Fantastic Fables

A 7-post collection

Challenge #03126-H217: War By Other Means

Two warring factions on a planet that had often been ravaged. The people were begging for help. The humans came and taught them a way to continue to fight in their war without bloodshed. Now, the battlefields were silent, all of the soldiers as grim as death, were in a large building where none were allowed to speak, other than neutral judges. The battles were as fierce and as aggressive as any war could be, pawns being captured, knights rushing to save their kings, for the new battles, were fought upon the chess boards. The winners heaped with honors as if they had won immense field victories, and those that lost... went off in silence. -- Fighting Fit

In battle fields, new flowers grow. Between the craters of not so long ago. The land heals, as land does. Time erases the scars of war from the surface of a living planet. Little birds make nests in the barrels of war machines long since grown cold. Yet the war is not over. It is fought in other places.

In the bustling city hosting the war, the citizens carry on their daily business. Goods and services exchanged for finance. Finances exchanged for even more finance. The war itself was happening in an otherwise plain and ignorable warehouse, cleared for the occasion.

There on the pied field, troops and important figures fell. Kings lay down after their queens perished. Castles were lost, territory gained. Gambits played between masterminds. And not a drop of blood was shed.

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Challenge #02848-G291: The Punk Choice

They are preppers, but not the type people think of. They did have places of safety, yes. They did have a way to defend themselves, hunt, fish, and all the usual equipment, though instead of firearms they had crossbows and regular bows. And instead of tons of expensive fishing equipment, it was basic rods and reels, fishing lines, hooks, bobbers and sinkers, no expensive lures, nothing like that.

They did have some dried and canned foodstuffs, things that could be eaten and

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Challenge #02780-G223: Redo From...

It started as a Company raid, aided by a hacker who crashed the system of a Rival company. It escalated, every computer system in the World crashed. Hospitals, Electricity, Money. All were lost and the only way to even get the beginning of a re-start needed electricity. -- Anon Guest

The moral, if there was one, was always add extra stop clauses in your trojan worms. Some would say it should have been, don't create trojan worms that will end the world

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Challenge #02754-G197: Panem et Moribus

There are always people who do what people in positions of authority say, just because those people are in positions of authority. There are also always people who stop and think before they act, but rarely do anything to try to stop the first kind of people from screwing themselves over. And then there are preppers.

Preppers stockpile. They stockpile food. They stockpile toiletries. They even go so far as to fret over all the different ways that civilization could collapse around

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Challenge #02465-F275: The Folly of (Rich) Man

with a wave of his finger and flick of his wrist, he cracked his neck and grinned like a bitch -- Anon Guest

[AN: Ugh, the prompts that make me think about my new D&D character who didn't exist when this was submitted... Not doing that noise. Keep it professional...]

There's two ways to go when the forces of fate conspire to brand you for the sins of your father. One, of course, is to sink even deeper into sin,

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Challenge #02409-F219: Escape From a Hell-Planet

It's also worth pointing out that [Name] and Considering Long Term Consequences have a distant, if cordial, pen-pal relationship. -- RecklessPrudence

It's hard to think long-term when your long-term is what other people call 'tomorrow'. Living through the day was challenge enough on the world I used to call home. Planning a week ahead was madness. If you had asked me, there and then, what my plans would be for the weekend, on the day before it... I would have stared for

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Challenge #01333-C238: Pick of the Three

"You can have it done well. You can have it done fast. You can have it done cheap."

"Pick any two!" -- Anon Guest

"You dare talk to me like that?"

The artisan didn't look up. "I talk to everyone like that. Fast and well is not cheap. Well and cheap is not fast. Cheap and fast is not well. Is there more that needs explaining?"

"Do you know who I am?"

The artisan spared a moment to look up. She regarded

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