Just Add Prompt

A 4906-post collection

Challenge #00691 - A326: Photographic Anomalies

Somewhere in the universe…

[AN: Picture shows a “grey” alien striking a pose on a dirt road by a beach. In the far left background is a circled object in the sky. Said object is enlarged in the lower right of the frame. It resembles a Terran jet]

ALIENS?! blared the headline. The article expanded on the bizarre tale.

K’tob Nygrosk had no idea what would appear in her holiday snaps when she took them. “I was focussed on Reikik, not what was in the sky. I had no idea it was up there until my cousin Bubil pointed it out.”

Experts have examined the camera and K’tob’s negatives and found it to be a genuine anomaly. But they further posit that it could easily be a child’s toy or a kite piloted by fellow beach-goers in the background.

“There’s no sense of scale or means to compare size, let alone a metric for measuring its height,” stated Aeronautics Division Representative Yob K’doth. “The object is most likely a hobbyists attempt at a joke. Besides, everyone knows that a circular wing design is the most stable for flight. These ‘wings’ are preposterous and could not possibly be used for interstellar travel.”

Anomalous objects in the sky continue to appear. Many posit that they are aliens, come to analyse Y’kthikan life. Let’s hope they’re friendly.

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Challenge #00690 - A325: The Treasure

A Gyiik discovers the food Elvis ate.

Vic reached hungrily for the cellulose sheet.

“Ut,” said the Archivaas Tiel, drawing it back to her body. “Payment first. I know how you Gyiiks get with new recipes. I learned after the first time.”

“My apologies,” Vic the Gyiik began to lay out her money. “Two Months plus hazard pay… and a voucher card for two Years’ worth of free meals at Unsuitable Food Eat.

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Challenge #00689 - A324: In Peril

Always remember, if you can see it it already knows you are there.

Good news, this alien rock had enough breathable air to make resource gathering less of a problem.

Bad news, resource gathering was going to happen from the ground up. Literally.

Good news, the edible flora and fauna were easily identifiable.

Bad news… there was a human in the area.

Like K'tole, the human had landed here because of its plentiful resources very close to the surface. And all

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Challenge #00688 - A323: Benevolent Anarchy

Just for shits and giggles, a Greater Deregulation that lives up to the name. Total meritocracy, ‘I don’t care what you do as long as you stay the Hell off my property’. In other words, a GD where ‘profit’ is equated not just to ‘money’, but also ‘personal freedom’. In other words, less Republican, more Libertarian.

Welcome to Greater Deregulation Nor-Northwest. No freeloaders.

Kell the Hitcher helped unload the cargo. This was as far as the freighter captain would take her.

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Challenge #00686 - A321: Peripatetic Commerce

Local union meeting for the owners of Little Shops That Weren’t There Yesterday, And Are Gone When You Try To Go Back, Local 37.

“Any new business?”

One hand went up. A relatively young hand in a forest of otherwise weird old people.

“Yes?”

“Who, where or when are we local to, exactly?”

Half the union assembled there groaned.

"Local is an artificial concept, but if you want actual co-ordinates…”

The entire meeting room

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The Q&A Session of Genghis Khan!

Genghis Khan rises from the dead, and gently and politely corrects some misconceptions about his history, personality, etc.

(#00685 - A320)

There were several big surprises when Gengis Khan returned from the dead. Not the least of which being that he was average height for a man of his time.

He was muscular, well-groomed, and quite brown… yet he looked as much at ease in a modern business suit as he should have in horse-hides and furs. He did not have

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The Hunt Begins!

The Rabbit Women of Solares IV begin their Great Hunt! (for carrots, Earth-Men mates, Bugs Bunny memorabilia, what-have-you.)

(#00684 - A319)

Nobody saw the invasion coming. Well. Almost nobody. Make that ‘nobody who counts in the greater social milieu’ because Professor Cocomilia was largely viewed as a crank.

His theories about Lapinoids had been the stuff of geek comedy for years. As were his increasingly agitated attempts to warn the public.

And then came Invasion Day.

They  were seven-foot-tall amazons

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Challenge #00683 - A318: Different Perspective

Free prompt! This ticket entitles the writer to do any daily drabble that just needs to be written, and may be used out of sequence.

[AN: The following is a preview of sorts for my book-in-progress, Kung Fu Zombies. However the point of view presented may not appear in the book. Essentially, I’m cleansing my mental palette]

If she wanted to be kind, E would say that Aiden astonished her. Amazed, confounded and confused. Maybe even a little bit of

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Challenge ##00682 - A317: Strange Camouflage

Pic prompt!

[Picture shows a tree that has grown around some war debris. The most prominent piece resembles a stick insect.]

It was another ghost world. Cheryl hated ghost worlds. There was always a chance, a slim and gut-wrenching chance, that there were survivors, somewhere far away from the relics of past civilisation. Bombed back to the stone age. Or further.

Nomadic gatherer-hunters were hard to find with orbital scanners.

There weren’t many buildings standing, any more. Forests had come

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Challenge #00680 - A315: Putting the Om in Omnivore

T’reka and some of the weirder things humans eat….

Of course putting a settlement into otherwise pristine land was bound to cause some ecological imbalance. The absence of so very many trees meant an upswing in homeless insects. Some of whom took the deforestation as a cue to breed.

The insects fed the birds and amphibians, who took the excess food as a cue to breed.

Which meant there was now an excess of Gargantua frogs looking for food in all

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Challenge #00679 - A314: Ancient Beasts

Australian Pelicans are like something out of Jurassic Park - like they remember when things like them ate things like you, and are just biding their time. (I literally asked a zookeeper “do they run off with toddlers?!?” when I saw one for the first time)

[AN: I have not met any other kinds of pelicans, so I just assumed they were all like that. And for the record, they prefer fish.]

Irwin glared at the current batch of temporal tourists. Another

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Challenge #00678 - A313: Cogito Assassin Sum

Tossing Cows: The act of thoroughly derailing a train of thought, deliberately or not.

Yubsid was meant to be clerking. It was relatively mindless copy-work. Input this data into those fields. Nothing much in the way of brain power, just check that the right data was in the right place and mark the last entry so she didn’t get confused.

When she took a miniature health break to stretch herself or ensure that her digits got all their requisite exercise,

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Challenge #00677 - A312: Loud Shy

They had never expected to be able to describe someone speaking as booming hesitantly, but that’s exactly what it sounded like.

The Ambassador for Gargantua was large, even for large cogniscents. He could easily intimidate a terran bear. He was all muscle and looked like he could conquer the universe.

And he was about to make his introductory speech.

“Er…” he boomed. “My name… is… Um. Grigri. Yes. Uh. I… was… an asteroid

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Challenge #00676 - A311: Taming Humans

Humans may be rendered almost catatonic by careful scritches in the correct place - under the cranial hair, behind the ears and along the spine.

Important note: Although this technique can turn almost any human docile, 70% of the time it also makes it harder to escape, as ceasing the technique can lead to your human grabbing one of your limbs, even when partially asleep. As a human’s grip is nigh unbreakable even at rest, it is advised you use this

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Challenge #00675 - A310: Caution Considered

“That’s the secret truth about the kind of people you’re dealing with, Princess. They’ll tell you one thing, and then do the other, simply because they can, and are usually correct in assuming you won’t notice the difference. It’s coded in their DNA. We call them enabled sociopaths. You call them politicians.”

Yakish waited for a response. The young princess Elise looked so tiny as her bodyguard/servants inserted her into her formal regalia. She

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