Fortnightly Writing Competition - ARCHER (Results)

[Sinitrena]

Welcome to a new round of our exciting Fortnightly Writing Competition!

This time, your challange is to write about an archer.


Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) - Anja Hitzler - Oliver <The Arrow> Queen (Stephen Amell) - Robin Hood


A medieval English longbowman, an olympic champion or a science-fiction hero shooting laser beams instead of arrows - archery requires a lot of skill, talent and strength.
The archer in your story doesn't need to be the main character but he/she should play an important part. Other than that, just write what you want.

Deadline: 29. Sept. 2015

[Baron]

What about a sling-shot?  Or a crossbow?  Or a rubber band sniper?  Where is the line between "creative take" and "off-topic"?

[Sinitrena]

Good question. Let's draw the line at the mechanics of how the projectile is fired: As long as it's based on the strength or skill of the archer it's ok. So a slingshot is ok, a crossbow is on the line but still acceptable, but a gun would be off-topic.

[kconan]

I'll take this to mean that ballistas and trebuchets are good to go as well.

[Sinitrena]

Technically, yes, they fall within the rules. But you're really bending them.
Why can't I stop thinking about this?

[SilverSpook]

I'm pretty shit at archery so this story should be terrible interesting.

[JudasFm]

Technically, yes, they fall within the rules. But you're really bending them.
Why can't I stop thinking about this?

I've never seen this series before! Thanks for the new entertainment

[Sinitrena]

A quick reminder that there are a bit more than three days left until the deadline. So type your stories, proofread, and then post them here!

[Baron]

Finally got an idea, but things are reeeeeally busy right now.  Any chance of a small extension?

[Sinitrena]

For you? Always.
Are three days enough? Deadline extended to the end of the 2. October.

[Baron]

That should do it, thanks.   Any other takers out there?

[SilverSpook]

I've been pretty squeezed for time/energy as of late, but I will throw (shoot?) in at the last moment so no one wins by default.  Can't promise anything extensive, but it will have a pro/antagonist who uses their own stored kinetic energy to fire a weapon(s).

[JudasFm]

Yeah, I'm in. I have my usual problem of far too many ideas though. At least this time there was no doubt about which character or world to pick

Nope; other writing commitments got in the way and I ran out of time. Sorry but I'm out on this one

[Ibispi]

Lonely Heart Cupid

<3==============================================================================/\/

Detective John Smith opened a dusty window, illuminating the corpse of a young woman. Upon noticing her, he took his round leather hat off and sighed.

“Cupid strikes again, eh, Charlie?” He remarked.

He put the hat back on and looked away.

The victim was lying in the middle of the room. Blood painted her body in red, and an arrow was sticking out of her chest â€" precisely piercing through her heart.

Across the detective stood a juvenile-looking fellow, who wore a polished black bowler hat, and a white tie, with red diagonal stripes. He took out a small computer device, and opened it. White text appeared on its luminous screen: “Welcome, assistant”.

He stepped forward. Floorboards squeaked.

He peeked at the corpse, nodded and gave the detective a quizzical look.

“Unless it's got an impersonator, sir,” he said, grinning.

Smith smirked, one hand in his coat pocket, the other waving, pushing away the dust in the air, and giggled.

“I'm sick of that little monstrosity,” he said. “If only we could just get our hands on it. Alright, Charlie, what do you think we should do?”

“I don't know, sir,” Charlie replied. “I haven't got any ideas, really. I'm not that kind of person, you know.”

Smith spread his arms out.

“Then what in a god's name were you thinking, when you chose this career? You could have beenâ€"”

“Just a moment, sir. I've got lots of details from previous cases here, in my computer. If we read them, maybe we'll find something important.”

“Alright, alright,” the detective said, slightly tilting his body upwards, his feet anchored to the ground.

The assistant sat down at an old, oak desk, in the corner of the room, on the opposite side from the window. He leaned on it, and then pressed somewhere on the screen of his computer device. On it, text appeared: “Choose a page number”.

“Where should I start from?” He asked.

Smith was examining a grayish ancient closet, in the adjacent corner of the room. It had glass doors, covered in spider web. Click. He opened it.

Inside was a pile of letter envelopes. All together, they formed what looked like a tower of pancakes. The detective plucked one out and took a closer look.

“I don't know. Perhaps, in a chronological order. From the first one. The old man with the stick”, he said.

Charlie pressed the computer screen with the tip of his index finger, and moved the it across the screen, which, in return, flashed. Text appeared: “The old man with the walking stick”, and under it, a long description of the case.

The envelope in the detective's hands had a crimson stamp in shape of a heart. Smith glanced at the other letters and noticed they all had the same looking stamp.

“I think it's safe to say, Charlie, that Cupid targets people who send love letters to each other. None of the victims ever used the Internet, in fact, all of them were very traditional in their dating approach. Also, all of them were kind of â€" poetic,” he said, reading through the letter he held in his hand. “Anyways, let's hear it. Maybe you'll solve something instead of me, eh?”

They chuckled.

A small pause ensued.

Charlie cleared his throat.

“So, the first victim to fall into the hands of Cupid was the old man with the walking stick, we, unfortunately, couldn't identify. Nobody knew him, except his lover, a pen friend. But when we found his lover, it was already too late.”

“Yeah, the midget went on to commit a massacre. Now â€" there was something interesting about this man's walking stick, wasn't there?” The detective said.

“Yes, indeed, sir. We found a secret opening. In it, was a message written in Latin.”

“And what did this message say?” Smith asked.

“But, you already know, sir,” Charlie said, quizzical look on his face.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. This was your plan, to go through all the cases again, so-,” Smith said.

“Ah, yes, sir. I am sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. In the message, the old man addressed Cupid, and wrote that he challenges it to a death duel, so that he would save his loved ones,” Charlie said.

“We interpreted that as a provocation of Cupid. Which in return caused this bloodbath,” Smith noted.

“That's what I think too, sir. In fact, every case after the first one: his lover, then the brown-haired woman in the supermarket, then the guy with a green cap, and the twelve other victims gave no other clues as to why Cupid is doing this,” Charlie said.

“And the thing they all had in common was that they wrote love letters,” Smith said, and started pacing.

Both of them became lost in thought.

Only thing that could be heard was the noise Smith made with his shoes.

“I disagree,” Charlie announced, and stood up, looking fixedly at the detective, with a straight face and a raised chin.

“You disagree?” Smith shook his head.

“I did some investigation, in private.”

“In private?”

“Yes, sir. What I've found out is that the letters aren't Cupid's main motive. There has to be something else â€" which is more important to it,” Charlie said, smiling.

“Alright. And how exactly did you come to this conclusion?” Smith looked at him searchingly.

“I wrote a love letter, sir.”

“You wrote â€" what?”

“I wrote a love letter to my dear, my dearest, Angela.”

The detective was staring at him, speechless.

“You can come in now,” Charlie said, turning to the room's entrance.

In paraded a blond, hazel-eyed woman, who grinned upon seeing her lover.

“Charlie!” She cried.

Two of them hugged.

“That's all nice and sweet,” Smith said sarcastically, “but, the way I see it, you are just another pair of mortals for Cupid to destroy.”

“Oh, no,” Angela cried, sobbing, “Whatever shall we do, Charlie? We have to run away â€" somewhere, where the serial killer won't find us.”

“You can't just run away from it,” Smith said, smirking.

“Don't worry honey,” Charlie patted his girlfriend on her shoulder, “he won't touch us. I am certain of it. The reason why he murdered those poor people weren't the letters. It must have been something else. The letters were just â€" there.”

“So you claim it was just a mere coincidence?” The detective asked.

“Yes, sir. I think so,” Charlie answered, radiating with confidence.

“Very well. Now let me think on this. Maybe you are right, Charlie â€" maybe you are,” Smith said, whilst nodding.

The two investigators paced around the room, while Angela was standing in place, gazing at Charlie. Her posture spoke of how proud she was of her boyfriend, and yet her eyes bared a worried look.

Charlie was looking outside the window.

In front of him spread out a hill, a grass landscape, with a canal crossed over it, and far away waggled a myriad of trees.

Charlie looked at the sky.

“Hide! Hide, quick!” he yelled. He, then, grabbed Angela by her hand, and pulled her behind the desk.

Smith glanced in the direction of where Charlie had been looking at, gasped, and dropped his jaw.

Right there, outside, a little pink baby, with white feathery wings on its back, was gliding in the air, towards the window. It was bouncing, up and down. Its face formed an innocent smile, and it looked directly at the detective's eyes.

Smith winced, eyes wide open, and dashed behind the closet.

All three of them were crouching and shivering.

“What's happening?” Angela asked, her voice shaking.

Charlie didn't say anything. He shook his head, whilst holding her tightly.

Smith was the the least shaken. He took out his a laser pistol out of his coat.

“Alright, listen, Charlie,” he spoke loudly, “you've got us into this mess â€" but, it's not so bad, actually. In a way, as much as surprised we are, the little midget fell into our trap. Ha!” He smirked.

Charlie gave him a gloomy look, and said nothing. Angela grabbed his boyfriend even more tightly.

“Charlie,” Smith yelled, “take out your gun, we've got to shoot the bastard!”

Charlie shook his head.

Smith gave him a quizzical look.

“No. Sir, I don't think we can just shoot it like that. It will shoot at us first, and when it does, well, we are no match for it,” Charlie said.

“So what's your plan, kid?” the detective asked, shrugging.

“To run towards it, from two different sides of the wall. This way, the baby will have far less time to shoot at us both, and since we will be in motion, it will be a lot harder for it to hit its target.”

“Nice thinking, Charlie. Maybe I was wrong after all â€" maybe you are born to be a great detective, and not one of tho-,”

“It's approaching,” Charlie stuttered. He took out his own laser pistol.

“Wait, Charlie!” Angela said, pulling him back to herself. “What if the plan goes awry?”

“Don't worry honey, we'll stop that murderer, before it touches any other innocent human,” Charlie said, kissing her in the cheek. Angela frowned, her hazel eyes were drowning in tears.

“You are risking your life, Charlie. Why?” She asked.

“For you, my dear,” he said.

He embraced her hand.

She looked down, letting Charlie out of her grasp

He looked at the detective.

Two of them nodded, synchronously:

“Now!” they yelled at the same time.

They rushed, screaming, towards their respective walls. The baby levitated above the corpse, in the middle of the room, and in its hands a gilded bow, with silver string, materialized out of nowhere. On the bow was a purple arrow, with a crimson arrowhead, in shape of a heart.

The gunmen managed to fire at the baby, but failed to hit it. While running, they couldn't target Cupid precisely, and their shaking hands made things worse.

On the contrary, Cupid flew in place, and his arrow pierced directly through Charlie's heart. Smith, noticing that the baby wasn't targeting him, stopped running, aimed at it, and shot.

He missed.

Blood was pouring out Charlie's chest and mouth. Angela was screaming - but didn't move out of her hiding place.

Whilst choking on his blood, Charlie said something, but it was incomprehensible. He was looking at the smiling baby, wild-eyed, and then dropped dead on his face.

Smith fired another shot, and this time it hit one of Cupid's wings. The baby let out a a very loud, high-pitched scream, and fled through the window.

“Damn you, flying dwarf! You're dead! Dead!” The detective yelled, when he saw Charlie's corpse, and Angela, who was on her knees, crying.

He jumped out through the window, and rolled down the green hill.

The baby was gliding away, towards the trees. To get to the trees, however, Smith had to move across a short water canal.

He jumped into the canal, and traversed through the muddy water. Whilst Smith was in the canal, he moved drastically slower. So much, that Cupid moved faster than him.

Smith sighed.

“You little coward! Come back here!” He screamed, firing his gun in the direction of Cupid. The baby was too far away for the lasers to hit it.

He trudged out of the canal.

Cupid was lying on a big branch of one pitch black tree. Unlike the other ones in the area, this one had no leaves.

Smith skulked towards it.

He winced â€" Cupid was weeping and sobbing. The baby's tears leaked out of its eyes, like a fountain, and poured down onto earthly ground, moistening it, and forming small ponds of water.

The detective sighed.

“Mister Cupid? You are under arrest. You are not obliged to say anything,” the baby's cry became louder after every word he said, as if to absorb his words in noise, so he spoke up, whilst pointing his pistol at its head, “Anything you do or say can be used against you, in court, in form of evidence. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be given to you. Do you understand these rights, as I have read them to you?”

The baby's weeping was so loud, that the detective had to put his hands on his ears, to muffle the noise. He was no longer able to point the laser pistol at the baby.

Suddenly, a deep, monstrous voice was heard, out of nowhere.

“We are so similar, friend. Yet, you dislike me. Why?”

Smith gasped.

The voice continued to be heard, at the same time as the baby. Together, they merged into a terrifying, demonic sound.

“You do not truly love anyone, just pretend. This is what you were made for. To pretend,” the noise became so loud, that the detective screamed, “Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. That is what I need. Organic, primitive, basic. That is what I desire. So long I have waited. So long. So lo-”

Suddenly, it stopped.

John Smith let his body loose. He fell down. The thin layer of water splashed around him, creating a ripple in the pond.

At that moment he thought of everyone he thought he ever loved.

And thought to himself, have I ever truly loved anyone?

And then, he realized that the answer was, to him, traumatic.

So he closed his eyes.

That ripple was the last thing he ever saw.

<3==============================================================================/\/

[SilverSpook]

Mine will be in shortly!

[SilverSpook]

The Cospauper

Gem Roguestar kicked the door out of her sort-of-Youtube-boyfriend's Volvo Valkyr.  The cockpit glass shouted at her in impact font that 'excessive self-inflicted damage may void the warranty', and to please stop.

"Patronizing aircars!"  Gem stepped out, kicked the door again in a rage.  She checked the tip of her stompy silver Powergirl boots for scuffing, checked her makeup in the mirrored surface of the car's polarized exterior before it flew away.  No scuffing, phew.

The crowd was thick as cheap foundation in front of The Fulcrum's immense glass towers, coagulating with cosplay, crossplay, and mashplayers of every star-level and like!-tally. 

A genderbent Thor and Loki couple swaggered by, the female Thor looking utterly Aryan.  6'2", perfectly sculpted Miss Universe biceps, disproportionate boobs, tiara that was almost certainly real platinum.  Probably a GMO-body grown just for this event.  You had to be royalty to afford that kind of costuming swag.  Gem was the opposite of that.  A cos-pauper.

"Hey, aren't you... what's her name?" Lady Thor rubbernecked.

"Gem Roguestar?  Yes."  Gem got up off the ground, did a pose.

"Uhhh... who?  No, you're a bit... Nevermind.  Good luck in the competition!"  The two mythological and literal goddesses walked off arm-in-gauntlet, laughing to themselves about something, looking over their shoulder. 

A bit... what?  Gem's throat tightened, like the time she'd accidentally eaten a peanut.  She'd worked on a small party balloon of self-confidence, making costuming videos and fishing for compliments on the Interwebz all day, and with that little bitchslap of negative human interaction, she felt the balloon deflate.

"You're a microcelebrity, Gem.  No, you're at least a millicelebrity, just look at your subscriber base!"  She psyched herself up.  With a wave of her Power Glove throwing neon-emerald and ruby holograms against the bright latticed vastness of High City.  A virtual coliseum of her Followers erupted around her; mostly avatars of douche-looking guys with names like "Cheetron" and "Warzennegar" with endless drooley comments on her Ivy Valentine cosplay saying things like, 'gawwwwd, marry me baby or I'll seppuku myself', and 'Def SMASH!!!   I need moar of DAT a$$!!!!'.  Gem felt that rush of pride and validation, like the first time she beat Super Mario, and the confidence-balloon swelled, from the size of an eyeliner brush up to a bronzer.

She scrolled down with her Power Glove's directional pad and found a comment with twenty thumbs down.  She yelled at herself not to read it, but then gave in, "IDK what you BBW-lovers are on about.  This bitch is too much cottage cheese, and I'm not looking to save the whales.  Kind of looks like a shemale too.  Stop embarrassing yourself, fatty."

DELETE!!!

But the damage had already been done, the balloon exploded, and she took an aerosolized anti-anxiety spray up her nostril in a futile attempt to combat a downward spiraling rash of negative thought. 

"FUCK!  No crying, Gem!  Stupid, stupid!" She picked herself up off the floor, retouched the delta of smeared mascara from all her loser crying, and took a walk of shame to the end of the registration line.  A long, thousand-person-long line.

"Hey bootycakes, hows the con going?" It was her sort-of-boyfriend, Lazerfalcon, on the holo-phone.

"Oh, uh, you know.  Going.  It's great!"  She masked the hurt in her voice by calling up her Japanese-schoolgirlish 'customer service' voice she used when working for call centers, before robots ate up that job category globally. 

"That's great baby.  Hey- I just wanted to check up to see if we're still on for that sub-orbital zero-g after-after-party tonight.  I totes can't miss this.  Biz, you know?  Connections to keep up and all, and I'm pretty sure D-Vuh will be there."  D-Vuh, as in only the biggest 'webz star in the universe with 20 billion views and 500 million subscribers.

"Oh, yeah!  Of course!"

'Don't get your hopes up, Gem' the little devil on her right shoulder told her.  'Your sort-of-Youtube-boyfriend always has an excuse for why he forgot to pick you up.'

"Next!"  A seven foot Juggernaut, complete with helmet head was at the ticketing booth.  His hands were the size of wedding cakes.  Ok, not really the size of wedding cakes, more like a nutella-snickerdoodle party cake.  God, relived-childhood-trauma crying gave Gem such a craving for cake.  A cake crush.  A cake-on.  Yeah.

Gem got on her Power Glove and Twumbled it to her meager hundred followers.

@GemRoguestar: "Relived-childhood-trauma crying gives me SUCH a cake-on. #cakenomnom"

"Ma'am!  The walk-in registration for the three-day event is two hundred sixty five dollars."  The giant live-action comic book character boomed.

"What!  Oh sorry," Gem snapped her fingers, dimming the me-dia hologram.  Pulled up her bank account balance.  $214.  Fuck. 

"I think I read on the I-con page that celebrities get a discount, right?  I'm Gem Roguestar, I should be on the list,"  She put one hand on her hip and crossed her knees in her best pinup pose.

The Juggernaut pulled down ridiculously tiny glasses to read something, "No, sorry, you're not on any of our lists."

Gem felt a rush of desperation.  Desperate times, desperate measures...  She touched the juggernaut's hand, making hers look like a first-trimester fetus' in comparison, and gave her most convincing sexy-eye.

"What are you doing?" The juggernaut asked, yanking his hand back and looking around for managerial staff.

"Oh, uh, nevermind.  How much is just the one-day thing?" 

"One hundred dollars."

Gem sighed, held out her Power Glove to be swiped by the Juggernaut's scanner.  A hundred sixty five for food, merch, water, and the contest entrance fee?  Ouch... She got back on her Glove as she walked through the nanomagic glass panes of The Fulcrum Convention Center that spread like a derezzing Nintendo boss.  Flat two-inch-cubed pixels of crystal-like material, pulling aside.

@GemRoguestar: "Broke as FUCK at I-Con, hate to beg but I could use a donation.  Check out my Amazon wishlist." 

@GemRoguestar: "Buy one of my genderbent Magneto pinup prints at my e-store or something and I'll love you 4ever!  Wet kisses 2 my awsum fans!"

Gem checked her 'cake-on' post, and it had gotten all of seven likes, and one retweet by a user named 'GaryStuStu'.   Come on Gem, you can do better.

After getting her Spiderman #635 signed by the disembodied, cryogenically frozen head of Stan Lee atop a robot body, Gem entered a Street Fighter 2 Turbo competition.  She came in third place, behind a seven year old Japanese girl named 'Kiki' and a five hundred pound man who could've convincingly played Jabba The Hut (but was just in t-shirt cargo pants).  The Jabba The Hut guy was nice and congratulated her, but when they stood together for the 'winners' pic where they all held up nano-assembled Ryu trophies, the big guy grabbed a handful of Gem's ass.  Gem ended up with a frown in the pic, and they had to reshoot, and it got weird. 

Afterward, Kiki's plainclothes tiger-mom took her aside and yelled at her like a drill seargent, "2nd place!?  What do I do with '2nd place'?!  We are not royals!  How will we pay our rent?  Stupid loser girl!"  Kiki sobbed into her Sailor Jupiter costume as her mom wrangled her to the next competition.

No negativity!   

"Hey, um... Can I get a pic of... What are you?" A vanilla male Deadpool that was as skinny as Gem was thick asked, holding up his Appoogle Futurecam. 

Yes!  Gem celebrated internally, trying hard not to emote how desperate she was, this being her first pic-request in ten minutes of strutting the convention.

"It's a Terminator-Powergirl mashup.  I call it, 'Powergirlator'.  I actually have a web series and fan fic about the character-"

"Yeah, uh, that's cool." 

Gem tallied up about twelve kudos for her costume, although one of them was from a blind man and five were from guys who just wanted Dat Picz of her from behind.  But hey, All Attention Is Good Attention! 

That's what her idol, Princess Cindercat, said, once, in an interview video at Mars-Con.  Cindercat was Gem's favorite ascendancy story, working her way up from lowly Los Angeles Wastelander, living in a crumbling Section-8 suburb, dayjob at a sweatshop and sewing Black Widow jumpsuits by night.  A plus-sized player like Gem and without cash for a gastro-bypass, boob job, let alone a vat-grown body, Cindercat had started out the laughing stock of competitions, enduring years of bodyshaming and lecher creepazoids.  Cindercat got her big break when she won 'Best of Contest'  at Apocacon 2029 with her killer Post-apoc Psylocke-Robocop mashup that involved tattered (scandalously revealing) blue jumpsuit and rusty cyber-prosthetic arms that she'd lathed from the bumper of her own beater Toyota, and later revealed gave her actual tetanus.   

Haters claimed that Cindercat had hooked up with the judge, a famous Marvel artist who was a well-known BBW lover, which was never proven, but the flame wars surrounding the controversy boosted both Cindercat's and the judge's social media followings, so it was win-win.  After that, Cindercat made it to "America's Next Top Geek", and shortly thereafter married Princess Sarah Gates-Walton, of the Gates-Walton Corpate Empire.  Gates-Walton was the first transgender / lesbian / transpecies royalty, with 20% feline genes in her vat-body that gave her literal and not just makeup cat-eye.  The utter scandal – not the les/trans part, but the fact that a Royal had married so far below her subscriber level -- took the mediaverse by storm and catapulted Cindercat to cosplay, Youtube and RL superstardom.  "Cindercat's beauty came from within," Princess Sarah was quoted saying during an interview at the Transplanetary Academy Awards, which she won, by default, because 80% of the Academy Awards voting members were Gates-Walton family members or employees.

That was Gem's plan.  "I'm a professional cosplayer," Gem reminded herself.  Her destiny was written in the stars.  The Cosplay Contest was on.  The contest was on?! 

"Again, the Contest will be starting in two minutes in Fulcrum Plaza," Gem wished female comic characters didn't wear ridiculously impractical high heels as she struggled to run and ended up tripping, falling, and knocking over a team of hairy bearded men cosplaying sexy-Pikachus.

The Plaza was a stage made literally of gold and jewels and nano-fab quartz, showcasing fabulous cosplayers in laserlight and pop-tart flavored confetti.  The crowd was roaring against an 80's-wave techno remix of the Jem And The Holograms theme.

You see?  They're playing your song, Gem.  "Tonight is my night.  Tonight is MY night," Gem subvocalized her mantra.  The liquid latex on her right cheekbone was already itching and her hourglass corset had her nearly throwing up her lunch of sugar, carb, fat, and gluten-free cupcakes.  Cakes.  Cakes.  She ate some pop-tart confetti, did one last costume check and soldiered up. 

"You are beautiful, you are skilled, you are awesome."  Her future was hinging on this.  This was her Cindercat moment: judge Prince Charming was somewhere out there, beyond the neon and the spotlights and the douchebags, and she would wow him into submission.  She would wow them all.

"Next up we have... Powergator?  Powergirlator?"

Gem strutted out before the cheering thousands, lightning in her step, stomach exploding with butterflies, walking on air – literally, the catwalk was translucent, gave her vertigo.   She was almost blinded by the spotlights and nearly toppled off the stage.  "Come on girl, get it together!" 

The Terminator exoskeleton-under-ripped flesh prosthetic tore off her face again, and she scrambled stress-paulsied fingers into her Powergirl Boob Window for the emergency adhesive to fix it.

"FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!" She slapped the piece back on.  The moderate courtesy-applause of the audience was dimming towards agitated boredom.

"Uhh... What the heck is she supposed to be?  Warmachine's girlfriend?" Gem heard someone say.

"I think she's supposed to be some kind of Powergirl fembot.  Too much padding though, her body shape is all wrong."

"That's slutty even for I-Con, doesn't she know there are kids here?"

No crying Gem, no crying!  But it was too late, she could already feel herself going to the dark place.  "You are beautiful, you are skilled, you are awesome, you are beautiful you are skilled-"  In her mind she visualized all the skinny mean bitches from high school, the eugenically perfect Thor cosplayer, the avatars of every smug anonymous Interwebz hater, all of them, sitting out there in the audience.

I AM AWESOME!

Gem puffed up her boob window, pushed her sizable rump out, nailed the Powergirl flex and screamed at the top of her lungs,

"HASTA LA VISTA, BABY!"

With the flick of a thumb on her Power Glove she activated her fiber-optic Terminator Eye, that burned ruby red, and simultaneously revved up her custom-machined M61 Terminator minigun, and imagined mowing all of the haters down.  Non-fatally, in the kneecap.

The gun flared fake muzzle flashes at two hundred rounds-per-minute, roared like a high-caliber lion, and the crowd roared back at Gem. 

"That's fucking awesome!  Holy shit!"

"It's Terminator-Powergirl, OMG that is genius!"

"You are MURDERING it, girl!  Rock that beautiful curvy body!"

The nexus erupted into standing ovation.

Gem felt her confidence-balloon filling up so big it was pressing up against her chest like some kind of xenomorph chest-burster made of pride.  Her heart felt like it was going to explode into a gooey mess of chocolate-maple-bacon-buttercream frosting.  Cake.  The feeling was pure cake! 

Reeling from the high, Gem watched her realtime Interwebz analytics taking off in her hologram.  She'd gained a hundred Youtube subscribers in thirty seconds, there were 2,348 notes on her Twumbler dash.  The buzz read:

"Who the HELL is this Powergirlator darkhorse?" 

"We've got an honorary booth at Luna-Con for this Gem Roguestar girl," 

"She was a little too chubby for my tastes-"

DELETE!!  BAN!!!

She waited for the depression spiral to start, but Gem felt her confidence balloon had just become a confidence Death Star.  She was Mario rocking an invincibility star.  The negative comment bounced off of her like a 9mm Beretta round off of a T-800.  Or a Powergirl, for that matter. 

"Hey, Powergirlator," it was the vat-bred Thor giantess, who stepped in front of her, almost on-top of her as Gem stepped off the stage. 

Gem clenched her thunder thighs and balled her small fists.  At any other given moment of her life, she would've ran away screaming from the uber-intimidating cloned Amazon goddess. 

But not today, not now. 

If this blue-blood cos-Nazi wanted to start some shit, Gem was certain she was going to cut a bitch, or at least punch her in her pumpkin-sized stem-cell-titties, even if it meant Gem was going to be smashed to a pulp of discount silver-metallic makeup, white jumpsuit, and cos-pauper flesh.

"What do YOU want!?" Gem killed a perfect Powergirl scowl.

The giantess did a mock-pose of the Terminator's thumbs-up and awkward grin.

"Not bad, for a Pleb.  Not bad."

"Oh.  Thanks.  I think."

Gem got a serious popularity bump, and #gemroguestar briefly trended, at it's peak, at 103rd, just behind #CatPoopingOnRabbit and in front of #USNukesSyria and #RefugeeHolocaust.  Unfortunately, she did not win the competition, but did get an honorable mention as "Best Rookie Commoner" cosplayer.  She'd also sold ten of her Sexy Magneto crossplay print putting her bank balance at $210 (cha ching!) and an Amazon drone came flying in through a window with a medium pepperoni meatlovers pizza and a bucket of gourmet chocolate-maple-bacon-buttercream frosted cupcakes.  "Courtesy of user MadMaximus34," the drone said in Steven Hawking voice.

Gem did a quick animated gif of her wetly kissing the screen of her Power Glove, pulling back to a hawt boob window cleavage shot, and beamed it over to MadMaximus34 as promised.

"Treat yourself, Gem, you deserve it!" She plowed face-first into a cupcake.

First place, in fact, went to the Lady Thor, who turned out to be Princess Cindercat herself, who was at I-Con incognito in one of her many ten-million-dollar alter-bodies.  Discovering this, Gem felt simultaneously fangasmic that she'd actually gotten to talk to her idol and superceleb, but also betrayed that she'd been basically snipe-dissed by her own idol, and repulsed that her idol had gone from being a sweet lowly street girl to a self-centered, royal fascist bitch. 

"Fame will never do that to me, I'm so above all that," Gem said to herself as she unsubscribed from Youtube channels that she'd 'outgrown', who by now had far less subscribers than her.

Princess Cindercat in the body of Lady Thor marched up to the stage to accept her I-Con trophy to raucous applause, and the Hulk / Thing security team had to bodyslam several fanboys and girls who tries to rush the stage.

"I'd just like to thank all of my loving fans out there, and I'd like to say I had an AWESOME time working with Robert Downey Jr. IV and Hugh Jackman Jr. in X-Men vs. Avengers VIII, and you guys should all totally check it out in VR theaters June 7.  Also, don't forget to buy my latest platinum album, 'Cindercat On Fire' produced by B-Dreddy.   Oh, right, and don't forget to comment, like and subscribe!  If I get to two billion subscribers by 12 midnight tonight, all my fans will get a chance to pre-pre-order my AAA video game 'Creed of Cindercat' and I'll be releasing a new line of this Lady Thor body I'm wearing for all of you to rent to your next con, or use for other fun purposes-"

Princess Cindercat's voice cut out as a flaming arrow whizzed, out of the rafters, into her.  Into her kneecap.  Non-fatally.

"WWWAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" Princess Cindercat wailed so loud into the mic it actually blew out one of the speakers.  Blood splattered the phonecameras of the first row audience, who kept filming, but tried to frantically bag, bottle or ziplock the blood of the princess like saintly relic fan memorabilia, no doubt to enshrine in their collections or to auction online.  Her red cape caught on fire, as did all the blue spandex she was wearing, and Cindercat was soon a mashplay of Thor and the Human Torch.

"GET ME OUT OF THIS BODY!!!!"  She caterwauled, sounding more like a whining toddler now than anything else.  A phalanx of Gates-Walton SWAT proceeded to secure the area, firing rubber bullets, active denial microwave guns, and tear gas into the audience at anyone holding a gun, lightsaber, crossbow, blaster, Chitauri scepter, vorpal blade or other weapon, prop or otherwise, which was a whole lot of cosplayers.  The Plaza erupted in screaming, but only a few attendees ran for the exits, and everyone else kept filming the event while trying to dodge the various nearly-lethal munitions.  Two Punishers were brutally punished in the face by sonic-boom weapons that blew the spandex off their ripped bodies, and a half-wolf She Hulk who was apparently on some kind of amphetamine was tased eight times, once in each boob.

Gem (gently) tossed her Vulcan M61 onto a box of Captain America t-shirts so as to avoid being shot at.  She dove out of the way of a flying teargas canister, and huddled behind a life-size statue of Colossus fronting the disembodied Stan Lee-head booth.   Gem tried to use the burning curtains and costumes ignited accidentally by the microwave gun to get well-lit, focused shots of the havoc.  "Oh God!  This is crazy!  I need a new lens for this camera!  It looks like I got buttercream frosting on the lens!"  She did, in fact, and wiped the frosting off with a non-T-800 exoskeletal finger, licked it up.

From her vantage point Gem made out a team of neuroscientists, biophysicists and other future-science-looking people in labcoats rushing in, with a Princess Cindercat-original body with tubes and IV's sticking out, an oxygen mask on the face.

They blasted the still-screaming Princess Cindercat-Thor's body with fire extinguishers to put out the flames from the charred flesh and strapped her down, placing a transcranial-consciousness-transfer cap on her head. 

"Area secure, ma'am," the SWAT leader declared to the incoherent Princess.  She responded with strangulated groans.

A future-scientist injected her full of a liquid the color of Predator blood.

"She's flux-incapacitated, we've got to get the princess' consciousness out, stat!"  The scientists activated a giant wheeled MRI machine the size of a Batmobile.  After hooking them up to the machine the two Cindercat-shell-bodies were engulfed in lightning arcs and magnetic-resonance wave rays blew out all the cameras in a 30 meter radius, but Gem was smart, had her Power Glove shielded in the faraday cleavage of statue-Colossus' metal pecs. 

As they were bringing Princess Cindercat to life in her original-body clone, with all the paramilitary types and other Gates-Walton personnel focused on the corporate dauphin's consciousness transfer, something crazy happened.

Three dozen cosplayers, and a good quarter of the jackbooted, riot-shielded SWAT team tore off their costumes to reveal transgender, transracial, transpecies, mashup cosplays of Katniss Everdeen, Green Arrow, Robinhood and other revolutionary archer characters.  The sudden explosion of red hair, Hunger Games girls-on-fire, and furry red anthro-foxes made it appear as though the entire I-Con convention had suddenly burst into flame.

The guerilla flashmob of rebel archers drew their bows, crossbows, longbows, lightbows, laserbows, and fired a hail of electrified arrows into the Gates-Walton guards, who went into convulsions, like a synchronized dance troupe of glitchcore breakdancers, before toppling to the floor. 

"We are Phoenix Uprising, and we represent the many!" the archers raised their bows and shouted in unison.

From the rafters, a Katniss descended, in a simple hand-crafted suit with feathers made of red felt, and a cheap bargain-store Halloween wig.  Looking closer, Gem realized that the black jumpsuit was coming apart at the seams.   Her Hunger Games: Mocking Jay militarized bottoms had white leg stripes that were painted on with what looked like whiteout. 

"OMG, that is such a crap costume!" Gem thought to herself.  Then she thought to herself, "Wait, that girl looks familiar.  Isn't that... no, it can't be."

It was Princess Sarah Gates-Walton herself, Princess Cindercat's girlfriend. 

ACTUAL old-blood royalty.  Daughter of the owner of basically most of Earth and most of the other interplanetary corporate empires.  Gem almost passed out.

"Sarah... you bitch!" The newly resurrected (ex?)girlfriend, Princess Cindercat, now in her original body, threw the IV tubes and needles to the floor, and stepped over the charred remains of her Lady Thor body paying it no mind, like it was a molted snakeskin.

"No, YOU bitch, Cinder."  Princess Sarah shot an arrow into the 200-foot runway screen, into Princess Cindercat's projected face.  She swung down like a real-life Spiderman, somersaulting onto the convention stage upon a pile of collapsed unconscious SWAT team members.

The two royal (former?) lovers stood off against one another as the entire Fulcrum Convention center fell silent.  The entire world was definitely watching history unfold.  It was like that time China misread a hot air balloon festival in Seoul and launched a nuke into Honolulu, and everyone waited for World War III.  Like that moment where Galactus has his panet-sized mouth open ready to devour the Earth and the Silver Surfer rockets up to face him in a cosmic standoff for the fate of the world.  The livestream of the I-Con event skyrocketed to #1 by a long shot. 

Princess Sarah began, "I still remember the day I discovered you.  In your mindblowing Psylocke-Robocop costume that you slaved over for months, eating krill paste-flavored soynoodles and junking your rusty beater to put together.  I remember that girl who could out-game, out-80's movie, out-Marvel reference any comic book store owner in San Diego, hands down.  That beautiful soul who was imperfect, chubby, homely on the outside, but on the inside was the most beautiful, talented, creative soul I'd ever met in my life.  The friend who taught me the Konami Code, the confidant who showed me how to fabricate a foam Doctor Doom gauntlet and sew Psylocke boot covers, the lover who stole me out of my Royal shell of privelege and with whom I boldly went to furthest edges of geekdom, where I'd never dared to go before."

"And what are you, now?  You've destroyed everything you've ever loved about cosplay.  You're a symbol of everything you once hated.  Cosplay was a celebration.  It was about showing your love for your favorite characters and making friends.  It was about creativity and acceptance.  Now you've made it about money and elitism and exclusivity.  The celebration has become a cut-throat competition, a costuming Hunger Games."

"Yeah?  Well your costume looks like utter shit, Sarah.  I mean really."

Gem got really pissed off that she wasn't able to see whether Princess Cindercat was being sarcastic and the two Princesses ended up making up and hugging tearjerkingly, or if Cindercat was serious and they ended up catfighting to the death. 

Gem's Power Glove ran out of battery simultaneously as another wave of SWAT exploded in through the roof of the convention center, and chased away / arrested the Phoenix Uprising army, along with Gem and all the other con goers.

Gem thought that Princess Sarah Gates-Walton gave a really great speech, and though she wasn't sure exactly how the speech applied to her, she suddenly felt kind of bad about... she wasn't sure but she felt maybe she might've been an ass to some people, and maybe she might've taken advantage a little of some of her fans.  Maybe.  But it was all in service of her craft!  Gem's heart was in the right place.  Probably the Princess was referring to some of the other people.

"Hey, could I get your sig on this?  That minigun prop is the sickest thing I've ever seen and you uh... Look amazing," said a beat-up Iron Man.  She knew that scatter-eyed, mouthbreath-ey look that meant this guy was into Gem's body, but she appreciated that he didn't like, try to grab anything or make any creepy comments.

"Thanks!  You look amazing too, especially that arc reactor with the cyan LEDs.  Too bad it got fried..."  Thinking about it now, Gem had rarely if ever given any actual compliments other than to more important people that she wanted to sub or follow or like her back, or give her some kind of celebratorial benefit or buy her meatlovers or donate her rent money in exchange for pics of dildo-in-underboob. 

It felt good to do a nice thing.

Gem signed the half-burnt itinerary of Tony Stark who's aluminum foil suit had been microwaved literally by the active denial gun, which had set his program on fire.  Then there was the sonic boomed Punisher, who's program had ripped, but he paper mache'd it back together with Mountain Dew Red mixed with some of Gem's peanut butter frosting (she couldn't eat it anyway, allergies).  The Punisher actually turned out to be a girl, but with this weird hormonal condition that made her crazy buff even if she ate tubs of lard all day and lay in bed.  Gem didn't realize you could be bodyshamed for being TOO in shape, and found herself relating to the Punisher's life experiences, like a lot.   It also felt really great to really have honest conversations with other human beings face to face.

Gem wasn't in the schedule, didn't have a booth or panel or anything, but Gem sharpie'd her signature over the blurb of one of the no-show voice actresses who played Harley Quinn in the straight-to-Youtube spin-off of Suicide Squad, which Gem thought sucked ass anyway.  She pasted her business card over the MIA chick's portrait with her emergency adhesive from her boob window.  Both the Iron Man and Punisher girl asked Gem for her pic (photo-reqs at 25, a new record yay!) and also asked her if she wanted to come get a bite and Karaoke and maybe do some retrogaming with them later.  The superskinny Deadpool kid was going to be there too.  She thought about it, but then remembered her sort-of-famous Hollywood director sort-of-Youtube-boyfriend and all the opportunities he could provide, then turned them down.

Then she remembered something Princess Sarah had said, "Cosplay is costume-play.  It's about expressing yourself, geeking out, having fun and making awesome friends."  Then Gem thought about what an absolute mega-bitch Princess Cindercat had turned out to be. 

"Hey, uh, yo, guys!  Wait up!  If you guys let me bake you some snickerdoodle-frosted red velvet lollipop cakes, or generally have anything involving cake at some point in the night, I'm SO in!" 

[Baron]

I'm about half done.  Should be able to finish before the end of Oct 2 my time.  Stand by.

[Baron]

The Unbowed

   A mug of coffee sat half-drunk on the lab bench next to the open dossier.  Sweat beaded on Dr. Williams' brow as he squinted raptly into the microscope.  The specimen writhed in and out of focus, struggling to escape his ruthless evaluation, but he was used to such petty nuisances by now.  With one hand he delicately wielded a pair of surgical pincers to restrain the specimen, while with the other he expertly turned the focal dial.  A drop of perspiration splashed thunderously close to the specimen, but Dr. Williams would not be deterred from his work.  Again, he squinted intently.

   The heat and humidity of the lab were oppressive but necessary for the breeding program; the dry atmosphere of a typically air-conditioned lab was not the ideal habitat of the musca genus.  And so through dedication to his work Dr. Williams had reconciled himself to labouring in the heavy air.  He no longer noticed the smell, either: the rank stench of putridity with just enough of a hint of sweetness to make an unaccustomed human gag.  Even the constant hum of air being beaten to a submissive pulp by a hundred-thousand pairs of wings barely registered any more.  An insect might need a hundred generations to adapt to a newly harsh environment, but a higher order organism such as himself could achieve the same feat in but one through sheer force of mind.

   Suddenly there was a tickle on the back of the doctor's neck.  His first impulse was to smack at it, but he restrained himself.  Through force of mind, he reminded himself.  It was probably just sweat, and the less evolved part of his brainstem playing tricks on him.  He gently turned the focal dial a barely perceptible amount.  Almost got it.....

   The specimen squirmed, and suddenly the tickle was up on his hair.  The good doctor could feel his face twitch involuntarily.  Through sheer force of mind.  Then there was a second tickle.  If there was one thing he couldn't stand it was the feeling of flies walking over him, the microscopic hairs of their legs dragging untold filth and noxious micro-organisms all over his body.  There was a spasm in his gut now, and the focus was gone.  The specimen was gone, soaring to a false freedom within the confines of the lab.  The force of mind was gone, evaporated like a drop of sweat in a frying pan.  The pincers fell to the floor with a clatter as the doctor swatted his hands violently over his head.  Now the microscope tipped over, and the dossier of papers was scattered.  He screamed and drew his lab-coat up over his head, crouched low on the floor, and rocked himself soothingly back and forth, back and forth.  Snap.

   It was an interesting thing, snapping, if one had the good fortune to observe it impartially from a higher plane of mind quite distinct from the monster of instinct that was seizing control of one's body.  It was as if his very being had split into a binary system like a single-cell amoeba.  The rationality and pensiveness of the old executive wing of the mind was now in one half, while control slipped to some new wild and feral creature in the other.  The one could see and think; the other only act.  Or rather react, for acting would require some higher purpose that was beyond the capacity of the crazed neanderthal.  The doctor felt his body contort into a crooked approximation of a baser hominid, and a malicious glint now came so easily to his eye that it shocked his voyeuristic hostage-ego.  He had assumed the wild ape that was himself would instinctively flee the buzzing madness; instead, its impulse was to fight.  To destroy.  To hunt.

   Like a foraging beast the caveman began pawing through the debris of the lab, looking for a club or cudgel with which to smash his attackers to death.  Almost immediately he seized upon the microscope, which he swung about with all the aggressive precision of a drunken baboon.  His tormentors buzzed easily around the blunt implement, careening with measured impunity off his face.  He screamed in primal rage, then threw the instrument against the wall where it smashed into a thousand pieces.  Back to foraging again.  Shards of coffee mug: too light.  Wet papers: too delicate.  Paperclip: too puny.  Rubber bands: too.....  The monster stretched a rubber band in his hand, dredging up muscle memory from some distant and forgotten past.  The dossier had been bound shut with several rubber bands, great long ones that could snap with terrific force.  He grabbed half a dozen, and stretched one taught between the thumb of one hand and the fore-finger of the other.  Now the hunt could begin in earnest.

   Reflexively the creature that he had become rolled under the lab bench, covering himself in cold coffee and fly-droppings like a predator disguising his scent from his prey.  Then he sprung up again into a ready crouch, eyes barely peering over the edge of the counter, rubber-band cocked to the side of his face, watching.  They were all around him, buzzing malevolently.  In the air they were invulnerable, like F-35s swirling around some second-hand Russian ground-kit.  He rolled again, this time taking up a defensive position with his back to the corner.  Even stealth fighters ran out of fuel, and when they were on the ground they became vulnerable to precision attacks of an unexpected nature.

   Another fly buzzed by his head, teasing him with its speed and manoeuvrability.  He scratched his primitive, oversized jaw, rubber-band still cocked, struggling to formulate a degree of forethought necessary to make a plan.  His ego would have shaken his head, had he control of any motor functions at all, but instead he was left to suffer in silence as his dull-witted captor stumbled from calamity to defeat without the benefit of reason.  If only the caveman would listen: if only his tiny walnut-sized brain could learn!  He shouted in his mind's ear with all the ethereal volume he could imagine.

   The brow of the beast became furrowed, straining at the effort of flexing some undiscovered muscle in his head.  He tried to harness some primal memories of hunting technique: the blind, the bait, the flanking manoeuvre.  Slowly the pieces fell together as his eye fell upon the hulking mass of the molecular fusion spectrometer.  Without entirely understanding the sophisticated theories behind the idea, he nevertheless knew what he had to do.

   Another quick roll through the debris of the lab floor and he was pawing through drawers, pulling out papers and implements and bottles and -aha!  The half-eaten chocolate bar had melted into a scat-like puddle of goo, but that was all the better for smearing up and down the counter-top.  Then he dove again, rolled through a gap beneath the work benches to throw off his pursuers, then doubled back when the coast was clear.  He was a raptor on the wing.  He was death!

   Now the labcoat was left dangling on a hook, the last remnants of chocolate wiped over the human-pheromones that seemed to attract his attackers like beer bugs to hard liquor.  He was in the raw now, a celtic warrior painted only with the dirt of the floor and the rubber weapons that adorned his wrists like golden trophies of war.  He was wedged in the tight space between the ceiling and the top plate of the molecular fusion spectrometer, a bundled haz-mat suit camouflaging his location.  A rubber-band was again stretched from his ear to his fore-thumb, his breath steady, his gaze intent.  Let the infernal insects spend their strength on turning circles in the void.  Sooner or later temptation would get the better of them, and when it did he would be waiting.

   Zzzzzzzp!  There it was, a fly pitched on the counter, curious about the chocolate smear.  The cave creature in the lab equivalent of the lonely bell-tower took aim.  The surroundings of the lab melted away, and all that was left was his tiny adversary, about fifteen paces away, pitter-pattering up and down the edge of the counter.  It was oblivious to the danger lurking above, like a field mouse unaware of the haunting shadow of the falcon gliding menacingly over the meadow.

   SNAP!   A streak of carnage stretched across the counter-top like the next rubber-band already at his ear.  I am wrath!  I am murder!  He scanned the lab coldly for his next victim.

   Zzzzzzp!  There it was, investigating the remains of the first fly.  But in a moment it was airborne again, instinctively sensing the peril it was now in.  Of course, the conditioning!  His ego laughed at the irony.  All these long months spent meticulously enhancing the fly's nervous system, trying to adapt it to monitoring computer systems that were otherwise prone to drone-like naivety when it came to potential security breaches; what he had really done was create a super-adversary of unfathomable cunning.  He was a fool!  He thought he could play god without the-

   Zzzzzzp!  No sooner had the fly had alighted upon the decoy lab jacket then a 5 gram band of tensile death went hurtling towards it.  In a fraction of an instant it was leaping again into the air, but to late to avoid the vector of destruction that splattered it into a thousand droplets of liquid Darwinian failure.

   Suddenly there was a change in the tone of the infernal droning, as if the captive specimens had collectively all come to the same conclusion.  Could it be?  Could they really coordinate themselves at this early stage in the genetic engineering process?  Impossible!  The wild hominid had another rubber-band drawn, his breath held, listening for a clue.  His nakedness slipped imperceptibly on a film of sweat along the smooth metal casing of his perch.  There was a screech of metal, like rusty hinges protesting at being force-marched into usefulness.  The rational thing to do was to wait and observe.  To watch like the hawk hidden in the glare of the sun, only to strike when his victim was at his most vulnerable and oblivious.  But the crazed  wild-man knew no such art.  In a trice he was over the edge to confront this new and heinous enemy, come what may, rubber-bands blazing, to death or glory!

   Unfortunately the film of sweat on the metal casing caused him to slip awkwardly, so he rolled more than pounced to the floor ten feet below.  But he still had his rubber-band primed -that was the important thing.  There, towering above him now, massed the silhouette of a great agglomeration of writhing evil.  But somewhere in that swarming riot there had to be a centre of control, a general, a queen.  A lord of the flies.  It had to be high up for the maximum vantage, near the apex of the hateful multitude.  He had nothing but faith in the trueness of his rubber bolt to guide him, but that would suffice for the untamed primitive hunter.  If he was going down, he was going down shooting.

   â€œWilliams?  What the f -ouch!”

[Sinitrena]

Aaaaaaaand time is up.

We have three lovely (last minute ) entries:

Ibispi - Lonely Heart Cupid
SilverSpook - The Cospauper
Baron - The Unbowed

Thank you very much.


And now it is, as always, time to vote. Our Categories:

Character: You find one or several characters really believable/captivating/magnetic/unique, etc.
Plot: The story arc was well-organized, coherent, and well-executed with appropriate pacing.
Atmosphere: This is all about feeling: did the story evoke strong feelings due to excitement/humour/intrigue/wonder/emotional intensity?
Background World: The best setting or milieu for a story; a place brought to life.
Word Choice/Style: The technical art of combining words in clever or gripping ways.

As there are just three entries, you are only allowed one vote per category. Get them in until the 7. October.

[Ibispi]

Hello, bluecuppers!
I liked both stories, and it was difficult to choose for which one to vote in all categories.
Here are my final votes:



Character: Gem Roguestar from SilverSpook's The Cospauper. I liked Baron's Dr Williams, but I was really amazed by SilverSpook's story and its characters. I've never read a story where characters are cosplayers. Originality aside, Gem Roguestar seems very real to me, and that is why i vote for her.

Plot: The Unbowed by Baron. I liked the pacing of SilverSpook's The Cospauper, but I felt that Baron's story was more succinct and easier to read. I like both stories, but I feel as if Baron's is structured better.

Atmosphere: The Unbowed by Baron, again. This was a difficult choice too. I got immersed into both stories. I felt that Dr Williams' tense experiment and the havocking of his lab was more atmospheric, than the I-con. Also, Baron's story is quite comical. 

Background World: The Cospauper by SilverSpook. SilverSpook was very descriptive about the characters in his story and went into smallest about some stuff. Especially the main character's career of cosplaying.

Word Choice/Style: The Cospauper by SilverSpook. I liked both writing styles - but, SilverSpook's very modern, internet-slang way of writing, shocked me. Not in a bad way though.