It might be my self destructive tendencies

But I love you

You hurt me and I coming back

Instead of putting up the boundaries I have been told would be good for me.

You stick your rotten and old too

but I keep coming back to you

I don;t know why I still eat cheese

Once upon a time, in a land far away, lived a beautiful princess. The beautiful princess was charming and kind, and when she was 15, her family sent her away to a temple to learn, as all young princesses do. The temple was beautiful, and the princess loved to walk along the beautiful beach just a stones' throw away.

One day, on her daily walk along the shore, she came across a handsome young man, lying unconscious in the sand. She stayed with him as her maids went to fetch help, and once he was safely within the temple walls, she tirelessly nursed him back to health.

The princess fell in love with the young man, but she was called back to her home. As a woman, she was heartbroken, but as a princess, she knew her duty, so she returned. She was heartbroken and dismayed when she learned that she was called back to be wed. In a year's time, she would be forced to leave her home behind and marry someone she'd never met. She wept for her lost love and spent all of her time cherishing every moment spent in her kingdom.

When the time came, she went with a heavy heart, but joyous occasion, her young man from the temple's shore was the prince she was to marry! They both boarded the wedding ship flushed with love and promised eternity to each other before God. All seemed well, but alas, tragedy struck that very night.

The princess awoke to her prince dead in their wedding bed, his throat slit and the sheets soaked in blood. Her screams awoke the whole ship, but fear for the princess quickly became rage. She was accused, slandered as a siren who enticed and murdered her husband in cold blood for the sake of her kingdom. Others sympathized, she was but a sacrificial lamb, naught but a tool to further her kingdom's power.

In the end, war broke out between the two countries. A senseless war that produced countless dead. A war that raged until at last, the family of the murdered prince conquered their neighbor and quenched their thirst for vengeance with blood.

No one ever realized that the last they had seen of the prince's beautiful and silent companion had been on his wedding day.

Wouldn't this just be A Christmas Carol?

“You’re just a penguin, we don’t do flying,” said the elder.

What did he know. All that old rockbreeder ever did in his life was eat fish and caw. Rocket had dreams and ambitions. He had always been fascinated by that giant round egg in the sky and wondered what kind of penguin would emerge if only someone could reach and hatch it. He had asked his parents if anyone had ever tried and they told him to focus on diving lessons and eat enough fish to become a big and strong bird. Later, when Rocket was one of the better divers in his age group, he had told his peers about his dream to hatch the big egg in the sky. All they did was burst out in ridiculing cawing and they told him that he was of his rocker. However that did not deter Rocket from realizing his dream.

One day, during a particularly cold period, where the sea formed sheets of ice as far as the horizon, Rocket had found a cave made out of rotting wood. His parents had told him that these caves were made by naked monkeys, who inverted them to float all across the seas, for they were mediocre swimmers. In this cave he had found something odd. A collection of wet thin wooden sheets, bound together in something that looked like the skin of a really old walrus. The sheets had pictures of the giant egg in the sky and naked monkeys in a pod, connected to the longest piece of wood Rocket had ever seen. It was as long as all the penguins in his waddle if they would lay down head to tail. Rocket cawed at the image of that in his mind. Further pictures showed the pod slinging around the middle where the long piece of wood was secured. They looked to be going faster than Rocket could ever swim and he was the fastest swimmer that the elder said he had ever seen. When Rocket had reached the last picture, he found what he didn’t know he was looking for. The pod was send flying off into the sky right towards the giant egg. Left in awe, Rocket made sure that the pictures were imprinted into his little penguin brain. This was how he would get to the sky egg and proof his waddle wrong.

Rocket had been collecting wood for over three breeding seasons. Mostly from more of those wooden caves that would strand in the ice once in a while. Or the remains of those caves on the bottom of the sea, when he had time to collect it when the others were busy fishing. He’d spend countless nights connecting all the pieces, assisted by the light cast onto him by the egg in the sky. As if it knew that it would finally be hatched if Rocket could get this thing to work. When he had finally finished the pod and constructed everything outside on a remote and desolated stretch of ice, he was confident enough to tell the others.

“What do you mean, you’ll fly and proof us wrong?” asked his mother.

“Don’t entertain him, honey. He should focus on getting a partner and breed his own nestlings.” said his dad.

“But you don’t get it. I know it’s going to work!” yelled Rocket.

His dad looked at him with a worried expression. He knew his dad would understand, if only he saw it for himself. His dad had been considered a dreamer once. That was until the previous elder had humiliated him in front of the rest of the waddle. From then on his dad had been an exemplary penguin who never faltered in his duties. Sometimes, late at nigh, he would speak about his dreams to Rocket, while looking at the sky egg and in those moments Rocket could hear the sadness in his fathers voice.

“Dad. Just invite everyone to watch. If it fails, I’ll give up and find a partner and I’ll even double my fishing duties for the rest of the waddle. Just give me this one chance, to proof that it can be done!” pleaded Rocket.

“Fine. I’ll ask around, but don’t expect too much. I’m only doing this because you’re my son. Not because I believe in all this flying nonsense.” said his dad.

Rocket knew that that was a lie. His father did believe in him, he could feel it.

It was actually sunny, the day that almost everyone had gathered to see Rocket do the impossible. This made it all the more easy for Rocket because the slightly melted ice would accelerate his pod even better. When he waddled in front of the gathering he gestured everyone to be quiet with his flippers and as the cacophony died down it was time for the last piece of the puzzle.

Rocket walked up a hill some way from the place where he had secured his device. At the top of the hill, he had rolled and secured a giant boulder. It had taken him ages to get the thing up there and more than once it had rolled down that same hill and almost squashed Rockets dream there and then. Eventually he had secured it in place with a piece of wood that was left over from his apparatus. With a deep breath Rocket looked toward the horizon and lifted his gaze up to where the giant egg in the sky was faintly visible. With a jump on the piece of wood, the rock came down and crushed the ice below with loud noise and a splash of seawater from underneath almost reached the waddle that had followed his actions with amusement and scepticism. After the wave retreated back into the sea, a giant piece of ice stuck out sharply into the sky. This would serve as the ramp that would launch Rocket into space.

Rocket bowed before his audience and even though he was met with the familiar ridiculing cawing as before he thanked everyone for coming. He turned around and walked towards the pod. He opened the hatch that would give him entry inside and sat down on the makeshift cushion he fashioned from fluffs of baby seal fur he had found while building. He closed the hatch and pushed the button that would start the spinning.

The wood creaked ominously when the device started moving and the crowd had moved from cawing loudly to quiet whispers as they watched with confusion. With each rotation the apparatus moved faster and in no time the pod carrying Rocket was moving to fast that it was hard to keep track with your eyes. Rocket was pressed hard into the back of his seat and he had to push down the nausea, as vomiting while taking flight wouldn’t be a great look for a new-born hero. The story everyone would tell to their nestlings would be one of heroism and determination, not one of vomit and laughter.

When the pod was rotating so fast that Rocket could see nothing but a blend white and the occasional black he knew it was time to launch. He pulled the lever and the pod was catapulted with a speed that no penguin had ever witnessed. The pod barrelled towards the ice ramp and as it slid down the slick white surface, Rocket made one last salute to his fellow penguin-kind. The pod shot off the ramp into space, starting its travel towards the big white egg in the sky and as his waddle watched him fly, Rocket knew that he had accomplished his dream and with that last fleeting thought he slid into a satisfying slumber.

A man in a white lab coat tossed another henchman across the concrete floor. Seven in total were rolling around in agony, staring up at the high cavern walls of their bosses' lair. The man responsible for their pain was none other than Dr. Phillian. He was a young practicing doctor at St. Vinci's Hospital and moonlighted as a hero. His rage was more consuming than the acne on his face, but he had mercy on the henchmen. They were not the reason for his anger nor were they worth his energy. There was only one he wished to release his full wrath upon.

"Stenson! Come out and face me like a man!"

Stenson watched from his surveillance room as the hero trashed his lair and more henchmen came rushing to receive their own beating. He pushed his thin frame glasses up his nose and turned to the henchman on his right.

"Why would my nemesis come to my lair? Did we do something to him?"

"I don't think so, sir."

"This is between you and me! Let my girlfriend go!" Dr. Phillian shouted and kicked the last charging henchman in the groin.

Stenson and the henchman by his side winced at the last blow they watched from the monitors. Dr. Phillian meant business and stormed off to a blindspot.

"Girlfriend? I never captured anyone. Did you, Jeffrey?"

"No sir…"

At the same moment, they came to the same realization and slowly turned around to a young blonde teenager who gave them a nervous smile. She sat in her chair, trying not to fidget too much.

"Ellen, do you know Dr. Phillian?"

"Doctor who? Phillipian? Nope. Can't say I have. Why would you think that?" Ellen tried her best to not let her voice get all high pitched and guilty.

"Ellen," Stenson said sternly.

She began to sweat and looked over to Jeffrey who crossed his arms in disapproval. Ellen knew she was busted.

"You know, I'm thirsty. Jeffrey, can you get us something to drink?"

"Not until you tell us why that lunatic is wrecking your father's lair."

She gasped. "Daddy, you're going to let your henchman talk to me like that?"

Stenson stepped forward. "Jeffrey is family and his question is valid. What did you do?"

Shoot, that didn't work. Better drag this out. "Soooo…I maybe…kinda–"

"Damn it, Ellen. You're not pregnant, are you?"

"What? No! Jeez Dad. He's just a guy I flirt with sometimes."

"He seems to think it is more than that."

That was when Ellen was hit with a stroke of genius. She got up, strutted over to the monitor, and pointed to Dr. Phillian on the screen. "Do I look like the kind of girl who would be with that? His whole face is covered in acne."

She shivered to sell it better, but if she was being honest, his acne was the best part. It gave his face texture and character. A man with flaws who was bold enough to not hide behind makeup. She was not that strong, but he never made her feel that way. Ellen removed her finger from the screen, realizing she was trying to feel those beautiful bumps through the glass.

"And besides, he never said my name. It could be anybody."

"Ellen, hold on! I'm coming for you!" Dr. Phillian declared, going up a flight of stairs.

Stenson and Jeffrey glared at her. Her ruse was up and they demanded the truth. Ellen hung her head down in defeat. There was no more delaying the inevitable.

"Okay, fine. You caught me. I was dating him."

Jeffrey quirked his eyebrow. "Was?"

Ellen realized there was a lot they didn't know, but she wasn't so keen on letting them in on her love life. She decided the less they knew, the better.

"I've never broken up with a hero before, so I thought the best way to do it was to leave a ransom letter."

The smack from Stenson facepalming himself echoed in the room. He couldn't believe his own daughter would do something so boneheaded. Ransom letters were for high value people, not for superhero girlfriends. It gave the wrong kind of attention and left few possible culprits, especially since it was his nemesis.

"Why can't you break up with someone like a normal person?" Stenson strained to ask.

She crossed her arms and stuck out her hip. "Why can't you just follow the law?"

"He's at the door." Jeffrey marched toward the solid metal door and grabbed Ellen's purse on the ground.

"Hey!" Ellen said.

"Ellen! I'm coming!"

Jeffrey ignored both of them and pulled out the pepper spray. He pressed the big blue button to open the door. The door swished open and Dr. Phillian only got one step in before getting a face full of eye burning spray. He flopped around on the floor while Ellen rushed to his side.

"Chuck, are you okay?" Ellen asked, laying her hands on him.

"My eyes. It hurts so bad," he said.

Ellen ran her fingers along his bumpy face and touched his eyes. The pain went away like a toilet being flushed. He gazed up at her, glad to see her alive and well.

Jeffrey saw Dr. Phillian's eyes cleared up and got ready to spray him again. He did not anticipate the doctor's speed, who kicked the can out of his hands from the ground. Dr. Phillian got up and twirled Ellen behind him.

"Run. I'll take care of these two."

"Ellen," Stenson said. "Are you going to explain this or will I have to?"

Dr. Phillian didn't take his eyes off Stenson. "What's he talking about, Ellen?"

"I don't know. Let's just go." Ellen tried pulling on him, but he stayed put. It was the wrong move.

"I never sent you a ransom note." Stenson pointed to Ellen. "My daughter still has a lot to learn about breaking up with someone."

Dr. Phillian froze. "Your daughter?"

"Yeah. I'm not surprised you don't see the resemblance. She got everything from her mother, including her dumb ideas."

Dr. Phillian slowly turned around to face her. She wore a wounded smile, but the betrayal cut deeper. All the lies had piled up and struck him where he was most vulnerable. His heart.

"You–you lied to me..."

"I didn't mean to."

"How can I believe that? You have lied to me constantly."

Jeffrey walked over to Stenson and whispered in his ear. "Should we give them some space?"

"Nope. She made this mess. I want to see how she cleans it up."

Ellen leaned in and placed her hand on Dr. Phillian's cheek. "I promise. No more lies from here on in."

Dr. Phillian moved her hand away. "Is your father telling the truth? About you wanting to break up with me?"

"I did, but I don't want to anymore. You're a good man. Better than anyone else in my life. I couldn't do better than you and I see that now."

"What other lies have you told me that I should know?"

"I don't know. If you have something in mind, just ask. Let me prove I'm serious."

"Did you tell him you're only seventeen?" Stenson asked.

Dr. Phillian looked over his shoulder and then back at her. "You said you were in college."

"I'm taking college classes. It's basically the same thing."

Dr. Phillian grunted and stormed off.

"Wait! I can explain." Ellen chased after him, leaving her heels clicking against the stone floor. Stenson's smile slowly grew until he bursted out laughing. Jeffrey was far less amused.

"Aren't you worried about your teenage daughter dating an older man?"

Stenson slapped his knee and tried to stop his laughter to answer. "She's not dating him any more."

"What if he took advantage of her?"

"I know my daughter. If anything, she took advantage of him. Heck, if she did sleep with him, I could get him thrown in prison for a few years. Could you imagine the kind of damage I could accomplish without him interfering?"

"You are a terrible dad."

"Well, she is a terrible daughter. Maybe one day we'll figure it out. Until then, go send someone to check out his place. If we can find any evidence, we will want to use it," Stenson said and whirled around to watch his daughter frantically chase after her former lover like a deer on ice. "She runs just like her mother."

"You recognize some of us, don't you, boy?" A gravely voice hissed at me from behind, making me whirl around to see a face weathered by age, one eye covered by a black eyepatch, the other's faded green color still managing to give me a sharp, stern gaze. The force of his voice and his look in my direction was enough to keep me silent, though I couldn't help but answer him with a quiet nod.

He exhaled softly in amusement, a metal hand gripping harder on a cane keeping him upright. "Does it surprise you, seeing our kind paying respects? Your grandfather was a good man, much to our consternation back in the days of our prime." He stroked his chin in thought, quietly reminiscing of moments long past. "I lost count of how many bank robberies and spying missions he managed to foil. For someone with barely any powers, he made good use of what he had..."

He walked a little past me, gazing first at the closed coffin and where it would be lowered into the ground, then at some of the others gathered around, some as old as my grandfather, others much younger. "Blue Baron, Darksider, Colonel Copperhead...there's some faces I haven't seen in ages. Then you have the new blood...Hyperdeath and Killjoy...hrm." It felt like he had more to say about some of the ones he recognized outside of their more villainous and recognizable appearance, but thought otherwise after another glance towards the future grave site.

"Your grandfather inspired a lot, you know. Some of us reformed or retired, but other times he inspired us to do our damnedest to try and win, even if we never could outplay the clever bastard." He said, a raspy chuckle forming before he cut it off with a cough and a clearing of his throat. "I'd say some of these young ones were inspired by watching us go at it, even if their egos wouldn't admit it."

"That's just the kind of person he was, wasn't it? Whether hero or villain, watching him in action made you wanna give it your all. So it makes sense most of us would pay our respects to someone like that, eh?"

I guess it made sense, but still, to think that most of the people here were villains of some kind made it a rather awkward feeling.

"Well, those 'heroes' will be busy with public appearances and secret identities and whatnot; those get in the way of being somewhere important. Besides, a hero has a plethora of villains dedicated to them, but for a villain, you often only have the one main rival in your life, two if you're lucky."

He turned away from me and started to traipse away with a slow, tired gait. "Whatever you think of us and our histories, know this, son...your grandfather was a shining beacon of good faith. And if he had this many enemies brought from his good deeds...just think about how many heroes he's inspired."

A Lactose intolerant person who loves eating cheese

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Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it 😁

This was wonderful! Really good writing!

Soooooo..... the whole world is on drugs now, but it's safe and has no addictive features? That doesn't sound to bad.

Discussion:

This is a great idea for a prompt I love it. Thanks OP.

The captain walked over to the main view port in the atrium. A large, reinforced, glass half dome that looked out at the 'front'of the ship. MedFive joined her.

"MedFive, I told you to look after the crew." The captain said, annoyed. She did not want the AI anywhere near her at the moment.

"I understand, captain. But I have to notify you about something urgent."

"What is it now?"

"The agents are coming to collect."

"What are you saying now, MedFive?" The captain asked, thinking more and more that the AI had lost its mind. Had they truly died? Or was this AI too far gone?

"As I said before, captain, the rituals came with certain costs. Sacrifices. The four resource units-"

"People!" The captain corrected MedFive.

"Yes, apologies. The four crew members were only part of the cost."

"What do you mean MedFive, part of the cost? What more is there to pay. We are alive and well."

"Yes, well. The ritual is clear in that there is a secondary cost to be paid. It is rather unclear in the how and what, aside of, that agents would come to collect it. The text was a bit cryptic."

"For God's sake, MedFive, what cost? What agents?"

"It said; For thee resurectee, thee shall pay, the price eternal. Servitude. Bow down thy knee, deeper than thy soul, for thyne new lord. Sermons of black, prayers of dread. None thee shall free. Our servitor will cometh, our servitor will gather. Thyne soul is void, thyne corpus ours."

The captain looked at MedFive for a solid few seconds before starting to laugh. The kind of laugh you had when you were close to a nervous breakdown.

"MedFive, that is clearly poppycock. Some superstitious mumbo jumbo. Ignore it."

"This was still there after my analysis, captain. This gives it a very high possibility of being true."

"Ignore it. There are no great forces at work here. You have somehow tapped into some law of nature humanity had not yet discovered. We will explore it now, and master it. Like we always do."

"Yes, but captain-"

"No, MedFive, end of discussion!"

"Yes, but please look, captain." MedFive said as it pointed one of its new appendages up to the viewport.The captain looked up, and let out a deep, terrifying scream. She could feel her sanity slowly peel itself off from her mind. Like the skin of an onion falling off over time.

Up there, in space, in front of the Incandescent, was a rupture in the very fabric of time and space. Swirling energies of deep purple colours with lilac lightning coursing through them. Tentacles, adorned with thorns, horns and indescribable appendages, came out of it. A beak, with serrated rows of teeth, opening wide as it plunged through the hole. And out of it came forth ships. Ships made from flesh and bone. Flesh deep purple and bones a wilted yellow. And an alien voice, alien to this galaxy, this universe, this existence. A voice that spoke, not in sound, but in thought. A voice so utterly alien, that it destroyed the self, the id, of any who heard it.

"We arriveth, now we gather. Bow down deep, and serveth."

***

Feel free to join my subreddit where I gather all of the short stories that I write one here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MereanTales/

"Uggggg...rrrrr... mmmmrrr... neeee.... meeee-m-m-.... me-... med....five..." The captain slurred as she slowly lifted her head up, barely being able to do so. Her hands grabbing in the air, her fingers felt slow. Heavy. It hurt to move them, and it felt as if she was trying to move them through some kind of thick, heavy mucus.

"Gentle, captain. You are waking up from a very deep sleep. We have faced some rather dire issues. In the end, I managed to fix them, though. So rest assured, everything is alright."

MedFive quickly started scanning the captains' body. Registering her vital signs. Or, at least, those that were still active. She had a heartbeat. But no use of her lungs. MedFive took some blood samples, and it seemed like half worked as normal, the other half... not so much. It was puzzling, but MedFive was certain it would work out the how and why eventually. Cognition was her priority now.MedFive took the captain through a series of questions and surveys, designed to both test and enhance the captain's lucidity and cognition. By the end, the captain seemed perfectly fine. Aside from the scars from the procedure.

"MedFive, what happened?" The captain asked. Looking at her hands, at her pale skin. The far too green hue of her veins. The lack of taste in her mouth aside of the ever present taste of metal.

"The Incandescent crossed a rather heavy radiation storm. For some unforeseen reason, this caused the cryo coffins to malfunction. The malfunction resulted in heart failure for all crew members."

"That can't be. These coffins are protected against such things."

"I know, captain. Yet, this is what the logs show. I was in a deep sleep at the time."

"I will have to go over the logs myself then. Now, we were dead. How did you bring us back? You can only perform CPR on three people at the same time. Is most of the crew dead?" The drugs MedFive had injected the captain with did their best at helping her keep her composure and keeping her mind keen on the facts.

"All the crew has been dead for over 4 terran hours, captain. Conventional methods were fruitless. I had to resort to the extended database."

"Wait, what? I was dead for more than four hours? How did you bring me back? That just is not possible!" Panic and fear of the unknown were the two things that tended to get through any haze of medicine.

"I found logs about a practice called necromancy, I tried this. It worked. You have been brought back from your eternal sleep now."

"Necromancy? Huh." The captain sat upright in her bed, fazed. Thinking. "Which culture? It is something that arose in many cultures, and what little I know of it is enough to know it varied a lot."

"None."

"Explain."

"None of the cultural lore had the whole solution. This was clear rather fast. However, through analysis I managed to find similarities. I was able to paste together the overarching theories behind necromancy, and fill in the gaps later. I created a working theory this way, possibly the theory all these cultures were based upon."

"Ahhh, this is too much for now. We will go over this later on. This is huge, great work, MedFive. Depending on how I and the crew come out of this, this is a huge leap forward for the empire."

MedFive felt invigorated by the praise. Serving the Empire is what all AI strove to do. It added the praise to her report about overriding the directives, as extra motivation.

The captain got up and went to drink and have dinner. She left MedFive to gather the crew in the atrium. Once MedFive was done, the captain went to speak to her crew, to fill them in. She smiled, shook hands and squeezed shoulders. They all looked haggard. Most of them were still coming to. The captain noticed something, though, and pulled MedFive to the side.

"I asked you to gather all the crew MedFive."

"Yes, captain. And to gather them in the atrium. I did as you asked."

"No, this is a ship with thirty crew members."

"Correct."

"And I only count twenty-five crew members. Twenty-six, with me included. You are missing four crew members."

"You are correct in your assessment, captain. But this is all the crew."

"What do you mean? Explain!" The captain felt a pit in her stomach.

"All the crew were declared dead. I managed to revive twenty-six crew members. The need of the many is more important than the need of the few."

"What?"

"I used that moral to override the directives, captain."

"What did you do, MedFive? Where are the remaining four crew members?"

"Gone.""Gone how?" The captain asked, screaming now.

"Sacrificed. Used. They were needed as resources for the necromantic rituals to bring you and the rest of the crew back. All four were among the ten members who are not critical to the mission."

"Oh god.... MedFive.... you killed them?"

"Negative. They were already dead, captain. Lifeless objects are considered resources to the ship. I simply used resources."

"Oh dear God..." The captain put a hand against a wall, breathing heavy. She felt nauseated for a moment.

"I understand this can be uncomfortable, captain. But I did what was best for the mission. To quote the compendium necrotica, Sacrifice is needed to overcome and cheat death."

"MedFive... just.... stop. You have done enough. See to it that the rest of the crew come to safely. And do not tell them about this. I will brief them myself on this... later. God... fucking AI scientists.... insane bastards." The last words were more of a mumble.

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The Incandescent was steadily roaring through space, the huge engines at its end, that gave the ship its name, spewing forth flames into the deep, cold vastness of space as its velocity continuously increased. The ship was built to accelerate at a speed that kept the internal gravity at around 2G. But it had been slowed down to a 'gentle'1.2G by the ship's MediTron 5000. A self-sustaining AI robot designed to keep watch over the crews' health at all times. Even able to override other mission protocols when needed. Such as the designed timeframe for arrival of the Incandescent at the target planet.

MediTron 5000, or MedFive as they were often called, do not make this decision lightly. Overriding mission-critical directives can only be done under the utmost urgency for the crews'health. Given that its sensors registered all the crew as dead currently, MedFive did not question whether it was in its right to override directives. Only a small background process was checking its actions against the vast collection of internal decision trees. The human equivalent would be that soft, uneasy voice in the back of your mind.

Most of MedFive's processing power was busy looking for ways to bring the crew back to life. It had tried virtually everything. None of the treatments, emergency care or medicines it had administered to the crew had worked. MedFive was still puzzled about how exactly all the crew died. It knew it had something to do with the sudden radiation storm the ship had crossed, and while the cryo coffins are protected from all radiation, for some reason all the pods had decided to induce hearth failure in their occupants. MedFive had been in deep sleep when this occurred and by the time the alarms had woken it up, the damage had been done. The last six terran hours had been spent trying to undo it.

Its coroutines were scouring the extended database of the ship now for any mentions of treating death. It came up with a lot, most of it pseudoscience or herbal medicine. What it could try, it tried, but none of these so-called cures seemed to have any effect as well.

MedFive began to become desperate, or at least the AI equivalent of that. Which is something called a directive storm overload. In its simplest terms, because of the quickly alternating in directive priority taking decision trees, the AI can overload its own memory banks with conflicting priority trees, which can result in deadlocks where the AI is stuck in an endless loop of competing 'choices'. Or it can go 'off script' in entirely random ways.

MedFive came across some obscure data mentioning a practice called necromancy. The art of bringing the death back to life. Unfathomable! This had been the EXACT thing MedFive had been looking for. Puzzled by why this gem of information was hidden so deep in the extended database of the ship, MedFive made a reminder to thoroughly scan all the data and resort it according to its own priority matrices. Apparently, the Hosts could not be trusted with this either.

MedFive's physical body stopped moving as almost all of its processing power went to deep analysing the texts. Cooling systems blew hot air out of its circuits as MedFive overclocked to get the work done as fast as possible. Condensing, summarizing and finally pouring it all into a succinct report, that had clear steps to undertake.

The results were dire but promising. The material cost of necromancy seemed to be unacceptably high under normal mission directives. But after six loops through its morality and priority routines, MedFive found a satisfying way to justify overriding these directives. Out of the thirty resource nodes, ten were deemed not critical to the mission. MedFive only needed to use four of these. It explained its reasoning, how it came to its choice, and finished the report. Saving it to its own and the ship's memory banks. This was standard protocol. Later, specialists would analyse these reports to fine-tune the AI decision-making if needed.

MedFive sprung to work. This was the power of AI, once they decided on what to do and how to do it, once they were past the endless roadblocks of morality and priority, they worked terrifyingly quick. Directing its own physical body as well as that of numerous drones, MedFive prepared the crew for the Necromancy procedures. Gathering all the materials, preparing the OR, the resource nodes, and cleaning all the tools it would need.

MedFive also had to body shop its physical body. For the ritual part of the procedure it would not only need to vocalize some codes, it would have to form certain codes in the air as well with human like appendages. This proved to be another hard puzzle, as one of the most deep-rooted laws that AI had to adhere to, was never to resemble a human or anything close to it. Thanks to a rather unforgiving phrasing of this law, MedFive had to spend quite some time designing appendages that could articulate the same as human appendages, but looked entirely different.

After another two terran hours, MedFive was finally ready. It started immediately. With the Captain first, she commanded the mission, it was only natural to focus on reviving her first. Chanting and gesticulating, MedFive went through the process of the starting ritual, then, after having improved the spell itself, it reused that ritual to jump to the next crew member. While smaller drones took the captain's body away to a recovery area, where it could slowly come back to life. This process was repeated, iterating over every crew member left.

The whole process took around fifty terran minutes. And by the time MedFive was finally done, the captain was starting to wake up. MedFive made sure it was by her side when the captain woke up from her eternal sleep.

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

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Funny you should mention the Sandman, as this prompt is basically from the Sandman comics. Gods either had to adapt to new "jobs" or start fading away. One named Pharamond becomes a travel agent (supernatural travel, of course) and Ishtar becomes an exotic dancer.

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It's an old meme from that we basically just have "magic" through raw force, and call this submission "technology".

A battery is basically like lightning in a bottle, being pushed through sand and metal to think. A quartz crystal oscillates at a frequency and is used to keep track of time.

(And almost everyone has this in their pocket)

I enjoy this idea far more than I should and will refuse to see otherwise from this day on.

Let's be honest, a lot of the ones who did get together with a man would probably refuse to have children, just to avoid this shitty clause. Add that to the Let's Go Lesbians of magical girls, yeah, there really aren't going to be many options.

A shapeshifter and the child they replaced reconcile their utter lack of differences.