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GAME: genre gambles: new year, new you!

kintsugi

the warmth of summer in the songs you write
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In short, this is a sorta RNG-based game/prompt/challenge I've seen around that I've adapted for the Writer's Workshop. I've particularly found it valuable since I tend to gravitate to a very specific genre/setting/cast, and it's nice to use this as a low-stakes chance to push some limits.

Also, for people who might not read to the bottom because it's lengthy: i will review your writing for free and maybe other people will too?? pyramid schemes??

interested? read on.

why am i doing this?
Ever wished that you could write that random fic about Orre but never really wanted to commit to the entire thing? Keep finding out that all of your stories get placed in Best Darkfic Drama every year? This is a low-stakes environment where you can test out writing in areas outside of your comfort zone -- write a short one-shot that's statistically likely to be very different from your standard fare, since it's literally not randomly rolled. And who knows? You might find something you never new you always loved.

As an added bonus, I'll review anything tagged as GG (genre gambles/this thread), unless the author asks otherwise!

what counts as me doing this?

Any sort of good-faith attempt to meet the prompt, regardless of length, counts! 250 words? 250 chapters? Both are fine!

how am i doing this?

It's time to put your fate in the heart of the cards dice. This time, instead of lovingly agonizing over the building blocks of your story, they'll be randomly assigned to you! You'll be rolled a story prompt based on the three sections below:

GENRE
1. Action
2. Adventure
3. Comedy
4. Drama/Psychological
5. Fantasy
6. Friendship & Romance
7. Horror
8. Science Fiction
9. Slice of Life
10. Tragedy

CATEGORY
1. Journey
2. Speculative
3. Character-Driven
4. Expansion
5. Crossover/Non-Pokemon
6. Alternate

PROTAGONIST
1. Human
2. Pokemon
3. Gjinka/hybrid/some fusion of pokemon and human
4. Other/none-of-the-above

WILDCARD/MONTHLY THEME
This section is also randomly rolled, but will change monthly. You know, to keep things fresh. May or may not be tied to the review game prompts. Themes are open for suggestion; sample themes would be what Pokemon the story must feature, genre (i.e. western/space/medieval/cyberpunk), style (epistolary, science log, poem, prose), type of narrator (first, second, third), or setting (kanto, johto, orre, space??). This category is honestly where the most specific prompting comes into play; the other two are more of the outlines of the story while this one kind of forces you into a more specific track.

when am i doing this?
Great question! Right now, prompts will last two weeks, but that might change to be more/less infrequent depending on how people find the schedule to work. There's also no superbig taboo on doing a previous prompt.
 
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january theme: setting
1. Main-Series Region (Roll d7 for which generation)
2. Side-Series Region (Roll d3 for Orre, Ransei, PMD)
3. Fakemon Region
4. Other (Pokemon in SPACE??)

january prompts (feat. two for the price of one)
upload_2019-1-1_11-7-20.png

The first prompt is: Character-Driven, featuring a Human Protagonist, set in a Fakemon Region!

upload_2019-1-1_11-6-8.png

The second prompt is: Speculative, featuring a Pokemon-Human-Hybrid Protagonist, set in Anywhere That Isn't a Pokemon Region.

Questions? Concerns? Comments? Hmu in this thread.

FAQ
1. Do these prompts apply to everyone, or does everyone get their own prompt?
Unclear for now! For this month, we'll be trying it where the above two prompts apply to everyone. See what directions people take the same base starting blocks! Next month we might try the reverse.
 
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This is a lovely idea! Good on ya, Kintsugi. Good luck to everyone. I'm not sure if I can afford to participate any time soon, but we'll see how springtime sunlight treats me.
 
AIGHT FAM, ALL IN.

I went for prompt 2. some of this was already lying around, but the bottom half is pretty much new material:

HORSE OF THE HANGED

prologue??

He counts seventy-two thousand, three hundred and fifty-six heartbeats before he feels it once more: the sickening feeling of his body lurching out of control, limbs spasming, flinging themselves apart and leaving him hanging, crucified. Fingers of another thread their way up his nerves. It doesn’t hurt so much as cramp, until suddenly it’s like someone pumping ice through his veins, and the sensation of someone else wearing his skin becomes unbearable all at once. He’d vomit, but his jaw doesn’t open on his command any more.

He hates this. He hates every second of it with every ounce of passion that hasn’t already been wrung from his desiccated body. It’s in moments like these that he realizes he hasn’t been fully drained of life, because there’s still enough left in him for his guards to crush like this.

The light comes half a moment after that, so bright that it almost burns the silhouette of his visitor out of his retinas and into the back of his brain. Valinn swallows hard as his body folds against his will, leaving him kneeling to an unseen god, his forehead pressed firmly against the pitch-black ground. In eerie blue light that permeates from the outside of his prison, he can see the shadow of the figure approaching him, but his muscles are no longer his own; his eyes can no longer tilt to even see the boots of his assailant. This has happened more times than it should’ve to any human being, more times than he can count, but it will never become easy.

“How… long has it been?” he chokes out at last, his tongue feeling like it was smothered by weights. Haemokinesis. He recites the facts because they make the moment pass faster. It’s a rare offshoot of hydrokinesis, except it allows the user direct control over the opponent. His master warned him about how cruel it was, how violated it left the victim, but nothing could’ve prepared him for this. Nothing but experiencing it three times a day until he lost track of how many days it had been.

This. This is why Yggdra employed morphs when pokémon, in theory, could do the same job more effectively. Pokémon could only be pragmatic at their worst. But humans? Humans could be cruel on a good day, and never even question it.

There is no response. The only indication that he’d even been heard was the spike in pressure forcing him to hold his tongue, every ounce of liquid in him at the mercy of another. When he tries again, it’s like trying to speak underwater, the weight of the ocean leaden on his lips. “How… many… years?”

“We were told not to speak to you after what you did to the last guard.” He hears the plates rattle as they’re swapped out, like clockwork, the remains of the last meal replaced with the new. The voice is curt. Professional. He is being controlled with skill and without remorse. There will be no foothold here. He’ll have to wait until the next one.

Footsteps fade away. The light from the portal vanishes soon after.

After this, the boy Valinn sits in the pitch-darkness, alone. Time and space meld together here, in this pocket of reality in a universe that slowly learns to forget him. Finally, the feeling of another’s dominance over his flesh fades and his heart is able to beat again. When the first heartbeat starts, he begins to count, each beat like a lifeline.

There had been a brief moment of arrogance when he had first arrived. When he had thought that he could do the impossible; that those who caved under solitary confinement were somehow different than him, inferior. He’d been trained by the best and had been deemed worthy; he was strong enough to last here. He’d been wrong.

He doesn’t know how many days passed in the time that came after, how long he had spent trickling in insanity. He doesn’t remember the visits that surely happened, or how the guards must’ve reacted to how he sang like a bird, sobbing as the isolation threatened to crumple him like a tin can at the bottom of the ocean. He has snatches of memories, and the feeling of recovery, and he knows that these events must’ve happened, because he is still here now, and they are still coming. But he hadn’t counted the heartbeats then, and there’s no one left to tell him the time.

There isn’t much else to think about between visits. Ahead of him is a non-existent future; behind him rots the ashes of a past he’d personally lit aflame. Neither of those give him the steadfast resolve he needs in order to endure. In darkness so intense and unending that he can’t see his own hand in front of his face, the pulse in his ears is the only reminder that he is still here, that his body is his again.

One.

Two.

Three.
chapter one
Three hundred fifty-two thousand, four hundred seventy-six.

The lurching nausea overcomes him. This is wrong; this is illegal, but he isn’t surprised that they’re bending the rules for him. But he doesn’t know why they still bother coming. It would be much easier, and leave people much happier, if he quietly died here, out of sight and out of mind.

But they would have no poetic justice in that. They couldn’t pat themselves on the back and say they’d fixed their problems with that.

This… this is a new person. The guards rarely visit more than once; enough time probably passed outside of his cocoon-like prison that they are able to rotate frequently. But even without that guesswork, he can tell already. There’s a certain flavor to each person’s power, a style and grace that’s as purely their own as their footsteps or voice. Normally, it would take a lot longer than these chance meetings to recognize it, but haemokinesis is tacky by definition——if morph superpowers were a voice, haemokinesis is the loud and obnoxious laugh that grates on your ears and gets in your face and demands every ounce of your attention.

There’s no posturing here. He isn’t being forced to kneel to some arrogant hotshot cop with dreams of justice and ideals; his head isn’t being pummeled into the unrecognizable floor of his cell. A few of his guards had beaten him up, as if punching him would somehow bring the past back, but this feels calmer, somehow. The force is like iron, yes; he knows already that he stands as much of a chance of breaking free as he does of lifting a mountain, but it merely holds him down. The face is too blurry, too backlit to make out, but he can see the primly-pressed uniform belted over leather boots.

His head is bent down next, but it’s too late. He’s already seen what he needs to know.

“How long has it been?” he husks out. His lips crack with disuse.

“In our world, ten years have passed since your imprisonment began.” She’s young. Probably a few years older than him, but that doesn’t mean much. Valinn latches on to the naivete he can sense in the stranger’s voice and devours it.

Had he been free, had he been foolish, Valinn might have smiled. “I wasn’t asking that. How long has it been since you were home?” There’s no time for laughter here. He needs this moment.

No response. Valinn closes his eyes and waits for the blue light of the outside world to fade, but it doesn’t.

Finally, she says, “We were told not to speak to you.”

Footsteps. The sound of the door out of the portal back to reality rippling in response to someone coming closer. Unbidden, Valinn’s heart begins to pound. This will be his best shot in a long while. “Your belt buckle is a talisman from the mountain clans of the Naiman,” he chokes out, urgency giving him strength. “You’re too young to have gone rogue, but they would’ve never taught you haemokinesis in the freelands. You were taken, weren’t you? You must’ve been young.”

The footsteps stop.

Valinn sees the crack and begins worrying away at it, like a beartic would devour the carcass of a seel. There’s a desperate hunger that he hasn’t known for years. Even if she doesn’t know it yet, she’s given him the most dangerous weapon of all: hope. “You and I are here for the same reasons.”

There was a slight tremor when she responds, “We locked you in an alternate dimension because no prison on earth could hold you.”

“No, no,” he says, allowing the annoyance to cloud into his voice like the edge of a storm, “don’t boil it down to that. No one else does. Say it like they do. I’m sealed here because I committed crimes against all of life, humans and pokémon alike. I sent Gungnir soaring into the heavens and Kalos tumbling into the sea. I waged war against the Founders. I almost killed Xerneas the Immortal.”

“You did kill them,” she says with more disgust than he’d thought humanly possible.

Interesting change of events. That doesn’t bode well for what’s coming next. Valinn would’ve leaned in if his body could allow it, but instead he lets his voice drop into a playful, conspiratorial whisper. “And I’ll tell you what. Let me out of here and I’ll tell you why.”

“Shut up!” He’s not even sure if she meant to do it, but the fringes of her power catch hold of him, flinging him into the ground and holding him there. He doesn’t bother fighting it.

“Feeling better?” he asks dryly after she lets his body fold back into more of a natural shape, but she doesn’t release him. Valinn makes a point to keep calm, as if she doesn’t terrify him, as if forcibly losing all control of his muscles were trivial to him at this point. No need to let her think she has an advantage here. Valinn focuses on the pain. He needs it.

The first reason is psychological, of course. He needs the fire in his nerves to keep him thinking sharp. Sensory deprivation has messed with his brain in more ways than he would care to admit. He’s not even sure if he remembers what smell is at this point; that’s how long he’s been left here.

The second reason is more practical. He needs to assess how strong she is. Even a powerful hydrokinetic can’t keep up a haemokinetic hold forever; there’s a limitation to how long your body is allowed to be in undeniable control of another’s, and this is encroaching on it. If he can just stall her a little longer…

She’s staring at him, the corners of her lips curling. “I don’t know why I’m still talking to you.”

“I do,” Valinn says quietly, and wonders briefly if it was her fault for wearing her heart so boldly on her sleeve, Yggdra’s fault for wringing it out of her chest where it belonged, or his fault for devouring it so readily. The tiny voice of reason in the back of his mind reminds him that it was most certainly the latter. “And, when you think back to the next minute or so, know that I’m sorry for what’s about to happen next, but you were doomed the minute you opened your mouth.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I mean, no, I’m really not, but I figured it would be nice of me to say the words since you were nice enough to chat.” He’s not even sure if she’d noticed how his voice was less thick, as if her hold on his tongue had loosened somehow, as if she was slowly loosing control over his limbs. His gaze is slipping, slipping toward the light from the portal. Somewhere, out of reach and yet twenty feet away, the sun is beginning to rise in the physical world. He can hear it calling to him, like a magnet, and he isn’t going to be able to resist that pull forever.

It almost feels cruel, doing this to someone so naïve. But almost won’t save her, won’t damn him.

Maybe she figures it out in time. Maybe she doesn’t. Valinn’s atrophied eyes can’t pick up the difference; more importantly, he doesn’t care.

He drops to the ground. She’s out of time.

Valinn turns to the portal. The physical world calls.

“Don’t,” comes the voice from the darkness, now tinged with fear.

Valinn allows himself a smile. Of all the things she could’ve said, she thinks he’ll listen to that. Adorable. The girl piques his interest, enough to keep him waiting here when he could’ve, and should’ve, left long ago. He’ll need a good morph for what’s coming next, and if she’s skilled enough to use haemokinesis, he’s generous enough to work around the overwhelming stupidity. “Or what.”

“I’ll—”

“It wasn’t a question. Don’t waste your time with threatening; if you could hurt me, you would’ve already.” He can’t quite see it, but he imagines how beautiful the sunrise must look. “Take another step and I’ll leave right now.” The cool light calls to him. In the early days of his imprisonment, before he had even understood what it meant to grow sick of this hell, he wouldn’t have hesitated. But now, now that he understood what it meant to sit and rot, to look forward to a torturer because it at least meant hearing the thoughts of another, he feels a rising tide in the pit of his stomach. Not enough to make him change course; never enough to make him change course, but enough to make him drop his anchor for thirty seconds more. He has to know that his actions have consequences. That had been the one thing his master had tried to teach him, the one thing he struggled to learn even now.

“Kill me,” she says instead.

He has to admit, he hadn’t seen that one coming. “Kill you? Why would I kill you for no reason?”

“I would rather die fighting you. Grant me that.”

He makes a show of pursing his lips even though she probably can’t see him from here; he’s more excited about the fact that he can see blue light flickering against his palms. He’s almost out. “I don’t do requests.”

“You killed Xerneas.” A jet of water whips past his ear. He leans his head to one side and lets it miss.

“You’re going to need a lot more than that,” Valinn replies archly. He estimates that he’s heard some iteration of those words close to two hundred times, now. Each time hurt in a different way—Duneyrr’s fire versus Dainn’s dark storm, for example, were thoughts that had haunted those early days of madness in his prison—but hearing it here, from a stranger, was new. A whole generation of children had grown up hating him while he’d been locked away. What else has the world done with his name in the past ten years? “And I had a reason. I had every reason.” He makes a show of checking at his watch even though there was no way it was still accurate. “Normally, I’d be game enough to debate, but I’m about a decade late for an appointment to keep in Yggdra.”

“There’s still a smoldering crater in the center of town after what you did.”

“All the more reason to hurry, then.” Valinn tosses her a mock salute and lets himself fall through the portal.

There’s a blinding flash of light, and he lands.

The ground—real, solid ground—hits him harder than he thought it would, and his knees nearly buckle under the unexpected weight that everything suddenly has. He hadn’t realized he’d missed this much color. He turns back to the rainbow tree they’d locked him in, looks at its scintillating colors in awe. And then his attention is torn away: for the first time since he’d been imprisoned, he sees his hands when he looks at them. At first, his field of vision is bleached out, like an overexposed photograph, but even as he blinks himself back into adjustment, he can tell how much these years have cost him. His palms are pale, lifeless, drained from months without seeing the sun, but they are his and they are here. Valinn almost stumbles. He flexes his fingers, just to see how they would respond, and when the image on his eyes aligns with the image on his brain, he almost cries from sheer relief.

“Get back inside,” she says as she emerges breathlessly behind him, summoning out a thin tendril of water to pull the alarm. Immediately, lights begin flashing and the sirens whine to life, and he knows they’ve got about thirty seconds before all hell breaks loose.

“Seriously?” Valinn doesn’t even try to hide his disappointment. “Get back inside? That’s the best you can do?” Kids these days. He sighs and turns to face her, able to see one of his guards fully for the first time.

She screams Yggdra. Even in the dim blue light, even twenty feet away, that much is clear. She has the tanned skin, flat nose, and sea-dark hair of her people, but the rest is wrong. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders; she holds herself rigidly upright in her uniform. There is no culture woven into her locks with a mother’s care; no ebb and flow in her stance that came only with years of living among the water. He can see her wish painted across her face, in features so big they almost smudge away with the blue of her eyes. “You know,” he says quietly, “now that I think about it more, I actually do think I meant it, at least a little, when I said I was sorry.”

“What?” she asks. Her hesitation saves her life and ruins her reputation, because just then, the door ricochets off its hinges in a blast of fire.

Valinn hadn’t expected them to react so quickly, and if he’s going to be honest, he hasn’t made a plan for—“Dainn, you’ve aged well,” he says with forced calm, never taking his eyes off of the man for a moment; turning your back on Dainn is as stupid as balancing on a cliff with one foot. Ten years have hardly changed the dark-eyed man in front of him, all frowns and sharp angles visible even through the mask that marks him as the First Founder, and that knowledge is the first thing in a long time to drive a freezing stake of fear into Valinn’s heart. There’s no time in trying to guess at the look of pain and confusion on the man’s face beneath the mask, so Valinn lets his imagination fill in the blanks. Dainn’s eyebrows were constantly in a state of arched annoyance, but they’d sag here, just a hair, probably in protest at the betrayal he must be feeling. And of course he still wears the scarf; the way he retreats into it broadcasts that he still remembers what it means.

The rest is buried beneath the mask—porcelain white, except for the clean, black line that runs down the middle and cuts it clean in half. Horns twine up skyward, branches of the deer to which they’re all sworn—so they’ve taken to taking that part literally, now. Interesting.

“I’m sorry, Dainn,” Valinn says, and then almost catches himself. Two genuine apologies in a single day. “You can’t have thought I’d stay patiently locked up forever.”

{Stand. Down,} a telepathic voice grates behind him before Dainn can open his mouth. Turning around, Valinn tilts his head as he studies the latest arrival. Duneyrr’s been busy while he’s been away; these are certainly new. Four purple eyes, each paired atop the hilt of a bronzed sword and shield, fix him with impassive glares, heavy blades bobbing up and down by the whims of some unseen breeze. The shields, a splotchy mix of blued steel and gold, are all cracked, but Valinn doesn’t take that as a sign of weakness. The way they advance makes the back of his neck tingle: they’re definitely ghosts, which means there’s a lot more than meets the eye here.

“I’d rather not. I have places to be.” Valinn looks at them. Wonders if their eyes can actually see. Wonders what they see him as. “Where’s Duneyrr? Is she not going to see me off herself?”

“She doesn’t want to deal with you right now,” Dainn said.

Coming from Dainn, that spelled a lot of trouble coming his way. As much as Valinn knew they didn’t see eye to eye, he and Duneyrr had a lot in common: they both tended to leave smoking piles of rubble behind when they were done. And if she’d already been able to summon four of these things from wherever she was…

The pokémon in front of him seems to split in half, the sword cleaving from the shield with Arthurian effort. By the time he’s done anything more but raise his right hand in front of his face, it’s already too late. But the Curse is still with him, and he’s fatally lucky for that. The ripple of purple energy breaks itself open on his palm, much like a wave breaks when it reaches the shore, and the edges of it curl away from him just in time.

The rest of the attack slams into the wall with bone-breaking force, leaving jagged crater three feet deep in the stone around them. Behind him, he hears a splash—his former guard must’ve been stupid enough to think that a bit of water would’ve protected them from that.

“That was a warning,” Dainn says, the crackling heat of caged lightning prickling down Valinn’s back. “The aegislash will stop you from leaving.”

Valinn doesn’t have time for warnings. He doesn’t have time to think things through anymore; he’s spent the past ten years thinking, and if he had any intention of protecting this newfound freedom, he’ll have to do a lot more than just stare. “You could try not harming me,” he mutters under his breath, trying to eke out the precious few seconds he needs to finish charting his escape path.

“You could try not destroying everything in your way,” Dainn shoots back. Even through the muffle of the Founder’s mask, Valinn can still recognize the strain in his voice that comes from gritted teeth.

Ah, yes. It would seem he’d touched a nerve there. Valinn reckons he owes them an apology, but those kinds of words never came easily to him. Speaking of destruction: “Where’s Xerneas now?”

“Far from here. You have no business left in Yggdra.”

“The usual spot, and you’ll come alone or not at all.” Valinn gives a mock bow, grabs the guard with his left hand, and then places his free hand on the ground.

There’s a pause. Dainn’s conflicted; poor guy. Valinn doesn’t blame him. “I can’t let you leave here,” the man behind the mask rumbles.

“Don’t worry,” Valinn replies lazily. “I’ll make it look realistic.”

The rest of the aegislash begin firing bolts of widespread waves of lightning at them, but it’s too late. Valinn doesn’t fault them for that, but he does wish that some people learned. The electricity arcs into the ground as his Curse takes effect: the stone touching his hand begins to melt away, dissolving into nothingness until the floor is entirely gone and he and the guard drop down onto the floor below. His knees flex slightly as he lands on the balls of his feet. It’s crazy how the body still keeps reflexes like this after all these years.

The roof shakes as the aegislash above begin blasting a path apart the ceiling above. Rocks trickle down above them, adding to the fine layer of dust that’s gathered on the floor. He looks uncertainly toward the hulking figures standing in the corner, their shoulders still hunched forward in silent watch. They’ll still answer the call. They have to. “I’m not going to beg, but if you don’t want to die, you’re going to want to follow me,” Valinn says calmly to the guard, who hasn’t moved since they landed. Call this his apology for ruining her life—at the very least, he can keep her out of a prison like his.

“No,” she says, and Valinn literally watches her jaw lock and her back straighten as if she’s actually taking pride in how stupid she sounds right now. “I am a sworn public defender of Yggdra, and—”

Right, okay, never mind. Valinn’s just a regular guy with the one hand that destroys everything he touches; he’s not going to waste time wrestling with her false constructs of honor. He vaults over the railing and into the hangar, lands himself squarely on the back of one of the guardians by the door.

The creatures hums to life as it recognizes the weight of him on its back; light spirals across the cracks in its armor. A slight hum tells him all he needs to know—the guardian is back online. The back of its armor opens up, lets him stand in the center of the guardian’s massive suit, and then seals itself back around him when he steps in. The lights spiderweb themselves out in front of him, a stunning array of twists and turns whose functionality Valinn knew, at some point. It’s like riding a bike, he tells himself, if a bike had fourteen thousand different combinations to try. He places his left hand against the back of the golurk and lets the ancient’s circuitry whisper through him again. Of all the things he missed from the physical world in the past ten years, the one he could never fully imagine was the vast expanse of this. No city he’s ever seen has ever felt as trafficked as a guardian’s armor, a splitting web of pneumatics and metal that flexes ever so slightly as he threads himself into it. This is his armor; his weapon; his heart, worn on his sleeve, and Valinn cannot begin to describe the foreign ache in his stomach as he realizes that he’s finally home.

A blast of stone catches the back of his golurk, sending him rocking forward. The aegislash are almost through. That’s his cue to run.

He studies the room for a moment longer. The guard’s eyes, awash with terror but ringed with a fierce frown, catch his own, and he does the math quickly enough. She was the unlucky one. It wasn’t her fault. They need each other now.

Valinn reaches out with a hand, hesitating only for a moment, but the mechanical shell has no such pause. The golurk’s arm, easily twenty times larger than his own, lurches forward and grabs her. Clanking steps carry them out of the garage, trailing dust in their wake. From what he remembered when they took him down here; the nearest exit from this side is through the northeast corridor. A few more motions with his fingers directs the mech into a sprint. Platinum-crusted feet easily the size of his body tear thick gouges into the ground as they move forward. Another blast of shadowy energy—probably from another aegislash—darts past his shoulder, almost lancing through the guard.

He weighed his options. The golurk really wasn’t built for two; he hadn’t been planning on getting his hired help until a little bit later, but he had a hunch that if he left the guard behind, the Founders would have her killed. She’d already seen too much, and it’d be all too easy to blame his escape on her rather than their own blistering incompetence.

Sometimes he hates knowing them this well—it’s a lot more sickening to engage them in combat when he realizes just how high the stakes are and how many innocents will get dragged into the crossfire. The earlier times had been simpler, when the enemies were all evil and faceless, and there was no such thing as collateral damage.

He makes another direction with his good hand, and the guard is shoved roughly onto the back of the golurk next to him. “Sorry for the landing,” Valinn says tersely, and turns his attention back to trying to pilot this mechanical marvel that, with only one hand to pilot it with, is effectively a giant semi-truck with several built-in means of murdering what came across their path. Neither of those traits would help them in a second. Just like riding a bike, he repeats to himself. This is possible. “Still re-learning how to pilot this. It’s been a while.”

“Let me down!” she shouts, lunging at him, but there’s a tangle of unused levers and steering wheels idling between them.

He doesn’t even dignify that with a response, but raises one eyebrow as the glassy armor of the cockpit is bathed in a sea of electricity. He watches the sparks fizzle around the edge of the cockpit and spiral away harmlessly into the metal shell of the mech. Faraday’s cage. They’d learn eventually. “Hi. Sorry for the rough start. Let’s try this again. I’m Valinn.”

“Everyone knows who you are. What are you doing?”

Valinn sighs. “The polite response,” he says tersely, “is to introduce yourself. They really don’t teach you anything in the academy anymore, do they?”

There’s an awkward pause. He honestly hadn’t expected her to answer him; she seemed like an honor-before-reason sort of person, the kind who thought that criminals—specifically, the one who had just come into her life and nuked it like an ICBM fresh out of orbit—were always in the wrong.

“Modge,” she says at last, surprising him. And, from the sound of it, surprising herself.

There isn’t much else to say, and they’re both jolted around in their seats as Valinn directs them to duck under another blast of ghostly energy that craters the ground in front of them. Valinn tries to get the mech to dodge smoothly, and instead sends them tripping through a wall and into a pile of bricks.

Oops. Not like property damage wasn’t already on his list of charges, though, so no real harm there.

The way that she almost bites back her word sticks out to him. It wasn’t discomfort; if she truly hated him, she’d never have started talking to him back in his cell. There is something deeper there, something more primal, and Valinn has a hunch. “The Naiman pass down their names like a birthright. The names they give their children mean more to them than any other gift they ever give. When one of their own is blessed with the powers of a morph, and a sacred name is given—” He likes to pretend that he’d cut himself off there not because continuing was too painful, but because he’d gotten distracted by the fact that another aegislash had appeared and shoots blades of silvery-tinged light at them with impressive accuracy.

“I don’t see why you keep bringing that up.”

Valinn resists the urge to reach into the tangle of weaponry circuitry, find the golurk’s attack systems, and command it to fry the stupid sword out of orbit. Killing the guards here will do him no good, though, and there’s a tiny voice in the back of his head reprimanding him for being so callous about something as precious as life. And Duneyrr would never forgive him, but he’s ninety-five percent sure they’re well past that stage already. “Did your new friends in Yggdra make fun of you? Is that why you changed it?”

“Shut up.” She produces another whip of water and hurls it at his neck.

He uses his right hand to dissolve it. “Stop trying to kill me while I’m saving your life. It’s distracting.” As if to prove his point, the golurk smashes through another wall. “Anyway. Did you not know what a slap in the face it was denounce your name like that?”

“Stop it.” She tries water laced with ice this time, and even though the sensation of col air is strange on his fingertips, he pretends like it doesn’t even touch him. No need to let her guess his shortcomings this early.

No, the real cause of her anger is a lot different. That much is clear now. “Or were you so young that you don’t even remember?”

Her eyebrows knit together in confusion, one hand rising to hold him back, but it’s too late for both of them.

The transmission box of the golurk crackles to life. “This is not a warning. Stand down and—”

He presses his hand against the radio unit and lets it short itself. The message splutters off into dust. “Right. Modge.” Valinn returns to business as he directs the golurk to begin sprinting resolutely towards the wall ahead. This time, actually on purpose. He thinks. “I’m going to get us out of here. After this, you’re free to go wherever you want.” The wall gets closer. “I would recommend any place besides Yggdra. Sorry for ruining your career.”

“Why did you come back for me?”

Because no one deserves what they were going to do to you. “I needed a morph who could help me cross a few rivers and it seemed like you were on the market,” Valinn says tacitly.

He knows how this works. Now that he’s back inside of a guardian, now that he remembers how it feels to belong in his shell, he knows what he’s supposed to do. No one expects the killer pokémon to have a soft, squishy human on the inside, and the human is certainly not allowed to separate from the metallic armor that protects them both. Once you’re in the suit, the world has to believe that you’re both impregnable. This is how he learned to be. This is how Xerneas—

The floor gives out suddenly, and Valinn is too slow to react before the tiles erupt into two floating aegislash, their unseeing eyes fixing him with a bright blue gaze. They train their eyes on him, and the mech is bathed in blue light; an instant later, it turns to unearthly blue fire. The shell of the mech is strong enough to take it for at least a few seconds, but he can already feel the temperature skyrocketing.

The aegislash’s first attacks weren’t strong enough to do much else but slow the mech down, but he can tell that this is different. There’s an extra power behind them; their master is nearby, and now they’re hitting for real. He could command the golurk to strike back and it wouldn’t hit with nearly this power—he’s not its master, after all. It listens to him, but it’ll never truly obey like these ones will.

It’s her. It has to be her. He can’t see out of the cockpit through the ghostly flames, but maybe that’s a blessing. He doesn’t think he’d be able to stomach seeing her face right now. “Duneyrr, wait!” he shouts, almost by reflex, before he remembers that she’d never speak to him again, and that knowledge hurts a little more than her nonchalantly turning him to ash.

Valinn’s fingers curl, and the golurk rolls over, just avoiding the twister that the two aegislash were about to use to crush them. The other two aegislash float down, and he can almost see the outline of the human figure standing between them. He sees her lips move, and then the aegislash erupt in turn: one releases a blade of darkness, the next hurls a blast of ghostly energy, the third sends a wave of razor-sharp wind, and the fourth produces a barrage of stone. There’s no fighting back any more, no gloating as he plays with his food.

He was supposed to be well out of the way before Duneyrr got here. This is what he gets for trying to be clever and save everyone. Valinn can’t curb back the feeling of desperation that swells up in his chest; he’s being fenced in and he can’t go back there, not again. He has to use that fear or risk letting it consume him, but when he tries to channel it into the golurk, to make his armor sweep its legs up and jackknife to its feet, he can still sense the disjointed breaks in command as the golurk hesitates beneath him.

The aegislash reward his hesitation by unleashing their attacks in his face. There’s a brief moment where Valinn runs the calculation and knows he won’t be able to block all of them at once, but he has to try. Surging forward, he leaps out of the guardian and dissolves the glass blast shield with his hand, hoping to take block the brunt of the attacks and leave the golurk behind him intact.

He doesn’t.

The golurk is launched backward in a wave of elemental energy, and the resulting explosion sends him flying back into its open chest cavity, where he makes contact with the rear wall of the cockpit hard enough to see stars.

As his vision swims away to black and the sharp screeching of stone on steel of Duneyrr’s summoned aegislash grow closer, Valinn lets himself savor what will surely be his last memory of the outside world.

This… isn’t how he’d meant for things to go.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​
chapter two, except it doesn't finish and cuts off halfway
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

“I want to see my parents. Where are my parents?”

“Not now, girl.”

“Please!”

“I said
not now, girl. Be quiet and do as you’re told if you want to live.”

“I—”

“Look. Over there. Do you see it?” Pause. “That’s Automata. The people there will eat you alive if they know who you are. They will never accept you. You have to keep your mouth shut. Girl. Are you listening?”

Pause.

“Girl?”

“It’s… beautiful.”


– o – o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Autopilot engaged. Course revision not allowed at this time.

“Eleven years ago, Maeve the Immortals led the Four Founders forth from the sacred grove to create Automata, shining city of hope and light.”

“Stop, dammit! Stop!”

“From the ashes of the war-ridden world beneath, we rose up, a floating refuge for those who had none.”

Modge pounds the dashboard of the mech with frustration, voice choked on tears; the controls beeps back in merry harmony as the ground rushes in faster and faster.

“I remember the Founders, who dedicated their lives for this cause, to give safety and life in a world that was otherwise lacking.”

The mech splutters out pathetically as soon as their legs hit the ground, and Modge takes it as a sign that she did the right thing. And, of course, now the autopilot finally disengages itself, ten miles too late, when it’s all over.

“I remember Maeve, who took her Gift from Yggdrasil and turned it into something altogether greater, to lead the world when no one else would.”

She reaches over to start powering down the ignition cycle, but before she can do anything else, the entire suit keens and falls over. It was just a little fire. It’s gonna be okay. It’s probably fixable with what she has on hand—

“I stand now in their shadow, to pledge myself as a Varangian, to take up their torch and follow in their footsteps.”

The engine falls out of the mech’s chest and explodes into a small pile of bolts and motor fluid in the field below.

“To uphold justice and peace, to hold all life sacred, to defend those who cannot.”

Cursing under her breath, Modge unbuckles herself and scrambles out of the cockpit. With her luck, the thing was going to explode on her, and that would be the absolute least of her problems at this point.

“I swear this in the grove of the gods, beneath the branches of Yggdrasil, against all to come.”

She takes a deep, calming breath as her boots hit the grass beneath her, and the wind in her face starts to clear the scent of gasoline and molten steel from her nostrils. Yesterday, she was a Varangian, sworn to defend Automata. She’d made oaths.

“I will be shield and sword of Eikthyrnir forevermore, from this day until my last day.”

One hand curls into a fist. Yesterday, Varangian.

Today, traitor to Automata, Valinn’s unwitting accomplice, and criminal.

Modge knows how the admittedly-short interrogation is going to go. If you weren’t guilty, why did you run?

She has vague memories of being born on snowy plains beneath a grey sky, but she doesn’t remember feeling that cold since. Not until now, when the numbness begins to sink in alongside the realization of what she’s done. By not finding a way to stop the mech, by letting it run on its pre-charted course far, far away, she’s allowed Valinn to escape. No one was able to pursue them. There will be no turning back from this. She spent ten years in the academy, fighting to prove that she deserved a spot in Automata just like any of the highborns from the city, and she’s watching it all spiral out of her fingers now.

No, it was more than that. When she’d seen the sigilyph guards firing their attack at her, she’d lashed back. She’d prevented them from being taken into custody.

She can’t fight him. But if she closes her eyes and thinks hard enough, she can pretend the last thing she sees before he kills her is snow.

She looks back at the smoking cockpit, where the body of Automata’s nemesis is curled up in a tight ball, his right hand clutched close to him even when unconscious. She should’ve left him. Things would’ve been so much simpler if she had.

Valinn is free in the world. Valinn. The smoking crater at the center of town, a deep pit that led straight down to the Core, was a reminder that Automata still hadn’t healed, hadn’t forgotten. He’d done something worse than hurt them that day: he’d shown them that their gods weren’t gods at all.

All it had taken was one moment of miscalculation, one decision to stop the blistering fire coming towards her, one blast of water fueled by fear and desperation. She hadn’t considered that her mech held Valinn as its cargo. She hadn’t considered the collateral.

Now here they are, standing at the Gate, and there’s nothing left to be done. This is the end of the line.

Automata is a floating city straight out of legend, a network of cogs and gears that spin smokestacks and steam tunnels to keep the whole thing floating through the clouds at a turtle’s pace. The glass dome above is laced with protective shields and all the technological defenses that the city has to offer, while the rocky bottom is practically impermeable. There are a few ways out of the city, and most of them are heavily guarded. You can never be too safe in times like these, after all, and even a locked door has a key.

The Gate, though?

She remembers it from her patrols as a new recruit. It’s easy enough to recognize. It’s a straight shot down; on clear days, you can see the miles and miles of space between them as they float above a wartorn earth. They’re a floating city in a cloud layer a mile thick. Some of it is the smoke and char from the hell down there; some of it’s not. Modge doesn’t know how this mythical shelter managed to get off the ground, but one thing’s clear enough: the fastest way out is the one-way ticket that the Gate offers.

Modge can’t help herself. She peers down the Gate, stares at this unnaturally round, perfect hole in the ground that bores straight through all of Automata before opening up to the sheer drop below. It’s like a lesion in her world, a cookie-cutter hole in this otherwise unmarred meadow, a reminder that hell rages on outside of the oasis that floats above.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice threads through her ears, almost like silk.

He’s awake. “Whatever you do, whatever you’re planning, I will find a way to stop you. Maybe I let you out, maybe I can’t kill you now, but you won’t succeed.”

Even though she’s had her time to get used to it, looking back at him makes her stomach curl. This is the face stamped hard into their minds in the academy; he was the one who nearly destroyed Automata ten years ago. His time imprisoned has stripped the youth from his face, but at the same time, he hasn’t aged from those pictures—there’s still the hint of a boyish smile in a face framed by dark bangs, except for the dark brown of his eyes, set in gaunt sockets. Pale, waxy skin has recessed into his desiccated frame, leaving nothing more than skin and bones behind. If Modge hadn’t just seen it happen, she would never have guessed that someone like this would’ve taken out Automata’s elite.

“My dear Modge.” Valinn doesn’t even look at her, but instead turns back to inspect the mech disparagingly. “You aren’t really going to try this again, are you? It was embarrassing last time.”

“Where are you going?” Modge shouts, wading after him and finding that the grass is halfway up her thighs. In exasperation, she cuts it out of the way with a lash of water.

“Away? Where does it look like I’m going?”

Her breath begins to stick in her throat. She’s on her own. Somehow, she’s been left to deal with this, and she doesn’t know what to do with it. “Why are you doing this?”

Valinn sighs and kicks the motor of the mech, having apparently come to the same conclusion that she has. “I’m just going to warn you for what’s about to happen: why questions will never get you what you want.”

“What are you doing?”

Valinn suddenly spins around, so abruptly, that Modge has to jerk back to keep her distance. “Fine. I answer one of your questions, you answer one of mine. Neither of us lies. Deal?”

She shouldn’t trust him. He is a criminal. He destroyed Automata. He— “What are you trying to get out of all of this?”

“To finish what I started and kill Maeve the Immortal.” Pause. “My turn. Why did you save me?”

“What?”

“You don’t,” he says, breathing heavily, “get two questions.” When he looks at her, his eyes are wide and wild, and the edge of insanity that she’d seen in him is back, just enough to remind her that this was someone who had endured ten years, completely alone, in pitch-darkness. That he had been imprisoned for murder and trying to crash her hometown into the ground. “It’s my turn. The Fourth Founder doesn’t let her prey get away easily. She was going to kill me. I set the mech to autopilot here when I left it there ten years ago, but that wouldn’t have gotten us out of the building alive. Duneyrr was on the warpath. That leaves, in this entire gods-damned city, you. I made my peace. I accepted my failure. And yet I wake up and get a second chance at things. Why did you save me?

Modge swallows heavily. It feels like there’s a block of concrete stuck in the back of her throat, and the subtle wish that the earth would just swallow her whole and end it all hasn’t fully faded yet. “I piloted the mech away because I didn’t want to die,” she says at last.

“Bullshit, Modge. We promised we wouldn’t lie to each other.” There’s no hesitation. Valinn doesn’t break eye contact with her; his lopsided smile is replaced with furrowed brows and fire. “You challenged—no, begged— me, whose claim to fame is that I waged war on the Founders and rained fire on your entire generation, to duel you. Because, in your words, you would’ve rather died fighting me. Just now you chose to stick close to me to stop whatever I plan to do. That isn’t the wish of someone who doesn’t want to die.”

He’s right. He’s right.

She remembers the academy. She’d spent years training herself to get to this point, where she could roam the streets freely, where her badge and her uniform got her the status she thought she’d deserved. This was everything she’d wanted. Automata is her home; she wants to defend it. No matter what this traitor said, no matter what he dared insinuate, she isn’t supposed to let it stick to her like this. She. Is. Varangian.

Her mouth opens, but then she closes it again. “I don’t know.”

Valinn snorts in frustration and turns away, somehow even angrier than before. “Well, then, thank you for wasting my time and saving my life. I’m going down the Gate,” he calls over his shoulder. “Like I said earlier, you’re free to go wherever. If I were to offer some advice, I’d recommend skipping town for a bit. From personal experience, the Founders can be a bit touchy, for lack of a better word, when you break into their sacred spaces and tear down what they hold dear.”

“But this is where they execute criminals,” Modge says, trailing off. The wind is almost mesmerizing. “Why would you—”

Valinn’s grimset expression, eyebrows creased like thunder against the sunken pits that are his eyes, doesn’t answer her unfinished question, but it does cut her short.

In the time since they’ve landed, Modge has realized one chillingly important thing: she can’t outrun this. She’s finally stumbled upon a problem that she absolutely can’t solve. The Founders didn’t fix it, but they didn’t start it, either: this was all her.

Valinn’s smirk creases suddenly, and a flicker of concern crosses those creased eyebrows for a moment as he seems to realize something, puts the pieces together too late. Everyone’s always too late. “Wait. Modge, are you going to—”

She doesn’t have time to explain the clues she’s left for herself, all the unwritten notes that are full of words that are too hard to ponder because of how unspeakable they are. She’d thought that climbing to the top of her personal ladder in Automata would give her the fire back, but she’s always felt that shadow dipping into her: she’s spent her whole life trying to set herself up to die a hero. Valinn would never understand.

She takes a resolute step forward, and gravity does the rest.

“Modge!”

What she sees next sticks with her for weeks to come, and it’s an image she keeps returning to: Valinn reaching out for her on instinct with his right hand before ripping it back, and then leaping forward with his left hand outstretched.

The rest of the picture blurs together. Wind rips at her hair and makes the starched fabric of her Varangian uniform flapping like sails in the wind. Valinn mouths an incomprehensible word over and over again, screaming it like it’s a magic spell. The sheening hull of Automata peels away faster than she thought possible.

“Dainn! Dainn! Dainn!”

Something soft and warm slams into her back, hard enough to make her see stars. Breath wheezes out in a rush. Head flops back, but she realizes something: she’s not dead.

Black wings beat in tandem beside her, feathers dark enough to cut through the sky. Words don’t come to her; there’s no air in her lungs, which have forgotten how to breathe.

The bird wheels around and snatches Valinn out of the air, who lands far more carefully than she did. His crouch is light and predatory, wiry arms splaying into spindly fingers that gently tense onto the bird’s feathers.

The honchkrow. The name.

“You are him,” Modge whispers. His name feels like nails on her mind; she isn’t meant to speak it. Mortals do not look into the eyes of god. Her gaze stays lowers on the shimmering feathers of the raven. “You ae the First Founder, he who speaks no truths.”

“I am not,” says the mask. It looms above her, porcelain white cut down the middle with a stripe of black as dark as the bird he summons. Twining deer horns spiral out above where his ears would be; here, they seem to sag heavier than Modge would’ve expected them to, as if he has to bear them gingerly lest they break him down.

“Don’t mind him,” Valinn says, lazily rearranging himself on the raven’s massive back as it wheels back in a tight circle. “You might’ve met. Dunno what kind of publicity events the Academy puts you in these days. This is Dainn, bound by Yggdrasil’s gift to be the loneliest man alive. All knowledge, all lies. Once you get past the speech quirk, it becomes a lot easier to talk to him. Did you miss me, Dainn?”

“Not at all,” says the masked man, inclining his antlers toward them both.

“Did anyone else?”

“Very much so.”

“Why are you here?” Modge finally asks. She isn’t sure when she managed to make it upright, the bird’s wingbeats rocking them beneath, but her gaze can’t settle on either of them. The deity and the demon. One of these people helped build this city, and the other nearly destroyed it. She’s pretty sure that neither of them should be near each other, and none of them should be anywhere near her. She feels the droplets of water orbiting her, portending a storm, but that feels like child’s play compared to either of them. She’s reminded of an azurill splashing on the beach, blissfully unaware of the riptide beneath.

Valinn gives that annoying sigh again. “You can’t ask Dainn why questions; you’ll never be able to guess what he’s trying to say.”

She turned to face him fully, completely aware of the way that her lips curl and her face contorts in hatred. “I’m not done with you yet.”

“You must’ve been, because you could’ve left me to die, yet here we are.” He does that stupid smirk again, and this time he doesn’t even give her the pretense of needing to break eye contact before letting the stream of water she throws at him disappear harmlessly against his hand.

Frustration boils up in her like a geyser, but there’s no clear outlet. He was the liar who hurt her home, but she was the fool who tried to treat the liar like a human. So instead her rage lashes out for her, and she reaches into the water inside of his body and throws it down, pinning him to the bird’s back. Her power does the talking for her.

“Your history lessons were true,” the First Founder rasps behind her, but neither of them have moved to stop her. “He committed treason against Automata, and planned to harm many others.”

The First Founder can tell only lies. This is a truth they learned from the very beginning.

She looks at the kid splayed on the ground in front of her, his limbs akimbo like a dead insect, but she doesn’t let him up. Instead, Modge looks at the First Founder, feeling like a clueless child in a classroom. The questions burn against her lips, ripping holes into her tongue, and they swallow her words like lead. She isn’t meant to ask questions of the Founders. It isn’t her place. She is Varangian.

“Dainn. Did… did I murder Xerneas?” Valinn chokes out, but his eyes are fixed on the First Founder.

The First Founder’s response is immediate. There is no hesitation in the voice that can tell no truth. “You wanted to, and you did.”

For the first time since she can remember, Modge wants to question what she’s been told about the Founders. Four humans gifted with incredible power—and yet entirely human nonetheless. And that made them somehow more unbelievable: they had been able to found a city of peace by working together. It made sense to revere them; they were the absolute upper limit of human potential. If this were anyone else but the First Founder, Modge would’ve left long ago.

But this… this is confusing.

She releases her hold on Valinn, who doesn’t make eye contact with her as he slowly picks himself up off the ground. Instead, he looks at Dainn, completely without reverence for the Founder. “Are they in the place I tried to keep them from finding?”

“No.”

Valinn closes his eyes like the answer physically hurts him. For a brief, brief instant, Modge can see anguish painted across his features, something she hadn’t seen when he was jumping into pokémon attacks or being flung across rooms or discussing murder. “Did they find what they were looking for?”

There’s a long pause. Evidently, even Dainn can’t figure out which is the lie and which is reality.

“Yes.”

The look on Valinn’s face is unreadable, at least to Modge. She sees the way his lip curls involuntarily, before he bites it back down. His eyes narrow and Modge could’ve sworn she’d seen him move forward, just a little, with his right hand. “They’ll notice that you’re gone, soon,” Valinn says to Dainn. The laughter vanished from his voice sometime in the past fifteen seconds, and all that’s left is cold. “Goodbye, Dainn. Thank you for catching us. I’ll see myself out. Next time I meet, I do expect you to try to kill me. Don’t worry. I did commit treason, after all. I won’t be offended.”

Pause.

“I expected nothing less.”

The two of them stare at each other, mask and man, and then the raven caws and spirits the First Founder into the sky. Modge stares after him.

i also had a weird start with a post-apocalyptic one about this old woman murdering stuff with a giant sword who finds a little girl with strange, spacey powers... spectra rewrites??

anyone else do anything? post in! I'd love to read it <3
 
NEW ROLLING SYSTEM -- as per popular request, prompts will now be rolled on a per-person basis. post in-thread here for me to saddle you with some god-awful luck or roll your own and post what you got! we'll be using the same wildcard as last time, so stay tuned!

GENRE
1. Action
2. Adventure
3. Comedy
4. Drama/Psychological
5. Fantasy
6. Friendship & Romance
7. Horror
8. Science Fiction
9. Slice of Life
10. Tragedy

CATEGORY
1. Journey
2. Speculative
3. Character-Driven
4. Expansion
5. Crossover/Non-Pokemon
6. Alternate

PROTAGONIST
1. Human
2. Pokemon
3. Gjinka/hybrid/some fusion of pokemon and human
4. Other/none-of-the-above

WILDCARD -- SETTING
1. Main-Series Region (Roll d7 for which generation)
2. Side-Series Region (Roll d3 for Orre, Ransei, PMD)
3. Fakemon Region
4. Other (Pokemon in SPACE??)
 
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1/13/2019 -- I rolled @Flaze a Crossover or Non-Pokemon/Pokemon Protagonist/Alola prompt.
 
roll the dice babyyy

i had an idea for the previous prompt, but couldn't form an actual story in time. would've done it otherwise. :<
 
roll the dice babyyy

i had an idea for the previous prompt, but couldn't form an actual story in time. would've done it otherwise. :<
we added genres into the thing called genre gambles shocker, i know

Flaze's new roll: Expansion / Horror / Human / PMD
Canis's new roll: alternate / tragedy / pokemon / orre

and flaze rolled me : Journey / Tragedy / Hybrid / Kalos
 
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Hmm, let's get the juices flowing, shall we? :p Roll, please!
slice of life / crossover or non-pokemon / pokemon protagonist / alola!

rolled one for Misfit Angel: Fantasy / Alternate / Other protagonist / Johto!
 
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Didn't get a story finished for the previous prompt in time, but do know that I've actually started this one, which is already far better than the one before it! I hope to get it finished before the next deadline, at least.

In the meantime, hit me with a new roll! Even if I can't guarantee stories for all of these, I've found these to be pretty great at helping me generate ideas.
 
Well, over a month later, I have finally finished my late January prompt. It is called Barricade and it is up here!
 
hi all, small and awkward post here to note that I will still roll prompts for people and hopefully will take fewer than three months this time
 
Please note: The thread is from 5 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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