I was thinking that. Like... up until the last sentence, it's just Megamind.

As the giant robot sentry lumbered out of the cell, I stretched out on the surprisingly comfortable bed to wait for dinner. My captor always insisted on the finest furnishings and cuisine, even for his perpetual prisoner.

Though the kidnappings were an inconvenience, a small part of me had come to look forward to these forced getaways from my ordinary lonely life. My apartment was so quiet and routine, day after day passing with little change or company. But here, I had Vilhelm's undivided attention, as dramatic and over-the-top as it might be. There was a thrill in wondering what new technological terror or scheme they had devised, a comfort in the predictability of their theatrical pontifications about foolish heroes and impending doom. I never feared the threats or traps because escape was never the point for Vilhelm. Only the performance.

Perhaps it was ironic that only by being repeatedly kidnapped did I gain a sense of connection with someone else, even if through overblown artifice. While the masked introductions were unnecessary repetitions, dropping my usual objections might ruin the fun for my captor. Vilhelm lived for crafting elaborate spectacles, and I for once had a role to play. The playacting was more than the nothing waiting back in my apartment, where the hours were undefined and spider mecha did not skitter across the floor on cue.

Still, after months of dramatics, I wondered what might happen if I convinced Vilhelm to unmask and step out of character for a normal conversation. To speak face to face not as captor and captive but as two people who had spent so much time enacting this strange ritual together. Perhaps without the pretense between us, my apartment would not seem so lonely or the days so quiet. But that might land me back there with only silence awaiting, this reprieve from the ordinary lost for good.

Was it time to shatter the illusion, or keep my usual objections unvoiced? For now, as another impressive dinner arrived, I would see how the performance unfolded. Real life could wait while scheming henchmen took their cues and threats of doom swelled anew. If playing prop to Vilhelm's plans granted nights of activity and company otherwise lacking, so be it. The world outside could always come calling soon enough.

This prompt is actually pretty nice, wholesome even

Original Female characters! Not my best work - I'm on AO3, VNiceBish, go check me out! Not really edited 😜

I let laughter bubble out of my chest. Disbelief covered my features as I look down at the letter. Surely it was a prank, most likely from my sister. As soon as I would open it, glittery pink glitter would shoot out and Mindy would jump oit of my closet, tripping on my shoes or pulling shirts off their hangers.

I bit my lip subconsciously, hesitating as I look down t the letter. It was stupid to believe in Santa, anyway. The letter had mostly been for show for my little siblings, and so my parents knew what to get.

It had to be a prank of sorts. "This isn't funny, Mindy," I mumbled, dropping the letter. I trudge over to the closet and pull open the door. It's empty. Under my bed, empty. Bathroom, hallway, each and every crevice is empty.

My heart beats wildly as I turn back to the letter. It has to be a prank, why else would I receive a letter from bloody Satan?

I shove my concerns away, I had to stop being such a baby. I rip the letter in my haste to open the letter and curse as I receive a paper cut.

"F-"

"ANNA!"

I jump, dropping the letter on the ground. I place my foot over the letter and turn to my door as my mum burst through. "Will you take out the trash before your dad gets home?"

"Yeah, of course mum."

She blinks at my easy acceptance, and though I was a little insulted, it made since as I usually argue that Mindy could do it just as easily as I could.

"Alright, and clean this room. It looks like a tornados been through!"

I roll my eyes as she shuts the door and sigh in relief, leaning down to grab the letter.

I sit down at my desk, grabbing scissors. Time to get this over with.

I carefully cut the seal and open the letter-

Only to get covered in glittery pink glitter.

"MINDY HOWARD!"

Woo!

Ehh, not really but i get whatcha mean

Pirate Sorcerer, please.

Is the twist going to be people don't believe in him anymore so he lost all of his power?

A narcoleptic necromancer?

I think this is kinda the plot of Megamind.

Lol oops I misspelled it

I'd call that a "window".

Just a brief moment, short, sweet, and rather mundane.

I loved it

Thank you for letting me post this time. I finally figured out how. 😁

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Rock and stone!

He had a gold one but lost it in a bet. So sad.

Autocorrect did you dirty at the end of the first paragraph, feel like it should be files instead of flies.

Or maybe you were just practicing your chopstick fly catching skills for a Karate Kid reenactment.

Anyhow great short story!

You've heard about this one. They say he's immortal. That he can shape shift, influence others' minds, and even shoot lighting out of his fingertips.

They say that other bounty hunters have gone after him before. None have even made it back alive, much less with the bounty.

They say all this and end it with "we want him alive."

You know it's a bad job. Normally you wouldn't take it. But you're strapped for cash. The last 3 jobs didn't pay out and you're getting desperate. Desperate enough to take a sketchy job.

You pull together the last of your funds for the trip. You don't have enough but eventually a sleazy barge captain offers you passage in exchange for a cut of the bounty. It's either this or nothing, so you accept.

You don't have enough money left over for ammo, which is ok since you have to take the bounty alive. You don't have enough money left over for armor, which is less ok, considering the lightning thing.

You have just enough money left over for one vial of Star-Whale tranquilizer. Ever since Star-Whales were hunted to extinction, the stuff has been super cheap; even a small amount of Star-Whale tranq is enough to kill pretty much anything smaller than the beasts, which includes but is not limited to small planets.

You hope that what they said about him being immortal was true.

Four days of crappy cooking, less-than-stellar living conditions, and listening to the barge captain tell you about all the crimes he has committed (you almost consider capturing the captain, instead. Alas, no bounty) you finally arrive.

Your target has chosen a back-water planet to live on. Apparently, the local civilization is hundreds of years away from space travel. A guide book you picked up says the civilization is in the "Bronze Age." You find out that that means the civilization uses bronze tools.

No wonder your target chose this planet. As an immortal being living in a civilization that doesn't even know space exists, he must be treated as a god or something. That would be the life, you think. You bet gods don't have to pick up sketchy jobs out of desperation. You think they probably give out sketchy jobs for fun.

The barge captain lets you borrow the landing craft. It barely makes it through the atmosphere. You land in a forest and hide the craft with branches. After the atmosphere, you're worried that the weight of the foliage might break the craft forever.

Your target lives on a mountain. The tallest mountain in the area, in fact. It takes you half a day to walk from the craft to the base of the mountain, another day-and-a-half to climb it. You arrive at the false peak, where they said he would be, in a state of near exhaustion. You have nowhere to rest: the false peak is above tree-line and it is windy! This job sucks, you think. At this point, you believe, death would be a good option.

You find him sitting on a rock at the apex of the false peak. He faces away from you, staring intently towards the peak.

He is not what you expected. He is old, almost ancient. Long, white hair and tangled beard. Skinny, frighteningly so. Skin clinging desperately to bone. His eyes are white: he is blind.

"Zeus?" You ask in confusion...

To be continued when I figure out how to end it

Artistic Paladin

[removed]

Beautiful.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* No AI-generated reponses 🤖 >* Stories 100 words+. Poems 30+ but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* [RF] and [SP] for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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"Right!" the bearded human bellowed into the crowded cantina, his impractically hefty warhammer resting on his shoulder. "I come tae drink alcohol an' hit things wi' a giant FECK-OFF hammer, and I dinnae give two shites which one I do first, so ye best bring on th' bloody booze!"

Behind him, a half-dozen other similarly bearded and attired humans raised their weapons in the air and roared their hearty assent.

Krenzik the Naxor bartender gaped at the humans in astonishment for only a moment, before hastily dispatching a serving drone to escort them to a table and take their drink orders, lest they make good on their threat to start breaking things.

He knew that many species were comprised of multiple markedly different cultures, but all of the humans he'd met previously had seemed fairly civilized, unlike this raucous and heavily armed group.

"I will be right back with your order, sir." The serving drone said to one of the humans, in flawless Terran. The human responded by slamming a hammer into the side of it, leaving it with a sizeable dent.

"Ah'm a WOMAN, ye daft bucket o' bolts!" the human shouted, in the higher-pitched voice common to females of their species. She pointed to her long flowing beard, which Krenzik had previously thought was definitely not common in females of the species, and added, "Did ye nae see the FECKIN' PINK RIBBON IN ME DELICATE FEMININE BEARD?!"

The other humans erupted in laughter and cheers, as the drone hovered away unsteadily to retrieve the humans' drink order.

Krenzik wrung several of his hands nervously, as he watched the humans out of the corner of his upper eye, suddenly unable to remember if their species considered eye contact friendly of threatening. As he tried to look anywhere but at the loud and boisterous humans, just in case, he noticed Kizro, a fellow Naxor and regular at the cantina, seated a short distance away at the bar.

"Kizro!" he hissed, leaning close to the other Naxor. "You're a Xenologist, right?"

Kizro looked up from his bowl of intoxijelly, blearily. A few bits of the gelatnious substance clung to his siphon as he pulled it from the bowl to speak. "Huh? Yeah, that's right. Why?"

"What the deal with those humans? Are they some different culture we haven't seen on station before? Or a subspecies? That female human has face-fur!" Krenzik whispered.

Kizro glanced over at the humans, then laughed. "Oh! Nah. Those are just regular humans."

"No they're not!" Krenzik insisted. "A whole group was in yesterday, and none of them were carrying battle-axes!"

Kizro's siphon rippled with a tipsy chortle. "Nah, see, that's the thing. This is kind of a...a demonstration."

"Of what?"

Kizro jiggled his tendrils in the negative. "It's not demonstrating anything, it's a demonstration -- like, you know, a protest."

"What are they protesting in my cantina?" Krenzik demanded.

"It's nothing personal, more a general thing. See, last week, the Galactic Confederation came out with a summary of important sentient species in the Alpha Spiral Arm, and so the humans got a mention." Kizro explained.

"So? That's a good thing, isn't it? Aren't they always saying the GC doesn't take them seriously enough?" Krenzik asked.

"Kinda, except it was a short mention. Really short. It was just one sentence, in fact: 'Sol 3 is home to humans, a short, hirsute mammalian species of exceptional craftsmen and miners who are known for their love of rare ores and gemstones.'"

"Kind of terse, I guess." Krenzik said, with a slight wince. "So they're upset about that?"

"Yeah, so I gather." Kizro agreed. "They said it made them sound like some whimsical creatures from their species' mythology: Dorbs, or Dorgs, or something? Little hairy miner guys with a lot of face fur that love hammers, if memory serves."

"And that's supposed to prove they're not like that?" Krenzik said, gesturing to the increasingly boisterous group.

The other Naxor jiggled noncommittally. "It's a human cultural practice, I don't fully understand the reasoning behind it. They call it 'leaning in to the bit' or 'yes-and' -- I think it's supposed to be some kind of...I dunno, a rebuttal via satire, maybe?"

Krenzik was about to ask another question, when suddenly the humans raised their voices together in song:

...TO DIG AND DIG MAKES US FREE,

COME ON BROTHERS SING WITH ME!

I am a Dwarf,

and I'm digging a hole!

Diggy-diggy hole,

diggy-diggy hole!

Krenzik looked on in horror as the bearded female human climbed up on a table with one of the even-more-bearded males, and they linked arms and started dancing in a circle, heedless of the creaking of the tabletop under their boots.

Kizro drunkenly bobbed his head to the song. "Oh yeah! Dwarf! That's what it was."

“Hey, Leo, you know about dwarves?” I asked as I walked up to his workstation, where Leo was hunched over, absorbed in his work

Leo’s hunched back unfurled and his head turned to me as he pulled away from his most recent work. It was a circular object with thin lines inside and insanely detailed contraptions, with segmented “legs” on two sides. “Dwarves? The fairytale type?” He responded, his voice dry and gruff. “Bingo! Just the thing,” I said cheerfully, “the craftsman-miner-people”. “What about ‘em?” Leo questioned, “I wanna get back to my watch.” “Well,” I heeded, “aren’t you pesky human types the dwarves of the universe?” Leo’s face flushed and illustrated a confusing composure of amusement and anger alluded by the assortment of reds and pinks on his face. Amazingly, his face stayed relatively the same, except for a faint smile. He seemed taken-aback, positively flustered, but that was exactly what I expected. After a second, instead of feeling indignation, anger, or anything of that sort, he put on a mischievous grin. “Yeah, I suppose we are. I can’t be talking, at the very least.”

“Told you so.”

////

Here’s my author’s notes I guess. I didn’t really know what to do so I chose to do a little “slice of life” instead of some crazy action-packed sequence (though now the idea is totally in my head!!!! Ugh!!). I really liked the alliteration but maybe it was too forced? Either way, hope you enjoyed!

-you must take Olli on walks

-you must love Olli

-you mustn't get Olli wet

-you mustn't feed Olli after midnight