Instant Story

Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #03073-H165: Soft, Fluffy, Friendly

They had been working for a few months now with the havenworlders, who had gotten quite used to hearing them wake up screaming but it broke their crewmates' hearts to hear it each night. A de-regger rescue who was still learning that the world was not as cruel as they believed. The companion goes in one sleep cycle as the human begins to whimper and thrash in the special sleeping bag. A gentle hand petting the hair, a soft, trilling, lullaby, the human settles back into slumber reaching out to hold their friend's hand, a very, very gentle squeeze of sleepy gratitude. -- Anon Guest

Not every Human is capable of bouncing back from utter deprivation. In a world where children are 'freeloaders' but every baby has the right to be born, there are many cruelties wearing the sheep's clothing of charity. The people who made these worlds wanted to exist in an era of rofantasised[1] glory, and succeeded in recreating a great many of the factual and historical torments for those they dislike.

Sweatshops, workhouses, prison sentences for poverty, depersonalisation that went hand in hand with pointless labor. Slavery that was everything about slavery except the name. True evil in all its depravity, with blatantly treating people as things. Most of them are known as Deregger Worlds, where all that matters is the making of money by those who already have too much.

Human Roi was a Rescue from one of those Deregger worlds. Taken by force from a slaver colony by the CRC. Rehabilitated to a point, and leased with caveats to the Fiscal Upside with the condition that their therapy continued at a comfortable pace. The Neotomin aboard pretty much fell in love with Human Roi when they referred to the crew collectively as "My ratties." Then they learned about the Workhouse Howl.

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Challenge #03072-H164: Surprise Change of Plans

She was hunting for them, seeking hir out. The ancient one, the magi who went by many names, the one who had a thousand children, and more grandchildren than the world would ever know, yet possibly none by their own blood. Spotting their camp, the kobold, hir, and the bugbear child. Slowly through the underbrush she went as silent as a shadow in the moonlight. Then, swiftly, she sprang. Sudden flares shot out behind her in brilliantly colored sparkles, almost blinding in

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Challenge #03071-H163: A Deal is a Deal

A: What am I your f** wingman?

B: Come on you owe me for last time.

A: be quiet you Sonofa- whatever, don’t come crying to me later. I’ll try to create an opportunity for you, oh, and this will cost a little mor-

B: yeah I know what you want, it’s in the basement. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Ah, the temptation to riff on A Cask of Amontillado...]

Friendship can get weird, sometimes. Those who know each other

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Challenge #03070-H162: Weighed and Found Wanting

Entitlement. When one thinks of that word, they think of humans, especially stuck up females, though some males are as well, that are self-centered jerks who thinks the world should do everything THEIR way. But it comes in all forms. This havenworlder was self-centered, a total brat, and thought that just because the humans were kind to their kind and often allowed their people to ride on their shoulders to get from point A to point B safely, that the humans were

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Challenge #03069-H161: Steep Repair Work

Hello InterNutter, long time reader, first time poster here. I was wondering if you could give us the other sides' view on this? How the parents, and students, felt and viewed things as they were being forced to watch the videos showing their actions and her pain? What the CRC's reaction was seeing something like that happen in their schools? How the witnesses who watched the trial, and the others following with the timeline, reacted to it all? How the administrators thought

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Challenge #03068-H160: We Agree With You

HAH! (Heavenworlders Against Humans!) stated as an small movement which mutated into an organisation that had only 3 "simple" demands/ goals

1 Rid Alliance space of humans

2 Restrict Greater (and lesser) Deregulations to their own space and strictly guard and monitor their borders

3 Return to the peace and safety that was pre Human Alliance.

the Alliance was at a loss as to what to do with this steadily growing absurdity, as Heavenworlders had never recorded instances of *rofanticising past civilizations.

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Challenge #03067-H159: Take Only Pictures...

Animals go extinct constantly on Earth due to habitat loss and human misuse of the lands and animal stocks. Thanks to the paradox of time, and good ships, they came since the earliest era, and animals being driven to extinction due to human actions were collected and taken to pristine worlds where they could thrive, being careful to introduce the animals in a way that didn't harm, or alter, the local ecology, but rather where the animals could integrate into the ecological

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Challenge #03066-H158: Stolen By the Fae

Especially at the beginning of integrating humans into the Galactic Alliance, there are still humans that have never been to space, don't really need any training. What do a fierce crew who have 2 (as many as you want) death-defy-ing humans think of this? do they visit earth and see this? or is a human with no training forced out into space. how crazy can a human with no training be? probably just as crazy but that's not the point lol. Chaos

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Challenge #03065-H157: All Life Feeds on Death

"How do you think I feel seeing you eat a salad??"

A die-hard vegan's ship crash-lands on a planet that's what appears to almost be a haven world, lots of small animals, lots of plant life, absolutely paradise. Except...that the vegan sees a plant suddenly snap shut when an animal gets too close and the animal is eaten.

The cogniscents there are green, skin, hair, eyes, and they move with a slight rustling. They are descendant of carnivorous plants that have

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Challenge #03064-H156: Shall We Play a Game?

Anyone who ran a table would understand. -- AmberFox

[AN: Yeah nah that's a bad sesh there. And maybe bad management]

The life of the game master holds many roles. Storyteller, co-ordinator, plot-weaver... and primary parental to a group of people with the collective intelligence of a tadpole. It wasn't their fault. Not entirely. Players in a game this complicated had other things to concern themselves with between sessions. They had lives, errands, work, trivialities, and assorted nonsense that obscured their memories.

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Challenge #03063-H155: Handcrafted Hearth

Do you think, to prove it is love, not just an infatuation, he stays there? He learns to make musical instruments and presents to them to her for her approval or not? He starts to take singing lessons and asks to do duets with her? Maybe even introduces her to others as lovers and helps take care of tiefling children, all the while making it clear that he believes he owes HER, not her owing him, for the gift of her music

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Challenge #03062-H154: Monkey Gonna Jump

A member of a race of aliens new to the Galactic scene holds the misconception that life can be either land bound or aquatic watches a human climb a steep hill specifically for the joy of jumping off the cliff on the other end into deep water. -- Anon Guest

[AN: I have a much more capable program doing the counting for me, so today's full challenge number is actually correct. I'm not going back and fixing the others because that is

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Challenge #03076-H153: Charms to Tame the Savage Breast

A first contact between humans and a new species almost degrade to a war, until they hear humanity music for the first time... -- Tom

First contact is... risky. Both sides have no idea what to expect out of the other. One species' friendly greeting can be another's instant death threat, or grave insult to their grandmother. In a situation where any move could be hostile, it's safe to move very still and do one's best to try and read the other

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Challenge #03075-H152: Life Unlike Your Own

Edda Nebulae tries to chase down Healer Allie and had confronted her trying to get her to work only for Mx Nebulae alone. Now that the person has learned Allie's demand, in order to get better access to her healing ability, Edda decides to try to do what Allie has demanded and finds just how rewarding such actions can be.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02739-g182-do-not-pay-your-heart -- Anon Guest

At first, ze was offended by Allie's hubris. How dare that little junk

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Challenge #03074-H151: Learning to Reach Out

She'd been years, her and so many, many others, being 'deprogrammed'. Her entire life she had lived with hate. She had lived with the idea that violence was a GOOD thing. That these aliens were brutal monsters. That Pure Humans were the only true life in this universe and the rest were filth. It had taken a long, long, time for her and the rest to learn, to understand, and to accept the reality of the world.

From this prompt. https://peakd.

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