not in the rulebook? Yeah. That’s supposed to be HER job.

Anyway, summer’ll be over soon. Maybe then it’ll cool off a bit. ’More ways than one, huh Ace?’

Ace on Mark (spring):

‘…Sorry.’

Ace had always tried to keep a good eye on his sidekicks.

Course, some of them were easier to keep an eye on than others. Mark – you could usually rely on him to be in the place you asked him to wait, when you asked him to wait there. He’s done a couple of weird stuff. Like trying to “talk” to Random in the junkyard, and then there was that little incident with the amulet’s power boost last year. (Which had… worried him, sort of, because he’d had no idea mortals losing coding LOOKED like that or that it was so much of a big deal.) But at least Mark usually followed his instruction.

But not always.

And that time, he just happened not to. Which has been a mistake. A big one.

And he’s not where Ace told him to be then now, either. So Ace leaves, and flies somewhere else.

He’s close enough, though. Sort of. Kat always says he is, anyway. Ace has no idea what she’s talking about when she says that.

A couple of people watch him fly, but nobody says anything. This is his turf, and they’re getting used to him now. They all are. Lightning Knights like him got attention, no doubting that. What was it Mark said once? That mortal girls love a man in uniform? He’s not sure what to think about that, even though he knows Mark was joking.

Anyway, there were conditions to it ( ‘Like the RULES, for example, Mark. Damnit, the rules you should’ve listened to.’) Being a Knight meant you went where the amulet went, were followed there by evil and the battle repeated over and over again. Once, he hadn’t minded that, but now he knew a different kind of life. A place where friends were friends because they liked you, and not because of the program, and where you had different seasons – like this one, where the days were just starting to get longer than the nights and grass and walls weren’t monotone. A place that…

A place that dstroyed defenceless mortals…

Hell.

Yes, there WAS that in it…

Speak of the devil…

He knows he’s not really there, but these human emotions have a habit of playing tricks on him. He knows it happens