WRITING PROMPT - GRACE

by Zucca

 

        Doc Mallory was busy.

        He rushed through his workshop, frowning as he took note of the dwindling supplies. A crisis would be afoot if he could not pull this situation together in time, and innocent people would suffer.

        He could not allow that to happen.

        The doorbell jingled, and the familiar presence of the Traveler filled the shop. 

        “You needed me for somethi-?” his mixed-accented voice began.

        “Aye, no time to lose, either! I’m in desperate need of these items and I know you won’t let me down.” Doc shoved a list into Zucca’s hand as he dashed across the workshop, carrying bolts of fabric.

        The hybrid studied the list, his brow elevating. “Expensive list.”

        Doc scoffed. “You fly in a giant crystal with a Dyson Ring stuffed inside. That’s a few degrees classier than a Cadillac. Methinks it won’t dent your pocketbook too badly.”

        “Mine isn’t to what I refer. Is this-?”

        Zucca was cut off again.  “Pro bono, this one! Well, mostly. Basic package. But this one deserves something good to happen,” Mal barked as he got to work, lining up ivory white linen and lace.

        Zucca smiled, practically beaming. “I’ll be back shortly.”

        Kolo was next to arrive, carrying a rack of meats and a small box with a sample of cake inside. 

        “The rum’s overpowering the butter in the cake. Reduce it by ten percent and spring for buttercream frosting: not that canned shite. Steak No. 4 on the tray seems like how we want the beef, chicken: No. 2 for the poultry, and the first salmon’s the best!” Mal exclaimed.

        Kolo saluted. “Noted! I’ll get to work right away!” the white puma-naja slithered out with haste.  Pyrodox came in next.

        “I have secured a venue. It’s no Catholic Cathedral…nor is it a Church of Revenance convent, but it will do.”

        “And it’s Tantalous, right? That’s her and her chosen’s faith,” Doc asked as his scissors cut with skill and precision.

         “Please, Doc, I am not a scatterbrain. I planned accordingly. The Tantelan priest is ready, and I even found a very nice reception hall. Miguel de la Vega Youth Center. It has a large gymnasium that I’ve secured, and Sorova's written a song she will perform."

         "I wrote a song, Doc!" called the snake, who was leaning into a doorway she could not fit through.

         “Good, good! Now if only—”

         Aries came in, the azure wolfess accompanied by the high-energy cheetah, Kira Sierra.

         “Hey, Mal…” Aries said, a lopsided grin on her face.

         Kira flitted to his side. “I’ve got my stuff! Whole DJ package ready to go!”

         Jen’s hooves clopped on the floor as she entered. “Mallory, I have my makeup kit ready, and the dresses and tuxedos are ready for the party as well. Pyrodox supplied the location, and I will be ready for the bride and her maids.”

         “Good work, Jen. See you tomorrow.” The ferret dismissed her with a smile and a wave.

         Gahtren came in next, an enormous, grinning teal dragon. “The decorations are ready to be deployed! We got a venue yet?”

         Mal nodded. “Yup. Pyrodox has it covered. Talk to him!”

         Everyone else cleared out and Aries sat beside Doc, studying his hands as he worked.

           “You’re really going all-out, arent’ you? Did Squire get engaged and I didn’t hear about it?”

           It was a reasonable question, of course. Who else but his pride and joy of a daughter would inspire such an act? “Heh, nope…Never met her until she walked into the shop,” Doc chuckled.

          “Huh? Then…what’s with all this?” she asked, going over the list.

           Mal paused, reclining. “That girl came off as so earnest, so genuine, so utterly in love, that it broke my heart to hear that her mother-in-law-to-be completely trashed her original plans, venue, catering, and all. That’s why I need you on bouncer duty.”

           Aries could not help but smile. “And you pulled all this together? Does she know?”

           “She will. In eight hours. Poor things needs her sleep first,” Mal muttered as he took a step back to inspect his work.

            Aries gasped softly. “Gods above…”

            “Thank you…now my hands can finally fall off,” Mal grumbled.

 

             Everyone who hand come in clutch sat in the pew furthest back on the Bride’s side of the Tantelan Temple, wanting to remain out of the way, but also to be there. Doc heard the music begin as the doors opened up and the vision of beauty and grace that stepped through brought all chatter, and even the harpsichord player and Sorova's singing, to pause. A dress that looked like it was spun from ivory and silk adorned the bride who stepped forth, the young human’s face flush. Her betrothed, standing by the shrine, stared before tears began to run down his face, so deeply touched by the expression of love beaming from his bride.

             “You’re rubbing of on me, Old Man,” Mal murmured to Zucca.

             The Traveler smiled, shaking his head. “You say that as if you wouldn’t have don the very same thing had we never even met.”

             Mal opened his mouth to belt out, “Just take the stupid compliment, you dusty bodach,” but it caught in his throat. He knew it was true. For all the good influence that Zucca had on him, he was still, in his heart of hearts, a good man who wanted the world to be marginally miserable.

             Mal wiped his eyes with the kerchief that was tucked in his suit’s breast pocket.

             “Thanks you Spanish peacock…” Doc sniffed.

             “Always welcome, you bullheaded pugilist.”

             “Most day. But today, I’m a bullheaded tailer, and a bloody proud one,” he said as the bride stood behind her groom at the shrien, both reciting the chant of unity. 

              “You’re a good man, whatever you wish to be called.”

              Mal’s goodness had not come from Zucca.

              But perhaps, with the old boy’s help, he was finally able to accept the undeniable fact that ye, he, Mallory, had goodness in his heart.

               And as he watched the union rites’ being delivered, a warmth and calm washed over him that he had not known.

 

WRITING PROMPTS - WORK

- by Groveclearer

        With the shielding to the blast furnace down, Aries could feel the heat blow on her eyebrows, scrunch back the fine fur of her muzzle, and send the short ruff of her nape dry and bristling like pine straw. She could feel these things but not smell the singe of burning hair or the overwhelming shortness of air that would accompany being this close to molten metal.

        Instead, she leaned over the shield, her arm surrounded up to the shoulder by flame and red hot metal, and blindly swung her bare hand around inside the blazing furnace for a few seconds until her fingers met with the pair of tongs she'd dropped.

        "There you are," she said with all the enthusiasm of having found a misplaced earring. Her fingers rolled over the tool, inching it closer to her until her palm could wrap around it and pull it out into the open to examine it. The tongs were made of a heat-proofed astrosteel but still glowed bright orange where they'd knocked against the inner wall of the furnace and landed conveniently right out of her line of sight.

        She should be burning right now, she thought vaguely, she should have been set ablaze through sheer convection. Her skin should be boiling and her blue-gold fur should be singed grey-black. She should be screaming.

        She couldn't feel much of anything in the upper registers of heat any longer. A hot shower was the most of it. Her flesh, hair, and entire nervous system seemed to ignore every adverse effect from fire. The only parts of her that stung with warmth any longer were the ones that always hurt; the bright red hellmarks across her arms, back, legs, chest, ears, and the bridge of her nose. Even then they were hurting less intensely and less frequently as of late. It was doubtful they were healing. More likely, she thought, she was just getting used to them.

        "...great," Aries grumbled, noticing she'd been zoning out again and that the blast shielding had been down for at least fifteen seconds. She quickly deluged the tool in a nearby emergency water bucket and pressed the button close the furnace off. She may be fireproof but that didn't mean everyone else in this building was. The furnace shuttered with a grinding thump, and Aries was left to wonder where she'd been in the order before she'd dropped the tool.

 

           - - -

 

          "I know it was quicker than stopping process, I see ya there, but we've got these protocols in place for a reason."

          Aries nodded along and waited to talk. Forsythe was a good manager, if a little wordy. It hadn't taken her long to internalize this. She'd seen the best and worst of middle management across her stints in the Nightwatch and on the job for the Mercenaries Guild. It would figure that the Guild itself would keep a good staff of such for its internal affairs, particularly ones that involved rehabbing its members.

           "The last thing we want is any of us getting hurt. Well, more hurt anyway," he knocked on that prosthetic leg of his. "Product can be re-smelted. People don't usually get that luxury more than once."

           Sensing he'd found a good enough line to stop on, Aries shot in what she wanted to say. "I'm ready to go back out on the field."  Seeing his skeptical look, she added in quickly "Under supervision, of course."

 

           "I'm…" she thought for a second before finding what exactly she thought she was. "I'm a lot better now. Better than I was before, even. I'm at least twice as strong, I haven't lost a beat, I'm getting a full seven hours of sleep each night, I'm..-"

            "Fireproof," Forsythe added.

            "Fireproof and ready to be out of here and back on the field," Aries concluded.

            There was a lull of several seconds as Forsythe looked around the room beyond Aries.

            "Aries, you stuck your arm into a blast furnace today," he said. "Really think about that for a second."

             "I know," Aries said a little too quickly for even her own liking. "I know what I did. It was the quickest, most efficient fix to the problem. If I'd have turned the thing off we'd have lost an hour of production."

             "You stuck your arm into a blast furnace," he repeated and let it hang.

              “Yeah.  That’s not crazy when you’re fireproof, you kno-“

              "Aries, the point of this program isn't to rehab you physically or provide ingots and license plates for the Guild. House Laysaar takes care of that nonsense. We just play around with their scrap. We just... we work. It gets us back in the mindset of following orders proper. It's imperative you follow the rules here."

               Aries sighed. She didn't have time for this social program bullshit, as well intended as it may be. Hers was a special case. She needed to get out of this rehab program, get her full mercenary license reinstated, and get back out in the field again. She had to. An eternity of suffering awaited her if she didn't. Didn't they understand that? Didn't they read her reports? Didn't they listen to the testimony of the demonologists? The only thing that could save her very soul was action... and here she was, getting scolded by a shift supervisor like she'd snuck an extra ten minutes at the end of her break.

               "You're going to get yourself killed if you take shortcuts," Forsythe continued distantly. "You're going to get people under your command killed. And if you die, you're going to go back to hell and you're going to end up staying there this time."

               Aries, snapping back to the conversation, cast him a glance that'd make most anyone not jaded by decades of Mercenary work flinch.

               "That's the long and short of it," Forsythe said. "At least from my understanding. So you'll understand why I'm concerned by your sticking your arm into a blast furnace. You need to calculate your risks better seeing as how you're now playing for the full pot."

                Aries inhaled and bit down. There were two options here, she realized. Keep fighting this point and never get a field commission again... or just take the criticism on the snout like she was back in boot and do as they say.

               "You're right," she said, trying not to sound too stung. "I need to work on that. I just..."

               "I know. I know."

 

                 - - -

 

                Four months and two psyche evals later, Aries Passadar was cleared to return to active field duty.

WRITING PROMPT: COST

by Zucca

      Doc awoke much earlier this morning.  He and Zucca had rented a room at a discreet inn to keep tabs on a hard luck case Zucca seemed interested in helping at seemingly random.  As it was the off-season, Doc did not have any matches anytime soon and rolled with it, especially when Zucca said he would be key.  The ferrety smacked dry lips and leaned out of his bed.  Zucca had taken the one closer to the window.  “Water,” he croaked, standing and staggering past the room’s clock, whose LEDs signaled 5:12, towards the bathroom.  

      He opened the door and paused staring.

      Zucca’s “boots” were on the floor, linked together with a cable leading to an outlet, his chrome arm was sitting on the counter, linked to the same, and a hunk of metal with a dimly glowing blue eye rested beside it. Their triplegic owner sat on the counter and turned hi shead to look at Doc, allowing him to see the hollow cavity usually filled in by the metal faceplate and eye.

       Both men just stared in silence for a moment.

       “Oh, apologies.  Did you need to use the bathroom?” the maimed hybrid asked softly.

       “I’m sorry…!” Doc blurted.  He’d never seen the old man so vulnerable before, so helpless.  It was worse than if he’d walked in on his dropping a chocolate dragon off in the well.

        “No, no, it’s alright!  I’m sure they’re charged up now.  I was just lost in my thoughts,” Zucca smiled, flopping on his side and then lowering himself to the floor with the only limb he had, take the “boots” one by one and pulling them to his thighs, standing up on them, and inserting the metal arm into the shoulder jack before sliding his faceplate into the hollow space on the left side of his head. 

         “I, uh…just needed water,” Doc murmured softly, having not had a place of mind to ask if Zucca needed help or if asking would offend the Old Man since he had clearly found a way to be self-reliant in spite of the missing limbs.

          “Are you going to tell me someday how that happened…?” Doc asked.

          Zucca paused, the lenses in the synthetic eye whirring as the refocused.  “Someday,” he promised, patting Doc’s shoulder before padding past him and climbing into bed.

          Whose life cost you so much to save? Doc wanted to ask.  And why do you have to suffer so much?

          The water he poured was a city tap, complete with the medley of trace amounts of heavy metals, bits of pollutants and other unpleasant things… but in that moment it tasted like it came from the cascades in the Primordial Evergreens.

WRITING PROMPTS - TRAP

by Zucca

        Pyrodox frowned as he stood with his large, wide rear to cold steel wall behind him, his comparably short arms held up in the air.

        “Well, now.  The Church of Revenance will be very happy to pay whatever ransom we demand to get you back,” said his captor, one of several slender, effeminate reptiles, all males.

        All had weapons trained on him.

        “I’m sure they’d also love to hear that one of their own was soliciting hanky-panky from the likes of us!” another one giggled.

        Pyrodox scowled, rolling his eyes.  “I couldn’t be less interested,” he grumbled.

        “Oh, now, don’t be like that, honey.  I’m sure we can work something out,” the third one purred, trailing the tip of his weapon across the dragon slate-and-cerulean girth.

         Pyrodox could not conceal his intense disgust…

         …or the smirk that spread across his face.

         “What are you grinning at?” the lead reptilian lady-boy snipped.

         “You’ll want to drop your weapons.  One of my friends is very impatient, and the other wants to sermonize to you.  I’d wish neither of them on my worst enemy, much less common criminals like you,” Pyrodox chuckled mirthlessly.

          One of them cried out in shock as he let go of his own weapon, while another let out a “WHOOF!” as the air vacated his lungs from a swift punch, dropping his own implement.  When the leader spun around, Pyrodox darted out, snatching the gun from his hand.

          “See, I knew you’d be operating in this area.  Another friend of mine tracked you here.  We drew straws to see who would be the bait.  Zucca lost, but I vetoed that.  Nobody here knows him, nor Doc Mallory, for that matter.”

          The ferret and the alien hybrid stepped out of the shadows, slapping restraints on the leader’s colleagues.

          “Me, on the other hand, you’d do your homework on and wouldn’t be able to resist pulling your scam on.  But now we have you recorded, and the constabulary will be most interested in it.”

           The leader squeaked, spinning around.  “B-b-b-but…what if—we could—I just…!”  He took a breath and composed himself, hands feeling up Pyrodox’s enormous blue gut.  “Can’t we…work something out…?”

            CLICK.

            Handcuffs.

            The dragon smirked.  “Don’t flatter yourself.  See you in court, ‘honey.’”

            Zucca strode up to Pyrodox as Mallory shoved the three shysters out.  “You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

            The dragon ran an antiseptic wipe where he’d been touched.  

            “You’re damned right I did.”