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Challenge #02721-G164: Hail Poetry!

The sign said "Old Terran style poetry for sale! Custom sonnets, written for you about what you love, in GalStand! Please fill out form and provide one Hour; finished poem will be sent to you within the next ten days. 50% discount for JOATs." The human seated at the table the sign hung from had a large stack of blank forms, a couple of completed forms, several one Hour notes, a notebook, and what looked like several kinds of dictionary. They were busily scribbling in the notebook and muttering to themself, occasionally crossing things out, and frequently checking the dictionaries.

On closer inspection, one of the "dictionaries" was actually a thesaurus. -- Anon Guest

[AN: I can't write sonnets to save my life so I'm faking out of doing that]

It was a pop-up sales booth, much favoured by the nomadic sorts who sold their artistic skills wherever they could wander. They were selling Terran style poems, but they were not a Terran. They were one of the multitude of Saurian life forms abundant in the Alliance. This was not a form of cultural appropriation, since the Humans were wont to share aspects of their culture wherever they went.

This wasn't even an important part of their culture, it was merely a form of art that the Humans shared like they shared everything else. He didn't need to alert the Terran Embassy, and he especially didn't need to let Shayde know this existed. Better that she never found out.

She may be "Ace", but she had a great love of romance. The absolute last thing he needed was Shayde purchasing poetry for him. Therefore, he thought it prudent to find out how much this cogniscent needed to take their pop-up booth and their business to an entirely different station. Strictly out of a combination of the decency of his spirit and a strong self-preservation instinct, of course.

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Challenge #02720-G163: A Short Sharp Lesson

Have you even seen humans stomping their feet while chanting the same thing all at once? It’s sometimes hard to believe they’re not a hive mind https://youtu.be/PmILOL55xP0 -- Anon Guest

[AN: Video linked contains swearwords and is a war scene]

They said the Human colonists were sessile. They were weak and vulnerable. Look at them, not a single weapon in their entire set of settlements. They were fat and lazy. Allegedly. I learned, just as many of

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Challenge #02719-G162: Played For a Sap

Come on body, just hold it in. Suppress the emotion for a few more hours. We can die from embarrassment when we get home. -- Anon Guest

He might have said they called him Sap because he was a blunt instrument. There was a story he told about being found in the woods, covered in tree sap and using it to trap and eat small animals to survive. The truth was, he was a City Tief[1], raised in the gutter, educated

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Challenge #02718-G161: One Cozy Afternoon in a Test Colony Complex

They'd been surveying the planet for several months now, the haven-worlders and their human friends. The planet was more than sufficient for colonization, that seemed to be sure, but they wanted to see how the changing of the seasons played out in full. Sitting within the large shelter base they'd set up, the humans feeding more wood into the fireplace they'd absolutely insisted on building into the design of the base, the captain had an odd feeling of peace as they relaxed

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Challenge #02717-G160: A Plot From the Slush Pile

A human gets body-swapped with a short avian havenworlder just before a band of vorax attack, they find the 'human' cowering, and the chirpy bird missing... -- Anon Guest

[AN: Mind swaps are silly episode ideas so this is entirely non-canon to my pet universe]

"Aw, what the hell?" complained Human De, currently Thelid De, since hir mind was in Thelid Vaax's body. "This is like every badly-written filler episode in the history of everything!"

Human Vaax, once Thelid Vaax said, "I

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Challenge #02716-G159: An Oldie But a Goodie

The ship is being raided by pirates, you and the human locked yourselves in the storage bay. The human is applying some liquid on their skin, asking “could you help me put on the shield generator?” You assisted them asking what they trying to do. “I’m gonna do a old scare tactic” while talking they snap their fingers and flames begin to cover their arms -- Anon Guest

Humans are insane. Many people acknowledge this on an intellectual level as most

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Challenge #02715-G158: A Delicate Mist

"They played us like a violin!”

“Actually violins are quite difficult to play, I played you like the cheap kazoo you are" -- Anon Guest

There is a vertiginous feeling to being betrayed. It's worse than falling because the damage has been done before the sinking of the heart even begins. It's the realisation that kills. It kills trust. It kills faith. It kills hope. Once those are dead, there is very little left to lose.

Nevertheless, there are those who insist

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Challenge #02714-G157: The Extra Option

Humans love stories. Humans also love adventure, and choice, and danger. Thus was born the "choose your own adventure" style of story. A small group of level 5 havenworlders, in an attempt to improve their genetics, undertake reading one of these stories, with the goal to "survive" to the end of the book. They quickly discover that survival alone does not always a "good" ending make. -- Anon Guest

Level Five Havenworlders should not exist. Just as Level Five Deathworlders should not

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Challenge #02713-G156: Pax Origins

A shockingly smart and devastatingly cruel crew track, hunt, raid, and kill the biggest threats to peaceful ships. -- LatinoThor

They called themselves Dragons, for the ancient tradition marking hazardous seas with, Here There Be Dragons. Their territory was astonishingly vast for what encounter logs suggested was one ship. The last records in the surviving black boxes stated that one ship was seen, but that didn't mean that just one ship was there.

Authorities were slower to act about the attacks, since

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Challenge #02712-G155: But I Want It

Everyone's heard of the Terrible Twos. Well, everyone who's familiar with raising human infants. A piece of information that's been surprisingly slow to make its way around, though, is that those years are only so terrible because the little ones have wants and needs and thoughts that they don't know how to communicate; a combination of not being exposed to the words for what they feel and having tongues too big for their mouths, making it near impossible to articulate the words

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Challenge #02711-G154: Helping Companions

An instructor greets his new students in the class known as "Know Your Human" A class meant to prepare various individuals for the maddeningly wonderful work known as being a human's companion.

It is well known that humans are insane, dangerous, and violent. And yet, they are also the most gentle, kind, thoughtful, and soothing species in the galaxy. You will find they are wild, yet tame, they are beyond stupid, yet terrifyingly brilliant, they brought their furry headaches known as cats,

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Challenge #02710-G153: Paradox Wreck

As a warning for any future scientist: Do not hook up a warp-drive engine to a gravity-generator. you will create a gravity cannon that will obliterate 1/3 of a class zegalbond warship, but also lose 1/3 of you blood without any wounds. -- Anon Guest

They called it 'warp drive' in flagrant violation of copyright at the time of the wreck's discovery. What it did was create a temporary 'soft spot' between real space and the parallel dimensional brane known

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Challenge #02709-G152: Fixes Any Problem

A: "Just how many things do you humans make out of that stuff?"

H: Pulling yet another roll of the silvery duct tape from his bag. "Oh, quite a fair few. Wallets, flowers, clothing, water bags, plates, bowls, shoes, weapons, you name it. Oop, hold the bow still, if we're going to get back to the space port, I need to finish this boat and then make the thing's sail."

A: "You can't be serious, we're really going to be going all

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Challenge #02708-G151: Bug of Contention

The two humans in this ship are really close. They will do nearly anything to save the other. On the other claw, they destroyed the training room arguing about whether a certain earth insect is a lighting bug or firefly. -- Anon Guest

The two Ships' Humans were out of breath, bruising, and one of them had a dark reddish-brown ichor leaking from their nose. They were also kept well out of each other's grip by the presence of Companion Jorx directly

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Challenge #02707-G150: Rescue From Vulnerability

Some level four, and level five, havenworlders know their species is quite fragile. They also know that, in order to survive, to thrive, in this harsh universe, they need to grow stronger. With that in mind, and speaking to other havenworlders that were of higher levels, they all agreed training was in order. They hire a team of humans to help them learn to grow stronger. So, when they have their children, their children will be born stronger. The plan was for

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