Once upon a time, I was running a DnD game for some friends. The player characters were checking out reports that a local town had been having trouble with monsters. They’re informed that it was true, a few years ago, but a copper dragon set up a lair in the mountains and chased all the awful creatures out. A dragon slayer showed up shortly thereafter and neither dragon nor slayer were heard from again. Players are disappointed at first, but then quickly perk up when some other plot threads become apparent.
A few sessions later, the place they were staying burned down (their fault), forcing them to check out the more expensive tavern in town. There, they meet Allie Cohol, a half-elf woman with red hair that owned and ran the tavern. She was cheerfully greedy, but still helpful and always ready with a cheesey joke… And after only the third joke, one of the players, Bill, froze and locked eyes with me. “You fucker. She’s the copper dragon,” Bill says.
That reveal was supposed to be a big thing later, so I’m kinda on the spot. Fortunately, another player, Fran, pipes up and says, “nah, that’s stupid. The dragon in the mountain is a red herring. We’re here for the cultists.” The cultists were in the sewer and the PCs were actually working for the cleric Big Bad without them knowing.
“No, listen,” Bill continued. “Red hair. Greedy. Bad jokes… Her name is Allie Cohol.”
Everyone around the table gives him a fairly blank look, but I’m sweating bullets. Threads that I had spun oh so carefully were half a heartbeat away from unraveling. Bill is getting this real wild look in his eyes and pounds a fist against the table. “Allie Cohol. HER NAME IS ALCOHOL.”
Fran then slowly pans over and looks me dead in the eyes. “The deadly joke ability. She’s a goddamn dragon.”
this is beautiful
Tags:
#I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog
“HELLO NEIGHBOR STEVE, I WOULD LIKE TO INVITE YOU TO BARBEQUE ON THE EVE OF THE BLOOD MOON. I FEEL WE GOT OFF TO A BAD START.”
“NEIGHBOR STEVE, DO YOU NOT WISH TO PARTAKE OF THE UNCLEAN FLESH-MEATS OF PIGS AND THE POLLUTED ESSENCES OF TOMATO? PERHAPS YOU ARE A CAROLINA STYLE MAN, NEIGHBOR STEVE?”
“PUT THE GUN AWAY NEIGHBOR STEVE, YOU KNOW I SHALL ONLY RISE AGAIN WITH THE DAWNING OF THE MOON. WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH THIS MANY TIMES.”
“LOOK AT THIS PICTURE MY SON DREW OF YOU AND CHILD TIMMY, YOUR SON. ARE THEY NOT THE PICTURE OF PACT-MATES? THIS COULD BE YOU AND ME, NEIGHBOR STEVE.”
“YOU MISSED THE UNHOLY NEXUS OF POWER THAT IS THE KEY TO MY CORPOREAL FORM, NEIGHBOR STEVE. YOU WILL NEED TO RELOAD NOW, SO I WILL GO INSIDE TO MY HELL-WIFE AND PUT YOU DOWN AS A SOLID ‘MAYBE’.“
I have the feeling that the families get along great except for Steve. Like, the wives are baking (questionable) brownies together, the kids are playing together, Antler Guy occasionally takes Son and Timmy to school (no car, just carries them in huge swinging strides through a nexus of ungoldly sights in a swirling netherworld shortcut. Sometimes they stop for McDonalds). Hell-wife gave them a potted Audrey Jr., Steve’s wife (who I now christen Sharon) gave them a begonia.
One time Steve tries throwing holy water but all Antler Guy does is thank him, saying that no, Antler Guy isn’t Catholic but it’s the thought that counts, he is so kind to water his creeping deathshade vines regardless.
For Christmas Antler Guy gives Steve a case of ammunition. To be funny/sarcastically mean Steve gets Antler Guy the world’s most hideous Christmas sweater, singing light-up reindeer included. He immediately regrets it because not only does Antler Guy love it and wears it for several months, it will never need batteries because Antler Guy powers it with his own eldritch aura.
When they come back from a holiday to Hawaii, Steve is horrified to find out Sharon bought them matching Hawaiian shirts. He is even more horrified that his wife means it that if he doesn’t wear it he will forever sleep on the couch.
I want to expand on this, since I see it’s still passing around and the ideas have grown in my brainmeats.
What drives Steve up the wall and down the other side is how… normal… everyone treats the Abominations. (Yes, that is their last name. No, it is not a joke. Son was asked his last name for the standardized testing at school, had a quick conference with Timmy, and decided that Son Abomination sounded good, “Since my dad calls your dad the Abomination anyway and we can paint it on your mailbox just like the Henderson’s did theirs!”. Antler Guy agreed and did a lovely rendition of it for the mailbox, with only a few glyphs of soul-rending terror added to keep up to snuff.)
The Great Plant Exchange went beautifully, though the Audrey Jr. (named Aubergine for the lovely shade of purple poison that drips from her fangs) is on a diet at the moment. She was in cahoots with the cat and the dog to get into the good people food and ate two frozen turkeys all herself. Now she’s restricted to the hallway table to answer the phone and the door. (Steve actually likes her, and keeps slipping her hotdogs when Sharon isn’t looking. Their door-to-door salesman rates have dropped dramatically since she changed abodes.) Hell-wife has almost gotten the begonia to bloom and say it’s first words.
The homeowner’s association just loves the Abominations. All paperwork stamped and dotted, in on time and in triplicate. Antler Guy likes filing, says it reminds him of his old job. There is a resident who spent 20 years as a lawyer and they have long, animated conversations about all sorts of things that make Steve swear to never need legal counsel.
Hell-wife joined the PTA and spearheaded a committee to fundraise in the fall with a haunted house. It was a county-wide hit, though the claims that a particularly rowdy group had been deliberately lost in a timeslip to the Outer Doors Of Chaos was firmly rebuffed. Most young people nowadays, it was agreed, just couldn’t appreciate flute music.
Antler Guy really does try to connect with Steve. The surprise birthday party was perhaps a bit much, given that most participants do not have the ability to suddenly materialize in front of the guest of honor to give them a hug. Sharon assured them that Steve normally screams on his birthday, and the remains of the cake were heartily enjoyed by all. (A plate was saved for Steve once he came down from the treehouse.)
After the Hawaii trip (which was a present for his birthday) and the Matching Shirt Ultimatum (which was Sharon’s attempt at patching things up with Antler Guy, he really was sad about the birthday screaming), Steve finally grabs his courage in both hands (plus the shotgun, which let’s face it is about as useful as a teddybear at the moment but it does comfort him) and confronts Antler Guy, about why such a group of……Abominations could possibly come to his quiet slice of suburban bliss.
“……BUT NEIGHBOR STEVE, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE.”
“No no no, I read it in a book! Don’t you have to be invited or something?!”
“WELL YES, TO THE HUMAN WORLD. BUT THIS IS NOT THE HUMAN WORLD AS YOUR THREE-DIMENSIONAL BRAIN PERCEIVES IT.”
“What the hell does that mean?!!”
“DID YOU NOT KNOW, NEIGHBOR STEVE? LEGALLY SPEAKING, ALL OF THE VASTNESS OF HUMAN SUBURBIA IS, IN FACT, A PART OF HELL.”
“……..”
“THE FLAMINGOES ARE THE BOUNDARY MARKERS. IT WAS DECIDED THAT THE FLAMING SKULLS WERE TOO KITSCHY FOR MODERN TIMES.”
Yuletide inspiration, anyone?
Tags:
#Neighbor Steve #long post #story ideas I will never write #oh look an update
A couple of years ago I went out camping in the woods with a few of my friends. It was a dark and stormy night, and we felt very alone in our little tent, so we started telling scary stories.
I described how the hills we were in used to be coal mining country, and the coal mines were dark and dangerous. If you didn’t die from coal lung you’d die from cave-ins, and if you didn’t die from either of those, you’d starve to death on the miniscule wages they paid you. The mine just up the hill from us was the worst. The manager had an extortion racket that he was keeping hidden from the owners – he would demand a “tribute” of 50% of the day’s wages from each of his miners, or he would think up a reason to get them fired. Pay was starvation level even without giving the manager his cut, and so after a few months of this tribute the miners became pale, sickly, and emaciated. Paradoxically, they started working harder and harder, hoping they would strike it rich enough to get a bonus that they could use to get out of that awful place.
One of the miners worked even harder than the others. He just kept digging and digging, and when he looked back, he’d gone too far, left everyone else behind, and couldn’t find his way back. Life out there was so bad he found he barely cared. He just kept digging and digging and digging, figuring that working himself to death was as good a way to go as any other.
Finally he came to a vein of rock darker than any he’d ever seen before, and when he broke through it – wham! – he had dug all the way to Hell. Satan came over to meet him, and told the miner that they had a problem. He couldn’t stay in Hell, because he wasn’t a sinner. But he couldn’t go back either, because the rules say no mortal may leave Hell alive. So Satan offered him a deal – he would transform the man into a vengeful ghost, who could spend eternity possessing mortals and driving them to madness.
The miner thought a bit, but he wasn’t convinced. The only guy he wanted to possess and drive to madness was his evil manager who had stolen a tribute from every one of his paychecks. After getting revenge on him, he wasn’t sure he wanted an eternity of possessing random other people. Satan suggested that maybe he could spend eternity possessing people and talking about how evil his manager was, so as to make his name forever dishonored. The man thought that was a good idea, and so with a word Satan transformed him into a spirit. He spent a while haunting his evil manager, then after that possessed random other people in the area to give monologues on how exploitative his manager’s labor practices were.
And so, I finished, sometimes, on nights much like tonight, with groups of campers much like our own…
“Hold on,” interrupted my friend. “Is this going to end with you saying that you’re possessed right now, and that’s why you’re telling us this story?”
“Um,” I said…“I guess that…”
Just then the police burst into our tent. “Stop right there!” said one of the officers. “You’re under arrest!”
“For what?” I asked.
“Possession by a miner within tent to diss tribute.”
This was hilarious.
(ignoring the last 3 lines) For a ghost story featuring Hell, this is a remarkably non-terrible resolution, too.
Tags:
#ghost #puns #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(knew from the start this was leading up to a joke) #(but didn’t predict which joke)
I remember my first eagle ceremony when I turned nine. The first eagle you get is always declawed, which I always thought was pretty inhumane, but it was a good way to ease into caring for the birds. My eagle (named Baldy, because I wasn’t a terribly clever child) was already quite old when I received him (he was a rescue eagle, luckily) but I did have him until I was 16. I don’t know if I was more excited about getting my drivers license that year, or my new eagle! You should have seen the party we had when I got him, too! Grilled hot dogs and fire works and lemonade…. obviously I named my beautiful new eagle Freedom. He’s too big to keep inside anymore, unfortunately, but we’ve got a pretty comfortable roost for him on our apartment’s balcony.
Ah, yes, the eagle ceremony! My Justice and I remember his quite well. (They had just come out with telepathic link transplants when I got him, which is how I know he remembers it.) Our celebration was quite modest, compared to Freedom’s—apple pie under a cloudless summer sky as we signed our Declaration of Interdependence. I still have the inked and talon-pierced document hanging on my wall.
I was so scared during my pet eagle ceremony I almost threw up. But Stonewall Jackson and I have been best friends ever since. My dad and grandfather built a really massive roost behind the house for my eagle and my sisters’ eagles. Stonewall always waits for me when I get home from class since schools are getting so over protective and strict these days and won’t allow eagles indoors. Which just goes to show how much we’re bubble wrapping kids today. Back in the day, if you couldn’t handle a few stitches because you pissed off the wrong kid’s eagle, you had to just man up and learn your lesson!
Ooo, I never miss a chance to tell this story! I had a rather unusual first eagle ceremony. The traditional giant American flag that you wave around to summon your eagle had been severely damaged the week prior (a ceremony that had not gone according to plan, but the child only suffered minor talon wounds. The flag took the brunt of the attack). Anyway, I couldn’t use the normal flag so we had to search ALL OVER for one suitable for eagle summoning. Unfortunately the stripes weren’t the correct shade of patriotic red so everyone was worried an eagle wouldn’t show up at all. I had to stand in the middle of that wheat field, the wind creating amber waves out of it, shaking that flag in the air for over three hours. Everyone was just about to give up when suddenly Patriot appeared out of nowhere! He came to me so quickly it was like he was apologizing for being late. And we’ve been together ever since.
Some people think it’s excessive to have two eagles. But what can I say, I’m a two eagles kind of guy. Well, I can say, “You must be a terrorist to call me out over my excesses,” but I digress. We don’t have many open fields around here, so I got Liberty by waving my flag atop a decommissioned WWII aircraft carrier. I was kicking a couple of boxes of tea into the harbor for good measure, and there she was. I loved her so much I repeated the process a year later and got young Colbert here. It’s hard work, raising two eagles, but I have two shoulders, after all. Besides, I know that the secret to happy and healthy eagles is plenty of Bud Light.
Oh man, the eagle ceremony. I was a weird fucking kid, okay, so I was totally sure that the eagle ceremony wasn’t just going to net me my eagle and deepen the mystical bond between a citizen and their country, I thought I was going to get to turn into an eagle too. So me and my mom and my dad and my little brother are all standing in the old civil war battleground, surrounded by the ghosts of our fallen soldiers, and all and the problem here — it’s not usually a problem because I make sure to shave my beard off twice a day, three times on sundays — was that I am, actually, born on the fourth of July. So it wasn’t just one eagle that showed up, it was pretty much every big old patriotic warbird in Missouri, all flapping around confused and pissed off, their innate senses of direction completely fucked up by the way firecracker babies warp America’s natural system of ley lines. And I was six, so grabbed the flag and ran with it over my shoulders, rippling in the wind, thinking it was going to turn into wings for me and I would go be an eagle with all the other eagles. Instead I just got mobbed by a freaked-out mess of nationalistic avians who all weighed more than I did. I lost half my nose and my whole left arm and spent most of fourth grade in reconstructive surgery getting machine guns welded on to the shattered remains of my ulna. Completely missed my little brother’s eagle ceremony, which I will always regret, but it was all worth it to have met Columbia. I never did turn into an eagle on the outside, but I like to think those long hours in the hospital, feeding her rubbing alcohol and my own blood, have made me an eagle in my heart.
Ah, see, in Canada things are very different. In Northern Ontario, for example, you never quite know what you’re going to get. Ralph, my beaver, is a very standard 20 lbs, and she came to me quite easily during my Oh Canada Calling. A friend of mine, though, ended up bonded to an 800lb bull moose (she named him Bambi, she was a weird kid).
My eagle ceremony was weird. First of all, my parents felt I was too young to get my first eagle so I was the last one of my classmates to get an eagle. My parents are hippies so they got really into the spiritual aspects of it. Like, with my first eagle, I wasn’t allowed to get the telepathic implant, they wanted me to do it “natually” so I had to sit and meditate with Artemis for the entire morning. Luckily she was awesome and creating a natural telepathic bond pretty much happened organically. Of course we had some of the traditional parts of the ceremony, the waving of the American flags while the guests chanted “USA USA USA”. But other than that it was a pretty relaxed eagle ceremony. I’m glad my parents gave me the opportunity to develop a natural telepathic bond with my eagle because it’s good experience, but with my current eagle, Brunhilde, I went ahead and got the implants because I’m so busy with school that I didn’t have time to do the proper meditation. Brunhilde is a scientific type so she thinks the implant was a good call.
Ugh growing up in New Zealand is worse. You just stand outside and yell Xena war cries until a Hobbit pops their head up over the nearest hill and politely tells you to keep it the hell down.
If you’re lucky, a Kiwi ambles up, but it’s basically like having a football with a handle for a pet.
getting my american citizenship was both amazing and a bit traumatic. you have to do a lot of work before they will let you have an eagle ceremony, and the older you are the more difficult it can be. but after I passed all the tests and received my flag, my canada goose, laura secord, and I went to a shut-down auto plant and waited. eventually uncle sam, my eagle swooped out of the sky, and after a brief struggle, killed laura secord. it was sad, as we had been together for so long, but everyone knows canada geese are assholes, so I got over it quickly. because of my age we had to get the implants, but uncle sam and I are quite happy together.
Our family, well, the common word you’d have for us is “hillbillies,” but I don’t mind. We’ve been living in our part of the Alleghenies for a long, long time, and my Pa’s family in particular holds to the old values. Of course, this was a while back, so we didn’t have the link, but I don’t think the old man would have approved if they’d been around. Anyway, he was determined that I would do things the right way, even though we both knew he was pretty sure I would be a disappointment to him. I didn’t like to fish or hunt (to his shame, I was gunshy); I hated camping, and I wasn’t good at swimming. Still, I was bound and determined to go for my eagle like our family had always done it.
He took me up into the Laurel Highlands, past where stupid old British General Braddock got himself shot in the back and where George Washington built and surrendered his first fort to the French and their Indian allies (though the enemy never got his cannon because George hid them). We got to the end of the track our family had always taken up into the mountains, and Pa gave me a panic button if I wanted to quit. He’d come and get me then, but he’d give up on me, too. That was another thing we knew without saying.
Long story short, I was coming down a hill my second day, worn out because I’d gotten little sleep in the cold, and upset because I hadn’t seen or heard any birds or animals let alone an eagle (I wasn’t what you would call an observant kid) when I tripped and fell. Down I went, and tumbled. I stopped on the bank of a stream,
I had my first aid badger from Girl Scouts, and supplies in my back pack, so I soaked my sprained ankle in the icy creek, then bound it up. By the time I found a branch long and strong enough to lean on, it was coming on sunset. I had two more days before Pa started to track me. I wanted at least to be partway back before he found me.
I had given up on that eagle. He’d have to wait for my sisters Kim and Dani to get big enough. They’d find theirs; they were better in the woods than me already. I was just a daydreamer, someone who never had any sense. Put me to shelling peas or doing dishes and I’d take twice as long as anyone else, because I’d be telling myself stories. That’s what I did that night, to keep my mind off my pain. I told myself stories of brave girls who found their eagles and went off to be soldiers (girls weren’t allowed to be in the Army then) or joined the FBI (we weren’t allowed to be agents, either). If the owls who hooted or the deer who drank at the stream liked the story, that was good, too.
I must have dozed off sometime before dawn. When I woke, a golden eagle stood by my hand. Not a bald eagle, like all those in my family, or like my friends’ parents had, or like people had on TV. A golden eagle, a big fellow with a trout in his beak. He dropped it on my knee.
At first I couldn’t breathe. When I could talk, I said, “Thanks, but I have jerky, and peanut butter, and celery, and … things. You eat it.” And he did.
When Pa saw me limping on the track three days from where he’d dropped me, dirty and crazy-looking with twigs in my hair and no eagle on my shoulder, he stopped and looked at me, his weathered face like stone. Then Anthony Wayne, his eagle, began to raise hell on his shoulder as Tecumseh glided down from his tree top. We’d found it was easier for him to fly ahead and wait for me than for him to ride on my shoulder, at least while I had one bum foot. This time, though, for the purposes of meeting family, he settled on my shoulder.
I describe things all the time, but I can never describe the look on my Pa’s face. I only know that he reached a hand out to Tecumseh, who stretched out and touched his fingers with his beak. Finally Pa said, “It’s been right in front of me all along. I’ve been trying to make you a strong member of the family, and you are strong, but you’re also a medicine woman. A dreamer. And this is a dreamer’s eagle.”
“His name’s Tecumseh,” I said.
Tecumseh fluffed himself up with pride.
Pa grinned. “Now let’s see if I can get you two home. Your mother is going to read me out for letting you into the woods alone.” He put two fingers to his mouth and whistled. One of my uncles and two of my aunts walked out of the woods, their own eagles on their shoulders. Tecumseh and I were going home like royalty.
casual reminder that i wrote an 90-page novel when i was eight about a deranged pensioner who wants to take over the world and return everything to “The Good Old Days”, and which included such choice elements as
a really neurotic vegetarian vampire
alice cooper, for no apparent reason
an evil supermodel called miranda goth
three nine-year-olds climbing mount everest in diving helmets
the entire population of scotland appearing out of literally nowhere to help defeat the antagonists
“you can take our lives but you cannot take our trousers”
a few people have been asking me to post extracts from this so uh
here’s something
#are you Douglas Adams?
THIS is the kind of writing I aspire to
Tags:
#…oh my god #I’d read it #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog
I wonder if, in superhero universes, the villains ever get contacted by those “Make a Wish Foundation” and similar people.
I mean, the heroes do, of course they do, kids who want to meet Spiderman or Superman or get to be carried by the Flash as he runs through Central City for just thirty seconds.
But surely there are also the kids, who – because they are kids and sometimes kids are just weird – decide that what they really, really want is to meet a supervillain. Because he’s scary or she’s awesome or that freeze ray is just really, really cool, you know?
Oh, man, that would absolutely be a thing. The heroes would be so weirded out by it. The villains with codes of ethics would totally band together to force the villains without one (should they be the one requested) to do their part for the cause.
But imagine the person who has to track down the villains and organise everything?
Like, the first time it happens, no one actually thinks it’s possible, but one of the newbies volunteers to at least try. They get lucky, the kid wants to meet one of the villains who is well known to have a personal code of ethics (eg one of the rogues), and it takes them weeks to track the villain down to this one bar they’ve been seen at a few times, plus a week of staking out said bar, but they finally find them.
So they approach the villain, very politely introduce themselves and explain the situation, finishing with an assurance that, should the villain agree, no law enforcement or heroes will be informed of the meeting.
The villain, assuming it’s a joke, laughs in their face.
At this point, the poor volunteer, who has giving up weeks of their time and no small amount of effort to track down this villain, all so a sweet little girl can meet the person who somehow inspired them, well, at this point the employee sees red.
They explode, yelling at this villain about the little girl who, for some unknown reason, absolutely loved them, had a hand-made stuffed toy of them and was inspired by their struggle to keeping fighting her own and wasn’t the villain supposed to have ethics? The entire bar is witness to this big bad villain getting scolded by some bookish nobody a foot shorter than them.
When the volunteer is done, the villain calmly knocks back their drink, grips the volunteers shoulder and drags them outside. The bar’s patrons assume that person will never be seen again, the volunteer included. But once they’re outside, the villain apologises for their assumption, asks for the kid’s details so they can drop by in the near future, not saying when for obvious reasons. They also give the very relieved volunteer a phone number to call if someone asks for them again.
A week later, the little girl’s room is covered in villain merchandise, several expensive and clearly stolen gifts and she is happily clutching a stack of signed polaroids of her and the villain.
The next time a kid asks to meet a villain, guess who gets that assignment?
Turns out, the first villain was quite touched by the experience of meeting their little fan, and word has gotten around. The second villain happily agrees when they realise it’s the same volunteer who asked the other guy. Unfortunately, one of the heroes sees the villain entering the kid’s hospital and obviously assumes the worst. They rush in, ready to drag the villain out, but the volunteer stands in their way. The hero spends five minutes getting scolded for trying to stop the villain from actually doing a good thing and almost ruining the kid’s wish. The volunteer gets a reputation among villains as someone who can not only be trusted with personal contact numbers but who will do everything they can to keep law enforcement away during their visits.
The volunteer has a phonebook written in cypher of all the villain’s phone numbers, with asterixes next to the ones to call if any other villains give them trouble.
Around the office, they gain the unofficial job title of The Villain Wrangler.
The heroes are genuinely flabbergasted by The Villain Wrangler. At first, some of the heroes try to reason with them.
Heroes: “Can’t you, just, give us their contact details? They’ll never even have to know it was you.”
The Villain Wrangler: “Yeah sure, <rollseyes> because all these evil geniuses could never possibly figure out that it’s me who happens to be the common thread in the sudden mass arrests. Look man, even if it wouldn’t get me killed, it would disappoint the kids. You wouldn’t want to disappoint the kids would you?”
Heroes: “… no~ but…”
The Villain Wrangler: “Exactly.”
Eventually, one of the anti-hero types gets frustrated, and decides to take a stand. They kidnap the Villain Wrangler and demand that they give up the contents of the little black book of Villains, or suffer the consequences. It’s For the Greater Good, the anti-hero insists as they tie the Villain Wrangler to a pillar.
The Villain Wrangler: “You complete idiot, put me back before someone figures out that I’m missing.”
Anti-hero: “…excuse me?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Ugh, do I have to spell this out for you? Do you actually want your secret base to be wiped off the map? With us in it? Sugarsticks, how long has it been? If they get suspicious, they check in, and then if I miss a check-in, they tend to come barging into wherever I am just to prove that they can, even if they figure out that they’re not being threatened by proxy. Suffice to say, Auntie Muriel really regretted throwing my phone into the pool when she strenuously objected to me answering it during family time. If they think for even one moment that I’ve given them up, they won’t hesitate to obliterate both of us from their potential misery. You do know some of the people in my book have like missiles and djinni and elemental forces at their disposal, right?”
Anti-hero: “Wait, what? I thought they trusted you?!”
The Villain Wrangler: “Trust is such a strong word!”
Villain: “Indeed.”
Anti-hero: “Wait, wha-” <slumps over, dart sticking out of neck>
The Villain Wrangler: “Thanks. I thought they were going to hurt me.”
Villain: “You did well. You kept them distracted, and gave us time to follow your signal.” <cuts Villain Wrangler free>
The Villain Wrangler: <rubbing circulation back into limbs> “Yeah well, you know me, I do whatever I have to. So I’ll see you Wednesday at four at St Martha’s? I’ve got an 8yo burns unit patient recovering from her latest batch of skin grafts who could really use a pep talk.”
Villain: “… of course. Yes… I… yes.”
The Villain Wrangler: “I just think you could really reach her, you know?”
Villain: <unconsciously runs fingers over mask> “I… yes, but, what should I say?”
The Villain Wrangler: “Whatever advice you think you could have used the most just after.”
Villain: <hoists Anti-hero over shoulder almost absently> “….yes.”
The Villain Wrangler wasn’t lying to the Anti-hero. They know that the more ruthless villains would not hesitate if they thought for one second that the Anti-hero would betray them.
But this is not the first time the Villain Wrangler has gone to extreme lengths to protect their identities.
Trust is a strong word. The Villain Wrangler earned it, and is terrified by what it could mean.
Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetry alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.
Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.
You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.
That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?
Jon kicked Ginna’s boots, which were currently resting on the table, and she glanced over toward the door. A clump of knee-high aliens, plump and round and covered in golden fur, were lifting their little pink noses into the air – scenting the air in the bar.
Sashrans. Perfect.
Ginna quickly downed the last of her drink and dropped her feet to the floor. The Gentleman of Fortune was full to the gills of professional companions looking for work, she wouldn’t be the only one in here with a fondness for sashrans. She needed to work quickly if she wanted a chance at whatever job these ones were hiring for. The sound and vibration of her boots caught the attention of the group, and Ginna followed it quickly with a greeting in the quiet shushing sounds of their own language.
A universal translator would take care of most of the talking, but by knowing a little of their language Ginna proved she had worked with their kind before and cared enough to learn it. Caring was probably the most important skill a companion could cultivate.
It paid off. The group of sashrans centered quickly on her and darted over, still in their clump.
“I am human Ginna, companion for hire,” Ginna introduced, tapping the side of her visor to activate the display.
“Sala and Rini, with crew. Spice collectors,” the largest of the sashrans introduced, tapping at their own earbud. Their information began to stream onto Ginna’s display, while her own would be playing in their ear. She was proficient in everything from weapons to mechanics to medicine, xenobiology to politics, and of course survival in any kind of situation from atmosphere decompression in space to a tsunami on a planet. The more varied the knowledge they had the better a companion a human could make, and Ginna prided herself on being one of the best.
As for the sashrans, they’d found a jungle planet with a plant that was delicious to their senses. Cultivation efforts had failed thus far, so the price was high enough to support the risk of hunting for it on its home range. A six-month tour was on offer. It seemed they’d contracted with another professional companion a few times, a man named Drix, and Ginna quickly switched over to the guild’s internal records to see what he had to say of these sashrans and the planet they were harvesting from.
The sashrans themselves would be able to check what Ginna’s former employers had to say about her too.
Drix had enjoyed working with Sala and Rini’s crew, it dripped out of every line of his reports. He’d included good detail about life aboard their ship and the risks of the planet, that Ginna would have to look into closer later to be prepared.
All she needed to know at the moment was that they paid well, the risks were not unacceptably high, and that they treated their human companions well. It sounded like a job for her.
“Sala and Rini and crew, I would take this job,” Ginna told them.
The sashrans shushed and buzzed together, their tones sounding happy to Ginna’s relatively untrained ear, and she hoped she was reading them right. They were such beautiful little creatures, and she’d always enjoyed working for their kind before. They were close enough she could have reached out to touch them, pet their soft velvet fur, but she resisted. Touching them uninvited would be rude.
Finally they turned back to her. “Sala and Rini and crew will, with joy, contract to hire companion Ginna,” the lead one answered.
Contract negotiations went quickly enough, using the standard guild template and modifying it here or there as both parties preferred and agreed upon. Sashrans were easy to haggle with, not like the argumentative akskar. Soon enough Ginna had a contract and three days to prepare her effects for travel.
“It has been a pleasure,” Ginna told the sashrans. “I look forward to being your companion.”
She would have expected them to leave, then, go get their own things ready for launch. Instead the smallest one pushed forward – all wrapped in pale gold velvet fur and their sweet little pink forepaws resting on Ginna’s knee.
“Companion Ginna will now engage in petting for promotion of pack bonding?” they asked hopefully.
“Of course,” Ginna reached out toward the sashran, let them smell her palm, but it seemed this sashran wasn’t shy at all. They immediately pushed their head into her hand. There was nothing in the galaxy so soft as a sashran’s fur. Ginna dug her fingers in around the ruff of the sashran’s neck, gently scratching, and then smoothed the fur all the way down their back.
The sashran made a dreamy-soft pleasure sound, and Ginna mimicked it back. “Oh you sweetheart,” she murmured. Already she could feel that little melting tug in her heart, that protective urge that set some humans on the path to professional companionship.
Come hell or high water, Ginna was going to keep these sashrans safe.
Six months was just about right for a jungle planet tour with a group of sashrans. Ginna loved Sala and Rini and the crew to distraction, and there was still nothing in the galaxy softer than sashran fur, but she was ready to move on. Being regarded as furniture a lot of the time, once they were used to her presence, got tiring after a while. Sala and Rini weren’t looking for a permanent companion, and Ginna wasn’t looking for that either. She’d joined the guild because she wanted to see the universe and meet all the peoples in it, after all.
The spice expedition had been a great success. The sashrans’ hold was full to bursting of dried twigs and leaves, and Ginna had gotten a healthy bonus on top of her already generous pay. There’s only been the one incident with a large angry herbivore who decided the sashrans were infringing too close on its breeding grounds. Still, Ginna had thwacked it in the face with a dead branch and distracted it long enough for the sashrans to make their escape, and only gotten the one cracked rib for her trouble when it tried to run her down.
Ginna hugged and kissed each sashran on the crew one last time. “If you ever need me, don’t hesitate to call,” Ginna told them, wiping a stray tear. Sala and Rini and crew endured this human foible, and were off to sell their goods.
The Gentleman of Fortune was the same as ever, serving interesting foods and drinks from across the galaxy and full of professional companions between tours. Her friend Jon had shipped out with a hunting pack of akskar, but May was finally back from er three-year stint in a lintran colony and they had a lot of catching up to do.
It was great to be back among humans, it really was. Ginna sent some money home and laughed and drank and celebrated with people who had the same base template and urges she did. For about two weeks, it was great. Then Ginna got that itch again and started watching the door of the Gentleman of Fortune, scoping out her options.
Vivid jehes, stolid orhides, hovering mellisugans – none of them felt quite right, and Ginna didn’t approach any of them. Other companions gladly worked up contracts and left for exploration expeditions and disaster relief efforts and new colonies.
Then a big bull barbax pushed into the bar, weight resting on xir heavy knuckles and ducking far far down to fit but still scraping xir cracked and weathered shoulder-spikes on the frame. The barbax swung xir heavy head from side to side, small beady eyes – well protected under a heavy brow – sweeping the space.
Perfect.
Ginna jumped up to stand on top of her chair and screamed as loud as she possibly could. The barbax rocked back, then sprang forward toward her, slamming xir knuckles hard against the floor in pleased approval.
.
Three days later Ginna was shipping out for a nine month tour with a crew of barbax miners. The desert planet they were headed for would be a nice change of pace from the muggy humidity of her last tour, and the barbax being so much bigger and heavier-armored than she was meant she didn’t have to worry about being a body guard on this trip. Much more relaxing.
Barbax liked shiny things, and already they’d bought Ginna a cute cropped jacket with imitation shoulder spikes to match them, and several bracelets and necklaces. It would have been rude not to wear them, and Ginna had to admit she looked good even if it wasn’t her usual style.
The bull barbax, Zab, absently grabbed Ginna by the waist and settled her on xir shoulder. Ginna easily settled in between the big spikes – they made good handholds as she was carried onward to the ship.
“Twisted xeno freak!” some human snarled after Ginna and the barbax crew. “You’re a traitor to human-kind. You make me sick!”
Gina laughed. “Jealous you lack the emotional capacity to cut it as a companion?” she mocked.
The xenophobe’s embarrassed and angry expression was the last thing Ginna saw of the station. Then the ship doors closed behind them, and she turned to face her next adventure with a smile.
Ginna returned to her home base at the Gentleman of Fortune absolutely glittering with platinum and rough citrine.
A fact – For all their strength, a barbax is not fast enough to evade a nest of sand snakes. For all their armor, a sand snake’s teeth can still pierce them.
A human companion, fueled by adrenaline, is more than fast enough to evade. But they might instead dive in between the panicking barbax and destroy the sand snakes attacking them.
Another fact – a sand snake’s venom is deadly to a barbax. Their blood coagulants are destroyed and they bleed out from even such a tiny wound. Their armored hide is too strong for the tourniquet that might save them. A human, bitten by a sand snake, gets off with a painful wound and some bruising.
Ginna tied her bandana around the bleeding wound on her thigh and got to work. Zeb and Gnar and Agi were bitten. The crew, their family, piled around them, drumming against their hides in mourning. They had two hours to live, according to the barbax medic.
Ginna delivered a cure in 30 minutes. Thirty minutes with the clock racing. Thirty minutes far too long, with death creeping up on her friends. She drew a liter of her own blood, repurposed a mining centrifuge to separate it, and filled three big syringes with plasma. Her red blood cells would be toxic, foreign to the barbaxes bodies. She could only hope her plasma was less so.
They might die of it; but they would die if she didn’t try.
Facts – the only place a barbax is tender enough to be injected by even the strongest medical needle is in the vein along their gumline.
– it takes five minutes for blood to circulate all the way through a barbax’s body.
– it takes another minute after that for a sand snake wound to clot, and the blood loss to cease.
The barbax crew trumpeted and pounded their knuckles against the floor with surprised joy. And only then, only when the slow bleeding had finally stopped, did Ginna sit down and cry with relief. She was shaky and dizzy from drawing so much blood, and badly bruised from getting jostled by the panicking barbaxes, and the wound on her own thigh was very painful now that she had nothing else to focus her mind away from it, but she’d done her companion’s duty and saved her friends.
She was fussed over, tended to and praised. She explained what she had done, and was given far more sweets and water than she could possibly consume to replenish herself when she explained that’s what she needed to recover.
Zeb and Gnar and Agi were sick for a week, with the aftereffects of the sand snake poison and purging their bodies of her alien plasma, but they lived. That was the important part.
It turned out that having given a part of herself into the barbax (nevermind that it was just plasma and their bodies purged it afterward) Ginna had done literally what was done symbolically for a barbax crew-bond. She was now crew-bond to the barbax she’d saved, and since Zeb was the senior bull and crew-bond to the entire crew, that meant she was too. She was family – married to the whole lot of them, in essence.
Ginna was not exactly sure how she was going to break that to her moms.
Thankfully the barbax had a laze faire concept of marriage. None of them thought it odd that Ginna planned to leave still at the end of her contract. They would have gladly kept her if she wanted to stay, but she didn’t.
They would have weighed her down with a quarter ton of jewelry, to be decorated the same as one of them, but thankfully Ginna talked them out of it. Her crew were miners by trade, but they were craftspeople by inclination, and they made her beautiful sets from the platinum they were mining that weren’t too heavy for her fragile human limbs. The style was armor-like and spiky and set with beautiful rough citrine that would have been discarded as mining waste otherwise.
Ginna wore it proudly. She spent one last evening drumming with the barbax crew, and then she was back among humans, back at the good old Gentleman of Fortune. Elizabeth was fresh back from the jungles of Shur with a lathan colony, and they had a lot of catching up to do.
Ginna was in no rush to head out again. She took some classes offered through the guild, brushing up on her knowledge base, and pondered her options carefully. She wanted something new, something different.
Late one evening – or maybe it was early morning by that point – a faint high note echoed through the Gentleman of Fortune. There was a collective intake of breath, an uncomfortable quiet, and Ginna looked to where everyone else was looking. A roughly human-sized shimmer was drifting deeper into the bar.
A tintillian. Ginna had never actually met one, she’d only ever heard of the telepathic aliens. They were not strictly corporeal in the same way most contacted species were.
The tintillian chimed again, hopeful, almost plaintive. And no one was answering.
Ginna was singing back the tintillian’s note before she really thought it through. It chimed again, a lower note thankfully or Ginna might not have been able to hit it, and Ginna again mimicked it. As Ginna held the note, it chimed a double note in harmony with her, and drifted closer.
The note Ginna was singing cut off, her heart in her throat, but the tintillian recoiled and drew back before it touched her. Began to drift away.
Metal. Right. They couldn’t abide concentrations of heavy metals and Ginna was encased in platinum. Ginna began ripping all her jewelry off, stacking it in a loose pile on the table. What had possessed her to wear so much of it?
“Help!” Ginna pleaded, turning her other ear toward Elizabeth as she struggled with the earrings. “Liz, please.”
Elizabeth laughed and relented, quick to help her out of all her platinum. Ginna took her boots off too, they had metal eyelets. And her pants had zippers, so they had to go. And her bra had an underwire, so Ginna wrestled that out through her sleeve and finally stepped toward the tintillian in just her shirt and boxers.
No one else was trying to approach the still-chiming tintillian. Telepathy was beyond what most of them were comfortable with. There would be no universal translator for this interaction, it would be direct. Mind to mind.
At least Ginna halfway stripping was far from the weirdest thing that had ever happened in the Gentleman of Fortune.
Ginna sang the note again, and the tintillian harmonized and moved back toward her. It changed as it got closer, until Ginna was almost looking at a mirror – a transparent shining woman. It lifted its hand, and Ginna echoed the motion. Her fingers were shaking, but Ginna cleared her mind and was full of only curiosity and affection when the tintillian merged hands with her. Like a point of golden light.
Suddenly, through it, Ginna was weightless, boundariless, her self wrapped around by the fear and curiosity of the others in the bar. Ginna laughed aloud, that joy echoed, rebounded, and strengthened as the tintillian drifted forward to merge completely.
Ginna’s affections were bare, all the connections she’d made with her contracts exposed, her trainings mulled over, her self weighed and judged and found adequate. The burning curiosity that had made her approach it pushed Ginna to delve into the tintillian in turn. It was all starlight and nebulas, ancient and brand new.
The job on offer was midway between exploration and rescue – a star nursery where an expedition of the tintillian’s mind-mates had disappeared. They had two months to map what they could, and recover the lost mind-mates if possible.
Ginna’s physical and psychological needs would be met, and the terms of her regular contract were seen as acceptable.
The merge faded, and the tintillian winkled out – off back to its vessel to prepare. Ginna dropped back into her own body and sagged into her chair.
“So?” she was asked, people crowding around. She didn’t need the tintillian to practically feel their burning curiosity.
“I got a two-month contract,” Ginna said.
She took a small seated bow for the cheers that echoed through the bar, and accepted the celebratory drinks that were passed her way.
First professional companion to contract with a tintillian. This was definitely going to be one for the history books.
[ THE END ]
I will write no more of these. Thank you! I’ve had a lot of fun in this ‘verse.
If you want to read about Elizabeth, please turn your eyes toward the very cool fill that Chrissy did utilizing the Gentleman of Fortune and companions guild concept. [link]
(if anyone else uses these headcanons please let me know I’d love to read it!)
Tags:
#storytime #aliens #the version on tumble-tales was just part 1 #but I looked at the writer’s blog and there was more #so I’m reblogging the complete version from them instead #long post
the most implausible thing about superhero movies is that these guys make their own suits, like seriously those toxic chemicals did NOT give you the ability to sew stretch knits, do you even own a serger
I feel like there’s this little secret place in the middle of some seedy New York business neighborhood, back room, doesn’t even have a sign on the door, but within three days of using their powers in public or starting a pattern of vigilanteism, every budding superhero or supervillain gets discreetly handed a scrap of paper with that address written on it.
Inside there’s this little tea table with three chairs, woodstove, minifridge, work table, sewing machines, bolts and bolts of stretch fabrics and maybe some kevlar, and two middle-aged women with matching wedding rings and sketchbooks.
And they invite you to sit down, and give you tea and cookies, and start making sketches of what you want your costume to look like, and you get measured, and told to come back in a week, and there’s your costume, waiting for you.
The first one is free. They tell you the price of subsequent ones, and it’s based on what you can afford. You have no idea how they found out about your financial situation. You try it on, and it fits perfectly, and you have no idea how they managed that without measuring you a whole lot more thoroughly than they did.
They ask you to pose for a picture with them. For their album, they say. The camera is old, big, the sort film camera artists hunt down at antique stores and pay thousands for, and they come pose on either side of you and one of them clicks the camera remotely by way of one of those squeeze-things on a cable that you’ve seen depicted from olden times. That one (the tall one, you think, though she isn’t really, thin and reminiscent of a Greek marble statue) pulls the glass plate from the camera and scurries off to the basement, while the other one (shorter, round, all smiles, her shiny black hair pulled up into a bun) brings out a photo album to show you their work.
Inside it is … everyone. Superheroes. Supervillains. Household names and people you don’t recognize. She flips through pages at random, telling you little bits about the guy in the purple spangly costume, the lady in red and black, the mysterious cloaked figure whose mask reveals one eye. As she pages back, the costumes start looking really convincingly retro, and her descriptions start having references to the Space Race, the Depression, the Great War.
The other lady comes up, holding your picture. You’re sort of surprised to find it’s in color, and then you realize all the others were, too, even the earliest ones. There you are, and you look like a superhero. You look down at yourself, and feel like a superhero. You stand up straighter, and the costume suddenly fits a tiny bit better, and they both smile proudly.
*
The next time you come in, it’s because the person who’s probably going to be your nemesis has shredded your costume. You bring the agreed-upon price, and you bake cupcakes to share with them. There’s a third woman there, and you don’t recognize her, but the way she moves is familiar somehow, and the air seems to sparkle around her, on the edge of frost or the edge of flame. She’s carrying a wrapped brown paper package in her arms, and she smiles at you and moves to depart. You offer her a cupcake for the road.
The two seamstresses go into transports of delight over the cupcakes. You drink tea, and eat cookies and a piece of a pie someone brought around yesterday. They examine your costume and suggest a layer of kevlar around the shoulders and torso, since you’re facing off with someone who uses claws.
They ask you how the costume has worked, contemplate small design changes, make sketches. They tell you a story about their second wedding that has you falling off the chair in tears, laughing so hard your stomach hurts. They were married in 1906, they say, twice. They took turns being the man. They joke about how two one-ring ceremonies make one two-ring ceremony, and figure that they each had one wedding because it only counted when they were the bride.
They point you at three pictures on the wall. A short round man with an impressive beard grins next to a taller, white-gowned goddess; a thin man in top hat and tails looks adoringly down at a round and beaming bride; two women, in their wedding dresses, clasp each other close and smile dazzlingly at the camera. The other two pictures show the sanctuaries of different churches; this one was clearly taken in this room.
There’s a card next to what’s left of the pie. Elaborate silver curlicues on white, and it originally said “Happy 10th Anniversary,” only someone has taken a Sharpie and shoehorned in an extra 1, so it says “Happy 110th.” The tall one follows your gaze, tells you, morning wedding and evening wedding, same day. She picks up the card and sets it upright; you can see the name signed inside: Magneto.
You notice that scattered on their paperwork desk are many more envelopes and cards, and are glad you decided to bring the cupcakes.
*
When you pick up your costume the next time, it’s wrapped up in paper and string. You don’t need to try it on; there’s no way it won’t be perfect. You drink tea, eat candies like your grandmother used to make when you were small, talk about your nights out superheroing and your nemesis and your calculus homework and how today’s economy compares with the later years of the Depression.
When you leave, you meet a man in the alleyway. He’s big, and he radiates danger, but his eyes shift from you to the package in your arms, and he nods slightly and moves past you. You’re not the slightest bit surprised when he goes into the same door you came out of.
*
The next time you visit, there’s nothing wrong with your costume but you think it might be wise to have a spare. And also, you want to thank them for the kevlar. You bring artisan sodas, the kind you buy in glass bottles, and they give you stir fry, cooked on the wood-burning stove in a wok that looks a century old.
There’s no way they could possibly know that your day job cut your hours, but they give you a discount that suits you perfectly. Halfway through dinner, a cinderblock of a man comes in the door, and the shorter lady brings up an antique-looking bottle of liquor to pour into his tea. You catch a whiff and it makes your eyes water. The tall one sees your face, and grins, and says, Prohibition.
You’re not sure whether the liquor is that old, or whether they’ve got a still down in the basement with their photography darkroom. Either seems completely plausible. The four of you have a rousing conversation about the merits of various beverages over dinner, and then you leave him to do business with the seamstresses.
*
It’s almost a year later, and you’re on your fifth costume, when you see the gangly teenager chase off a trio of would-be purse-snatchers with a grace of movement that can only be called superhuman.
You take pen and paper from one of your multitude of convenient hidden pockets, and scribble down an address. With your own power and the advantage of practice, it’s easy to catch up with her, and the work of an instant to slip the paper into her hand.
*
A week or so later, you’re drinking tea and comparing Supreme Court Justices past and present when she comes into the shop, and her brow furrows a bit, like she remembers you but can’t figure out from where. The ladies welcome her, and you push the tray of cookies towards her and head out the door.
In the alleyway you meet that same giant menacing man you’ve seen once before. He’s got a bouquet of flowers in one hand, the banner saying Happy Anniversary, and a brown paper bag in the other.
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Brinens and Things 