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Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #01980-E156: Friends From the Fringe

Having grown up together in the intergalactic community equivalent of an extremely isolated orphanage, you are very confused as to why everyone seems to be terrified of your best-friend-turned-basically-sibling-because-years-of-social-isolation-will-do-that-to-you. I mean, sure. She certainly has some weird habits and ways of showing affection, and can be rather unaware of her strength at times, but she’s also the nicest, quietest, most loving and peaceful sentient you’ve ever met. So why do all the scary, known-to-be-killers species hiding from her in fear? -- Anon Guest

They called it Oubliette Base, when they called it anything. There was work there, of course, because maintaining a spaceport means perpetual work. But it's one of those little pockets of the known universe that acts like a collecting area. And what it collects is the cogniscent equivalent of a tosheroon.

You know the type. The antisocial, the socially awkward, the weirdoes, oddballs, former stow-aways, and orphans of all kinds. Here, 'family' is a word for a group of people in a state of symbiosis. Love can happen, and it generally does, but the 'parent' role is nebulous at best and 'child' is defined as the person who needs the most looking after.

Theramin and Grohl more or less raised each other. Sure, there were others who fed them and clothed them and took them in, but they were transient at best and overworked to the point of accidental negligence at worst. They always had each other from the moment they could remember anything and that was that.

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Challenge #01979-E155: The Horror

We've all done it. Yelled at the screen when the 'new guys' did something to an old favourite. -- Knitnan

"They made a movie out of Sigh of the Wind!"

Kam looked at his nerd sister. "And you want me to go see it with you."

"Well... camouflage. I don't want some neckbeard mansplaining my favourite novel series to me for the entire film." Jen shrugged. Women were always challenged on their knowledge of Sigh of the Wind despite being the target

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Challenge #01978-E154: Ozimandias' Stepchild

Treasure comes in many forms. -- Knitnan

When the wealthy can afford room-sized vaults to protect themselves and their treasures, those who can't do so are bound to revolt. This is a fundamental truth. Civilisations end when the gap between the wealthiest and the rest are too large to be withstood.

When the wealthy live in secret, secure bunkers, separated from the real world by armies of their own guards and throngs of their own servants, you know the world is about

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Challenge #01977-E153: Toughen Up

humans have a passionate love affair between guns and explosions.

so much so that they decided to combine the two in fun and interesting ways -- Anon Guest

Offensensitivity Warning: Loud noises, sudden flashes of light, and human mirth at same.

Parent File: Mythbusters.

Contents: Humans test human myths by taking their mythos to the extreme. Frequent use of loud, fast projectile weapons, rockets, and bombs. The humans on record and viewing these files find the content highly amusing.

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Challenge #01976-E152: Low Rent Catchment

booooom "What the hell was that?" "Thunder?" "Are you nuts? It's a clear sky, there's not a storm for a thousand K's." -- Anon Guest

"Different kind of thunder," said Fouthet.

Somik glared at hir as if ze had grown another head. "There is only one kind of thunder."

"There's two," insisted Fouthet. "You're of age now, so you can sense the Hidden School." And just as Somik was about to argue, ze added, "It's where the mageborn go to learn their

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Challenge #01975-E151: Toxic Culture Kills

We're all familiar with phrases like "toxic masculinity", "testosterone poisoning", and similar terms used for men whose mindset and behavior could charitably be described as "aggressively unpleasant"...

But what if all that were not just wordplay? What if "toxic masculinity" somehow actually was toxic? What if "testosterone poisoning" really was poisonous? To whom, whether it be the person themselves or those around them, I leave as a decision for the author. -- Anon Guest

The last victim of the Friendzone Killer was

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Challenge #01974-E150: Dangers Untold

Team Blue again. In this case Team Blue read fan fic. -- Anon Guest

Evo-era Nightcrawler stopped when he saw his face on a thing. It wasn't a comic book, not a book. It was thick and filled with lurid art and closely-set type. "Was ist das?"

"This is my zine," said the vendor, "Blue is My Colour. It's a collection from a bunch of fans. There's Kurtty in there as well as Kurmanda. I try to keep out the hate-fics on

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Challenge #01973-E149: Rhapsodical in Blue

More of shenanigans when "Team Blue" turn up at a convention. Nightcrawlers, Taako and the Tick. AKA "Team Blue". -- Anon Guest

[AN: This hails back to this thing that happened a little while ago.]

Good news: They were relatively harmless. Bad news: They had decided to split up and search for clues. Some Nightcrawlers were Bamfing all over the place. Some were perched on tall objects. The youngest Nightcrawler of the group was politely asking gargantuan-suited cosplayers if their outfits were

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Challenge #01972-E148: Secret Curse

Earworms, those inane or catchy little tunes that play endlessly inside your head. Good defence against telepaths though. -- Anon Guest

If there was a worse curse you could give to a human, Rache couldn't imagine one much worse than telepathy. Sure, people could look past ugly. They could ignore venomously mean and frequently did. They could, eventually, believe that disabled didn't necessarily mean worthless. But telepathy? That was a living hell.

Human minds are chaos. There's conscious thought, subconscious thought, and

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Challenge #01971-E147: Help Them Grow

[Title: the Trousers of Time] Sir Terry Prachett quote there. Some one did something, often trying to be nasty that changed your Life for the better. -- Anon Guest

[AN: I keep telling y'all please DO NOT relate the content of your prompts (which I always use) with the title (which I hardly pay attention to). It's a pain in the butt for me to derail my usual routine to make certain the prompt makes sense to my readers]

This is how

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Challenge #01970-E146: Crash Site Review

"How does it feel?" "Can you describe...?" "What do you think?" And other inane questions often asked of the accused, the shell shocked survivors of a tragedy or just some poor sod who happened to be there when something happened. -- Anon Guest

In retrospect, it is a mistake to make an emergency landing on Nolliwud. It was almost a resort planet, with a majority of the planet's industry dedicated to creating dreams. Live action, animation of varying kinds, even audio. If

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Challenge #01969-E145: Fit to Print?

News, or Scandal. Newspapers either publish accounts of what is actually happening or gossip. World situation, local concerns or who has dumped who. Which current 'star' was caught cheating on their partner. With drugs, or just legless drunk. -- Anon Guest

"What's that?" asked the newest Ambassador, G'jok.

"That is the news station. People subscribe there for the news they are interested in."

"News," Ambassador G'jok repeated the new word. "Is...?"

"Information disseminated as a public service. Updates on alliances, wars, commerce,

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Challenge #01968-E144: Bullish Behaviour

Can you please write more on Challenge #01911-E087: Uptick in Downsizing? It was probably one of the best pieces of fiction I have read in forever. I don't really know your policy regarding this kind of stuff (I may have just stumbled on this site a few hours ago and have been bingeing your writing) so I really hope I'm putting this in the right place... Either way, cheers and keep up the amazing work! -- ASingleSpeck

[AN: I welcome

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Challenge #01967-E143: Irresponsible Beauty

Buy something to cheer yourself up. -- Anon Guest

Good news: Rael could plausibly purchase himself from Wave of the Future and therefore become a free individual. Bad news: even as low-bid goods and an admittedly buggy model, he was still heinously overpriced. Wave of the Future insisted that he was a bargain.

And they had him on open bidding.

An urgent ping from the Cogniscent Rights Committee overrode his mail system. Informing him and everyone looking at the auctions that this

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Challenge #01966-E142: One Way of Doing it...

Human sneezes, gurgles, wipes face. "I'bve gotta a cold, S'mime O.K." -- Anon Guest

[AN: Nonny, I have no idea what you mean by S'mime there. I can't correct it.]

Of all the terrifying things humanity had invented, the universal winner had to be the Immunoflu. Humanity never could conquer the common cold, nor influenza in its multitudinous strains. But they did tame it. They bio-engineered strains of rhinovirii to improve the immunity of their fellow humans against other, more deadly

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