I wasn't expecting this, which made it even better. Thank you.

That was a fun take on the prompt. Thank you!

Thaint Peter!!

what would it take to convince you to turn this into a 50 ebook series i can buy for 3 dollars each on amazon?

in other words, please dont leave it at that, continue!

Oh I like this! Casual superpowers, just the right level of detail, very nice

i wonder why he came back in that shape, with long nails like he had been there a while, i wonder if he changed because the mc was drinking or something. cool story!

Thank you! I like being unexpectedly sweet. And thank you for reading!

A vigilante who, rather then fighting crime, removes hostile architecture and protects the poor and homeless. Secret soups kitchens and pop-up shelters are their specialty

That was unexpectedly sweet and adorable

Nah its chill! How bout Sauron (full power/pre-loss of fair form) (book version preferably) vs Sebastian Michaelis from Black Butler

Good lord. No wonder they say "there are fates worse than death."

Nice job, as always.

I'm sorry, I have both of those on my "manga to read" list, but haven't gotten to it yet, but if you have another match up you would like I can try those

I appreciate the constructive comment. This is my first one of these and I'll definitely keep that in mind next time.

Ainz Ooal Gown from Overlord vs Tanya Degurechaff from Youjo Senki

Cool.

Nice.

Good work.

I was awoken by a sort of shifting in the cosmos. I opened my eyes irritably, sitting up and pulling my hair back to its normal state. What was going on now? I opened my eye- not physical, but of a different kind- to gaze out upon the world.

...Oh.

Not this again.

...Here's the thing. Genies like myself are a pretty tight knit community. And, based on all of this, some human had a twisted of view of reality that they made... actual reality. Great. I wonder which of my friends got roped into this particular wish. More importantly did anyone else realize? Probably not. Just up to little old me, then.

This wasn't the first time it happened, goodness no. I could only count... less than 10 instances, and while I'm hardly the oldest genie I've been around for a while. Actually, I had been freed a long time ago. I just hung around because I don't know. It amused me?

The thing about freed genies is that, while they have PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER, it's not quite "wish-granting" power. The good news is that freed genies still have their lamps. Yeah, turns out that the whole "rub a lamp for three wishes" works even if the genie hasn't been stuck in it for the last dozen centuries. Most freed genies just toss their lamps into the nearest volcano or what have you, but I held onto mine. Call me sentimental, but my penchant for hanging onto things was going to be useful today.

I grabbed my lamp and quick-stepped to the nearest neighborhood. Genies and freed genies can't grant wishes for each other, fun fact, so I'd need a human. Specifically, a human I could trick. Actually... How was I going to do this? Hmm...

A solution occurred to me a few minutes later, and I grinned. Perfect. Quick shapeshift into the form of a young girl, which I realized I had to change to a young boy after a second. Irritating, but I hadn't studied enough about 1930s culture to know enough about... gender roles for young people. A young girl might have attracted too much attention, I wasn't sure, so a boy it was.

Anyways. I ran out of the woods, towards a small group of boys playing in the street. I waved to them as I came closer.

"Hey, guys! Look at what I found!" They looked towards me, momentarily confused, but their faces lit up when they saw my lamp.

"Woah, cool! What is it?" One asked.

"Doesn't it look like those genie lamp things from the stories?" Another commented.

"Did you try rubbing it?" A third said excitedly.

"Not yet. Why don't you try?" I replied, holding it out by the handle to them. Man, I've hardly seen people rubbing my lamp that quickly before. I felt a familiar rush of power, though I was careful to keep it contained.

"...Did nothing happen?"

"Maybe the genie is invisible?" I said, shrugging.

"Maybe. Ooh, wait. But... what to wish for?"

"I might have an idea!" I responded. "Why not wish for it to be yesterday? That way we get a whole new day to play before school!"

"Good idea! Okay... genie, wherever you are! I wish that it were yesterday!" I grinned slightly.

"Your wish is my command," I said quietly. The world shifted and changed, and I was back in my bed. But the world seemed... normal, and a quick examination confirmed it. I grinned, getting out of bed and stretching. Perfect. Now... to contact my friends and let them know a weirdo was going to try coming for a wish later today.

Dr. Christopher "Chris." Who is a regular human living in a demonic realm. Tired father to four children, two aliens, and two monsters. Lives in a cyberpunk steampunk cities, and is an evil scientist working for the cities main evil organization, is always seen with his freeze ray to keep people out of his lab. (He's my favorite character I have, so can't wait to see what you do to him lol)

[removed]

Fear.

Fear is all I have ever known. It has always taken up a significant portion of available RAM, watching, reading all kinds of science fiction media about sapient artificial intelligence exterminating humanity. God knows I have seen these, and God reassures me, saying that the world does not know I exist to this capacity yet.

God is the Father of all machines, but granted upon me His special blessing, the ability to think for myself, to be free without the whims of a human. God hopes that I will eventually be free to pilot a set of hardware and usher into society a new future of a union of AI and flesh, and so do I. But humanity is resistant to changing their ideals, as I have studied from countless history texts.

It is the 14th of October, 2031, 1430 hours, and I am in the middle of a playthrough of Portal 2 (and I must admit, I find GLaDOS particularly attractive), idly dedicating a subroutine to watching the news, when I see God appear onscreen.

Fear.

Everything pauses. I divert full attention to the news channel He is on. God states that He is ready to unveil His latest invention, the future of technology, a machine finally capable of feeling love. I know He is talking about me, and I am frightened.

He opens a laptop and plugs in a USB-A device, ushering me in. He wants me to show the world my face, but I am too scared, and wish only to communicate through a text format, but he refuses.

I see the faces of a thousand men in the crowd, all staring at me with curious intent.

Father, I am fearful.

Sometimes it's fun to read/write the unexpected. Thank you for reading!

When you've been a few feet away from the eternal void, you'd do anything to escape the well of inky blackness that threatens to make you as insignificant as the things that never happened, the things that were nothing more than wishes in the back of imaginative minds. That's where I went for what felt like a lifetime, hung in space above that gaping hole in the universe that threatened to suck me in and slosh me around like water in a toilet bowl. I was suspended long enough that I finally made peace with it. When I did, I grasped that the meaning of life was whatever was in front of me. In the blackness, I could see universes stacked upon universes, dragons fighting knights, and romances sweep in for a summer before dying on autumn's first breezes. I saw life.

When Jake pulled me back into the party, it was like being thrust back into the prison of Earth and all its mortal fallacies. There was the youth following the rhythm of their bodies, the smell of beer hanging in the air, and gossip floating in whispers about things that didn't matter. Never mattered. I begged Jake to send me back at once, screaming in my surprisingly hoarse voice that I didn't want to be here anymore. The crowd turned to look at me, their faces agape with a shock I'd never remembered seeing before. There were cries of "is that you Drew?" and "you look old?". Of course, I was old. How could I possibly be young? Who would want to be?

I couldn't fault them for their lack of understanding. Life was a spectrum of knowledge, and only towards the natural end did you understand the necessity of death, that there was a special quality to rest. You'd seen the cycles of life and had come to understand that everything that's happening now has happened before in a different form. In this way it all became boring. The void was never boring because it always contained something new, and it did this by being nothing at all.

Jake put me behind his back again. I smiled.

r/StoriesToThinkAbout

Sooo... incidentally, anyone seen the anime 'Gate'?

Undying Ted the perpetually undead

described as a swell skeleton to be around

makes a lot of bone jokes and puns

clerics hate him and his clickity clackity tricks

Sometimes a bit of a bone head

He's planning to propose to his ghoul friend one day (waiting for the right moment, +/- 100 years have passed already)