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Challenge #00360: Everything Proof Shield

When the greatest weapons and technology does nothing, it’s not always the end of the battle. Sometimes you just have to grab the nearest heavy object and go medieval on your adversary.

She had watched them glide through nukes that did not explode as they were supposed to. She saw both bazookas and bombs fail to ignite in their presence. Even guns would not fire.

The alien invasion did not kill. They didn’t need to. They simply stopped their enemy - the humans - from doing anything to hurt them.

Not even tasers would fire.

All this, she watched, as the leader of the free world moved from office, to temporary shelter, to bunker underground. And her duty was to stand around, looking pretty in her dress uniform with a stupid dress sword and, only when push came to shove, put her body in the way of anything the aliens had to throw at him.

They defeated the electro-magnetic lock in less than a second.

“Why do you ascended monkeys keep on trying?” The alien shook his head. Only now, close up, was it possible to see that their mouths were out of sync with their words. “We have the means to defeat any and all sources of ignition on your pitiful weapons. You are completely powerless against us.”

The action came before the thought.

Swords don’t have ignition sources.

But by the time that went through her head, her sword was already out, in her hand, and speeding point-first towards the threat.

It was a perfect lunge. Something taught in Presentation Drill but never expected to be used. She would hurt tomorrow; but by tomorrow, the world would have changed.

The alien looked down at the metal sticking through its chest. “How crude,” it said. “And yet, so very effective.”

And then it died.

The Secret Service folks performing the wall of bodies around their leader stared in shock and awe.

“What are you all standing there for? Go get something pointy and stick it in these bastards!”

It was the first and last war won against superior technology with swords, arrows, spears, pikes and halberds. It was definitely the last war won by trebuchet, catapult, and mangonel.

And it was the last war that aliens ever tried to bring to Earth.

She hung the sword on her wall, when she retired with honours. A reminder for herself, her children, and anyone who came to see her or it.

There is no such thing as an everything-proof shield.

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Challenge #00359: Shining, Gleaming, Silken, Flaxen, Waxen...

Here’s a good challenge - write something that involves someone finding a way to explain Wolverine’s hair.  Seriously, whether comics, cartoons, or movies, it’s always the same winged sorta puffed-out spiky thing that looks near-exactly like the sides of his costume’s mask.  Does he style it that way intentionally, does he just have the world’s worst case of Hat Hair, or what?

They had been hiking for hours. Everyone’s hair

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Chalenge #00358: O...MG Tannenbaum

“How did you even get a live pine tree onto the space station?”

“Uh… the Magic of Christmas?”

It was sixteen Standard Distance Units tall. It was coated in sparkling lights, then coated again in shiny metallic fronds of tinsel, then covered in small, shiny objects, then covered in bows. And then, to top things off, whoever covered it over in all of this thought that that wasn’t enough, and started all over with the

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New take on an old saw.

Whoever said that when all you have is a hammer, the world starts to look like a nail was a handless idiot. They’d obviously never stood in front of a forge, never beaten on a piece of red- hot metal, because the fact is that you start with a hammer; it’s the first and most fundamental tool, the one you use to give shape and structure, to bring all the others out of the raw material and make

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Challenge #00356: Average Ordinary Every-Day...

When your special talent is not having a special talent, and why it’s awesome

Storybook Slate could do a little of everything. She was the most helpful pony in Ponyville.

And yet, every morning, she would be touring the town seeking odd jobs to help with. Towing her tool cart behind her. Every day she was doing something different. Helping ponies everywhere.

Naturally, the Cute Mark Crusaders found her fascinating.

They caught her on a rare day off, when she

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Challenge #00355: Designated Victim

When having no powers at all is a power all its own

The world was full of Supers. Capes. Special powers. Skin-tight costumes. Fantastic abs. And, in the case of the ladies, zero-gravity boobs and super-flexible spines.

They didn’t bother with secret identities. They all had super fortresses and leagues of allies. Some sworn to protect the ordinary citizen. Some working on their own agendas…

But most of them, to a cape, performing politics with their fists.

There were

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Challenge #00354: Tell Me How to Get... How to Get to...

There’s a monster in the woods at the edge of town, so be caref-

You’ve seen it?

Big, hairy thing with razor claw- oh no, that’s just Jeff, he runs the bakery on Bard street.

Monsters.

Monsters everywhere.

Fur and fangs and claws and the imitation of human faces. The mockery of human bodies.

He fetched up in an alley off the main street. He’d given up on holding back tears. This place was

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Three people on Tumblr

[1st person]-how did they learn to translate languages into other languages how did they know which words meant what HOW DID TH[/]

[2nd Person]
English Person: *Points at an apple* Apple
French Person: Non c’est une fucking pomme

*800 years of war*[/]

[3rd Person]
I’m laughing entirely too hard at this. :’)[/]

(Bonus points for “pomme” - “Apple” in French, and “Pom” - English person in Australian) ;) – RecklessPrudence

(#00353)

Darleen hadn’t

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Challenge #00352: The Case For Doing Your Homework

“At last! I have - No! Oxygen, my only weakness! How did you know?”

“… Did you even look up the planet before you got here?”

Zykryxx the Conquerer looked down at the small, blue-green marble in the view screen at his feet. There was, unbelievably, cogniscent life on it. A planet with seventy percent of its surface covered with liquid water.

They were undoubtedly primitives. They were still communication on radio bands, and had only recently graduated

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Seen in another fic (take two)

Sorry, ignore the last one. Here’s the full prompt, with some details changed from the original:

“Well, Sir, where there’s living there’s crime, as my grandfather the Detective Superintendent always used to say. You know [this station] has more than her fair share of it, though.”

“Your grandfather was a fairly senior cop. No doubt you started learning your disrespect for the law at an early age,” [new station commander] commented.

“He did

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Found this in another 'fic.

“Well, Sir, where there’s living there’s crime, as my grandfather the Detective Superintendent always used to say. You know [this station] has more than her fair share of it, though.”

“Your grandfather was a fairly senior cop. No doubt you started learning your disrespect for the law at an early age,’ [new station commander] commented.

"He did a stint in Internal Affairs, sir. He also said, when there’s a lot of crime, the police are

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Challenge #00346: Didn't This Happen On Star Trek?

Most sci-fi universes either use FTL travel, or involve long trips in suspended animation to go to new planets. Why not both?

Science moves faster than space travel, and an FTL ship overtakes a stasis ship from the same planet. 

[AN: Working top-down from my inbox because our internet is being a shitty-head]

Fiction became fact so fast that fiction itself had been abandoned. Except for soap operas. Nothing could kill them.

But there were still the beloved classics, and humankind carried

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Challenge #00342: Wild Goose Chase

The Three Pig Trick: Releasing into an area three havoc-causing animals, traditionally pigs, labelled 1, 2 and 4, (may be scaled up for larger numbers of animals) and watching the chaos ensue in catching the labeled animals and searching for the nonexistent missing numbered ones.

The premise was simple. There was a large flock of numbered geese in a fenced enclosure. Their opponents had to catch every last one alive before they went after Shayde and her reluctant companion, Rael.

It shocked

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Challenge #00340: Send Me an Angel

(parte deux)

There are two main Slenderman mythos’ on the internet, both spawned from the same sets of images and data, and later the games.

The Second is a monster that hides in the shadows, a silent watcher and protector. He likes the children, they can see him sometimes, and he will keep them safe. His punishment may be swift or slow, sometimes deadly and always utterly terrifying. If an adult can see him, it is already too late no matter

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Challenge #00339: The Thin Man

There are two main Slenderman mythos’ on the internet, both spawned from the same sets of images and data, and later the games.

The First is a monster that lurks in the dark, steals or follows children for unknown purposes that vary from story to story, some more dangerous than others. Some accounts put him at merely feeding on momentary terror, others range through feeding on souls, or blood, or simply creating more slender, faceless creatures

I showed them, yesterday. The

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