

Machimagic

Ver 2.0.1

George Saoulidis

Copyright © 2018 George Saoulidis

Image copyrights Hicham Kaidi AKA bloodsplach and Philip Bawasanta AKA philtomato

Published by Mythography Studios

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

What is Inktober?

Every October, artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day for the entire month.

They get a list of words as prompts for each day, they sketch a piece on paper with ink, then upload it online under the #inktober tag. It's like the writers' NaNoWriMo, but with far less tears involved.

There are variants on the prompt list. This is the one we used:

  1. Poisonous

  2. Tranquil

  3. Roasted

  4. Spell

  5. Chicken

  6. Drooling

  7. Exhausted

  8. Star

  9. Precious

  10. Flowing

  11. Cruel

  12. Whale

  13. Guarded

  14. Clock

  15. Weak

  16. Angular

  17. Swollen

  18. Bottle

  19. Scorched

  20. Breakable

  21. Drain

  22. Expensive

  23. Muddy

  24. Chop

  25. Prickly

  26. Stretch

  27. Thunder

  28. Gift

  29. Double

  30. Jolt

  31. Slice

The official rules read as follows:

  1. Make a drawing in ink

  2. Post it online

  3. Hashtag it with #inktober and #inktober2018

  4. Repeat every day of October

And I, being unable to draw anything but able to make a story, got inspired by each sketch and prompt and wrote one each day. Granted, not all of them made the cut. I've kept the best ones in this collection instead of just putting up 31 of them. And writing a story is not like a sketch of a single frame, you need to both have an idea and a plot. Without the plot, even the most amazing idea goes nowhere.

Some days I struggled to find a plot, some days it just flowed with no effort.

The result is the collection you're reading right now. It's black and white, it's raw, it leaves ink stains on your fingers.

Yes, even if you're reading the ebook version.

George Saoulidis

Machimagic

Stilvi kicked the damn thing. "Why won't you work?" she cried out, both from frustration and from pain.

The broom stared back in silence, mocking her with its immobility and its refusal to start. It was last-year's model, of course, Stilvi couldn't afford the newer ones. She liked it a lot, having stared at it every day as she passed the shop on her way home. The broom had a nice copper exhaust that shone nicely, a retro-style grip for the gear-shift and a big honking aluminium cooler at the back. It was a machimagick obviously made with love, just like she herself was.

She sat down on the bench across the store she'd just bought it from and sighed, her hat thankfully covering up her crying face. It was dark and the street light shone over her, making her face even more obscure.

She heard the sound of footsteps on the pavement. Three pairs. She instantly knew who they belonged to, because of the pit in her stomach.

It was the last person she wanted to see her that way right now.

"Well, well, if it isn't the flickering star," Meanie No. 1 said, mocking her name.

Stilvi raised her head just a big, enough to see their legs under the rim of her witch's hat.

"Yes! Come on, little twinkle. Fly. You can do it," Meanie No. 2 said in a fake tone of voice.

"Just like this," Meanie No. 3 said and hopped on her own broom. The small but efficient engine on its back purred and the broom hovered between her legs. She then held on the clutch and shifted gears, her broom gently lifting her up in the air. The smoke it let out was minuscule, and Meanie No. 3 gave them all a bit of a show by flying circles around them.

"What a machine!" Meanie No. 1 said, throwing her hat in the air in applause. The hat spun a few times and then fell back right on top of her head, even facing the proper way.

The Meanie No. 2 flicked her wand, its gears spinning and a small vial of yellow liquid bubbled in the base. A shower of sparks ignited from the tip and opened up in a delicate flower, a rose blooming in the sky above them. Passers-by stopped and marveled at the sudden show.

Stilvi felt even worse. The trio of Meanies casually flaunted their use of magick in her face, when they knew that she couldn't possibly do any of those things.

"Leave me alone," Stilvi said with gritted teeth.

"What's the matter, mechano?" Meanie No. 1 leaned in, faking her worry.

Meanie No. 2 tsked. "Hey, don't use that word. Even she doesn't deserve it."

Meanie No. 1 waved her companion's complaint away. "I apologize for the slip of the tongue," she said, her hand on her chest in mock sincerity. "Then again, that is what you really are, right? It's obvious by the fact that you can't even manipulate the smallest trickle of mana flow."

Stilvi said, "No!" Then she deflated on the bench. Who was she kidding? The Meanies were right. She was machimagick. Trying to make another machimagick thing to work was preposterous. What was next? Making them? Minds would explode at the very idea.

"That's what I thought!" Meanie No. 1 said, her hands on her hips and her feet apart, looking triumphant. "Let's go," she said louder, so that her flying friend could hear as well. The trio of Meanies went about their way.

Stilvi touched the gas throttle. She twisted it a few times, imagining herself flying up just like the Meanie No. 3 did just then. The air on her face, holding down her hat with the strap she had just sewn into it... She didn't have the enchantment to hold it in place like the other witches, of course, so she'd have to settle for that.

Only, it seemed she had planned too far ahead.

Meanie No. 2 said something to the others as they were about to reach the corner, and walked back towards the shop. She checked back, the other two went out of sight. Then she walked straight towards Stilvi.

"What do you want? Came back to make fun of me some more?" Stilvi snapped at her bitterly.

"No... I... Um..." The Meanie bit her lip and looked around.

Stilvi said nothing, she just held her precious broom tight in her hands.

"My family has worked with sentient mechanos-" she stopped herself with her hand over her mouth. "Sorry! I'm so sorry, it slipped and I-"

"It's okay," Stilvi shrugged. "I deserve it."

"No, what I wanted to say was that we've worked alongside them for years. And some of them have learnt to manipulate mana, if someone starts the flow."

Stilvi perked up at that. "Really? How?"

"Like a spark, I guess. Basically, if someone lights it up, then you have the capability of learning to control it," Meanie said, excited.

Stilvi eyed her cautiously. "This is just another prank. I don't buy it. You just want to lift me up or something and then your buddies can laugh from their hiding spot as I crash onto a tree."

Meanie chuckled at that. "No! I mean, yes, that is totally something we would do. But not this time, I swear."

Stilvi looked away, gripping her broom. She mulled it over for what seemed like an hour, but was probably just a couple of minutes. "Thrice," she said.

"What?"

"Swear it thrice," Stilvi said, meeting her gaze.

"I... uh..." Meanie gulped. Swearing it thrice was no small thing, even Stilvi knew that. The backlash alone was significant. "I swear it, I swear I'm telling you the truth," she said, nodding deeply with pressed lips.

Stilvi tilted her head. She couldn't believe that Meanie No. 2 was actually telling the truth, but there she was, swearing an oath. She presented the broom to her. "Here."

Meanie's face took on a focused expression with a deep frown. Then she waved her wand, the liquid bubbling and sparks flying from the gears, her focus on the broom.

Nothing happened.

"I knew you'd screw me over!" Stilvi spat out, balling her fists.

Then it happened. The broom's engine made an angry grrrr sound like a pissed-off hog. It was nothing like the expensive model Meanie No. 3 had, but Stilvi didn't care. This one was hers. Her eyes went wide.

Meanie No. 2 looked exhausted. "Put your hands on the handles, quick. You only have a few minutes to figure it out."

Stilvi complied. She put her hands on the handles and inhaled deeply. For a moment, she felt nothing but the vibrations of the engine. Then, she saw it. Or rather, she felt it. It was as simple as knowing where your leg was, that innate awareness of how it was bent and where it was placed. That's how the broom, no, her broom, felt like at that moment.

"I-I can do it!" Stilvi squealed out in delight. "I can feel it!" She hopped on the broom and it hovered between her legs, just like it was supposed to.

"Yeah!" Meanie said, apparently shocked.

Stilvi gave it a push, she spun the throttle towards her and made the engine even louder. To her delight, she flew a good ten centimetres off the ground.

Meanie laughed with excitement, and suddenly stopped. Stilvi had jumped off her broom and was hugging her tight, crying tears of joy over the witch's shoulder. "Thank you," Stilvi whispered, squeezing her even more.

Meanie stood there shocked for a while, then she put a caring hand on Stilvi's back and hugged her as well. "Enough about this," she said, pushing her gently away. "You've got some flying to learn, it's not easy."

"I know all the theoretical stuff, I've read them all in the library," Stilvi said, wanting to hug the smaller witch again, but composed herself.

"Oh, it's nothing like that. Don't get me wrong, it's good that you know the theory, but doing it is another thing. Come on now..." she prodded her.

Stilvi hesitantly climbed back on the broom and held it tight. Smiling wide at her new friend, she revved up the gas and braced for the acceleration.

"You're sitting too far back," Meanie No. 2 yelled behind her as Stilvi held on for dear life. The ground went by in a blur and the trees were becoming real big all of a sudden.

Stilvi crashed on the trees. Laughing, and putting her hat back on, she pushed the branches away and sat back on her broom.

Then she took off in the air.

The End

Mecha-Chicken Race

Cluck, cluck, cluck.

"The chicken race is serious business," the man said, slapping the Mecha-Chicken's behind.

Cluck, cluck.

"Now," he continued, "hop on that chicken and ride like the wind, jockey!" Then he left, onwards to repeat the same pep-talk to his other riders.

Kotopouli hesitantly put on her gear. Vest, breathing apparatus, sword and holster. "The chicken race is serious business," she sighed to herself, repeating the man's words.

She took a second to inspect her chicken. It couldn't have been more of a piece of cluck. The chicken shook violently as its engine ran. Suddenly, she literally snatched a bolt that had shook loose and was flying in the air. She quickly leaned in and grabbed her multitool from her belt, a gift from her grandfather.

As she tightened the bolt back, she remembered the man's words: "Granddaughter, it's up to you to win the race for our family's sake. Your father is too old to try again, and your sister is too fat to ride. It's why we've gotten you ready all these hard years."

And then he gave her his multi-tool, reverently, as if presenting a magnificent sword.

Kotopouli accepted it and set her jaw firm that day. "I won't fail you, grandpa!"

Such a stupid girl she had been, she knew now. She glanced at the other jockeys, they were all better equipped for this, better prepared. They all seemed fit and calm and ready to win this thing.

Whereas, she, was scared out of her mind.

Cluck?

Yes, chicken, she was here. Ready to ride.

Cluck, cluck.

What now?

The announcer screamed, "Jockeys, take your places!" and her chicken went to his spot.

Oh. Even he knew more about the race than she did. Oh, she was seriously not ready for this.

"LET THE CHIIIIIIIICKEEEEEEEN RAAAACE BEEEEGIIIIN!"

Cluck!

Holy clucks!

Her chicken darted off, sprinting like crazy. She held on for dear life, as the reigns themselves got torn and became useless. She hugged the chicken's neck and positioned herself down low. Lucky for her, she barely dodged that way an incoming slash of another jockey's sword, who had found easy pray and had taken a swing at her during the confusion.

"You clucking bastard!" she raised her fist at him, but they were already worlds apart. Chickens everywhere, bumping and jumping and clucking away, their jockeys trying to control their mounts while at the same time trying to kick their opponents off. And in that chaos, they were all somewhat sort of heading towards the finish line, a black and white ribbon three kilometres ahead.

Another slash, and Kotopouli leaned back completely, arching her back and becoming one with the chicken's clucking butt. In her adrenaline rush, she saw the blade slicing through the air she had occupied. Angry, she eyed the jockey. He was handsome. "You clucker!" she swore at him and her chicken side butted his own.

The chickens both clucked. It was madness.

Kotopouli realised she needed to get out of that mess. She stood back up on the saddle and pushed her chicken's head down. "Come on, come on, stupid chicken. Get what I'm getting at. Go. Just clucking go!"

It took its damn time, but it finally got it.

Cluck!

And it shot off towards the finish line.

Kotopouli was happy for a moment, thinking she had outsmarted everyone.

"Oh, no! The bout is over and now the real race begins!" the announcer said.

Kotopouli's face went pale. She forced herself to look back as the entire flock of chickens came charging her way.

"Go, go, clucking go!" she yelled at her mount, slapping the side of his head. He ran, oh he tried, but he was a piece of cluck.

The flock came crashing on top of her, and in an instant she was overwhelmed, spinning around, out of control, parts flying off into the air, a piston coming in hot and sizzling on her arm, a screw shooting right into her cheek. "Clucking, ow!" she exclaimed, fighting to stay on the saddle.

It was a free-for-all around her. Everybody, and I mean everybody was at each other's throats. Chicken legs flew off, torn apart by swords or angry beaks. One jockey in particular had a nasty chicken with spinning saws on its beak that tore through at least three other chickens in the few seconds Kotopouli could spare to watch.

It was madness. It was the chicken race.

Cluck!

"Yes, I know," she said, trying to comfort her poor mount. "Just try to avoid them all. Just try. And we both might make it to the finish line."

Who was she kidding? Nobody made it to the finish line, none except the victor. Even then, he or she sometimes didn't make it in one piece, and that wasn't an infrequent occurrence.

Every year, each family could sign up a jockey to ride in the chicken races. Every year, the best and the finest, or at least what was left of each family, would ride and get turned into chicken pulp.

Now she realised why her clucking sister kept eating all the time. She couldn't possibly fit her fat behind in the saddle, let alone have the speed to race.

It seemed, her big sister was the clever one.

A beak came straight at her face and Kotopouli instinctively blocked it with her sword.

It snapped in half, sending shards of metal to slice her arm. She cried out in pain and could see the beak coming in for the kill.

Thankfully, her chicken used the precious seconds she had earned very well. He too dodged and pulled his jockey out of one harm's way, and straight into a different harm's way.

An entire chicken jumped up in the air and came slamming down on them. It was big, it was fat, and it was heavy. Kotopouli knew then, she was about to die. Pulped, in the chicken races, a mere five-hundred metres from the finish line.

She closed her eyes, gripped her belt tight, and braced for the inevitable squish.

She felt her multi-tool in her hands. Everything in her body hurt, the chickens weren't easy to ride even when nobody was trying to kill you, but she realised something. Her grandfather had given this to her for a reason. She gripped it tight and opened her eyes wide, multi-tool in hand.

What do you do with a multi-tool?

"You clucking screw things!" she answered to herself, grinning like a madwoman. The chicken was coming down on both jockeys, fluttering its stupid wings and slightly adjusting its trajectory. Kotopouli fell to the side and in a feat of dexterity, screwed the other chicken's leg. It froze in place, the chicken turning in circles like, well, a headless chicken. The jockey riding it cursed at her, then got squished.

Cluck!

"Nope, it's not happening to us," she assured her chicken, then slapped it to get running.

The squish-happy jockey jumped up in the air again, and Kotopouli repeated the same routine, sabotaging the closest chicken she could find and letting it get squished instead of her.

Cluck. Cluuuck!

"Yes, run, chicken. Run!" she said excited, seeing the opening and going for the finish line.

The heavy chicken realised it too late and began pursuit, but she was light. Lighter than most jockeys actually. She had lost her sword even, and her chicken had shed a few precious pieces of machinery.

"Come oooon! You just have to hold it together for a few more seconds," she said with gritted teeth, now becoming one with the chicken's trot. She felt the air hitting her face and her cuts stung, but she didn't care.

The angry chicken behind her tore through the ground, its feet hitting the earth and digging in holes as it sprinted forward, despite its weight.

Metres away from the finish line, it caught up to her. Or, more precisely, its beak snapped shut on her chicken's tail, pulling them both to a screeching halt.

"I'm sorry," she said to her chicken and unbuckled her harness.

Cluck?

Flying through the air, throwing her petite body towards the black-and-white ribbon, she turned back and saw it all in slow motion. She could see her poor chicken's eyes, realising he'd been left behind, abandoned to the beak of an angry chicken, being crushed slowly and steadily. She had jumped forward with not a care about how she'd land. She just needed to get through the finish line, even it wasn't in one piece.

For her family.

The End

Sweet, Hot Taffy

"No, don't run away!" Irina pleaded as the man fled.

He shat himself as he ran. Irina stopped on the sidewalk, arm raised in a non-threatening gesture of 'Wait!' She couldn't understand what was really happening. All she wanted was to find the 'Be-Positive.'

That was nice, right?

Of course it was. Nothing that nice-sounding could ever be bad. She held her head, her thoughts were hazy. She couldn't actually remember what the Be-Positive was, but she knew she really wanted to find some, and fast. But she kept asking people for directions and they didn't even give her a chance!

Such mean people.

Where was this rude town anyway? She had no idea. She could understand the signs on the streets, so at least she wasn't that far away. But something felt off. It was quiet, if you discounted the loud cheers of joy she heard from an alley just a while ago.

Irina walked down the street. Cars were left in the middle of the road, no wonder nobody could go to work or anything! Why were people always so inconsiderate to others? She hated that.

Anyway, no bad thoughts, Irina. Be-Positive! Yay!

She walked through the abandoned cars. Some were messy, too. There was a nice smell coming from them, like hot taffy. She sniffed the air. It was unusual, had she hit her head or something? Could she be one of those people wandering off after a car-crash, concussed and confused?

Maybe.

She leaned in and checked her reflection in a rear-view mirror. Eh, she could barely see herself, and she twisted her body around, trying to get a good angle on everything. She didn't look hurt, it was just her normal, curvy self, wearing a red dress. She couldn't remember ever buying that dress, but it fit her nicely. As she turned herself over, she realised she needed to find a bigger mirror.

She walked to a shop window, it was reflective enough and the interior was dark enough to make a mirror. That too was weird, it seemed like it was the middle of the day, yet the shop was closed. Anyway, enough with that. She checked herself out, raising her leg on the ledge, then the other. She didn't seem to find any cuts or bruises.

There was a weird crick in her neck, and she stretched herself to rub it better. She also felt weird on her back, on the shoulder blade. Maybe she had been in an accident after all, but with no visible bruises?

Ah! Could she have internal injuries?

She didn't feel like it, just a bit sore. And she also had these long fingernails, they were perfectly done by a manicurist, long and red. She never had her nails long like that, it always bugged her when it came to manipulating stuff. So that was weird. Was she getting dressed for some sort of event? A wedding, perhaps? And what about the nails? Somebody had to have convinced her to get them, they were so out of her usual style.

Oh well, must have been a special offer or something, she definitely was a sucker for such things!

Irina kept on walking the empty streets for a while. Now, this was getting ridiculous. Where was everybody? These bloody towns. What was it, a festival or something?

Was that what Be-Positive was? Perhaps she was going there, and then she forgot why. Perhaps someone was waiting for her.

A date!

That's why she was so dolled up, that must be what it was!

Silly Irina.

She tilted her head and concentrated on a noise somewhere. As she did that, drool fell down the side of her mouth. Oh, come on now, be ladylike, dammit! This is no way to act in public. She wiped her drool and kept on listening.

She scanned the area. A store front, another one, a pizza place... A dumpster. Yup, there was definitely someone behind that dumpster.

She walked up to it, and could see that the man was somehow stuck behind it. He made some weird sound from his throat. He was definitely crying for help.

"Relax, silly! I'll help you out," Irina told him and got ready to get her hands dirty. She grabbed the dumpster, this was why she didn't like long nails, and she pushed it aside.

It slid to the side.

Huh. It must have been empty.

Oh well...

"Hello, mate! No need to shout. Hey, could you tell me where Be-Positive is?"

The man lunged at her. Irina dodged him with a swift shuffle of her legs. The man kept on running down the road.

"Hey, wait! That is bloody rude, mate!"

She reached out and grabbed his leg, making him trip. "Okay, sorry, mate, but you shoved me first, and I was trying to help you! I mean, really, what is it with that rude behaviour around here?"

Some drool fell from her mouth again right on top of his shirt. She gently held him down with one hand as he thrashed and kicked her. "Oh, so sorry about that! So, so sorry. I don't know what's happening to me, can't seem to keep my bloody drool inside my mouth! How silly is that?" she chuckled, but the man didn't seem to find it funny.

Instead, he punched her.

"Ow, you bloody bastard!" she snapped back, and gently punched him in the stomach.

For some reason, that nice smell wafted from his person again. That hot taffy smell, so sweet and delicious. There it was, her entire hand inside his belly, and as she pulled it out the soft taffy was all over her fingers. She licked it, and it tasted heavenly.

"How rude of me," she chuckled, unable to control herself, still licking her fingers. "This is a weird way to meet your acquaintance..."

The man gurgled taffy from his mouth.

"Now that's an understatement," Irina agreed.

She licked her fingers, she was so bloody hungry all of a sudden. The man had stopped thrashing, at least that was a good thing. Perhaps he was calm enough now to answer her question?

"Hey, mate, I just wanna know, where is Be-Positive?" She flashed her biggest smile at him.

Nothing.

What the hell, had he fallen asleep?

Irina stood up. Still that crick in her shoulder. She felt a lot better now after that sweet taffy, but her thoughts were still muddled. She turned her head and stared at herself in the store-front's reflection.

Same thing, her, dressed in red, drooling again (dammit!) standing over a man with warm taffy coming out of his belly and mouth. Okay, that last one sounded weird, she had to admit that.

A flicker.

Everything was the same, but the sweet taffy in her mouth felt more metallic. Vampirina's long nails were even weirder, like metal fingers. Her teeth were stained with red lipstick, and they felt larger somehow in her mouth. And that crick on her shoulder? Well, it seemed like a bloodhunter symbiote.

Wait, what?

She shook her head. Everything came back to normal.

There it was, all better.

Now, if only someone could tell her where that bloody Be-Positive was, everything would be alright.

The End

Have You Tried Turning Her Off and On Again?

"Have you tried turning her off and on again?" the tech support lady drolled on the holocall.

"Yes!" Jack said, exasperated. "That's what you tell me to do every single time. I have. She's smoking from her back, it's not a software issue. Or, at least it's not just that anymore."

"Okay sir, we're sending a technician over to service your sexdoll. Thank you for calling 6T9, we're here for you to plug any hole."

Then she hung up.

Jack waited anxiously, tapping his foot. He could see his doll through the door, slumped forward, smell of smoke in a hazy room. He felt bad about that, so he went in and opened a window to air it out.

It wasn't long before the doorbell rang.

"Hello, this is your technician Wendy from 6T9, here to service your sexdoll. If you please point me to the room where she's installed," said the bored technician, carrying her toolkit.

"Right this way," Jack said, inviting her in. "Here she is. I've followed everything support told me to do on the phone, nothing worked."

"Hmm, I see," Wendy said, inspecting the sexdoll. She put on plastic disposable gloves and turned her over, then plugged some device into a hidden slot in her back.

Jack was nervous, pacing up and down. He wanted to intrude, but decided that it would help speed things along if he just stayed out of the technician's way.

Wendy checked the readings. "I see that you've had a similar malfunction three times already, but you opted-out of our offer to replace the sexdoll."

"Well, yeah. I wanted this one. A replacement wouldn't be her," Jack said, apologetically.

Wendy raised an eyebrow. "I assure you, they are identical, sir. And in case you've paid for any mods, which I can see you haven't, they too would have been replicated."

"Yes, but I want this one. Can't you fix her?" Jack said, pleading with his hands.

"We certainly can!" Wendy perked up and went back to checking the readings. "Same malfunction, every time. Sir, I need to ask you about how you use our product. Please be assured that I'm bound by my contract to not disclose any information to anyone, ever. Think of it like talking to your therapist."

"Okay..." he said, hesitating. "Ask away."

"What is the exact nature of your sessions with her?"

"What do you mean?"

"How do you use our product? Doggy-style? Reverse cowgirl? What?" she asked, spitting the terms in a deadpan, even bored tone of voice.

"Uh, sometimes, yes," Jack said, his face turning red.

"I can actually see the logs, sir. You've done none of that. Listen, part of troubleshooting is sometimes figuring out what weird shit the client does to the doll. Now, trust me, I've seen it all. And I do mean, all. Nothing you say will shock me. Just lay it out for me, what's your kink?" She batted her eyelashes and waited, tablet at the ready to jot his reply down.

"Uh... I don't think I have any."

Wendy snorted. "Right. You have a sexdoll that costs half an apartment's worth and you don't have any sexual kinks. Sir, all of our clients are weirdos, nothing to be ashamed of. Well, at least not when your money keeps going into our bank account."

Jack was getting angry now. "I'm telling you, I don't have any kinks."

Wendy sighed and put the tablet away. She licked her lips, shut the back panel on the sexdoll and turned to him once more. "Sir, I have all gyroscopic and inertial data here. The sexdoll records your sessions so she can become better at pleasing you. Honestly, man, this was a high-priority call and I'm late on a dinner with my wife. I'd much rather be figuring this out early and being home with her than standing in your sticky sex room and begging you to tell me what you're doing to your sexdoll to mess her up."

Jack said nothing.

"I know you're tinkering with the product, but none of the other technicians could figure it out. That's why they sent me. You might have noticed my lack of decorum here, we're basically teetering on the edge of a lawsuit. They don't usually send me out on calls, for a good reason. But I'm the best, and I can't figure out how you're fucking the damn doll to mess her up like that."

"I don't fuck her," Jack said softly.

Wendy cupped her ear with her hand. "Excuse me, what was that?"

"I don't fuck her," he repeated.

"You don't fuck your sexdoll," Wendy mocked him back, crossing her arms under her breasts. "Suuure..."

"We have sex... It's just not, like that," Jack said, waving his arm in her direction. "Like what you described."

"Come on, dude, I'm trying to fix your fuck-toy so you can get back to pounding it! Tell me what it is you're doing to her. What is it? Hot wax in her pussy? Almond milk in her ear? Drilling a Lumbar Puncture in her lower spine and then fucking it? I'm telling you, I've seen it all. Just tell me what it is."

"I make love to her," Jack said, softly.

Wendy's eyes went wide. "WHAT?" she exclaimed, stepping back. She looked as if he had just admitted he liked killing puppies.

"I just make love to her," Jack repeated with a shrug.

"That's not how you're supposed to treat her! Where's the abuse? The punching? The humiliation?"

"Nowhere. There is none."

"She wasn't built for that!" Wendy said, going back to the sexdoll's diagnostic panel.

It was Jack's time to cross his arms and hug his chest. "Well, I'm the customer, right? Make her be able to handle it."

Wendy stepped close to him and spoke as if to an idiot. "You bought the most heavy-duty sexdoll in existence, basically a crash dummy with boobs and fuckholes, build from space-age material that can withstand any and all abuse, so you could just have sweet-sweet love with her?"

"Yeah," Jack apologised again. "I liked her eyes. You know, on the website."

"Ay ay ay," Wendy huffed out and went back to the sexdoll.

"Can you do it?" Jack said hopefully.

She sighed. "I guess. Why the hell not? It will void your guarantee as it is an illegal mod, but it's not like you're ever gonna need it with your touching and caressing," she said, making fun of his voice.

"Thank you!" Jack said, excited.

Wendy clicked her tongue. "You better, 'cause this will take too long and my wife will be pissed. But who am I to get in the way of mechanophilia?"

"Mechano-what?"

"It's a kink," she nodded slowly, looking sure of herself. "Look it up. I honestly wasn't expecting that one, it's a first. I give you that. But I'm always right."

The End

Come and Get It

Robo Muffin walked out of the field covered head to toe in pink blood. Only a tiny bit was hers, just some spittle from a kick she took to the face. The rest was from the opposing team, the losing team.

She got back to the locker room and the others made way for her. Conversations ended and eyes followed her as she passed them by.

Heading to the showers, she tore her armour and clothes off and went straight in the spray. The girl who was getting a shower at that moment yelped, "Hey!"

Robo Muffin simply shoved her out. The girl fell on the floor, wet and stunned, but Muffin didn't care.

She let the scalding water wash her sins away. One more match. Just one more bloody match, and the sword was hers.

Muffin didn't enjoy hurting people. Sure, she'd protect herself if someone took a swing at her, but she wouldn't go out and deliberately hurt someone.

At least not outside the Cyberpink field.

It had been ten years. Ten bloody years, and she was promised she'd be out six years ago. The contract was simple, play jugger, earn cash, pay off your debt, earn your freedom.

Such an easy concept, isn't it?

But the fine print was what truly fucked you over.

She had fought tooth and nail to get into a good, winning team to get the cash early. She had waded through opponents with her sword, had torn ligaments, had crushed bones and ended careers.

A million euro, was the end total.

It wasn't that high in the beginning. Buuut... accumulated interest here, a tiny bit of delayed payment there, and it added up to a ton of money. Nobody explained the fine print to you. Nobody. Not your owner, not your fans, not your next owner who your paramone contract was sold off to.

And then it was the injuries. Jugger was a fast game, a brutal game. Injuries were a daily thing. You got injured, and then you got medical care. But, in this time and age, you couldn't pass up on the opportunity to also augment yourself. Why let the arm heal when you can just augment it and become stronger? Why live with that neck problem with silly brittle bones, when you can augment it and fortify the entire neck area against incoming blows? Why settle for human reaction times, when you can supercharge your nerves and get superhuman ones?

It added up. A toe here, an aug there, you ended up trading pieces of your soul. Bit by bit you got replaced until you looked in the mirror and couldn't recognise yourself any more.

Daisy was gone. Robo Muffin stared you back.

Covered in pink blood, washing over you, its spectrum shifted to avoid the streaming laws but the smell remained the same. Blood.

Muffin pushed the wall of the shower and let her head hang under the water. The water trickled around her short hair and somewhat covered her nose and mouth, making her drown a bit. She liked that, simulated drowning.

A waterboarding of your own.

Hundreds of opponents would have liked to see her go through with it.

Muffin was feared, envied, cursed upon. She had the guts to actually claim freedom, to fight for it and get close enough that it nearly burned her.

The precious Spatha sword. It was what you won along with the cyberpink tournament trophy, but it came along with something more important: Freedom.

You won the tournament, you won the sword. You could trade it in for enough money to buy out any paramone contract.

Or, you could keep it, and keep on fighting. Why anyone would want to choose the latter was beyond her.

Muffin walked out of the shower, dripping water. She didn't bother to get dry. The girl who was there before was gone now. She put on her clothes and armour back, clipped her current padded sword on her belt and headed out of the locker room.

On her final match, she didn't hold back. At some point during the final few seconds, her opponent got in a lucky hit and paralysed her. Muffin happened to be in an awkward angle as the implant kicked in and made her freeze. Her head was slumped down, her hair doused in pink blood. It trickled down, rimming her nose, filling her lungs with every panting breath.

One stone. She felt she would drown, so close to reaching the end.

Two stone. She surrendered to the blood's thick delight.

Three stone. Dammit! Not like this.

Four stone. She braced herself, coughing and chocking. No. She would simply not lose now.

Five stone. She looked around, deciding her next strike.

As soon as Robo Muffin got free, she charged the opposing enforcer. She went down in an instant, clutching her torn off cyberarm, pink blood and blue hydraulic fluids spraying in the air. Then she tore through the other one.

With the opposing team disabled, her qwik picked up the skull and scored a point.

They won.

The fans screamed their lungs out, but all she could do was cough and cough and cough. The blood was inside her, stuck there, infecting her. She coughed to get it out, but she couldn't.

Journalists and cameras and microphones got shoved in her face, but all she could do was barely contain her coughing.

Someone gave her the Spatha sword. She held it. It was heavy and felt great in her grip. It had a corporate logo on it, and came with a holographic surface that made it shoot out rainbows from the beams of light that hit it.

She stared at it, mesmerised.

"So, what will be your choice, Robo Muffin?" some man asked her.

"Uh? What?" she stuttered.

"The sword. Do you keep it and defend the championship next year, or do you trade it for your freedom?"

Everybody went silent, waiting for her reply.

She looked down at her hand. It was alien, augmented, powerful. It held the coveted sword. With it, came power. Fame. Glory. It shone back a rainbow as an errant light hit it, like a naughty wink at her.

What was she doing? Was she really considering it, carrying on? She had one goal all these years, one single goal: to earn her freedom. Why was she even hesitating?

Raising her chin, she gripped it tight. She knew what her reply would be.

Robo Muffin raised it in the air, took in a big breath, and shouted, "Molon labe!"

The End

You can read the Cyberpink books here: https://mythographystudios.com/books/cyberpink/

Hewoo

Cooky smiled at the hitmen that had come tonight to kill her. It was her birthday, after all. There were two of them, and they were properly armed. All she had was her trusty dagger.

Not that she needed anything more.

"Hewoo!" she cooed as she charged the one on the right. Only idiots waited, the correct action was to catch them flat-footed. Nobody ever expect a head-on attack when they were the ones getting the jump on someone.

They both raised their guns at her.

"Too laaate!" she giggled as she drove her dagger between the man's armour plates and straight into his neck. He had barely managed to raise his gun half-way before she had closed the distance and had daggered him. Another rookie mistake, people think that a gun draw is quicker, when in fact, a knifed attacker can do-

Well, exactly what Cooky just did.

She twisted the knife to make sure she got the jugular. She had aimed from five meters away and straight between his protection, but getting through it and actually delivering a killing blow were two different things. She was good, but she wasn't that good.

Thick, warm blood spurted into her face. "Jackpot!" she smiled, then turned to her next attacker. He had lost precious seconds being stunned by her attack, but his training seemed to kick in and he had raised his pistol at her.

She smiled at him eerily, her face sprayed with red.

He fired at her.

Cooky pulled the dying hitman in time between them. The bullets struck the guy's Kevlar.

The hitman with the pistol froze in place, waiting to see the result. After a few endless seconds passed, Cooky poked her head from the side. "Peek a boo!"

The hitman yelled, "Aaah! Die you crazy bitch!" and emptied his clip.

Cooky poked her head out once more, her mouth in an 'o' shape. "Your peepee doesn't work," she said like a little girl.

Then she thrust her dagger under the man's jaw and into his skull. Something crunched. She put her palm to the handle of her dagger and punched upwards, driving it further in. She saw the glint through the man's teeth.

Then she put her knee to his chest and grunted, and pulled, and huffed, "Nyehhh!" and the dagger came loose, sending her tumbling down on the street and landing on her butt.

Cooky tilted her head. She heard some muffled sounds. She walked close to the first hitman's face. She slapped him, then pushed his lips together. "Hah! You're a fishy now. Are you talking?"

She could still hear something. She reached in with her fingers inside his ear and pulled the comms. "Ear wax, yucky..."

"I thought you said her name was Cookie! How fucking hard could it be to kill a girl named like that?" a man squealed through the comms, terrified. "I don't- No, I don't care. We're done. Contract is off, I just lost two men in five seconds. Never call me again, I will fucking gut you."

Cooky stood tall, as tall as a featherweight like her could possibly be. She looked down the alleys. There it was, a van. The lights just came on and the driver revved up the engine.

Now, what would the best course of action be in this situation?

She tapped the bloody dagger on her chin. Huh.

Oh, right.

Charge it headlong.

She ran up to the incoming van. The driver actually tried to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting her, but she sidestepped and jumped right into its path.

Slamming on the front with a hollow thud, she drove her dagger inside the metal. She barely had any footholds and held onto the dagger with both hands.

The driver cursed at her and turned the wheel, driving the van scratching into the sides of the parked cars. He was frantic, spitting and cursing. "Just fucking die, already!"

Cooky held herself from one hand on the dagger and swung around like a pendulum. "Weeee!" she squealed in delight.

The van revved and went into the main road, forcing other cars to stop and honk at him in anger.

Cooky could feel the wind hitting her, it made the various cuts on her body sting. They were going too fast, they really needed to stop. So she dug out her dagger, held herself with the other hand, leaned to the side, arched her body aaaand...

Sliced the tire.

The van came tumbling in the air and landed on it's top. Rending metal was all she could hear for many dizzying seconds that adrenaline stretched to feel like entire minutes.

Bam. Crunch.

"Wha- Nonono..." the third hitman said, shuffling away, pulling himself by his arms.

There was fire all around them. Oil slicks. Bits of metal. And in the middle, Cooky, coming at him with her dagger and a big smile.

She cut his arm carefully. He screamed all the way until he passed out.

Oh well. He was gonna bleed out anyway, no way an ambulance would come so fast in this neighbourhood, and she doubted that second-rate hitmen like these bozos could afford Apollo Tripods.

She lifted the man's severed arm and checked his implants. They weren't exactly military-grade, but they were black-market ones with encryptions she didn't have the patience to crack otherwise. She fiddled with the severed arm until it popped up an augmented reality display. There it was, her location and an exact time for the hit.

Only one man had that information.

Cooky stepped inside her house, waving the severed arm around, staining the hallway. She faced her husband in the study, who was drinking expensive whiskey while watching the flames crackling in the fireplace. His eyes met hers, then he gulped and frozen, he waited for her reaction.

A long moment passed. Then she squealed, opening her arms wide, "My hubby!" She ran up to him and gave him a big hug. "Best birthday present, ever, muah, muah, moo-waah!"

The End

Berenice's Hair

Since she was little, Berenice had one goal in mind: To be become like one of the models she saw on the AR billboards.

It was what she desired. She kept letting her hair long, despite her mother's protests of wanting to keep them manageable. It was her big issue, that her hair was thin and whispy and frail, just like her mother's, just like her grandmother's.

She fixed that as soon as she turned 15, with a black-market CRISPR modification of her genes that hurt like a motherfucker.

After that, her hair became thick and long and soft, becoming the envy of every woman she ever encountered. Even before her next birthday at sixteen, she had learnt a valuable lesson in life: fuck genetics. You make your own fate.

She ran out of patience at seventeen and left her small town to get to Athens. She traded a handjob to an overweight man for a lift in his car.

On the very first day, she met her best frenemy in a sleazy bar, getting drinks by horny middle-aged men. Arsinoe was the exact same as her, ambitious, pretty, they both wanted the same things. Before success was even a whiff in the horizon, they didn't really have anything much to separate them. They went to the same model auditions, to the same photographer calls, to the same porn castings. Yeah, that last one they pushed off, but as the expenses ate away at what little pittance of euro they had scrounged around, it only took a couple of months before they caved.

Honestly, Berenice was shocked at what passed as porn these days. She thought she would get hammered by two studs, or at least she wished she had. In reality, someone paid her 300 euro for her to sit on her perky butt while a man sniffed and licked her feet. He did some other weird things too, but she had tuned out after about twenty minutes or so.

And that was it. She had earned her rent.

"What did they have you do?" Arsinoe asked with a frown.

"It was silly, actually. Foot worship, he called it? And you?" Berenice said, bending her wrist.

"I got tickled. Not-a-euphemism," Sophia scoffed at the situation.

They both giggled and left, their paycards feeling heavier.

They moved in together, it was inevitable. Athens was hella expensive. Arsinoe got less gigs in general, but she seemed to manage to save a bit more, so it all worked out in the end. Berenice liked to party a bit too much and she always ended up in the red despite her frequent paydays. At some point, someone told them about sugar daddies and they both were extremely interested in the concept.

They found a few which they kept in rotation, who paid their bills and their drugs and their expensive clothes.

For a while, it was perfect.

Then Arsinoe got the job Berenice was angling for her entire life. "I'm so happy for you," she squealed in the highest pitch possible.

Arsinoe hopped up and down, grabbing her by the arms and twirling her around like a dance routine. Berenice smiled, she had practised a lot of fake ones, and her magnificent mane waved as they both spun in joy.

All she could think of was that Arsinoe's hair wasn't prettier than hers. They had both auditioned for that contract at Aphrodite Cosmetics, and the executive was staring at her ass, not her friend's, she was sure of it. She had worn the tiniest skirt imaginable, and it was sheer too.

How could they have given the job to Arsinoe of all people, who kept her hair short and in knots?

They stopped spinning and fell on their couch with an excited, "Whee!"

Then Arsinoe climbed on top of her and started kissing her on the neck. Yeah, that was a recent development, after one of their sugar daddies wanted them both at the same time one night. Berenice didn't mind, and she felt safer with Arsinoe, so she accepted. The problem was that after that day, Arsinoe had started behaving weird. Some nights she'd make a bother when Berenice wanted her to get the fuck out of the apartment so she could screw her sugar daddy, other times she'd badmouth them constantly, even being rude in front of them when they groped Berenice. Arsinoe had also managed in the last month to get her stoned a couple of times and then went down on her.

Berenice didn't mind, she was good at it, and her tongue felt like a small doggy who was way too excited to see you. As Arsinoe's head bobbed between Berenice's legs, she ran her fingers through her hair, examining them again thoroughly.

Cropped, tangled, she even had a hint of dandruff.

Terrible, really.

How had they given her the hair contract instead of Berenice?

Arsinoe used her fingers to pleasure Berenice, who moaned reflexively, but her thoughts weren't into it. She gripped her frenemy's hair and pushed her down. Arsinoe misinterpreted it as excitement and licked harder, but Berenice actually thought about choking her frenemy by using her pussy lips.

She could do it, perhaps pin her in place with her thighs. She was stronger. She was sexier. She had better hair. She was better at everything.

Arsinoe's skill probably saved her at that moment, since a wave of pleasure crashed all over Berenice's body and she arched her back, shuddering as it overtook her. She did pin Arsinoe between her thighs but oxytocin flooded her mind and made her feel good. Or, at least, less murdery.

It was Berenice's turn to get grumpy. She stayed at home more and more, while looking for gigs less and less. She cut ties with her sugar daddies, who were stupid enough to still send her cash for a while, hoping it was just a girl's phase playing hard-to-get and she'd relent, but months went by and even the last one cut her off.

Berenice would spend her days just listening to music, brushing her hair, caring for them, touching the individual strands softly. She was proud of them, dammit! Why couldn't they see it?

Arsinoe brought in the CEO of a subsidiary hair-product company one night. Her boss, basically.

Berenice simply barged in the room as Arsinoe was sucking him off on the bed. "You don't mind doubling up, do you?" she said lustfully and dropped her negligee on the floor.

He gulped. "Uh... No! Please, join us."

She started playing with Arsinoe as they always did. When she reached in to get her turn of the cock, she sucked it as hard as she could, making the man grunt with pleasure. She kissed the tip and said, "Hold my hair, I love it like that."

He did so, running his fingers through her hair and holding her head, pushing it down.

"Do you like my hair? Isn't it soft? And pretty?" she cooed.

"Yes..." he grunted. "It sure is."

Arsinoe stuck her tongue inside her ear. "What do you think you're doing?" she whispered, annoyed. Then she took the cock from her and attacked it herself.

Berenice stuck her tongue in turn, and whispered, "I just think the man should have a fair sampling of the goods on the market, don't you think?" Then she smiled at him, climbed on top of Arsinoe and started kissing him. She pulled his hands and placed them on her head.

He got the hint, and started massaging her head. "Mmm, you like this, don't you?"

"Yes, so much. You do it better than anyone else," she said huskily, kissing him again.

Arsinoe let go of the penis and went for Berenice's ass. She pretended to be making out, and then she bit Berenice very hard, definitely leaving a mark. "Ow!" Berenice exclaimed, slapping her away.

"Naughty!" the clueless CEO said. "I like it."

Arsinoe started kissing him then.

Berenice stuck a finger inside her frenemy and purposefully made it hurt.

"Ow!" Arsinoe said as well.

"Calm down, you girls, there's plenty of me to go around."

Arsinoe straddled the man and pointed his cock straight inside her.

Berenice kept on the playful teasing.

A few rounds of biting and twisting and hurting each other's skin, and Arsinoe had enough. "Stop it, you wacko!" She grabbed Berenice by the hair, it was long and provided a good handful.

"Ow! You-" Berenice fought back, pulling her away from the shocked and erect CEO.

They fought and said names. Finally Berenice shoved her and Arsinoe fell on the man's erection.

"Aaargh!" he screamed in pain, holding his crotch.

The embarrassing lawsuit from mangling his penis put both of the girls in serious debt.

Arsinoe kicked her out, as she was the one who had been paying the rent and all the bills for the past six months anyway. Berenice got back with one of her sugar daddies, because it seems that young pussy is always sought-after pussy, even if it falls off the face of the planet for half a year and ghosts you on every call and text you send.

He lived in the better part of Athens near the East, overlooking the sea. She liked that, even if she had to endure his body odour to have it.

In the end, Berenice defaulted on one payment, one single payment, and that was because she had been hungover that day and forgot about it. Adult responsibilities weren't her strong suit.

So she basically lost her freedom. They called it debt-bondage, where they made you a corporate slave basically and you had to do whatever they wanted to pay off the debt. She kinda got what she wanted, Aphrodite bought her debt and put her to good use as a model. Uglier girls had to do other things, yucky things. She got off easy, basically modelling for ads and videos where they needed a young, sexy girl with a sultry voice.

Which was pretty much everywhere.

She hadn't spoken to Arsinoe in almost a year. She knew that she hadn't lost the hair-product contract since she kept seeing her ads. Funnily enough, she thought of her best frenemy when they chopped off her arm.

Oh, yeah, it was a thing they could do to you, even if you objected. Basically, you were meat and they owned you. The ads aimed towards the augmented demographic, so they simply augmented her arm and plugged a few more implants into her. She had no say in this.

Even so, she knew that uglier girls had it worse.

Berenice didn't care about that, though. She had learnt early in life that you made your own fate. And yes, she had royally messed up hers so far, but she could still make it happen. Showbiz was a weird place with massive amounts of money that got thrown around each day. Just a tiny bit would get her freed from the paramone contract and straight into stardom.

If only she could her job back from that thief, Arsinoe.

The black-market dude was nothing like she expected him to be. He was a well-dressed Russian, actually handsome. He presented the box, it was metal and heavy.

"There you go miss," he said, presenting it to her.

"How do I know it's what you claim it to be?" she asked.

The Russian smiled and presented a device. He lifted the metal lid just a tiny fraction. The device started clicking with a weird tone. "A Geiger counter. See how it goes crazy when it's close? That's how you know."

"Nice!" Berenice said, her eyes looking wild. "Sending you the cash," she said and authorised the cryptocurrency transaction. They waited for the confirmations to come in and then the Russian nodded. "Pleasure doing business with you."

"I-Uh, just wanted to say I'm sorry..." Berenice stuttered in front of her frenemy.

Arsinoe had her arms crossed and wore a mask of annoyance.

"Here, just a small gift. I picked it out for you when I got to Bodrum, remember how we said we always wanted to go there?" Berenice said cowering. She presented an ornate hair brush that was decorated with semi-precious gems.

Arsinoe bit her lip. "Of course I remember."

"So you'll accept it? Please?"

Arsinoe's face softened. She snatched the hair brush and pointed it back at her. "Puh. Alright. Thank you, and apology accepted, even though you didn't actually say any of the words."

Berenice beamed at her. "This is so great! Okay, gotta go now, I have an audition to get to. But we'll talk, okay? Byeee!"

Arsinoe felt ill for months. Nothing she did would make her feel better. She vomited a lot, which the doctors misconstrued as her being bulimic. And a model trying to convince a doctor that she wasn't bulimic was like a porn star claiming she was a virgin.

Days went by.

One of them, her hair fell in a bundle. She kept staring at it in shock.

They treated her for cancer, then they operated, then they treated her again.

She wanted to die.

Arsinoe lost the contract immediately, the very moment she was unable to show up for a photoshoot. It was a clause in the fine print, naturally.

"I... Uh, I know you don't have to listen to me, but I do have a friend who you can consider for the ad," she said over the phone, fighting down a coughing fit. She hadn't enabled her camera, of course. She looked like a corpse.

"Uh-huh," the manager said, seeming bored. "Send me her headshots or have her send them to me, and we'll see about it. Not all girls have what it takes, you know," he said with a nasal tone of voice.

"This one does," Arsinoe sighed.

Berenice finally got the fame she wanted. AR billboards, her face on every street corner in this part of Europe. Millions of women and girls envying her, wanting to look as pretty as her, wishing they had her hair. It looked magnificent, cared after by the best professionals, digitally retouched of course to become even more divine.

One day, a deranged fan stabbed her outside a beach club. It was quick, it was painful, and Berenice died in the sun, surrounded by people, all alone.

Arsinoe dug up her grave as soon as she felt well enough to walk. She was still walking with the aid of a cane. She had someone else do the actual digging, she wasn't that crazy to attempt it herself. A few euros could get you what you wanted and the silence of those involved. The hired work dug it up and neatly opened it for her on the side, by the grass, in the night.

She reached into the coffin, touched that wonderful mane of blonde hair. She always did love her, and especially her hair. She had since the moment they first met. Arsinoe cut it carefully from her friend's corpse and then put it on a net, slowly forming a wig with her dexterous fingers.

"This way, you'll always be with me," she said, crying over the grave.

The End

You can read the Cyberpink books here: https://cyberpinktournament.com

Closely Guarded Secret

The mayor sighed. "I believe we've gone through the official unfinished business." He slapped the tenth pile of papers on his desk and slid it across to the other man.

The mayor-to-be took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "Yes, we've been hours at it."

"Nobody claimed that being the mayor was an easy task, son."

"I understand that, sir."

"Alas, there are more..."

"Of course there are," the mayor-to-be said, resigned. The city was big. There were so many things to learn in record-time. It had all been a blur, the campaign, the election, the debates, the race to the finish. The current mayor hadn't ran for some reason after his first mayoral service. That had been weird, and nobody had given the new mayor a straight answer as to why. "Okay, sir, hit me. What else?"

The mayor pulled out a couple of physical security keys, the ones that you needed to plug in physically to a computer to get access to some system. He held the two of them in his fingers, holding them in a 'V' pattern, looking them over. "This one," he said, pointing at the blue one, "opens the city's vault."

"Just one key?"

"One of a pair, the city's treasurer holds the other. Neither of you can open the vault without the matching key."

"Okay, sir. Makes sense."

The mayor smiled. "You are looking relieved, thinking that this is relay is coming to some kind of an end."

"Don't get me wrong, mayor, I'm excited, and anxious, and honestly shitting my pants here. But yes, I believe it's been about twelve hours non-stop."

"Of course I understand," the mayor smiled. "You're forgetting that I went through this exact rite-of-passage four years ago, to the day." He stood up, by chance standing right next to his holoportrait on the wall.

The mayor-to-be was shocked for a moment. He could see the mayor as he was now, compared to how he looked when he won the mayorship. It had been only four years, but his face was now ridged with crow's feet, his hair was grey, his eyes were sunken. He could have sworn that the holoportrait was of at least a decade ago, but he knew that it wasn't.

The mayor buttoned his suit and walked out. The mayor-to-be, buttoned himself too and followed him. They went down to the lower level.

"What about the second key, sir?" the new guy asked.

"That's what I'm about to show you."

They went towards a huge vault door, the kind you only saw in movies with big bank heists, tons of metal arranged in a complex locking mechanism. Unlike the movies' vaults, this one wasn't shiny. It was old, probably as old as the city was.

The mayor-to-be stood, but the current mayor kept on walking. "What? Aren't we going to open this?"

The mayor waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Ah. There's nothing interesting in there. Just garbage, paintings and golden bars and other crap."

The new mayor raised his eyebrows. "Okay..." Then he followed.

They went to another secure location, further down the hall. There was another security door here, albeit more of the 'lab' feel, rather than a bank vault's. The mayor did the entire thing slowly, he held the digital key and pushed it in. "Here, watch carefully. This sticks a little, just feel the give." He turned the key reverently, and then a screen lit up above the key hole. "5638829. Say it back."

The mayor-to-be repeated it a couple of times, memorising it. He had learnt of a couple dozen passwords these last few days, so he was in a bit of a groove.

The door opened, and the smell of chemicals came wafting out. It was dusty, with a tinge of ozone in the air. It was air conditioned, the mayor-to-be felt kinda chilly, even with his suit on. Or, perhaps it was the creepiness of the place.

The lights came on as soon as they stepped inside.

The new mayor gulped.

It was a lab. And in the middle of it, was a big tube of glass, with a girl inside it. The girl was connected in multiple places of her body, and she was floating in a relaxed, foetal pose. The liquid was hazy but he could see that she was a cyborg.

"What in..." he whispered, stunned.

The mayor raised a finger, "You-You'll understand. Please be patient for a minute." He stepped close to face her, but she had her eyes closed. He pressed a button on a pedestal in front of the vat. "Kallipolis," he said softly as if speaking to a little girl, "I'm back, sweetie."

The girl moved a bit in the liquid but other than that, she gave no outward signs of reaction. Only her voice came from the pedestal speakers. "Hi daddy! Where have you been? I missed you so much. Did you bring me anything?"

The mayor sniffed and rubbed his eye. "Yeah, yeah..." he said, waving the mayor-to-be to come close.

He hesitated for a second, then did so, leaning in to see the pedestal controls. There were various buttons on it, with many icons.

The mayor pressed a button that indicated a flower. "I got you flowers, honey. Do you see them?"

"I do!" Kallipolis said, excited. "Oh, they're lovely daddy! They smell so nice. Mmm... Lilacs."

The mayor-to-be was shocked. His mouth agape, he checked out the other buttons. A teddy-bear. A chocolate. A dress. What was this? He had a million questions, but decided not to interrupt.

"Glad you like them, sweetie. Now, I need you to do something for me, okay?"

"Anything for you, daddy!" Kallipolis said, excited.

"Remember a while ago, when you had to remind me how to do some things in the city?"

Kallipolis tsked. "Oh daddy, did you forget again? How silly of you."

"Yes dear, I am silly, I know. Now, over the next few days, I'll need you to remind me how to handle some things about the city, okay? The hydro dam, the security drones, the sewage system..."

A giggle came from the speaker. God, it was so... normal. The mayor-to-be looked around the lab. Everything in here was ancient, decades old. Who had built this thing.

And, more importantly, why?

"That's great, sweetie. Lets try it out. For example, show me how to see the Citizen stats."

"Tsk, daddy, that one is easy. How could you forget?"

"I know, dear. Just tell me how." The mayor nodded for his successor to work the pedestal.

He stepped in front of it, waiting.

Kallipolis spoke. "Press square, then enter the command, 'citizen stats,' then hit enter." He did just that, there was nothing complicated about it.

A screen lit up on the side, an ancient cathode-ray tube with a greenish tint. It showed rows upon rows of stats about the city's population.

"You did it! Wee! See, daddy? It wasn't so hard."

The mayor nodded for his successor to respond. He pressed the button. "Yeah... it wasn't hard, thanks." His voice was timid.

"I know, daddy. You'll get the hang of it, I know you will."

The mayor-to-be bit his lip, then pressed the button again. "Kallipolis? What can I do with the citizen screen?"

"Well, anything! You can issue new mayoral decrees, see birth rates and death rates, and even ostracise some people if the city becomes too big to sustain. But that last one is bad, daddy. Don't do that," she pouted.

"No, I won't do it, just checking," the mayor-to-be replied, getting the hang of it. The mayor nodded in approval next to him, staying in the sidelines, as he would be come next morning.

"What else can't you remember, daddy?" she asked cheerfully, her lips not moving, her eyes ever shut.

"How old is the city, Kallipolis?"

"It's two-hundred and fourteen years old, daddy. Why?"

"Oh, just checking, I had a crossword puzzle I couldn't crack. Thanks, dear."

"Why, it's my pleasure, daddy!" She giggled.

"Kallipolis, do you control all the systems in the city?"

"Yes daddy. Police, fire department - I love those firemen! - sanitation, city grid technicians. Do you want me to tell you about all of them?"

"No, not right now, but I will come back again tomorrow and ask you all about it, okay?"

"Okay, daddy! Can't wait. And don't forget to bring me something, please? Pleasepleaseplease?"

He chuckled. "Yes, Kallipolis, I will get you something tomorrow. How about a..." He scanned the buttons. "A Teddy bear?"

"Oh, that's great, daddy! Can't wait."

The mayor-to-be stepped away from the pedestal. He nodded and mouthed, 'Can she hear us?'

"No, she cannot," the mayor sighed, the worry pressing his shoulders down. "Only when you press the button."

The mayor-to-be paced up and down, then snapped at him, "What the fuck, man?"

The mayor sat down on a creaky chair and his lips formed a little smile. "Get it out of your system, my reaction was worse."

"What. The. Fuck? Why do we keep a little girl down here?"

"She's two-hundred and fourteen years old. Not little."

"Oh!" the mayor-to-be threw his arms in the air. "Oh! So, we're keeping her imprisoned for like forever! That's sooo much better, thank you!"

"It is not."

"And why the hell is she calling us 'daddy?'"

"I think you can work out the answer to that."

The mayor-to-be froze. He felt a chill down his spine, and it wasn't because of the air condition this time. He looked up, at the direction of the mayoral office, gazing through the concrete and the rebar. "It can't be."

The mayor breathed in deep, then checked his golden watch. "It is. The first mayor installed the system, the rest of us... We're just inheriting it."

"But she thinks we're her father!"

"Yes. Maintaining that illusion seems to make the whole thing easier."

"I can't lie like that!"

"Sure you can. You're a politician."

"Okay, sure. But not like this!"

"How would it help the situation if you shattered her fragile mind? Can you even begin to comprehend the extent of her delusions, right now?" The mayor turned to the vat containing the person. "There's some sort of dreamland for her, in Virtual Reality, fed right into her neurons. This is her reality now. And she acknowledges the controller as her father. What can we say that will make it better, hmm? Your daddy is dead, dear. You are a living mummy, dear. But don't freak out, because we can't get you free, the fate of the entire city depends on you." He waved it all away. "I've made these arguments myself a hundred times, heck, a million. You can't forget about her, son, it's hard. You'll have to keep coming down here. After every stupid meeting and every stupid argument, when there's something to be decreed, you'll have to come down here and make it happen. You'll have to greet her like her father would, you'll have to bring her a gift, talk nice to her, and then you'll have to open the city's screens and make the adjustments."

The mayor pointed downwards with his finger, his sleeve lifted. "This is the job, son."

The mayor-to-be had a feeling where this was going.

The mayor's shoulders relaxed, as if the burden of an entire city had just been lifted. "...And as of this moment, the mayorship is yours."

The End

The Whale on the Veil

Elliot Tuckerberg grew up admiring the promises and imagining the possibilities of Magic Leap. He knew from his uncle that the headset would be something expensive, so he saved up for three years so he could afford it. He didn't get a bike, got lunch from home, didn't waste cash on chocolates and snacks and music. He was mesmerised by that dreamy ad with a life-sized whale in front of a bunch of kids, staring in amazement.

He was only fifteen when the billion-dollar company unveiled their first product, and it was a huge disappointment.

He imagined everybody using Augmented Reality technology to interact on a sort of an overlay of the digital world over the physical one, a world where you could flip through the pictures on your digital gallery as easily as you could through a pocket dossier of printed photographs. He imagined AR pets, educational aids, people connected through wondrous technology.

All he got was some goofy glasses.

Sure, they were cutting-edge at the time. But the gap between the company's promises and what it could actually do was bigger than the Grand Canyon.

He bought the beta pack, of course. It was more than he had squirrelled away, but his uncle chipped in for the rest. He was the only one who understood Elliot's obsession with AR. He was an entrepreneur with plenty of failed startups and crazy ideas under his belt, until he settled on a winning micro-import company and finally achieved the success he needed. He'd say, 'It took me fifteen years to succeed. I started at my mid-twenties, so now I'm forty years old. If someone had prodded me to start my businesses earlier on, it would still have taken me fifteen years. But I would have succeeded earlier, I'm sure.'

Elliot's parents disagreed and didn't want him spoiling the kid, but the uncle was adamant that they should shove their opinions up their behinds. It was easy to be heard when you were finally successful, Elliot noticed. Perhaps that lesson was the one he treasured the most. He kept watching them for years as his parents ignored his uncle's crazy theories and aphorisms about life and success. 'Keep reading your self-help books,' they'd tease him. He was after all, a failed entrepreneur with crushing debt leftover from his silly startups.

But, once he got his first million, everybody's attitude changed. Suddenly everyone shut their mouth when he spoke. They wanted to take selfies with him. They huddled up in family dinners to chat him up.

Success is what makes people listen to you, is what Elliot learnt from that.

He'd settle for just a girl, for now. "Mindy," he said as she ignored him and kept walking while texting on her phone. He caught up with her, "Hey, I wanted to ask..."

"Mmm?" she said dreamily, her attention still on her phone. It glinged, then again, then made a bloop sound.

God, he hated technology sometimes. "Mindy, wanna go out with me sometime?" he blurted out before his brain would get in the way and made him think things.

Mindy froze for a second, staring at him. She opened her lovely mouth to speak. "What? Me and you?"

Then she laughed in his face.

Elliot played around with the Magic Leap goggles. They were quirky and round, made you look like Willy Wonka. They were well-made and again, truly a cutting edge of tech, but something was lacking. Elliot knew it.

He stayed up nights trying to figure it out. He had this vision of everything in the world being mapped in real-time. He knew that would require immense amounts of processing power, but that didn't bother him for now. It was an engineering problem, and there were people who could figure it out. That was another one of his uncle's aphorisms. Then he'd quote things from Ford or Musk, people who actually knew what they were talking about, but who ignored their engineers when they protested that what they were asking for was impossible, like the V engine or the reusable rocket.

Elliot toiled away for an entire year, stealing hours from his nights, taking naps whenever he could in the day classes, skipping going to cinemas and hanging out. It wasn't like he didn't wanna go do those fun things, but every time he actually did go out, he ended up writing down things on his notepad, or sketching AROs and coming up with various applications and experiences.

The cinema, for example. Imagine an experience, where each viewer customises his own overlay as he watches. A girl might want a layer where she gets information about the costumes and the clothes people are wearing, available with links and prices. A guy who is a cinephile might want tidbits on the movie, like trivia, comments, where that b role had played before, or even the Mr. Skin listings for that sexy actress.

The possibilities were endless, really. As he went through the world in his city of New York, the ideas kept coming at him.

All he needed was a format for all this, some sort of a baseline so that others could build upon it.

"Oh, you need an API," his friend Becker said when he explained the problem.

"What's that?"

"It's a programming thing, where you can build something that gets external commands from somewhere else, like another website. So, you build your own engine, and then make an API where others can use it to call data from your own, and make their own applications or adapt their current ones to support theirs." Becker finished the rest of his ice cream.

"Really?" Elliot said, getting lost in thought again. Guess he needed to learn these things. He wasn't very good at programming, but how hard could it be? There were books and courses to take. Oh, they were doing programming at school, but it was so basic that even Elliot knew those lessons were useless.

No, he needed to study by himself.

Another one of his uncle's aphorisms, 'An entrepreneur keeps on learning.'

He lugged those heavy programming books around. Then he started making room in his schoolbag for them by leaving the others back home. His teachers weren't pleased, and neither were his parents when they got called about it.

"I guess we can't really be mad at him, since he isn't goofing off but rather learning new things. Just not the things he's supposed to learn in school," his mother said, resigned.

"Computer programming is not the lucrative profession it was in our day, honey. That was then. Nowadays, they're little more than menial labour," his father said, shaking his head.

"We'll see. Let's not force him to stop learning to program. He might get bored of it on his own."

Elliot didn't get bored of it. Sure, it wasn't the breezy subject he wished it was, but it was interesting. Unlike the real world, it made sense. Basically, you needed to boil down real-world problems to a logical progression of commands. You broke down the problem to an algorithm that solved it. And if the problem was too complex to handle, then you broke it down further to smaller pieces.

It was a way of thinking that made sense to Elliot.

Unlike girls, for example. He stared at Mindy as she talked with her friends. Elliot knew from her social profile that she wanted to become a marine biologist, having suddenly grown an interest to it the past year. She'd visited an aquarium on a school trip and loved it. Of course, the idiot girls she hung around with thought it was lame. They thought everything was lame, if it didn't came out the mouth of a celebrity. They liked inane things, popular stuff. If it didn't have a hashtag, it didn't matter.

That's why Elliot liked Mindy. He knew she was clever, she just didn't really show it all that much. Girls who were both pretty and clever always seemed to rely of the former quality, abandoning the latter.

Also, Elliot admitted, he liked Mindy because she had grown into a pair of amazing boobies.

There was that, too.

Elliot sighed and slammed the book shut. He also turned off his laptop, being gentle around it. He was frustrated, sure, but he wasn't stupid enough to bang his most expensive property shut.

It so happened that his uncle was visiting. So his mother called him and he went downstairs.

"I'm giving up coding," Elliot sighed, when his uncle took him in a corner to chat.

"Why? You love it."

"No, I just love what it can help me do," Elliot tsked.

"Same shit, kiddo. Look, let's boil down the concept to its bare essentials. Why do you wanna make this AR thing. Really, imagine it, and tell me what you see when you make it happen. Say whatever comes to mind, I won't judge," his uncle said, slashing the air with his palm.

"Well..." Elliot hesitated and stared at his shoes. "There's this girl, Mindy? I always imagined I'd figure this out and become rich or something, and then she'd be impressed and go out with me. It's stupid, I know."

"No, it's not stupid. So, you kinda wanna do it in order to impress a girl."

"Fine, yeah!" Elliot admitted, exasperated.

His uncle nodded. "Okay then. Do it to impress a girl," he said matter-of-factly.

"Stop making fun of me."

"I'm not! Half the things men do are so they can impress a girl. Or a woman. Or many women. It's a valid application. Make your project capable of impressing a girl. It's a common need. Your invention can fulfil that need." Uncle slashed the air with his gestures.

"That's where you make millions," they both said in unison.

Elliot went back to his studies and opened his books, then fired up his laptop with a sense of determination. Coding was a way to solve problems. The problem was, 'Impress a girl.'

How do you do that? Elliot had no clue.

But what he did have was the urge to figure it out. Break it down, like an algorithm, bit by bit. If it's unsolvable, break it down even more, solve each piece separately.

He cracked his knuckles.

Yeah, he could do this.

Mindy dozed off during the class break. Oh, she was still standing up, but her mind had completely shut down. Cindy was droning on about some celebrity couple's recent breakup, and she was pretty animated about it. Mindy cared not for such things. She had decided to go to college, and these matters seemed less important to her right now.

Alas, she couldn't just tell Cindy she was boring her to her face, could she?

No.

She checked her phone. Just a couple of minutes left before Trigonometry. She could hold on for two minutes.

Walking towards the class, she thought she heard a whale song. The school was noisy and she couldn't be sure, but she was sure she'd heard it.

Classes went on, and she heard it again as she was standing up.

Come on, that was a classic call of the humpback whale, or what she was properly called, the Megaptera novaeangliae. Why was she hearing it, in school of all places?

Uh! Was she going crazy?

Nah, it was probably some ringtone or something. She shook her head and tried to put her mind at ease.

Next class, she heard it again. It was definitely there.

"What are you looking for?" Cindy nagged as she craned her head around.

"Nothing. Just thought I heard something."

"As I was saying, Jacinda then posted-"

Mindy tuned off after that. They walked to their lockers. Mindy opened hers absent minded as she had done a million times, and she saw something she didn't expect. There was a weird device in it, something like a pair of goggles, round ones, attached to a smaller device. It had a note on it that said, 'Wear Me."

Nothing else, just that.

"What is this Alice-in-wonderland shit?" she muttered.

"What?" Cindy said, too focused on her phone to see anything.

"Nothing," Mindy said and snatched her book from inside the locker, then shut it quickly.

They went through the last class of the day, and then Mindy went home. She kept trying to push it all away from her thoughts. But someone had definitely broken into her locker. Should she report it? And get tagged as a snitch? No way! Kids pranked each other all the time. She'd only report it to the principal if it was something yucky, like a dead rat or something.

No, this didn't feel like something mean. It was elaborate, sure. That device thingy looked expensive. Gosh, where had she seen that before? She was certain she'd seen it somewhere.

She couldn't sleep. She hugged her dolphin plushie tight and tried to calm herself, but she was way too curious at this point.

In the early light of dawn, she caught a few minutes of precious sleep before going back to school.

This time she had decided to do it. Yes, it was probably a prank and yes, they'd definitely record it on their phones and it'd be up on YouTube in no-time, but she couldn't stand it any more. She needed to know.

After class was over, she ditched Cindy who wanted to hang out. Then she opened her locker and faced the weird goggles. She looked left and right, made sure nobody was looking, and put it all in her bag.

In the football field, she was alone. She lifted the goggles in her hands, it was light. The main weight was on the processing thing which seemed to clip at her belt. The note said nothing more, and she tossed it away.

"Here it goes," she muttered, and then put the goggles on.

Nothing happened. She just looked like a dork.

Oh, wait, there was an on switch.

There it was.

She looked around. And she heard the whale song. From the ground came a translucent whale, swimming in the air as if jumping up from the ocean.

"Wow!" she exclaimed. It was so pretty.

The whale was ghostly, then it impossibly swam in the air around her. As she turned her head, it stayed in the same place, as if she really was there floating about.

It was magnificent!

Then the whale swam towards the street.

"Hey, wait!" Mindy said raising her hand. The whale was getting away. So Mindy ran after her, still wearing the goggles.

She got a lot of stares on the street, and yes, she felt idiotic. But she couldn't lose the whale, it was so damn interesting! Okay, for a second, she took off the goggles just to make sure. The whale vanished. She could see it only when looking through the goggles, like a magical lens that allowed you to see a 3D animation, but in real life. How cool was that?

Was this a marketing stunt or something?

She followed the whale down the streets. She kinda knew where she was going. "Heading home, huh?" she asked her, but expected no response. The experience felt real, it was like she was actually following a floating whale in the streets of New York.

She turned the corner to catch up.

And there it was. The aquarium.

Elliot felt hot. His neck was sweating, and his t-shirt was too tight. He waited on the bench. Would she be here? He had set up everything right, but she hadn't taken the bait yesterday. His program pinged the activation code today, so here it was, take two.

His heart pounded as he heard footsteps.

There she was, Mindy, wearing his Magic Leap goggles. Even looking goofy like that, she was still so hot.

Elliot suddenly felt thirsty, so thirsty that he could dip his head into one of the tanks in there and start drinking the entire thing.

"Hey, Mindy," he said timidly when she walked close.

She stared at him, her beautiful blue eyes gleaming through the lenses. "Is this yours? Oh, right, I remember now," she slapped her head and struck the goggles. "Oh, forgot I was wearing those."

"It's okay," Elliot said, looking down at his shoes. "Did you like it?"

"You made it?" she exclaimed, taking off the goggles.

He knew what she was seeing, he hadn't programmed anything else on the whale's path. She was just swimming around them after reaching the aquarium. "Yeah, I did. It's kinda my passion project? And I really wanted to it to you. It's okay if you didn't like it, really..."

"Oh-my-God! I loved it," she squealed, and her voice echoed inside the aquarium. People turned and shushed her. She didn't seem to care. "What else can you show me."

"I... Uh. This is all I programmed, but I can do more if you give me some time. A couple of days, perhaps?"

"Yes!" she smiled at him.

"Okay."

Mindy gave him the headset and sat on the bench.

"I'm gonna leave you alone now," he said and stood up.

"Hey, wait. Elliot, right?"

"Yeah..."

She shrugged and looked away. "Since we're already here, wanna hang out? My friends never want to come to the aquarium with me."

"S-Sure," Elliot stuttered.

And then Mindy told him all about the various sea life on their first date.

Elliot still couldn't believe he had a girlfriend. Any girlfriend, let alone Mindy, the girl of his dreams. But, she was real, not augmented reality. He had squeezed her in all of her juicy, soft places. And they had kissed, and made other things that they both were very unfamiliar with, but very excited to do them.

It was fun. He had pretty much abandoned his project. He made a few programs for Mindy to enjoy with various sea life, and an octopus, that one was hard, but even she was very much into their love life right now to bother with dorky things.

The project was still on his mind, but he kept postponing it, and to be honest, all he wanted was to spend his time with Mindy and nothing else. It was like he was crazy for her.

One day, while hanging out in her room, he gathered up the courage to ask her for a blowie.

"A what now?" she giggled, covering her mouth.

"You know... We haven't done it..."

"Say it again!"

"I'm not saying it."

"Say it again, and I'll give you one," she said, her face serious now.

"Okay. Mindy, can you give me a blowie?"

She burst into laughter once again.

"Okay, if you don't wanna, forget about it," he said, pissed off.

"No, no, baby, it's fine. It's just, it sounded funny, you know. Why don't you call it a blowjob, like, I don't know, not-a-dork?" She brought her face up to his and was tearing up while smiling.

"I don't know, it sounds dirty. And I don't want it to be dirty, 'cause I love you."

"Oh, so sweet of you to ask me for a-" she snorted, "blowie and then say you love me."

"I said forget about it."

She pushed him back on her bed. "No, we're doing this."

"Now?"

"Sure, why not. We haven't done it before."

"Okay..." Elliot leaned back and put up a pillow. The feel of her fingers unbuttoning his pants was very tingly, and then they were cold as they pulled his little Elliot out.

She played a bit with it, Elliot was soft and he felt bad about it.

Then he stood at attention, and she gave it a kiss.

He really enjoyed looking at his girlfriend being down there, her face so close to it.

"Unh, don't look at me!" she complained.

"Why not? You look beautiful, I like it."

"No, I don't like it when you look at me. Look away."

"Fine."

She started at it again, then she stopped, again.

"What now?" Elliot said exasperated. He didn't wanna pressure her into anything, but he was very, very horny right now.

She sniffed while she stroked him with her hand. She looked around her room. "Wait," she said and stood up, rummaging her closet.

Elliot sighed, really annoyed now. "Baby, it's okay if you don't wanna do it, just tell me."

She kept rummaging her closet. "No, wait. Hold on. Got it!" She came back and sat down, holding a green veil. She took the same position as before, her face on his little Elliot, but she threw the veil over her.

"What's the difference, I can still see you through that?" Elliot asked, but didn't really want to debate the issue as she seemed to have gone past any inhibition she might have had and was going at it full speed.

"Mmm," she popped her mouth. "I know, but I feel better having it cover me up," she said, and went back to the blowie.

Elliot looked down at his crotch. Of course he didn't mind the veil, not as long Mindy was happy and sucking him-

Uh.

Oh, crap, he was gonna-

He looked down. Mindy was smiling up at him, her hand still stroking him as he emptied out. She met his gaze, her twinkling eyes through the veil, looking up at him. She looked gorgeous, and he felt light-headed. The veil let the light through but was still there, like a digital overlay, it took shape by the physical world and let the light through to her eyes, her lovely eyes...

Elliot suddenly propped himself up at his elbows. "I need to call my uncle!"

"What, now?" Mindy complained, eyes wide.

"Yes, Mindy. The veil. I just figured it out!"

The End

Read more of the God Complex Universe here: https://mythographystudios.com/the-god-complex-universe/

Fluffy or Shiny?

Toula's job was simple: Kill everything on the alien moon.

As tasks went, it was so straightforward even she could wrap her mind around it. She knew she wasn't that bright, and that self-awareness was a rare attribute among stupid people. Toula had a one-track mind, usually involving shiny things.

So they told her there was a shiny thing on the other side of the moon, but she needed to kill everything she encountered while getting there.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Toula had no idea what that actually meant but she liked saying the words.

They dropped her off from orbit. The moon was small so the gravity was softer. That meant she'd weigh less, they told her! How lovely, she'd been wanting to lose some extra weight for months now.

She saw the ground coming in closer as she fell. The moon was lovely, lush with vegetation and sparkling waters. They actually had her learn some things about the climate and all that crap, but Toula didn't pay much attention to it. She told them to make a video, but no! They insisted on boring graphs and squiggly lines that meant nothing to her.

Stupid scientists.

Anyway, the ground was coming up pretty fast right now, so she needed to focus. She had the self-preservation instinct to let her limbs loose and cover her head. She used two hands to cover up her head, two lower arms to wrap up her knees close to her body, the other middle two to brace inside the pod, and the top two were pretty much useless in this particular situation so she just bent them over her shoulders.

BANG!

SCRACHOW!

Dirt all over the place. Her drop-pod popped open and she got out, squinting. Yup, she had landed. She always nailed her landings. Toula was proud of that.

Cough, cough. She waved the dust out of her mouth with two right arms. Then suddenly, a roar!

A gigantic maw came straight at her and snapped shut around her, a wet tongue slapping her in the chest like a truck.

How rude. Well, Toula was here to kill everything, after all. She brought her top two arms down, the malformed ones. She always disliked using those, but what else could she do? None of her eyes could actually see anything in the dark, even the ones that spun around to give her a 360 field of view. In retrospect, those would have come in handy two seconds ago, but there was just too much dust kicked up by her landing.

Oh well.

She brought her malformed hands and just punched in front of her, straight at the gigantic tongue. She injected her poison into the beast as it took to walking around with her in its mouth.

Nothing happened for a few seconds. Then a gurgle which sounded more like the fizzing sea between rocks, and then they fell on the ground. The beast's mouth opened and she clawed herself out of there, smashing a giant tooth in the process.

Toula looked back at the dead beast. Well, one down, a million to go.

She had her shiny reward to get to.

Days went by, but they were funny days, because the moon was smaller so they literally went by quicker than what she was used to. She had killed plenty of beasts and felt really good about herself. Checking the kill counter, she had killed about...

62.457 lifeforms.

That was a lot, wasn't it?

Well, she poisoned one more flying beast she found on a tree next to her, then doused those little beasties in the nest that were waiting with their mouths open.

Those sure made her job quite easy.

She just sprayed them with her poison and they gobbled it up. Dead in an instant.

She checked the rest of the trees, since she hadn't thought of it before and she really didn't want to backtrack now. The shiny was that way, the indicator said so, and going back would take her... Well, the other way.

She killed a few smaller beasts, the ones that grazed on the underbrush. Those were easy to kill too.

Then she froze.

She saw before her a tiny little beastie with eight arms such as her. It was hairy, brownish, and had enormous eyes.

She raised her malformed arm to poison it.

The fluffy beast came up to it and started licking her fingers.

She tilted her head, curious. What was it up to? Did it have some sort of acid in its tongue, able to melt away her poison delivery system? Or did it taste her to see if she was worth going through all the trouble of killing her and then eating her?

She didn't do anything for a long moment, against all her preservation instincts that screamed at her to either inject poison into the fluffy creature or just smash it with four arms, maybe five for overkill, just to be sure. This was an alien planet after all.

No, the fluffy creature licked her fingers and then looked up at her, opening its arms wide, all eight of them.

She kept on staring. Now that was very weird. Was it gonna try and choke her?

It waddled on its two tiny feet, bobbing left and right as it closed the minuscule distance between them, and reached her leg.

She kept aiming at it with her malformed arm, ready to inject it with a dose of poison that could kill a triceratops.

The fluffy put its arms around her leg, barely managing to reach around.

Really now, what was it doing? Was it trying to trip her? Make her break her head? Cunning little bastard.

The fluffy squeezed tight. Now that explained it, it was sizing her up. It was going to make a move any second now.

Any... second... now...

Nope, it kept on squeezing, shutting its eyes.

Then it made a sound. Something like muh-muh.

Muh-muh must be bad, right? It was threatening her, what else could it be? And where was the rest of its tribe? Where were the bigger fluffies? Ignoring the tiny fluffy for a second, Toula spun her eyes around and searched the trees, the vegetation, the canopies, even the air. She couldn't locate anything.

Did these fluffies somehow have camouflage? Or, perhaps it was only the adult ones.

Who knew? The scientists might had covered it in their briefing but Toula didn't pay any attention. Perhaps she shoulda had.

But the job was simple: kill everything on the planet. Why bother learning about it if you're just gonna kill it?

And now, the fluffy was holding her leg tight with its four pairs of hands, and she wasn't killing it. She checked, entire minutes had passed and she still hadn't killed it.

Why?

And why was it making her feel all warm inside? All... fuzzy?

She reached down with her normal arm and lifted the fluffy. It squealed in delight and blinked at her with its big, black eyes. It made her feel... weird.

"Muh-muh," it said again.

She shook it violently.

Then it switched it up, screeching it's tiny lungs out.

Yup, that was more like it. Those sounds of threat or of screaming for one's life were the ones Toula was used to, not fucking soft sounds like, 'muh-muh.'

She held it still. The fluffy climbed up on her arm, it was an expert climber, naturally, and it reached up to her neck.

There it was, the little fluffy bastard was gonna go for the jugular. Toula didn't mind, she was armoured there, but perhaps the little beast couldn't know that. It was definitely gonna go for the killing blow and then she'd have no more hesitation about killing it.

The fluffy looked her from a very close distance, she had to go cross-eyed to focus on it. Then it lurched forward and put its eight arms around her neck, softly. Okay, not all of them, but it did bundle as many of the arms up as it could around her.

Toula felt something weird again. It was like poison, green, vile, scolding, only the opposite of that.

Not-poison?

Toula couldn't find the word for it.

The little fluffy held her neck, but didn't do anything else. Then it wheezed and shut its eyes.

Toula realised it had fallen asleep, its arms wrapped around her neck. She knew from all the beasts she had killed that evolution would have allowed such a beastie to sleep while holding on to a branch in its sleep, after finding a safe location.

But she needed to kill it, or else she wouldn't get her shiny reward.

This was such a dilemma.

The tiny fluffy mumbled again in its sleep, 'muh-muh.'

Aw shucks!

Now, how the hell was she gonna decide about killing it or not?

The End

Explosive Decompression

KABOOM!

She kept telling everyone that she couldn't cook. At all.

But nooo, being an astronaut wasn't enough, apparently. Having two expert-level skills also wasn't enough, apparently. 'Men don't want an EVA specialist or an acceleration manipulator expert,' her mom kept telling her.

For the first few years, Heliodora refused to accept it. No, she'd dazzle a man with her wits, with her skills, and sure, why not, with her toned butt. All that zero-g training didn't exactly leave you unfit and ugly.

Then five standard years passed. Still no dazzling of anyone, at least not anyone who bothered to hang around for breakfast afterwards.

So, now she was, having caved this day and deciding to learn to cook 'like a proper wife,' as her mom kept saying.

Adrift, in space, debris floating all around her in spinning vectors.

It was quiet. She liked that.

Sure, the side of her face that was licked by the sun was already medium-rare, but she couldn't really feel it, her body must have been in shock, her nerves instantly fried and frozen by the vacuum.

Ha! Medium rare. See, mom, she did manage to cook something, even if it was her own stupid face.

Normally, a hardvac drone would be deployed and come pick her up. Sure, space would kill you eventually, but not for a few seconds more. How many had passed?

Heliodora didn't know.

All she could remember was her trying to follow the instructions on a recipe, and her messing it up so royally that her cabin exploded outwards and blasted her into space. Like an itchy boil on the skin, squeezed to burst out.

Splop.

Her communicator floated in the air, but of course she couldn't reach it, having nothing to change her delta-v with. A cooking pot also flew beside her, and no-

Ouch!

It struck her head. Seriously, she had two highest-level specialisations, she should be able to figure out something as simple as cooking.

It hated her. Everything, the pots, the stove, the vegetables, as it was all apparent by the explosive decompression and the ingredients spinning out into space all over her.

Water, flash boiled.

Pot, hitting her head.

Veggies, showering all around her like a vegetarian firework show.

Rugged tablet, still playing the cooking video she was following. Still mocking her in her face. Seriously, just break down already!

She cried, but she didn't know if it was the vacuum of space sucking out the moisture from her eyes or if it was her emotional breakdown.

And where was the damn hardvac?

Nowhere. Somewhere else, saving some other woman who could cook and clean and take care of her husband, someone who could contribute to the space station's population by squeezing out two or three babies with a mere five-month interval.

Dammit. She couldn't even cry properly in this mess. Her left eye was getting boiled, probably gone for good already. Now that was a reason for men to skip her over.

She could rock an eyepatch, though. That would be badass. She'd get one 3D printed with something on it, like a skull and bones. Yeah. Her matter allocation would be worth spending on that purchase.

But that hardvac drone had better hurry or else her eye would be the least of her worries. She could barely feel her chest, her training having kicked-in and her having breathed out all the oxygen, despite what her natural instinct told her.

That was the problem with space. Every single instinct you naturally had was wrong. People were not meant for space, we don't have the evolutionary experience for that. Everything you want to do when doing an EVA is pretty much the opposite of what you have to do.

So you drill down new instincts with meticulous training, over and over and over.

How could you have time for romantic entanglements in-between all that?

Seconds passed. Heliodora couldn't feel her fingers now. Her toes were pretty much a goner by now, she didn't even bother with those. If she had to choose, she'd always choose to save her hands instead of her legs.

EVA specialists didn't really need legs, they usually got in the way.

But hands?

Heliodora felt like crying some more, but nothing came out of her tear ducts. They were either burned or frozen, she really couldn't tell. She tried to calm herself down. It had been too long.

There was no chance of anyone saving her anymore.

She slowly spun around, her back on the space station.

Space was cruel, even in that detail. In her dying moments, she couldn't even see her home.

Dammit.

She felt a tug, but her senses were pretty much shot already. She couldn't tell if it was just a piece of debris. Perhaps her stupid frying pan, coming back for vengeance after she burned it yesterday?

She saw a light.

Oh, that wasn't good.

Nope, that light was definitely artificial.

A pod.

Someone spoke to her.

"Can you hear me?" a warbled voice came. It was a man? Probably.

"Imiamia," she replied fluently, her tongue not working.

"You are in shock, it's okay," he said with an accent.

"Imiamia!"

"This will hurt, I'm sorry, but there's no time to wait till I get you back inside the station," the man said from somewhere around there.

"No!" she managed to blurt out when she realised what he meant.

The nanobots flooded her system, going to town. She felt her nerves reattaching, her flesh mending, her eye filling up with fluids.

With a start, she stood up, panting wildly. Oxygen was so, so sweet. She'd never take it for granted again.

She hurried and checked herself, her hands, her toes, her face.

She was fine. She was whole. More than whole.

"What did you do to me?" she screamed at him. Now that she managed to actually get a look at him, he was cute. In a... space pirate sort of way.

"I injected you with nanos to-"

"I know what you fucking did!" she screamed again.

"Then why are you asking?" he said annoyed.

"I meant, why did you do that to me?"

"You weren't gonna survive ten seconds, girl, let alone all the time of me docking in the station, even with a mayday from my end. You're welcome," he said with an accent, and turned his back to her.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you!" she screamed at him.

He turned to her and winced. "You might have gone deaf, but these are tight quarters. I can actually hear you just fine, girl."

"I'm not a girl!" she screamed back.

"I can hear you," he said, turning back to his ship's controls.

She stopped yelling. She coughed a bit, her throat coarse from all the screaming and the, you know, gulping down space vacuum. "You've killed me," she whispered.

"What? Nonsense..."

"I can't go back to the station. Ever. Nanos are banned, you stupid bastard!" she got up and struck him in the back.

"Hey, hey, calm down now!" he said, covering up his head. "I know, but you have to admit that's stupid, isn't it? Moreover, why would you wanna go back to that stupid space station?"

She couldn't contain herself. She screamed in his ear again, "You're fucking heading there right now!"

"To refuel, trade, perhaps dip my willy in a willing girl. Not to stick around, that place is a shithole."

"That's my home, you... you rude space idiot!" she said, lamely, pointing a finger.

"Not anymore," he shrugged.

That struck her harder than the fucking decompression blast when she breached the station's hull. Heliodora sat back down, staring towards infinity.

He was right. It wasn't her home anymore. They wouldn't let her through quarantine, not after what happened in the grey goo incident.

She was alive, but she owed that life to the nanobots swarming through her veins.

Then she heard her mother's voice. Not really, just in her mind. 'Heliodora, you're being rude to the lovely man who saved your life.'

Not a lovely man, mother. Just a space captain with questionable intentions.

'He has a nice bum, though,' her mother would reply.

Stop it, mother! Jeez.

Okay, Heliodora nodded and she had to agree he had a nice bum. And piercing blue eyes. And a chin to die for. But that was it!

"Thank you," she finally said with a small voice. She pulled her legs close to her body and wrapped her arms tight around her. She wasn't even gonna be able to see her mother. Not even a hug.

"What?" the man said, cupping his ear. "I can't hear you after all that shouting, my ears must have been blown out."

"I said, thank you, for saving my life."

"You're welcome," he said simply, and smiled at her. Then he turned back to his navigation.

Heliodora looked around the ship. It was a piece of junk, but she was in no position to complain. She was stuck on it until he could drop her off at his next port. She wasn't stupid to voice her opinion about the ship in words, and thankfully he was looking the other way and not at her facial expression of pure disgust.

The ship aligned with the docking bay and tugdrones flew close and eased it in. "Now you show up," Heliodora said with her palm extended towards them. "Could have used one of you five minutes ago..."

The man snorted. "Shit happens."

"Sure does," she said, squeezing her legs tight on her body. Sure, she was happy to be alive. But everything in her life was gone now. She wanted to scream.

The ship docked. "Well, I'm off to your lovely space station, I'll take a look around. Any recommendations?"

"Fuck you," she snapped back.

"I'll just ask around then. You... stay here till I'm back. Don't try to hijack the ship, I've put safeguards in place, you won't like them if you try anything."

"I wouldn't do that," she said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, by the way, what can you do?"

"I'm an EVA specialist."

"Cool! That's always handy in my line of business."

"Which is?" she said in a mocking tone.

"Totally legitimate retrieval and trade operations," he said proudly.

She snorted. "Right."

"Well, I'm off, see ya later, space elevator!" He turned to leave through the airlock.

Heliodora stood up. "Hey, wait! What am I supposed to do while you're gone?"

The captain shrugged. "I dunno. You could cook or something? But none of that vegetarian crap."

Heliodora balled her fists and screamed "Aah!" in reply until her throat bled.

The captain took of in a hurry.

The nanos healed her throat.

The End

Welcome to the Asterism

"You can't sit with us," the other stars said, cooling themselves in their starpool.

"But why not," Cassiopeia complained, feeling left out.

"Tsk. You're new here, aren't you?" Schedar waved her away dismissively. She was tanned and full-breasted, with an aura of bright orange.

A smaller star came close to Cassiopeia and offered her hand. She was thin and glowed white. "Hello, and welcome to the asterism. I'm Caph. Who are you?"

Cassiopeia squinted against the brightness and tried to weigh the stars around her. She was the Seated Queen, more beautiful than the sea nymphs. She wasn't gonna get rejected by these lazy stars, no matter how much older they were than she. She faked a smile and shook the delicate hand. "I'm Cassiopeia, Queen of Aethiopia. Nice to meet you."

The star who was leaning on her back snorted loudly, for everyone to hear. She had her knees bent and close to her body, but otherwise she was naked, dressed only in starlight, just like the others. "I bet your hubby found a new queen already, since you're up here now."

"Ruchbah, be nice to our new friend," Caph said in her tingly voice.

Ruchbah leaned back as she were before, presenting everyone with a full view of her legs and what was between them, seeming indifferent of the whole situation.

Cassiopeia tried to be friendly. "Okay, let me see if I got this. You are Caph," she pointed at the small white star, who nodded happily back. "And the one on her back with her knees up is Ruchbah, and the big-breasted one is Schedar. And what about her?" She pointed at the flickering star on the side of the starpool.

Caph leaned in and whispered, "Oh, she's Gamma. We don't know her name, she never speaks. She's fine, I guess, but she's not all there, know what I mean? It's like she flickers in and out of presence. You might get a few words out of her, but don't count on it." Then she turned to flickering star and spoke louder. "Gamma? The new star says 'hello.'"

No reply.

Caph shrugged. "See? Don't take it personally, she's just like that."

"Okay," Cassiopeia said, taking it all in. Four stars, plus her, made five. But there was something missing. It took her a while but then she got it. "Hey, Caph? You're all glowing, right. Your aura?"

Caph giggled. "Yes, silly. We're stars. What did you expect?"

Cassiopeia looked down at herself. She was still dressed in her queeny robes and definitely not glowing. The stars on the other hand were butt-naked and wore only their starlight. "Well, I'm not."

Caph bit her lip, looking worried. "I noticed, of course, but it was rude to point it out."

Cassiopeia raised a demanding hand, just like she did with her subjects. "I don't care, I'm not offended. Just tell me how to get my starlight."

Caph thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure..."

The big-breasted one spoke up. "If you're not gonna contribute to the Asterism, then we have no use for you, dear. Beat it."

"No, I will!" Cassiopeia said defensively. Gods, she hadn't felt so dismissed ever since she was a child. "I just need to figure out how."

Ruchbah snorted again and crossed her legs, showing them all her butt. "A star that doesn't shine. What's the use?"

Cassiopeia was now getting pissed off. But she forced herself to cool down, she needed to figure this out. "Okay, help me out here, Caph."

"Sure! But what can I do?"

"Talk me through it. What did you do to get sent up here?"

Caph turned to look at the rest of her Asterism. "What do you mean? We were always up here. Not assigned together, not at first, but that's how it always was."

"Yeah, but I was a mortal, not a star. I was banished in the sky," Cassiopeia said, reliving the pompous words that brought the ire of Poseidon.

Schedar shook her head and her big breasts bounced left and right. Somehow even her orange light looked dismissive. "A mortal... What will they send us next? An animal?"

"Ooh, I'd like a dog!" Caph said, hopping in place.

"Ugh... Shuddup," Ruchbah said, crossing her legs in the air the other way.

Cassiopeia dismissed the rude stars and tapped her chin, thoughtful. "Okay, so I'm here, it's done, I don't think I can do anything to change that. And this is an Asterism, right? A group of stars?"

Caph nodded happily in acknowledgement.

"Okay. And an Asterism does what? Shines bright? That's it?"

"-And points the way to seamen and wanderers," a voice came from somewhere. It was distorted, crackling.

"Who was that- Oh," Cassiopeia said, realising who had spoken.

The flickering star had somehow registered Cassiopeia's arrival, and had butted in in the conversation. Gamma locked eyes with her, so she assumed her mind was here as well, at least for now. "Hey, Gamma right? I'm Cassiopeia. Yes, that's helpful, thank you very much. Do you know what else I should do to get my starlight?"

The star flickered for a few long moments.

Schedar sighed. "She's gone, that was it. She might have a reply for you in a few centuries or something, or she might just ask you what the question was. She's stupid."

Ruchbah stood up, which surprised everyone there. "Hey, don't call her stupid! She has issues, okay? Just ignore her if you don't wanna talk to her, but don't badmouth her." She sat cross-legged next to the starpool, frowning with menace as the Schedar. The orange star just scoffed at her and crossed her arms under her bosom, making it bounce around even more.

Cassiopeia saw it at that point. The camaraderie. They might seem off, and the definition of 'off' was under debate since these weren't people, but they had each other's backs. That's what she needed to do, perhaps?

She walked close to them, ignoring the initial warning of Schedar, and reached the far end of the starpool, which was a bit outside their imaginary inner circle. She pulled her sleeve up and leaned in to look in the starpool. It was brilliant and twinkling, just like the starry night. And there was some sort of dark liquid but you couldn't see through it. Cassiopeia reached in to touch it.

There was silence, and she had a bad feeling about this. She looked around to see what the stars were doing.

Schedar was still crossing her arms and perking her breasts up, but her attention was on Cassiopeia and the starpool.

Caph looked absolutely horrified, her pale face a mask of pure shock.

Gamma was out of it, staring at someplace far away, flickering like always.

And Ruchbah was cross-legged and leaning in, her face looking coy, as if she was waiting to see a woman get burned on a hot stove.

Cassiopeia pulled her hand back.

Schedar and Caph sighed in relief, Ruchbah tsked, disappointed.

Cassiopeia squinted at them all, it was necessary since they were all illuminated. She went through their conversations in her mind. What was the first thing they said to her?

Oh, right.

She had to admit that she wasn't a Queen anymore. She wasn't even a woman. She was just a star.

Cassiopeia stepped inside the inner circle, despite Schedar's stare that was pointing daggers of light at her.

Then she took another step, and even Ruchbah seemed she was about to hop up and pounce at her.

And then another step, and Caph seemed delighted to see her.

And a final step. They all turned to Gamma. She flickered brightly, making them all squint at the sudden flash of light. "Take your seat," she finally said, then tuned out entirely.

Cassiopeia felt assured then. "I was right," she said, and took her royal dress off, letting it slide on the floor that wasn't really there. It disappeared into lethe as soon as it left her toes. She plopped herself down next to the others by the starpool. Naked, just like a star.

Then she reached into the starpool, and cupped some light with her hand.

The stars stared at her, now looking impatient.

She drank it, and her skin shone white and blue.

The End

Sir Patrick and the Mermaid

Part 1

In a way, Sir Patrick felt responsible for what happened. It wasn't his tugboat and it wasn't his propeller that injured her, but he was nearby and he was minding his nets instead of seeing what was up with all the racket.

The sea turned bloody, the foam rose to the surface. It was clear that the tugboat had clipped something big, perhaps something nasty like a shark, or rather something pretty like a dolphin? Who knew?

Sir Patrick took his time pulling his nets inside. To be honest, even if he had throttled his boat immediately, the heavy nets would have held him in place better than a solid anchor.

Took him, what? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? At most.

Nets safely tucked in, he moved his boat closer to the disturbance in the water. He saw something glistening but that meant little on the Scottish sea's surface during the day. Lots of things glistened, a fish, a plastic bottle, a discarded bag.

What he saw that day changed him. But he didn't waste any more time, he threw his ropes to the side and grabbed his sticks and gently tugged the floating body close to the hull.

Seeing it close, he gasped, as she was pretty, and she was mangled.

Sir Patrick made a noose and tied her tail close with his expert hands, then let go of the sticks and climbed outside. He reached for her with his hands, his back straining, his feet slipping.

Once, twice, he failed, she slipped away, carried out by the gentle wave. Luckily he had tied her well, so he had a third chance.

Success! He grabbed her tight around her torso and tried to keep his hands away from the nasty gashes along her body. Was she in pain? He didn't know. Perhaps she had fainted from too much of it, Sir Patrick had seen grown men collapse that way after a severe accident during a fishing trip.

He bit his lip. If he had known, he would have hurried more. Yes, he knew that at most, he'd have come to her aid just a couple of minutes earlier, but still. Sir Patrick managed to pull himself up and back onto his boat, holding her tight.

Taking in a breath, he took her sight in as well.

She was young, that much was certain. And she was pretty. And naked. All that covered her up was her long hair and a stray bit of seaweed.

And, most importantly, she had a fish's tail.

"No time to waste," Sir Patrick said to himself as his heart pounded from the exertion. He slid a tarp under her to minimise all the pulling around and rolled her gently on top of it. She landed on her face, but she was out of it, and her wounds were still severe.

He pulled the tarp by the edges and brought her next to his fish tank, the one he kept for the live ones. Alas, it wasn't empty, and he gnawed at his lower lip, thinking it over. The fish would take large bites out of her if he put her in like that, but he felt it in his guts that that's where she needed to be if she was going to heal, and not outside in the air.

This wasn't a landlubber, after all.

He would have to waste at least half of the catch to save her, and who could assure him that she even could be saved at his moment?

He punched the bulkhead, making a loud 'thub.' Glancing from her to the fish tank, he made up his mind. He quickly brought in another smaller net and ran it through the fish tank, catching them all in two large swaths. Then he simply threw them on the deck, right under the sun, leaving them to spoil.

His livelihood, little piles of fish slapping the deck and breathing in air, going bad.

He ran back and used the pulleys to lift her. She wasn't light at all, and he needed to be extra careful not to open up any of the wounds again. She was still bleeding but significantly less now, he could tell. He managed to lift her up and slide her into the tank.

Now what? Sir Patrick scratched his head under his orange head cap.

Then he brought in his first-aid kit, and thought it through. She was floating all right, but he didn't really know if she drank in water or air. She didn't seem to mind breathing despite being out of it, so he decided to prop up her head at the rim of the tank, out of the water. Then he threw in a smaller rope and gently brought up her tail to the surface. He kept her injured side up above the waterline and slathered the entire thing with antiseptic. He didn't have much of it and it wouldn't do much in the water, so he secured her a bit tighter to make sure the cuts remained dry.

At least for now.

He used up every last drop of his medical resources and then sat back, taking a moment to process things.

He had taken care of her, doing the best he could with what he had on the boat. Her injuries were very serious, the propeller had sliced her in deep cuts along her tail and one on her waist. Her fins were mangled, Sir Patrick didn't know much about... those people but he was sure he couldn't do much to save them. Could she swim without them? Would she be a cripple?

Perhaps she'd simply grow them back, he smiled by himself, being hopeful.

Then he slumped back on the floor, feeling exhausted. It was a tiring day of fishing from the early hours, and at the very end of it he exerted himself again by pulling her out of the water, then back on the deck. And he had thrown his entire catch out of the tank to place her inside. His hands had been trembling as he sewed up her cuts. He was used to working delicately by the pendulum sway of the sea. His muscles complained, his vision blurred.

She was as safe as she possibly could, under the circumstances.

So Sir Patrick fell asleep, dreaming of mermaids.

Part 2

Sir Patrick woke up to a beautifully sad song coming from the throat of an ethereal creature. Even if he didn't know the words, he knew they spoke about the open sea and how much she missed it. "Hey, lass, feeling better?" he asked her, taking some cautious steps not to spook her.

She was looking terrible, pale and half-dead. But how could he know if that wasn't her usual self? She stopped her ohs and ahs and stared at him in anger.

Sir Patrick realised what she was mad about, he slapped his forehead. "Oh, sorry dear, here."

She flinched away from him but she couldn't really swim anywhere, tied up as she was. He opened his palms to show her he meant her no harm, and then undid the nautical knot with a single pull. He noticed that her skin looked dried up and bad, but the wounds were starting to heal.

The mermaid moved her tail around and she splashed all over the fish tank, spraying water everywhere. She was like a big tuna shaking about. "Oh ho!" Sir Patrick laughed, "look at you go! Feeling much better, right?"

The mermaid swam in circles and then faced him again, stopping in place, holding just her head up from the waterline. She looked as if she was sizing him up.

"I'm no threat to you, lass. Relax. I bandaged up your tail, see?" He pointed at it and mimicked his motions, trying to communicate that he had helped her out.

She didn't seem to understand, and moreover she frowned in anger at him.

"Perhaps you can't remember the tugboat, it must have been a shock after all. No, don't think I did that." He sighed, trying to think of what to do. "Oh, right, you must be hungry. What do you eat?" He mimicked putting food in his mouth.

She misunderstood again, splashing him with a wave of water and swimming at the far side of the fish tank.

"No, I'm not gonna eat you. I'm asking, what do you eat?" he tried again.

She kept looking defencive.

"Oh, rats. I'll bring you some things you can try." Sir Patrick tapped his chin. "Well, you live out in the sea, so it's not like you have pizza or anything... So, raw fish? Clams? Calamari? Eww, that must be terrible when eaten raw..." He mumbled away as he walked out on the deck.

He decided on a tray of bread, some strawberry jam and some water. He didn't know if she drank clean water, but the hospitable thing was to get her some. Then he went out and grabbed a fish from his catch that was piled up on the deck. A couple had been washed over and fallen back into the sea, but he couldn't chase after each one. Best thing to do was to head to port and try to salvage something, at the very least. He set course and then cleaned out a raw fish, gutting it with swift, practised motions.

He placed it neatly on the tray and brought it over to the mermaid. She was swimming around the fish tank, and he could see that her movements were wobbly. She went straight for the far side as soon as she saw him.

"Here," he mimicked eating, smacking his lips together.

She didn't come any close.

Sir Patrick cut some bread and brought it to his mouth. "See? It's safe to eat." And he did so to show her. Then he propped up the tray on top of two crates, and walked away from the tank to give her space.

Timidly, she tilted her head and seemed to think it over.

"Go on," he told her from the far side of the compartment, gesturing the same with his hand.

The mermaid swam close to the tray and poked it with her finger. Other than her fishy tail, her top half was as normal and good as a young lass', even better-looking, if Sir Patrick might add. He sat down at a spot where he had a straight view where they were heading and waited for her to eat. After a while, he fished inside his pockets for his music player. It was a cheap old-thing from China or somewhere, but it was rugged and watertight, and it worked, so that was most important. He put the white earbuds in and listened to some of his favourite songs. He made sure not to stare at the mermaid, and soon enough, she seemed to find the courage to reach out and grab the raw fish he'd cleaned out for her. She splashed back to the far side and started eating it in the cutest way possible, holding it with both her hands and taking small bites out of it.

Sir Patrick smiled, but didn't let it show. She seemed like she'd make it after all.

Once docked, he calmed her down. The horns and the noise made her fussy. "Hey, lass, it's no big deal. I'm gonna go now, and you stay here." He threw a tarp up on the door so nobody could see inside, and went out to arrange for his catch to sell.

"Why'd you throw them out here?" the dockworker asked, pulling the net.

Sir Patrick had the lie ready. "Oh, saw something nasty in the fish tank, decided not to risk it, you know? I'm gonna wipe it down good as soon as possible."

"Makes sense. Wouldn't wanna make them all ill now. Merchants would go nuts over it," the dockworker agreed. "But you lost four-tenths of the catch..."

Sir Patrick sighed, and that feeling was truth. He pulled off his head cap, scratched his head. "I had to."

The dockworker agreed to that as well and finished getting the entire catch out.

Putting the tarp back up, he checked up on the mermaid. "Okay, nobody saw you, or they'd surely freak out."

The mermaid seemed calmer now, she didn't flinch or swim away as soon as he walked inside. She still seemed to be in great pain though, Sir Patrick knew of that sort of thing.

"Did you like the food? What did you eat in the end? Fish and some bread. Okay, as cuisines go, I can definitely handle that particular dish." He smiled and picked up the tray. He saw her looking at something else. Following her gaze, he laughed. "You want my music player?" It was discarded in the corner where he was sitting down earlier. He went for it and brought it close to her. Sir Patrick clicked on a tune and offered the earbud to her.

She tilted her head, then sniffed at the earbud.

"See, here, like this. In your ears. I'm not reaching out to put it in there, you'll probably bite my hand off. Do it yourself, lass." He gestured and showed her how.

Hesitating, the mermaid picked up the white earbud and put it carefully in her ear. Then it slipped away, straight into the water.

"Don't worry, they're waterproof. Nothing electronic would survive in the sea otherwise. Just try it again, alright?"

She did, and this time it stayed there. She winced as she moved her hand around, her injuries still not having healed.

"Nice!" Sir Patrick offered her the other one too.

She put it in the other ear, then her eyes went wide as the music player got to an emotional rock ballad.

Sir Patrick could hear his favourite tunes coming in muted. "You like that one, huh? Me too. See, we have the same taste in music, that makes us best buddies already. By the way, what's your name?"

The mermaid stared at him, but she seemed to enjoy the music.

"We need to name you something?" he stroked his beard. "Fishy? No... Tails? Nah... Barbara?" he shrugged.

He got no response.

"Nope, you're right, I don't like that one either. Ah whatever, we'll think of something."

The mermaid still seemed to be in pain, but she smiled wide and nodded her head. She looked so normal, just a young lass at the side of the pool, her hands lazy on the rim, earbuds in and listening to music.

"You know what's missing?" Sir Patrick laughed. He took off his head cap and put it on her head.

She tensed up just a tiny bit, then straightened it on her head, and smiled back at him.

"Huh? Now you're perfect, just a lass hanging out with a fisherman, listening to oldies, right?" he laughed again.

Forgetting her serious injuries for a moment, she laughed back, looking happy.

Part 3

Sir Patrick spent a lot of time with the mermaid, hiding her inside his boat. She didn't speak except to sing at the fishes, but she was clearly intelligent enough to understand him.

One day, Sir Patrick had some serious business to attend to in the mainland.

The shopkeeper caught him mumbling in front of his gift shop, "What should I get her?"

"Daughter or niece?" the shopkeeper asked, sizing him up.

Sir Patrick was caught unaware. "Ugh... I dunno. I mean, she's my niece, but I don't know what to get her."

"What does she like?" the shopkeeper said, trying to be helpful.

"Well, the sea, definitely. And fish. And music."

"I see. Well, my niece likes this snow globe very much. She finds it very pretty," the shopkeeper said, picking said snow globe from the shelf.

Sir Patrick accepted it. It was an underwater castle, with plastic fish swimming around an the glitter inside looked like it was bubbles. "Ah, yes! This one is perfect."

"Give it a shake!"

Sir Patrick did. It was very pretty indeed. "Brilliant. She'll love this one."

The shopkeeper took it back and went for the counter. "Gift wrapped, then."

Sir Patrick was anxious to get back on his boat, to check up on her. What if something had happened to her? What if someone had gone inside and seen her? She had the music player and he'd left her enough food to last her more than the two days he needed to be away, but he couldn't sleep. He checked out of his hotel without staying the night and took the midnight bus back to port.

He found her singing to the fish.

It was lovely, and it was melancholy.

He didn't have the nerve to tell her to keep it quiet, her singing was so sweet. Of course, it was what people could easily hear while working or skulking around the docks, and it was what would get them both caught. Her, for being a creature straight out of mythology, and him, for keeping her captive all this time.

Yes, he knew that he wasn't keeping her prisoner, and even she knew that. But it wasn't like she could put that in writing. It was fishy, this whole situation, and Sir Patrick knew it wouldn't end well. The logical thing to do was to wait a couple more weeks for her injuries to heal and then drop her off at some cove somewhere, he'd even picked out the spot, it had plenty of fish and a gentle natural wavebreaker. But he didn't have the nerve to just drop her off.

She was scarred, both physically and mentally.

All he could do was to take care of her.

"Hey, lass! Look what I brought you."

She gifted him a smile and accepted the wrapped thing. She put her tongue on it, and the paint must have been bitter because she was disgusted.

"Ha! No, it's not food. Tear it open," he mimicked.

She did so, and held the snow globe in her hands as if it was something precious.

"Give it a shake, gently," he mimicked again.

She shook it, and the fish inside it swam around, and the bubbles went up. Her eyes lit up, and she looked up at him.

"Yes, it's yours. It's a gift. Keep it."

She shook it again, enjoying the pretty sight between her hands, mesmerised.

Sir Patrick sighed. "Glad you like it, lass. Hey, I also came up with a name. It was a fish tavern I dined last night, it was called Thetis. Has to do with some myth about plentiful fish. Do you like that name, Thetis, eh?"

The mermaid looked up at him.

He pointed at her. "Thetis." Then at his chest. "Sir Patrick." Then back at her. "Thetis."

She mouthed the words, making a sound. It was nowhere near English, but it sounded pretty close.

"Yes! So, you do like it, Thetis. Okay, that's what I'll call you from now on. Now, I'm exhausted, didn't get any rest. If you'll excuse me," he said, rubbing his sleepy face. He turned to leave. He stepped back and waved, "Oh, and before I forget, goodnight, Thetis."

She waved back at him.

A year passed. Somehow, some way, his luck changed drastically. It was as if he found schools and schools of fish wherever he dropped anchor. His nets kept bursting out from all the weight, and he kept having them sewn up. Thetis swam around in her fish tank inside his little fishing boat, coming along for the ride. She kept him company, since Sir Patrick was a very lonely man. Her fin hadn't healed back, unfortunately. She could swim, but Sir Patrick could see that it was the aquatic equivalent of a person limping on one leg. He felt sad about that. Perhaps, if he had gotten to her sooner?

But no, what more could he do? She was lucky to be alive.

Thetis' face was hesitant.

"Come on, we ain't got all day," Sir Patrick said, pointing at the door.

Thetis shook her head, pretending not to understand.

"I know you understand me perfectly fine, lass," he pointed a finger at her. "Now, you are going to move your fishy butt and pull yourself out of that tank, and into the water, you hear me?" he demanded.

Thetis looked horrified.

His mask of anger melted away. "Aww, come on, don't give me that look. I was yelling at you for your own good. You have to try and get back to sea. At least swim around the boat?"

She nodded in acknowledgement, still looking unwell. Then she brought up her mangled tail from the waterline.

"Physically, you're as good as you'll ever be," Sir Patrick said softly. "It's not your tail that's the problem, you're just scared. Now, come on, I'll be with you all the way." He put on an orange life vest.

Thetis bit her lip. He could see she was struggling internally, but she did grip on the ledge of the fish tank and made a hesitant push to get her body up. That of course, revealed her chest, and it was very nice indeed.

"Woah!" Sir Patrick said, stepping close but looking away. He held up between them a jacket he'd gotten for her. "Put this on." He waited for a bit, then took a peek. "Got it on? You have. Much better. Now, let me help you out of there..." He picked her up by the armpits and helped her get on a little trolley he had for the fish crates. "Okay, now, that's all the help you're getting. Push it with your hands."

She tried it out and managed it after a while, pushing herself on the deck. She looked around, squinting in the sun.

"It's a nice day. Nobody's around here, I checked the radar, so you can move as you like. Here, get to the side from up here and get down into the water. Grab onto the anchor's chain." He rattled the chain to show her the grip.

She didn't look like she wanted to. She shook her head.

"Now, now, Thetis. What did you promise me? You said that as soon you'd be all healed up, you'd get back in the water. It's been too long. Sure, the fish tank is nice and safe, but you can't stay in there forever. Come on now." He offered his arm for support.

Thetis hesitated and looked around. Then she grabbed it, and pulled herself up and along the chain. She was stronger than her tiny frame looked, and she had healed up. She pushed herself on the deck and onto the railing. Thetis looked down at the waves, longing evident in her eyes. She turned back to Sir Patrick.

He nodded in approval, blinking slowly.

Thetis hopped over the railing and climbed herself down from the anchor. Sir Patrick leaned over the edge to see. Thetis hesitated for a single second just before the sea level, and then she jumped into the water, making a big splash.

Sir Patrick cheered and pulled his head cap off. "Go, Thetis! Swim, you magnificent girl."

Four more years passed. Thetis found the courage to get back into the sea, but she never strayed far away from the boat. They made sure nobody saw her coming or going, but she never went far. Sir Patrick couldn't see her in the deep waters but the fishing sonar could, bright as day. Thetis sat on the bottom for hours, listening to music. He didn't really know what she thought about when she was down there, but he was a man that appreciated his being left alone as much as he appreciated good company, so he understood and just let her be.

Like the anchor she sat beside, she was tethered to the ship and him. Not by choice, but by circumstance.

The catch kept on being impossibly good, and Sir Patrick was experienced enough to know that this was far from a fluke. Five years in a row of good fishing just didn't happen like that, especially when the others kept trying to tail him and caught less than his little boat. Fishermen gossiped, and Sir Patrick was becoming well-known as the best fisherman around these parts. That was silly, of course, and Sir Patrick laughed every time he heard such a thing.

The End

The Redjus

Unit One always loved Unit Two. Not at first sight, like the old saying went, but close enough. In their vast lifespans, what could you define as the beginning of your relationship?

The first hundred standard years? The first thousand? Or the first million?

Because Unit One and Unit Two had been together for at least four trillion standard years, that's what their internal clock said. Sure, time dilation was a bother and it was all relative anyway, but it was something to measure things by, like using the palm of your hand. It wasn't the best ruler by far, but you could measure more or less a few palm-widths in a hurry.

Unit One carried Unit Two in his arms. He had struck out on the last fifteen hundred twenty-two planets and he was starting to get anxious. All he needed was some Redjus to keep them going, just a little longer. Something had to be out there, hadn't it? Some place they could recharge.

That was the thing. Survival. All they needed was Redjus to keep them going. To wake her up.

She had gone into power save mode six-hundred planets ago. Unit One hated that, and he protested loudly. In the end, after visiting planet after planet without any trace of Redjus to be seen anywhere, he caved and let her go into power save mode. That way she could operate at minimum energy while they hooked up together and shared it. It was a good plan, sure.

All he needed was to find a planet to recharge.

Redjus wasn't abundant in the universe, but it wasn't that rare either. Well, in the infinitesimal lifespans of the early humans, yes, things appeared to be rare. The problem is that space is vast both in distance and in time. It's not just the lightyears that are the problem. You might be living practically right next to a sprawling civilisation with whom you'd get along and be the best of friends, but you might just miss them by a million years or so.

An observer will see them both as a blip going out, and then another blip right next to it but right after that, and go, damn, they just missed each other!

That was how Unit One and Unit Two saw the universe.

They had patience. They had practically infinite lifespans.

And now they were about to witness the heat-death of the universe.

The real problem was that the galaxies had gone too far apart for the pair to use the filaments between them. The dark matter that held the galaxies together had been stretched too thin, and it wasn't like the old days where Unit One could simply slide through one to the other. Now they had been isolated in this galactic neighbourhood like a group of icebergs breaking apart from the others. You can hop on another, but you're still in that same bunch, and you're still slipping away.

Unit One searched planet after planet desperately. He carried his love in his hands. They never tired and they never ached, so he held her as he walked, as he slid from one galaxy to the next, as he traversed the distances between the stars, looking for traces of civilisation.

Redjus was what powered them both up. They could find replacement parts practically all over space, it was easy. Just chuck some minerals into the processing unit and a replacement part plopped right out. Sure, there could be a catastrophic failure where both of their matter printers could break down at the same time and some critical system might have been damaged making them unable to move, but even then they had chances of survival.

Actually, now that he remembered, that had happened to them. Twice, actually.

Unit One chuckled.

Yeah... Every situation had happened to them. You name it, they've done it.

Botched First Contacts? Done.

Putting their foot squarely in their mouth with some diplomatic blunder? Done.

Lost in the wrong galaxy? Done.

Isolated somewhere in the middle of freaking nowhere with nothing to get them repaired or powered up?

Well, they were doing that right now.

Unit One walked around the equator of the planet. If someone lived here, this was the warmest part. He had become an expert in finding civilisations. The same things repeated themselves over and over. Moderate climate for them to evolve, or at least whatever that particular organism considered moderate, water sources, it was always water, never methane, funny how that worked out, and precious minerals to build up upon. If one of those things weren't there, then you had no civilisation. You might have had the best organism out there, the one with the most potential.

Nature was cruel that way. She simply snuffed it out.

No, not cruel. She didn't care about you. She just needed to break you down and make new things out of you.

That was ironic, since Unit One and Unit Two had been replaced so many times that their sense of self had lost all meaning. Every single part, every single limb of Unit One, Unit Two had manufactured and replaced. And the other way round. Even their processing units. They simply had a hundred or so backups around their bodies just in case and they loaded up the same software if it got damaged beyond repair.

But that happened rarely, only a few hundred times or so.

Unit One finished circumnavigating this planet. It was empty, he was certain. He looked down at his love. He held her a bit tighter. "Just one more, my love."

And then he slid on to the next planet.

Now that one was interesting. Lava rolling on the ground, jets of flame spewing from the cracks. Primordial. Now that was promising. Perhaps he could wait around here, power down for a few million years, see what showed up?

Normally he wouldn't have considered it, it was a scenario that they had simulated and discussed several times. They decided that it was a waste of time, and a gamble. I mean, really, find some organic goo and hope it evolves into a spacefaring race with advanced technology?

You were better off trying to fart hydrogen and hope it turned into a star.

But these were extreme circumstances. They were one unit down in their two-man team, so redundancy was gone. If he went, they both went. There was nobody to save them. Unit Two wouldn't have let him do it, but she was in power save mode, and in an act of defiance he wouldn't have dared showing to her face he said, "Well, it's not like you're awake to stop me."

So he put her down on the ground.

And then he unhooked her from him, letting the nozzle hang down from her chest.

He got up on his feet, overusing his knees, making a little hop as he adjusted. Now that felt weird. How long had he been carrying her in his arms? It felt like forever. He knew it wasn't forever, the data was right there, but still. His hands felt lighter, unfamiliar. It wasn't that she was heavy to carry, or that his arms couldn't handle it and adjust, but it was still weird. It seemed that every bit of his body had adapted to carrying Unit Two, and now he was walking around and it all felt different, bouncy. He made a few laps around her, looking for a spot in the mean time.

He decided on one, and then went back to where he left her.

For a moment, he froze there, staring down at her. He loved her, he knew that. And he didn't wanna die. He didn't wanna disappoint her. But in the off-chance he did fail to find more Redjus, wouldn't this be better? This planet was beautiful, as planets went, and he had sampled a fair amount of the universe.

More importantly, it was peaceful.

He daydreamed of waking her up. She'd be wobbly for a while, that always happened after waking up from a power-save mode. She'd look around, get her bearings. He'd share his experiences with her and she'd take a while to catch up and process. Actually, the transfer only took seconds, but it was as if she savoured it, the experience of seeing the world through his eyes. She always took her time when they did that.

So, she'd do that, and then she'd scold him for being sentimental. She'd say he was wasting their last reserves of Redjus and that he had gotten them stuck here with no options whatsoever.

And she'd be right.

And they'd fight for a long time, and he'd storm off to the other side of the planet just to avoid facing her 'cause he knew he was being an idiot. And then days would pass, and he'd find something pretty to bring back to her and say he was sorry.

And she'd cross her arms and look the other way but eventually she'd cave and they would be okay again.

Actually, Unit One realised that wasn't a daydream. It was a memory. This had happened before. Their experiences were so hard to keep track of...

But he couldn't remember how they had gotten out alive from that dead end. Damn, his memories must have been corrupted. That would have been useful to remember right now...

Unit One knelt next to Unit Two. He could wake her up, spend whatever little time they had together, in each other's arms. Sure, she was technically in his arms for who knows how long, but it wasn't the same.

Then he had a dark thought.

What if he didn't wake her up?

What if he just left her there, safe in a tidy little spot, while he roamed around the planet and came back at night to just talk to her, even if she couldn't listen?

What if he gave up?

She wouldn't have to suffer through the last of their lifetimes. She would simply... sleep.

That dark thought overtook his mind and he paced around, mulling it over as he gathered rocks and made a crude wall. No, lava couldn't destroy them, but it would be a mess to dig out of.

Something blared, something red.

Redjus? He perked up.

No, it was just his power level warning. It had been beeping on and off for so long he had just been tuning it out, but now it told him he was running dangerously low on Redjus. "Yes, I know. That's the problem, stupid subsystem," he said to nobody in particular and kept on making his fort for a few hours.

Then he walked back to Unit One. He knelt next to his sleeping love and plugged her nozzle back into his chest.

The feeling was... Amazing. Ecstasy. It was nothing more than a trickle, but getting some Redjus after all this time, even this minute quantity...

He immediately felt better. It wouldn't last, he knew that.

He stood up. He had to make a choice. And no, he wasn't going to go the cowardly way. He'd fight for his life and hers.

He ran the simulations as well as he could, but Unit Two was always the one who was better at that theoretical stuff. He was better suited to building things and carrying on long after everyone had given up and died.

Granted, that was the character flaw that kept them alive so long, but in this case he could really use some of the brainier stuff.

Oh, well. Here goes nothing.

He finished his fort and took some readings.

Looked good.

Then he sealed it up, locking themselves inside.

And then he laid down next to his love, and held her tight in his arms.

"Hoping for a miracle, then," he whispered and went into power save mode.

A civilisation did indeed evolve out of the primordial goo of the planet's surface. It was bipedal, and its people believed in a benevolent god and were generally kind and logical and wanted to explore. Unfortunately, just like we said earlier, the distances were those of time as well as space.

They were simply too far away from anything useful, or even alive.

They were about four hundred million years too late to have a stepping-stone that could get them out of their solar system.

The civilisation thrived in its quiet little corner, since nobody showed up uninvited to kill them.

They made music, and entertainment, and constructed wonders that amazed their successors for endless generations.

In the end, just like all things, that civilisation died out like a blown out candle.

The last living person detected a weird reading inside their planet's crust.

He had a lot of resources at hand, factories and robots and matter printers and satellites. You might say he was the most powerful man on the planet, all alone over there.

That ended when he broke through the rock and into the chamber.

There they were, two humanoid forms. He couldn't believe it!

No, some kind of robot. They seemed battered beyond repair but they also seemed... Alien.

Could this be?

His civilisation had searched far and wide for as long as they could to find someone out there, something, anything alien... Just a tiny bit of proof they weren't alone in this cruel universe. And it was under their feet all along?

What cosmic irony was this?

He reached out, not daring to touch the humanoid artifacts. His devices told him it was safe. A bit of increased radiation but nothing that space-travel wouldn't pepper you with. So, they had come from out there?

How exciting! The man giggled like a child. A discovery like this one, on the eve of their civilisation...

He had no one to share it with. But he wanted to figure it out nonetheless.

He touched the smaller one, it seemed delicate, almost feminine. It wasn't fragile, not if it had survived the topling of the tectonic plate, but it just looked thinner than the other one.

Was that deliberate?

Wait, bipedal! So, their creators had looked like him! This was so damn exciting. His heart pounded, don't give out now, so close to this revelation.

He ran his fingers on her body, her arm. It vibrated a bit. Somehow, it felt like it was whirring. Was it true? Yes! And it was whirring up. She was powering up from some hibernation mode.

Oh, he could speak with them perhaps! The wonders they could share. Of course, they wouldn't have the same language. But the man could learn theirs, he would have the patience to.

The stories they could tell him! The details of alien people.

The female robot lifted her head, making the dirt fall down in little clouds. She looked around, as if taking it all in, getting her bearings. "Hello," the man said in his own tongue. He was certain she couldn't understand him but perhaps the body language translated through. "You're safe. How do you feel?"

The female robot looked to be studying him, as if she was squinting hard to make out every detail of his face. "I... feel... tired," she spoke in his tongue.

Ah! He couldn't believe it. What did this mean? Never mind that, they had all the time to chit chat later. "Can I do anything to help you?"

"Redjus," she said, her voice crackling.

The man leaned closer. "I'm sorry what? I don't know what that is. Can you say it again?"

"Redjus," she said, almost dead now.

Now the man was inconsolable. "What is that? A power source, a radioactive element, what? How can I help you?" he whined, feeling the situation getting out of hand.

"Redjus..." she hissed.

Then the female robot lunged on top of him and plugged a hose right into his heart. Red blood pumped by his own heartbeats right into the thief, who got more energetic by the second. "Redjus!" she said triumphant, as the last man of that dying civilisation finally went still.

Then she turned to the other robot. She plugged the bloodied nozzle into his chest now, recharging him. "Oh, my love. You made it happen. You found some Redjus for the both of us," she said, hugging him tight.

And Unit One and Unit Two lived a little while longer, together.

The End

Generations of Gold

Hinata had been in the family for as long as anyone could remember. Created by a master alchemist, she was made of exquisite porcelain, the kind you usually found on a king's plate when he really wanted to impress that foreign queen.

Generation after generation, the house of Ikari stood strong while others came and went, thrived or got wiped out when their sons fell in faraway battles.

They never admitted to it, but they owed that to Hinata. She was not their secret. The real secret was the reason they needed her.

Ichiro was in the back yard, holding a big stick. He liked that stick. He liked the heft of it, the weight. He also liked how the bark had been scraped off where he held it. It showed a long-time use, and indeed he had.

He brought it over his head and then slammed it down, smashing the doll.

"Ow!" she cried out.

"Shut up," he ordered. She wasn't even a real person, just a porcelain doll. He owned her, just like he owned everything in the family, being the elder Ikari son. Ichiro grinned like a maniac. He liked how the pieces flew off in unique patterns that no artist could ever truly capture. He liked how she limped away from him, one of her legs shattered.

He liked how her face contorted when she was in unimaginable pain.

He slammed his stick on the remaining stub of her thigh, laughing. A piece of porcelain flew off and struck his eye. "Ow! You whore," he cried out, rubbing his eye, making it worse. It bled a little, and the piece was definitely still in there. Furious beyond measure, he kicked her again and again. "Look at what you did to me!"

"I'm sorry, master Ichiro. I'm so sorry!" Hinata begged, taking the blows.

"I'll show you..." He smashed her other leg with his stick.

That was a satisfying crunch.

He looked down at her shiny porcelain ass. He liked that ass ever since he was old enough to play with his stick, but she didn't have a hole there. Ichiro had checked. He held his big stick up with one hand while he fondled his little stick with his other one.

She was curvy, Ichiro liked that. She had intricate blue patterns on her white skin, just like an expensive porcelain vase. Now, why would his great-great-plenty-more-greats-grandfather had ordered one from an alchemist that was naked and sexy to look at, if not for the apparent reason?

To his dismay, she didn't have the necessary holes to stick himself into like a woman had.

Even worse, he knew for a fact that his family had paid a fortune to make her. Would it hurt them to put some proper holes into her?

Hinata shuffled away from him, crying with no tears, begging him, "Please, master, please! Don't hurt me any more..." She whimpered and pulled herself from her arms, her porcelain fingers digging deep into the grass.

Ichiro stroked himself, now he was really getting horny. All these smashings brought this to him in the end, and he always hated that he didn't have a release for it.

He stared at her ass as it shuffled away from him. It was gorgeous, inviting. It arched nicely, protruding from her small waist. Below that of course were her legs, but those were in pieces behind him as he paced, and crunching underneath his boots. What was really beautiful were the breaks on her body and the way they were repaired. Just like Kintsugi, her cracks could be alchemically repaired by putting gold between them and applying heat.

Ichiro lifted his stick and held it with both hands, aiming right. "Sit still!" he ordered, and Hinata obeyed. He brought the tip of the stick down with force and broke a hole between her buttcheeks.

He stroked himself and pulled down his pants. Licking his lips, he pushed down on Hinata.

"No, master Ichiro, please!" she cried.

"Sit still. If you cut me, I will crush every last bit of you," he hissed, getting into position behind her. He was horny enough to consider it, but the break seemed razor sharp, and even in this state, he didn't try to stick it in there. Instead, he jerked himself off, rubbing on the smooth parts of her porcelain body.

Eventually he came, right in the broken hole.

Yumi saw the whole thing. She liked Hinata, and she didn't like how the men in her family always treated her. It wasn't right. Hiding behind the door, her knuckles whitened like porcelain with each blow. She flinched, but she didn't look away. Her brother didn't look away when he was hitting Hinata, and she needed to be strong for her. Everybody told her that that was how it was in their house, but it felt terribly wrong.

When Ichiro got on top of Hinata and started to rub himself, Yumi ran away to her room.

"What's the matter, dear?" her mother asked.

"Mother, Ichiro broke my doll again!" she complained, completely understating the situation she witnessed.

"I know, but it's not just your doll," her mother said and sat beside her, stroking her hair. "It's everyone's."

"But I play with her, and we have tea, and we make beautiful things. All Ichiro does is break her. Why, mother?"

She didn't reply immediately. Mother took in a deep breath. "The house of Ikari has a... condition."

"Like a disease?"

"Yes, Yumi. Like a disease. Of the mind, you could say, but equally serious."

"Oh," Yumi said in a quiet voice, thinking. Disease was bad, she had seen people in the city dying from it, and there was nothing the healers could do. And she knew that Ikari was rich and could afford healers, but many people could not.

"And that disease makes them angry sometimes. The men... they need a release. That's why we have Hinata in the house. Because she breaks, and then she becomes whole again."

"I know mother, but she cries in pain! That's not right."

"It's not, when it's a person. You should never hurt another person, and neither should your brother. But if it wasn't for Hinata, he might, accidentally, hurt me or you. Do you understand that?"

Yumi frowned. "I do, mother. It's not Ichiro's fault, it's the disease."

"Exactly, Yumi," her mother said and ruffled her hair. "Now, come on, let's get the furnace ready to melt the gold, so that we can repair Hinata tonight. Tomorrow morning, she'll be ready for you to play with!"

"Yes, mother, thank you." Yumi followed her into the smithy they had on their grounds.

Yumi hummed as she picked up the pieces from the yard. She was carefully placing them on her skirt, she was holding it up to carry things. The porcelain pieces were sharp and she had cut herself a few times before. She combed the entire yard, then diligently went around it once again to make sure she hadn't left anything behind. When she was satisfied she had done a good job, she hummed again and brought the pieces to the smithy.

She found her mother poking the fire inside the furnace. Hinata was lying on her back on a worktable. She reflected the firelight beautifully in warm tones of white and blue and gold.

"Hinata?"

"Yes, mistress Yumi?"

"Are you in pain?"

"Not anymore," Hinata said.

Yumi looked down at the broken thighs. She emptied out her skirt carefully, bringing all the pieces on the table. On a previous run, she had brought in the larger pieces, and her mother assembled those in their proper place.

"We will fix you up again, friend!" Yumi said cheerfully and held Hinata's hand.

"Thank you, mistress. I'd like that."

"Now, all that remains is the molten gold," her mother said, pushing the container with the piece of gold inside the furnace. "You need to learn this process, Yumi, so that you can do it on your own."

"But mother, I wouldn't need to do it at all if Ichiro could stop breaking Hinata all the time!" she complained.

"Yes. That is true. But I explained this to you, this is Hinata's purpose. Ask her yourself."

Yumi looked from her mother to her porcelain friend.

"Come on," mother said, minding the molten gold.

"Hinata, is this your purpose?"

"Yes, Yumi, I exist to serve the house of Ikari, in every way I can, with every last bit of my ability."

"And your body?"

"And my body, of course."

Yumi nodded in affirmative but she didn't like the answer. It still felt wrong for her.

"Here we go," mother grunted as she picked up the scalding-hot container. She gripped it carefully with leathers and prongs and tilted it to pour gold all over the arranged pieces. "Stand back, Yumi, this can hurt you a lot."

Yumi observed, fascinated. Gold reflected off her wide-open eyes. "But why doesn't it hurt Hinata?"

"She's not like us, Yumi. Hinata is a porcelain doll," her mother explained, pouring the gold over the shards.

The gold alchemically bonded with the edges of the pieces.

"Here, help me out," mother said, throwing Yumi a pair of thick leather gloves over the work table.

Then both women began to carefully place each piece back in its place. It bonded together, repairing the crack with gold.

It took them most of the night, but in the end, Hinata had her legs back.

Months passed, and their mother got the disease. They brought in the best healers in the land, and even sent letters with messengers to those that were in faraway lands but their skill had been heard all over. Ichiro was now angry all the time, smashing things, punching Hinata whenever she had the misfortune of crossing his path in the home. He also still had the piece of porcelain stuck inside his eye. That caused an unhealable bleed, which made him look very much like the half-possessed monster that he actually was.

Yumi repaired the crack in Hinata's cheek. She stayed up all night trying to figure out the furnace, and she got burns in her hands, trying to manipulate the scalding gold. She covered up the scars with long sleeves, but she didn't mind, it was done for her friend.

The day their mother died, Ichiro broke everything in his path, screaming like a madman. He punched Hinata on the ground, smashing her to little bits, over and over and over.

Yumi cried out and tried to pull him away from her, but she wasn't strong. He just shoved her away and kept on beating Hinata.

In the end, all that remained was a pile of bloody rubble.

Ichiro actually seemed to feel bad about what he had done the next morning. "I didn't want to break her that bad," he said, tears in his eyes.

Yumi shrugged. She didn't feel bad about him, and she was furious about what he had done, especially now that mother was gone.

"Can you fix her, little sister," Ichiro pleaded, falling on his knees. "Please?"

"I don't know if she can be fixed," Yumi said flatly.

"Please, try. Please, little sister. I need her. I need Hinata," he begged, gripping her clothes and sobbing into them.

Yumi ruffled his hair just like mother used to do to them both.

Yumi hid the gold. She buried it in the yard, right under her flowers. Ichiro would never think to look under there, flowers were for girls.

"I can't fix her, we don't have enough gold left," she lied, shrugging and pretending to feel bad.

"It can't be!" Ichiro said, rummaging through their valued possessions. A few handwritten books, a vase, swords and armour that belonged in the family for generations. He gripped the table. "It's nowhere near enough to buy enough gold," he said in a defeated tone of voice.

"No, there isn't. I'm sorry," she lied again. It wasn't hard to lie, they indeed had sold a big chunk of their gold to care for their mother. "There's only some left to glue a few pieces together, perhaps a whole arm. That's it, no more."

Ichiro sagged on his chair.

"You shouldn't have broken her that much, brother," she pressed on.

He glared at her angrily but said nothing.

Yumi got married off to a wealthy merchant. It was the logical thing to do, and she didn't really mind. Her husband was young and sweet. Older than her, but young enough so that their age difference wouldn't matter in a few years.

They had children, a daughter. They tried again, because, naturally, he needed a son to carry on the family business and name.

Their next child was a son, but in the time it took to get with child her older daughter blossomed into a pretty little girl. She played with a butterfly in the back yard, giggling and feeling the happiest in the world.

During a family gathering, Yumi saw something that she'd hoped she'd never see again. That glint in her brother's eyes as he stared at her little daughter. That smirk, that slight increase in his breathing.

Cold sweat covered her body. She knew that if that red-eyed monster ever touched her daughter, she would kill him without hesitation.

But it was the disease, she heard her mother's voice say in her mind.

Deep down she knew it was nonsense, but she couldn't risk it.

"I have a job to do with the family," she told her husband. "I'll be gone all night."

He looked at her strangely, but he never had a reason to suspect her of even looking at other men. "Fine. One night?"

"Yes, I need to find something at our family home. It will take me hours, and I don't want to walk back during the night."

"Yes, it's better that you stay at your brother's," her husband said, and kissed her.

Yumi dug up the gold ingots she had tucked away all those years ago. She fired up the furnace, grunting as she carried the sack of coal and the wood and the heavy containers.

They had placed Hinata in their family's porcelain vase. Fitting, she thought. She poured the pieces out onto the worktable and then spent all night meticulously placing them together, like a big, sharp puzzle.

She melted the gold, and bonded the pieces together.

Hinata opened her blue eyes, batting her eyelashes. "Mistress Yumi?" she said, as if awakening from a deep slumber.

"Yes, it's me. I'm taller now," Yumi smiled, holding her childhood friend's hand. "How do you feel?"

"I'm well." Hinata checked herself all over, her arms, her legs. "There's a lot more gold than I remember."

"Yes," Yumi winced. "But this is the last time I'm fixing you," she said firmly. "You better tell him I said that."

Hinata's voice broke. "You're giving me back to master Ichiro?"

"Isn't that your purpose?" Yumi asked coldly. Inside, she wanted to burst into tears.

"Yes, mistress," Hinata said, and got on her legs. She looked fine, as if she hadn't been broken into pieces and got stored away for a decade.

The first light of day came in through the window, and made her shine. Her porcelain shin was shiny on its own, but the added golden cracks, no, scars, shone bright under the sun.

"I'm happy to see you again, Hinata," Yumi said bitterly. "But now, I have to leave, and you have to stay here in the house of Ikari with my brother."

The End

A Trillion-Dollar Rock

Okay, Petra wasn't the brightest of the bunch. Everybody knew that, except for her, as it usually was with idiots. The problem, and this is where clever people really slam their heads on the wall, is that if you throw a thousand idiots at a problem, one might succeed at it.

Petra heard half of what the briefing said. No, not half, less than that. What was half of half? There should be a name for it, something so you could say it and keep it short. Those clever-pants scientists with their big words should get onto that, naming the half of halves.

Anyway, she digressed. She heard half of half of what they said on the briefing, and understood half of half of the words they used. Something about asteroid mining something-something, yadda yadda, corporations, mining rights, blah blah blah.

And then they said the magic words that made her eyes roll in dollar signs like an old-timey cartoon: A trillion dollars.

She raised her hand.

"Yes, Petra?" the scientist said, hesitant.

"Did I hear you right? That rock, whatchacallit?"

"THX-1138," he added helpfully.

"That's a silly name. Let's call it Shiny, from now on, alright? Now, if I understand you correctly, you said that that rock, Shiny, is worth a trillion dollars?" she asked, practically whistling the amount.

"Yes. That's an estimate of the precious minerals' worth when extracted and brought back to Earth, or at least in Earth orbit for use in space construction."

"I see." Petra shut her mouth and sat back down. He had her full attention now, not that that really meant anything, and she kept listening as the scientist kept talking about velocities and positions and apexes, whatever that was. She could understand half of half of the things he was babbling on about, but one thing was clear: She was gonna get her hands on that shiny.

She sold her house. She sold her car. She sold her shoes. That last one hurt the most. "I'll miss you," she said, hugging her Jimmy Choos before pawning them off. She sniffled. "I'll get you back. This is all or nothing, babe," she said, resolute.

The new space race had its perks. For one, you could just rent a rocket! To space! How insane was that?

There were American companies, European companies, big Russian rockets you could just rent from the proper institution. But the one that did not really give a shit who you were and what you wanted to do with a big-ass rocket that could fling you off to space, was the Indian space program.

She took a plane to Bangalore, put on her sexiest skirt suit, and strolled right in to the ISRO's offices. She slapped her briefcase on the receptionist's desk. "Hello, ma'am, where can I rent a rocket?" Straight to the point, that was Petra's motto in life. Never failed her so far.

The receptionist coughed. She had a fine tan all over, almost syrupy. Petra made a mental note to get her tanning salon's number. "Um... You mean to get to space?"

"Yeap," Petra said, impatiently, popping her lips.

"For a satellite?" The well-tanned receptionist picked up her phone, "Which space agency should I say you work for?"

"Petra," said Petra, not skipping a beat.

The receptionist spoke in whispers on the phone. "Yes, ma'am, the director will see you know," she said with a wide smile and escorted her to the top floor.

A very tall and tanned man greeted her. Did everyone here go to the same tanning salon? It looked very good on them, she needed to get on it right away. Focus, Petra, treat yourself later. Get to the Shiny rock first, then have fun.

She shook the man's hand. "Hello, are you in charge?"

"I am," the man said, showing her in his office. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, I need a rocket. Do you have any?" Petra said, raising her chin. There. Straight to the point.

"We sure do!" the director chuckled. "What's the payload, so we can see what's available?"

Her eye flinched at that, but she had to answer. It was one of the things those pesky scientists kept insisting about, the weight of things. In kilos, no less. What sort of idiot measures things in kilos? "Fifty-five kilos," she said.

The director sat back in his big and important chair. "That's not a lot," he said, breathing out, looking as if he was doing math in his mind. What a nerd.

"Thank you," Petra said with a proud smirk. She held her briefcase in front of her belly, delicate-like, like a lady.

"We can certainly do that. What's the launch window?"

"As soon as possible. There's a timer on that offer," Petra said, nodding importantly.

"I see," the director said, stippling his fingers. "Well, it's a low-end rocket, so I think we can actually accommodate your organisation. Petra, you said, it's called?"

"Yes. It's a new endeavour." She wasn't lying. She had just gotten the idea two days ago.

"And the target orbit? So we can get you a fuel estimate as soon as possible, these things take some time to calculate, you see."

She gave him the folder from her briefcase. It contained all the data she had swiped from the briefing on Shiny.

The director went over the folder, skimming it, then went back to some specific charts. His significant eyebrows shot up. "This is not a small feat. Not in orbit then, but an asteroid survey!"

"Are you saying you can't do it? I can always go to that Space Sex company."

"No, no! We most certainly can. It will simply be a challenge, one that we will be happy to overcome for you. You said you wanted this as soon as possible?"

"Yes. Whoever gets to it first gets the prize, I've been told."

He smiled. "I understand. Well, let me make a copy of this folder and we can get back to you as soon as we have our mathematicians and our supercomputer crunch the numbers."

She raised a meaningful eyebrow. Hers was delicately plucked, of course. "It better be quick."

"I'll put a rush on it. 48 hours, is that acceptable?"

She sniffed and paused for a moment. She knew from handling men all these years that you shouldn't look too eager to get in bed with them, even if your panties were already dripping wet, like her own was right now. "I can wait 48 hours before going to someone else," she finally said.

"Excellent!" the director said getting up, and shook her hand again.

Petra flew back to America and decided she needed to actually learn some of that nerd stuff about asteroids if she was going to pull this off. So she found a YouTube video that explained it all. Space mining, it was called. It would trigger the new space race, but there were challenges, the video said. It was a great video, it had animations and everything! But, the voice-over guy said, some of those challenges were insurmountable, whatever that meant. Something about tethers and surveys and international ownership laws and corporations needed to work together and other silly stuff. Petra tuned out. She got what she needed to know from the video: whoever got to that asteroid first, owned it. If two people, as in two corporations worked together to get there, they both owned it. The video guy said it would take at least four of the biggest corporations on the planet working together to get to the asteroid.

Now that was stupid.

They'd have to split the profits, wouldn't they?

What was half of half of a trillion dollars? Petra didn't know, but she was sure it meant she could buy a lot of designer shoes.

Anyway, she turned the video off. Those scientist guys were idiots, gnawing at the problem for thirty years like a bunch of cowards.

It was so simple for Petra. The Shiny was up there in the sky. The Shiny was worth a trillion dollars. Whoever got to the Shiny first, got the ownership rights. She didn't even need to actually mine it after that, all she needed was to own it. And the Shiny was being followed by stethoscopes all over the Earth. Yeah. So, everyone knew where the Shiny was. All Petra needed to do was to get a rocket big enough to get to it.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

She shook her head. How could those silly scientists make this simple thing look like a ton of problems? Nerds...

Now, she realised that the rocket wouldn't be cheap. After all it was a huge penis that shot up at the sky, making a fuss in the process. Huge penises that shot up in the sky making a fuss in the process felt to Petra like they cost a lot, like a million dollars lot.

Perhaps even two million.

She needed a guy who had said million dollars to spare. Even two.

She tapped her chin, squinting at the night lights below her window. Now, where would she find such a man?

The magazines said those millionaire types hung around in Dubai. But she had just come from that direction and she didn't wanna go all the way back. So she settled for the next best thing, a Texan cow tycoon.

She had to get ready for this 'chance' encounter of hers. She strolled inside a shop and said, "I wanna buy a gun."

"Sure, ma'am. Do you have a preference?" the shopkeeper said.

Petra thought about it. She tilted her head to the side, and looked around the counter. There were pinups on the wall, lovely gals wearing pretty much nothing and holding onto big guns. She pointed at a blonde one, that one looked like her. "I wanna look exactly like that. I want that gun, those skimpy jeans, that tight top. I want guys like you to get horny just by looking at me."

The shopkeeper turned around and unpinned the poster from his wall. He settled it on the counter and considered it deeply. "I'll cost ya, ma'am."

Petra smiled wide and plopped her cash on the counter.

"Yeap, I can sell you that rifle, sure. Extended barrel, that's what the big thing at the end is. You'll need some rounds to do some target practise, wouldn't wanna look like a newbie. As for the outfit? I think my cousin across the street can accommodate ya, I'll call her up."

Petra rubbed her hands together. It was all coming together!

Petra held the big gun sexily. She ran her hands up and down the stock, and made sure she had all the guys' attention in the firing range. But her sights were on one guy in particular.

"Excuse me sir, could you help me with this reload?" she said huskily. "It's stuck and I can't get it in."

"Well, hello," he said, taking off his hat.

"Hello," Petra giggled and rubbed her boobies on his arm.

"Lemme see. Yeah, it's a standard problem, you see," he demonstrated with his dexterous fingers, "this jams up all the time, you gotta jiggle it like this."

"Oh! I didn't know that, you're so clever. Can I jiggle it?" she said, bouncing up her down, making her boobs jiggle along.

"Sure!" he gave her the rifle back. "That's a lot of rifle for such a small lady like you," he said.

"I can handle it," she winked at him.

"What's your name, big-gun lady?"

"Petra. And what's yours?"

"Johnson. I own the Johnson lands and livestock," he said, puffing his chest.

"So interesting!" Petra said, eyes wide. She put her hand on the muscle of his arm. "Tell me more."

"Miss Petra?" the director said over the phone. He had a sing-song accent that she found delightful.

"Yeah?" she said, digging for gold inside her nose. There was one particular booger that day that simply refused to get out.

"We have your estimates."

"Tell me, then." She dug deeper.

The director took an audible breath. "We can certainly do what you require of us. It's 14.2 million US dollars."

Silence. Petra took out her finger. Damn, still nothing.

"Miss Petra? Are you still there?"

"Yes, yes. Alright, let's round it up to fifteen million. Got it. Can you have the rocket ready in time?"

The director was excited now. "Of course! We'll need a downpayment, of course,"

"Yeah, yeah," Petra said, dismissing his comment. She dug in with her pinky. That one should get in deep.

"So, we have a deal then?" the director asked.

"If you can deliver, yes. Send me the papers and I'll go over them and get them signed." She found an edge, she was digging in...

"And what about the payload? Won't you tell us what it is?"

"It's a... top secret project. You understand. Actually, now that you mentioned it, have you and your people sign a bunch of those NDAs."

"Of course, Miss Petra! I completely understand. We will begin the Petra launch preparations immediately, and keep you up to date at every step of the way!" The director sounded ecstatic.

"Good, good." She got her pinky out of her nose, and it had that damn booger stuck on the tip! Finally, this had been killing her all day. "Great!"

"Glad to hear you're pleased, miss Petra. I am on it, as you Americans like to say."

"We do that a lot, yeah."

There was one thing still missing. Okay, two things. One, was the equipment she needed to get to the Shiny. And two, she needed to find a drill. Not just any drill, but a space-drill.

What was the difference?

Heck if she knew.

She went into a local Black and Decker. "Hello," the employee said.

"Hello. I need a space-drill."

The employee forced down a smirk. "A what?"

"A. Space. Drill."

"You mean a heavy-duty one?"

"No, I mean one that works in space."

"To do what?" the employee deadpanned.

"To drill. In space. You know..." Petra mimicked the motion. "Bzzzin. Drilling."

"Into what?"

"Ugh..." Wait, she knew that. What was it, what was it... She clicked her fingers. "An icy mantle."

"You mean... ice."

"Yeap."

"You want a drill, that operates in space, and can drill through ice."

"Yeap." She popped her mouth.

"How deep?"

"It doesn't matter, it's the act of drilling that's the whole deal, really?" she squinted at him.

"Okay. Whatever. One battery-operated drill that can operate in vacuum and can drill through, let's say five-inches of ice?"

Petra opened her palm and recounted how long Johnson's Johnson was in her hand. "Yeah, five inches should be enough."

The employee tapped his keyboard. "Here, we have a heavy-duty drill for deep-earth use. Has artificial diamond drill-bits that have the highest rating worldwide. It can operate in oxygen-lacking environments, and can drill through bedrock, even pockets of mineral deposits."

She pointed at him, eyes wide. "Mineral deposits, yes! That's perfect."

"Sure, whatever. Do you want it gift-wrapped?"

"No, as is."

"Okay. Please wait."

"Hold on. How can I be sure it will work?"

"There's a guarantee on it. If it doesn't work in the specific conditions you requested, they have gone on the purchase record and you can simply bring it back for a refund or a replacement."

She sucked through her teeth. "Bringing it back might be hard. I need to know it works for sure."

The employee shrugged. "Test it out, then."

No problem. Test it out. She carried her new drill inside the butcher's. They told her they had slabs of ice in their walk-in freezer that hadn't been replaced for decades.

That was good enough, wasn't it?

Petra checked to see the charge. It was full. She put on one of the drill bits and lifted it up. It was a bit heavy for her, but she remembered that in space, things were just floating around. So that shouldn't be a problem for her when she got her hands on the Shiny.

Now, to see if this thing can get through a Johnson of dirty ice.

She fired up the drill and pressed it on the icy block.

One thing left. She decided to go online for this.

"Yeah, I'm interested in purchasing item number 12 from your website?"

"Of course. Let me pull up the details. Ah, yes," the woman on the line said. "One of our best items. It comes pre-packaged with everything-"

"Yeah, yeah," Petra interrupted. "I can read the listing, I'm not an idiot. I wanna buy one, size small. Can you send it to me?"

"Uh, of course, miss, but it's a custom order. It takes time to prepare, we don't have one of these just hanging around in a closet."

"Urgh! Fine... How long?"

"For the custom order? Three weeks?"

"Unacceptable. How long if I can pay for two of them. But get one. You get what I'm saying? Charge for two, and make one, in half the time. No, make that half of half the time. How much will that cost?"

The woman on the line stuttered. "Um-Yes, definitely. We can do that. But I'll need to speak to the CEO..."

"Go do that and call me back," Petra said.

Petra breathed in and looked at the stethoscope pictures of Shiny she hung on the wall. Her asteroid. It was going to become hers, very, very soon.

Those scientists would be shocked when she got her hands on it first. Petra, just a lowly secretary at NASA, getting solo ownership of the world's first asteroid.

A trillion dollars.

She breathed out, mumbling the words again and again. A trillion dollars. A trillion dollars. Okay, she had to marry Johnson now, as he was taken by her, hard. He had even gifted her cows. Who in the world gifts cows to a woman?

Well, Johnson did, apparently.

In a weird way, it had worked for him.

She'd marry him, and he'd fund her little Shiny project. A girl needs her shiny rocks, after all.

Showtime.

Ring ringgg.

Petra answered her phone. "Yeah?"

"Miss Petra, we are about ready now in flight control. Don't you wish to see the launch from the VIP booth?" the director asked with his thick accent.

She looked around the confined space of the rocket's tip. "Uh... I can see it, don't worry. Wouldn't miss it for the world!" she chuckled.

"All right miss, whatever you wish. Do we have a go?"

"You have a go," she said firmly.

"Enjoy the launch, miss Petra."

"I will," she said, scrunching up her face. She dropped her phone and she reached out to get it. Ungh! She was strapped in too tight, there was no way she could reach it now.

They fired up the engines. It felt like a dozen earthquakes underneath her feet. But nothing prepared her for the actual launch.

"Secret payload firing in 10..." flight control said. "9...8..."

"Oh... This was a mistake," Petra said, her teeth rattling.

"7...6..."

She held on tight. "I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die. I'm too young and pretty to die."

"5...4..."

"Nobody said this thing would be so uncomfortable!" she screamed at the ISRO's customer service's general direction and braced for dear life.

"3...2...1... Liftoff."

She felt the entire rocket slam onto her back. It was as if a tower-sized metal cylinder just landed on top of you, only it was heading the other way round.

She passed out.

Petra opened her eyes. She was flying through space! Weee!

It was pretty. But the stars didn't shoot past her.

"I repeat..." a voice came, drowned out in static. "Miss Petra, can you hear me? I repeat, miss-"

"Yeah, yeah. You're giving me a headache."

"Oh, thank God," the director said over the comms.

"Which one? Don't you Indians have different totems and such?"

"ALL OF THEM!" the director screamed, having lost his patience. "THANK, FUCKING, ALL OF THE GODS!"

Petra flew into space. She waited a bit. "Feeling better now, Director?"

He spoke softly now. "Yes. Much, thank you. And we're not that kind of Indians, but that's not the pertinent issue right now. What were you thinking?"

"What do you mean? Didn't your math nerds calculate what it took to shoot the payload at the asteroid?"

"Yes... But that was for a survey satellite, not a person!"

"What's the difference? Stuff is stuff."

"Well, yeah..." he trailed off. "Miss Petra, this is insane. You have effectively killed yourself, and you've made us complicit to it!"

"Not really. You didn't know what the payload was, you signed a contract, and NDAs and everything."

"Well, yeah..."

"And aren't you recording this?"

"Of course."

"Well, I Petra Stone, tricked those poor Indians and it wasn't their fault if I'm gonna die. So, don't arrest them or nothin'. Okay?"

The director said nothing for a long moment.

"Am I heading straight?"

"No! The payload is off. We calculated fifty-five kilograms exactly."

"Are you calling me fat?"

"No, Petra. You're carrying something with you?"

She looked down at her belt. "My drill."

The director sighed. "That's what, five, six kilograms?"

"Pretty much. But it doesn't matter in space. Everything floats here. See?"

"No it doesn't, you stupid blonde bimbo!" the director screamed again. He calmed himself down. "Look, mass still has inertia. It threw off the calculations. You're going to overshoot the asteroid. I'm so sorry, you've killed yourself."

Petra bit her lip. She was so close! She could see a speck, that was Shiny, right? She could just jog the distance there, dying a hair-breadth's away from it was so, damn, stupid.

"Wait, don't you have a room full of nerds there?"

"Yes, we do," the director said, curiosity in his tone.

"Well, then figure it out. I have the Space sex space suit item number 12, size small. I lost my phone on the launch, don't know where it is. And I have my Black and Decker drill on me."

"That's not... Wait! That's it, hold on, miss Petra."

She shrugged. "I guess I'll hold." She looked at the stars as she waited.

The director came back on after far too long of a waiting period. "Okay, we have something. You'll have to execute it perfectly, do you hear me?"

"Sure. Hit me."

"You're going to throw the drill away."

"To where?"

"Into space, to push you the other way."

"No!" she squealed. "I need it to drill a hole and claim the asteroid."

"Miss Petra, are you insane? We're just trying to give you a place to die peacefully right now instead of drifting forever into space, and you're worried about ownership rights?"

"I said no! The whole reason I've done all this is to get Shiny," she whined.

The director breathed deep, then spoke to someone beside him. "All right. They tell me you can drill with your hand, just keep one drill bit on you."

"Oh," she checked her belt. "I can do that."

"Very good. Now, will you throw the drill when I tell you?"

"This is gonna void the warranty," she grunted, pulling it out.

"Hold the drill over your left shoulder."

"Doing it," she struggled, stretching her arm back.

"And throw it when I tell you, not a second later, not before. Exactly when I say 'now.'"

"You got it."

"Hold on... Throw it over your head, as if you want it to come down and hit you on the face."

"Why would I wanna do that?"

"It's not going to come down, miss Petra! Just be ready."

"I am."

"Hold on... In three... Two... One... Now!"

She threw the drill.

Her trajectory adjusted accordingly, just a mere fraction. It was enough.

She landed on her Shiny, bouncing on its surface like a rag doll. She almost bounced off, but she managed to get a handhold on a fissure and grip tight.

Success!

"Can you see me with your stethoscopes, director? I did it! Whoohoo!" she screamed with delight, face down on Shiny.

"I can't believe it. The crazy bitch did it..." someone said next to the mic.

She grunted, pushing the drill bit into the icy rock. It was more dirty than she could ever imagine. It was very hard to manipulate the drill bit with her gloves, but she managed to turn it a few times, making a tiny nick on the surface.

"Do I own the asteroid now?"

"Well... Yes, it seems you do. Technically. But you have effectively committed suicide. There's no way you can get back from there," the director said solemnly.

"Can you broadcast my voice?"

"Oh, trust me, you crazy woman, a quarter of the world is listening in right now. You're completely nuts. Completely."

"A quarter? How much is that? Half of half?"

"Yeah..." the director sighed. "Half of half."

"Hey, you invented the word I needed! You Indians are so clever."

"..."

"Okay then. Hear me out, world. I'm Petra. I own this asteroid, THX whatever. I'm renaming it to Shiny, because it's easier to call it that. And I'm selling first-mining rights to the first corporation that can come and get me alive, right now, off this rock and back to my future husband.

A beat. And then a crowd erupted from the comms, she could hear everybody speaking at the same time.

She tapped her foot on the icy crust and checked her oxygen. She had two more days. These Space sex suits really were as good as the ad said.

This would be boring. Oh, well. At least it was peaceful up here with all the stars. She could daydream about all the things she could buy with a trillion dollars.

Petra waited patiently on top of her Shiny new asteroid for her ride back home.

The End

Messenger In a Bottle

The islanders had a simple messaging system: they just put a messenger in a bottle and threw it in the water. The twist was that it was the message that mattered most, and the recipient could be anyone.

Crazy, I know.

But Polynesia worked just fine like that for centuries.

Sure, it required a tiny bit of magic. And some wandering about on the messenger's part, turning back a few times, retracing their currents. But, in the end, they always found their correct recipient. The postal service was proud of that.

Oceania received her message. It simply said: Hug her.

As messages went, it wasn't the weirdest, vaguest nor the shortest. She still could remember message #453.112 that simply said, "Okay." By Maui, that one nearly killed her. She took forever to find the recipient, and it was just a confirmation on a candy order.

"What?" she protested in her squeaky little voice towards the wizard. "This can't be it."

"It is. Come along now, Oceania." The wizard pinched her from the shirt with two of his fingers and put her in the bottle.

"I have delivered 999.999 messages. This will be my sweet million, why are you making this so hard for me?" her voice echoed inside the bottle.

The wizard shrugged. "It is what it is," he said and pressed the cork tight with his thumb.

"You angry old git!" Oceania complained animatedly but even she knew that she could barely be heard by now, especially by a deaf wizard.

The wizard grunted and cracked his back. Oceania winced, it looked painful. The years hadn't been kind on him, it was apparent.

Good.

Oceania squinted hard at him.

He made an exaggerated pose and then threw her as far away into the sea as he could. Which was barely inside the foam, and then the wave crashed and threw her rolling back onto the beach.

"Gee, thanks!" Oceania rolled her eyes as she rolled with the bottle. She didn't mind the rolling. Being a messenger meant you got used to all the rolling. She shoved herself to one side and then pushed the other side of the bottle with a big, grunting, "Nyahhh!" from herself.

The bottle rolled back inside the water and got carried away by the currents.

No thanks to that wizardly pile of old bones, that was certain.

Okay, she was bobbing up and down on the water. Now, to find the recipient. She scratched her head. Usually, she had something to go on, some personal connection, a relationship, even a job application. But this? The old wizard sending out a letter saying, 'Hug her'?

Hug who? It could be anyone hugging anybody. A man hugging his wife. Or, his mother, before she passed. Or, his daughter. Or even, she thought naughtily, his mistress. Those needed some lovin' too.

But where to start?

Oceania pushed her bottle towards the north. She then stopped, stood straight, feeling the water in.

Mmm. Not warm enough.

She pushed north-west. Then centred herself again.

Mmm. Okay, this was warmer. So, north-west it is. "How hard can it be? There are only two-hundred islands that way," she mocked to nobody in particular.

It took her a while, the wizard's island was kinda isolated from the rest. Of course it was, nobody actually liked the old git. They sure did need him though.

She went to Samoa, and found a fisherman on his boat. "Hey, is there someone in your life that needs hugging?" she asked him, bobbing by.

"I could sure use one!" he said, licking his lips.

"Ew. So, no."

Oceania carried on to Futuna. That place had nice people. She ended up in a pier, found a boy that had his pants rolled up and his legs in the water. He looked sad. "Hey, little man, is there someone in your life that needs hugging? Perhaps a sister?"

"I'm an only child," the boy said.

"Well, this sucks," Oceania said.

"I know," the boy said and kicked the water.

"No, not your situation. Mine. I can't find the recipient!"

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault, kiddo. Go make some friends or something." Oceania left him too and followed the currents to Wallis.

It went kind of the same.

"Nope, just hugged my wife, if you know what I'm saying..."

Tuvalu.

"What am I, a sissy?"

Kiribati. Now she was deep into Micronesian waters.

"Sure, I'll go hug my cousin. She looks like she needs it."

Oceania was certain it wasn't that guy, the waters were cold around her.

Marshall Isles.

"Oh, I think you might be talking about my son-in-law. He's over at the next island, that drunkard."

That was cold too.

Disappointed, Oceania started to head back south-east, then cut it for straight south. She had a hunch.

Solomon Isles, deep in Melanesia.

"Nope, sorry, don't know any women at all."

"Seriously, none?" Oceania squeaked with her tiny voice, but wanted to get away from him.

Santa Cruz.

"Sorry honey, but there are some girls that can offer you hugs over at Fiji."

Oceania sighed and went there. It was on her way anyhow.

Fiji.

"Are you offering?" the dirty middle-aged guy asked.

"No! I'm asking if you have someone in your life that needs a hug. So you can give it to her."

"Oh, I'm gonna-"

Oceania rolled her bottle back into the water, she didn't wanna hear the rest of that obvious joke.

Tonga.

"Oh, I'm gonna go hug her right now!" a bubbly girl said, way too excited. She went up to her 'just girlfriend' and hugged her tight.

"Okay, I'm not judging, but just make it official, girls. Seriously!" Oceania yelled at them and rolled away.

She was getting pissed off. The sun was going down. She had wasted the entire day bobbing around the islands, and she still had no clue who the recipient of the message was. She was royally screwed.

What in Maui's name was the wizard thinking?

At night, there were far less people around the beaches and piers. The fishermen would go out again at early morning, so she had to just wait it out for a couple of hours, get some rest. But this was her sweet million dammit! This was supposed to go without a hitch. That damn wizard! Why did he hate her so? Okay, she wasn't the easiest to talk to, but she was good at her job, and she knew the wizard respected that.

She was the first one to even get close to a million messages, and she was this close to making it official. This close...

She cried, her tears filling in the bottom of the bottle, soaking in her feet. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. She looked up at the night sky, it had come already. She bobbed up and down and looked at the stars, crying. How many were they? A million? More?

Well, she had just been robbed of her perfect score.

None of the messengers had ever lost a message before, certainly not her. And she only had tomorrow morning to find the recipient, or else she'd have failed. They'd have to change the postal service's motto and everything, and this would be the utmost disgrace. She wouldn't dare show her face around the others if that happened.

Who was she kidding.

When. When that happened, tomorrow night.

'Hug her.' What sort of message is that? Who even writes this shit? The old wizard does, apparently. Old git. Choke on your potion fumes.

She wanted to give up. She wouldn't go back and face the other messengers after a failure of this magnitude. She'd just stay in her bottle and ride the waves wherever they took her.

Just never look back.

In the morning, the sun scorched her eyes. "Ugh," she complained. Then she jumped up. "Shit, shit, I overslept! I was supposed to start early, dammit..."

She started rolling till she found a good current, and followed it to Tonga. Or was it Tongatapu? She always got these two confused.

Okay, time was up. She only had like five hours left. She needed to take a step back, think it through.

She assumed the message was for a human, but what if it was for a magical creature?

They had lives too, intelligence, heck, some even had better jobs than some of the islanders. She felt the water kinda warm. Finally, she was getting close.

Tonga (Again.)

The dolphin said she couldn't hug anyone. "Well, duh," Oceania said, slapping her forehead. "Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just wasting time, stupid."

Tongatapu.

The monkey reached into the water from a leaning tree, holding itself from its feet. "I can hug my mommy. Is the message for me?"

Oceania sucked in air through her teeth. "Ugh... No, I'm not feeling it very warm here."

The monkey blinked once and then peed, maintaining eye-contact the whole time. The pee made an arc that ended up to the water next to Oceania's bottle.

Oceania just stood still and clenched her fists. "No," she said, fighting down her rage. "That kind of warm water doesn't change the fact that the message isn't for you."

Rarotonga.

Oceania sighed. This was her last resort. Huggie the Octopus was... Well, messengers tended to avoid him. He was slimy and lacked a backbone, literally. And he also...

Now that she thought of it, why did messengers avoid him? She didn't really know. They just did, and she was the oldest one working from the new generation. There was nobody else around from the old school to ask about it.

She pushed her bottle in a few expert manoeuvres and rode the current into Huggie's archipelago. Okay, he called it an archipelago, it was more like five rocks fallen into the sea in an arrow formation.

Huggie lived there, between the cracks in the rocks. Oceania went close and looked around. Huggie was nowhere to be seen. Oceania threw her arms in the air.

Of course. Just her luck. She only had twenty minutes on the clock and the hermit had decided to up and visit some friends!

Great. Just great...

She started to punch the inside of her bottle. Twink. Twink. That was the sound her tiny fist made when it impacted the glass.

Twink.

She was so, so angry at losing her perfect score. Sweet million!

"Why are you doing that?" a nasal voice came from somewhere.

Oceania stopped. "Huggie? Is that you?"

"Yeth..." Huggie said timidly.

She squinted, covered her eyes with her hand, looked carefully. Just rocks. She couldn't see him anywhere. "Where are you, I need to give you a message."

"Huggie doethn't like methages."

"I don't care. I think this message is for you, and I only have like ten minutes left, so, it's not like I can get to another island in time."

"I thee."

"Well, I don't thee you!" she shouted. "And it's rude to hide when you're in the middle of a conversation!"

A side of the rock in front of her simply melted and seamlessly turned into an octopus, then changed colours again. "Huggie ith here. Can you thee him now?" the octopus asked, clearly right in her face, swimming around the bottle.

She calmed herself down. "Yes, I can see you..." she sighed.

"Okay."

"Now, your message is this: Hug her." Oceania said, tapping her foot. She calculated she had only minutes to spare.

"Okay."

"Great. There, done, message delivered. Whoohoo! One million messages, baby! Suck it!" she cheered, making a little dance in her bottle.

"Thuck what?"

"Not you. Don't ruin it."

"But the methage thays 'Hug her.' And I'm Huggie."

Oceania froze and wiggled her finger at him. "No. No, no, no. Don't even think about it." Oceania spun her bottle and tried to get away.

"Huggie!" the octopus squealed in delight and sent one tentacle to grab her bottle. The suckers connected and locked in. She tried to wiggle out, but then another tentacle came and wrapped itself around the bottle, holding it tight.

"Lemme go, Huggie. Now!"

"Huggie!" the octopus said and pulled its body closer to her. All the tentacles now grabbed at the bottle. Oceania fell on the tilted bottle, pushed herself up with her hands. She went for the cork, she had delivered the message, now the magic would be gone. She could get out.

The tentacles wrapped around it. She looked around her, her entire world looked like suckers slapped onto the outside of her glass.

Oceania screamed. "Let me go!"

"Huggie!" the octopus repeated like an excited, eight-legged idiot.

Pop! The cork flew off.

"No!"

A tentacle wiggled inside the bottle and wrapped around her. It pulled her up and out of the bottle. There was nothing she could do, the octopus was bigger, in its element, and she was tiny and weak.

Then Huggie wrapped a few more of its tentacles around Oceania. They were slick and squishy and very, very icky. She writhed and fought but it was pointless.

Oceania shut her eyes and accepted her fate.

"Huggie..." the octopus cooed and squeezed her softly, but not too much.

Oh, that was rather nice, actually.

She opened one eye and saw Huggie's black eyes cooing close to her.

A tear came to her eye, and fell down into the water. "Nobody had ever done that to me..." she said softly.

"It'th okay. Huggie'th here." The octopus nodded deeply at her, smiling.

She stuttered. For once in her life, she was speechless. "I-I don't know what to say."

"Thith ith your reward. Happy Thweet Million!" Huggie said, two of his tentacles wiggling in the air.

"Happy sweet million," Oceania said solemnly. After a long while, she said softly, "Huggie?"

"Yeth?"

"Can you give me another hug, please?"

"Of courthe! Huggie givth the betht hugth."

Oceania closed her eyes and hugged him back. "Yes, he does," she said. "And I'm sure the wizard knew that."

The End

Gorgoneion

"Tell Perseus he's a pussy," Stheno yelled, disembowelling another one of his men. His partner just stood there in terror, looking through his mirrored shield.

Stheno moved in closer to him, her snakes writhing on her head. She raised her sword at him, the tip dripping blood. "I said-"

The soldier just bolted off and ran, not looking back.

Stheno threw her arms in the air. "Dammit, I had another good one-liner. Now the moment is gone," she said, panting from the exertion of killing all these mortals.

"Who are you talking to," her daemons said in breathy whispers.

"Nobody," Stheno shrugged. "To the poets who will recite this battle, I guess."

"Nobody is listening," her daemons said. "You are simply ill of mind." "Malakia," another of her daemons hissed.

Stheno gritted her teeth. "I fucking hate you guys," she said, and lopped off the head of a fallen soldier.

"Feeling better?" her daemons taunted.

"No!" Stheno kicked one of the careless ones who got turned to stone by her gaze. He toppled down the stairs and shattered into a million, very satisfying pieces.

"Are you feeling better now?" her daemons asked again.

"Still a no. Not until I kill that fucker Perseus," she said, spitting on the floor after she said his name.

She slithered upstairs, using her serpentine lower-half of her body to push through the barricades. It was a valiant effort by Perseus' men, but the coward was hiding behind his army instead of just facing her like a man.

"It's a good think Evryali refused to come with," Stheno said, looking for a good piece of bronze.

"It didn't seem like that when you were screaming in her face," her daemons said.

"Well, yeah. I was angry. But now I'm glad I don't have to take care of her too. Doing this alone is far better," Stheno said, and found a good spear tip she could use. She then jammed it inside the barricade and pushed it to the side, making a lever.

"You're doing it wrong," her daemons said.

"Shuddup!" she grunted as she pushed on. The spear snapped and without any pushback, she fell on her face. "Ow!"

"Told'ya," her daemons said.

"I hate you guys," Stheno said, rubbing her face. Then she simply screamed at the top of her lungs and slashed at the barricade until it splintered, deteriorating into rubble. With a few good punches and elbows, she got through.

"That was inefficient," her daemons noted.

"It got the job done."

Stheno went inside the inner palisade of the palace. The place looked abandoned recently, which it kinda was. Mortals tended to flee in terror when a Gorgon was coming for vengeance. Well, they should.

Stheno checked a few of the corners for traps and archers before going in. She may be angry, pissed off out of her mind and seeing red right now, but she wasn't a vlaka. She had fought enough battles to know that the mortals could come up with ingenious tactics and traps when they worked together.

She wasn't going to fail her sister. Not again.

She moved further in, avoiding the piles of grain and the bales of hay. A donkey sniffed at her, still tied up, left to die. Stheno averted her petrifying gaze and forced her snakes to look away. There was no need for the beast of burden to get turned to stone. It was just a loyal animal, breaking its back day and night, providing for the mortals.

Medusa would have wanted her to spare it, so she did.

Stheno took a path that kept her out of sight of the donkey and found a double door. She put her hands on her waist, looked up and appreciated it. "Now this... This is proper fortification, not like the pieces of timber from before."

"Great. You admire their door. How are you gonna get through it," her daemons asked.

Stheno scratched her head, making her snakes unhappy. They hissed and snapped their jaws at her hand. "I don't know, actually. Perhaps there's a key somewhere?"

"By the gods, you're such a vlaka," her daemons said, insulting her. "Is wielding a sword all you know in this immortal life of yours?"

"I dunno," she mocked. "Is bothering me all you know in this immortal life of yours," she mimicked their whispy voices.

"The door is still shut," her daemons said helpfully.

"Gee, thanks. I hadn't noticed the ENORMOUS DOUBLE DOORS IN FRONT OF ME!" she screamed, punching it. It rattled in its hinges. "Hey, maybe there's a secret knock?" Stheno tried out a couple of popular tunes. Knock knock. Nope. Knock-knock-tap. Nope.

"I seriously doubt-"

"Shut. Up." Stheno rested her forehead on the door, sighing deeply. "Why is this so hard? I just wanted to go in there and kill Perseus. That's it. I didn't really wanna kill anyone else. But the coward keeps sending people at me!"

"There's no one here," her daemons noted.

"I know that! I'm just giving a dramatic moment of introspection for the bards. Sheesh, now the mood is gone. Moving on. What do I have?"

"A donkey," her daemons said.

"Yeah, I know. But what else?"

"A donkey. And some hay."

"Yes, yes, you said that. But what could I use to bring the door down?" she hummed, tapping her chin. Her snakes writhed on her head.

"A don-"

"I got it! All by myself!" Stheno yelped, punching the air. Then she carried a ball of hay onto the side of the door. Then she went back and brought a mirrored shield from one of the fallen soldiers. She held it up and approached the donkey. "Here, donkey donkey. Here. Stay calm," she said, petting it.

It sniffed and licked her hand.

"Ew. Okay now, I'm gonna tie you at one of the hinges, and I'll need you to just do your thing and pull, okay?"

The donkey sneezed in her direction.

"I'm gonna take this as a yes." Stheno tied up the donkey's rope into the door hinge and then set the ball of hay in front of it. "Come on, donkey, move."

"It doesn't seem to be hungry," her daemons said.

"What? Nonsense. Look at this tasty hay. Look," she ate some and chewed it. "Ptchoo. Ew, that's earthy. But you like it, don't you? Don't you? Come on, donkey, come for the fucking hay, I ain't got all day. I got Perseus to kill. He killed my sister, yes? He decapitated her, that fucker. And now I'm gonna decapitate him, yes? Now go and eat that hay!"

The donkey didn't move.

"I'm gonna petrify you," Stheno said, looking at the donkey's reflection through the mirror shield.

The donkey snorted.

"Okay, that's it." Stheno went around the back side and pinched the ass's ass with her sword. It kicked wildly and ran away, tearing off the hinges in a big crunch.

"That wasn't very efficient, either," her daemons said.

Stheno said, "You think?" and then straightened herself from her being thrown across the room and into the hay, snake tail up and head down on the dirt. She then pulled the hinges and the door came crashing down with an extremely loud THWACK.

A bunch of terrified mortals were behind the door. They wielded swords and spears and knives.

Stheno grinned, showing her pointy teeth. "Finally," she said, and charged them head on.

"You will not get your revenge," her daemons said.

She cleaved through five mortals. "Why in Hades not?"

"Because it always has been that way," her daemons said.

She hacked a man in two halves. "Says who?"

"Says the poets. And the scribes. And the men who write those myths," her daemons said simply.

She took arrows on the back. "Argh! And who are they to judge?"

"They sway like a twig under the wants of the crowds," her daemons said.

She lost two snakes from her head, she screamed in pain and petrified two mortals. "Are you telling me he survives? That filthy killer survives?"

"Yes," her daemons said laconically.

She kept on killing in a whirlwind of blades, but kept silent. Her daemons never gave such a short answer. They always had more things to say, being creatures of intellect and knowledge.

"Stheno?" her daemons asked, a tinge of worry in their voices.

"What? I'm busy killing these mortals."

"Why are you carrying on?" her daemons asked.

"Yeah, yeah, it's pointless, fate foretold, set in stone, all that skata. I heard you," she waved them away, then flung a spear and skewered two mortals at the same time.

"This is illogical," her daemons said.

"You guys don't have a sister, do you?" she hissed, blocking three incoming swords with a swipe of her tail.

"No, we do not," her daemons said.

"Well, if you did, you'd understand why I have to do this, no matter what fate says," Stheno panted, taking in more hits. She had wide gashes all over her body now and bled from a dozen places.

"We understand," her daemons said.

Stheno hissed the next words, "No, I seriously doubt that." She killed the last two men, they had been huge and it took her a few seconds more to slay them.

And then there was Perseus. He gulped, looking at her through his mirrored shield.

"That's the shield you used to behead my sister," she said, pointing her sword at him. It had dents on the blade, and blood from a dozen different men was still gleaming all over it, dripping in thick lines at the floor.

"I-Uh, no," the coward stuttered.

Stheno spat blood on the dirt. "How can a coward like you be considered a hero?"

"I-uh... I have my ways," Perseus said and donned a cap. The cap of Hades.

"No!" Stheno shouted at raised her hand to stop him.

It was too late. Perseus vanished.

"No... I was so close..." Stheno whimpered, her tired shoulders slumping. Her snake heads died severed on the floor. She just noticed her tail was slashed at the tip. And she snapped two arrows embedded in her back.

"We told you, Stheno," her daemons said. "This is how the story goes."

The End

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