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NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
You thought a simple ban could destroy me! Pfftt... In, flash plz.

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NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
Dualism
1,291 Words

"Keep your eyes on the sky tonight! We've got some unique meteorological activity that's drawn quite a bit of attention to our little town. Amateur astronomers, scientists, astrologists, and prophets have all gathered for the largest meteor event Texas has seen in centuries."

"The Messiah's chosen Angels have descended from heaven to prepare us for Armageddon. Repent now! Save yourself from eternal damnation in the ever-loving arms of the Lord!"

"This particle storm is unlike anything we've ever witnessed... we keep trying to explain to the news and public that it's not meteors... it's something far more fantastic. Actual materials from another dimension traversing through our own in a rare interstitial phenomenon that lends credence to froth and foam-based reality theories. This is revolutionary."

Jed pushed a callused thumb into the faded arrows of his remote as he searched for something to watch, but could find nothing outside of long-cancelled reruns and nonsense about this sci-fi mumbo jumbo that had brought a whole host of loons to his small Texas town.

“Ain’t poo poo on tonight.” Jed grumbled towards the kitchen where his wife Deborah, had been putting away dinner’s dishes.

“Figures with all that fuss about this meteor shower.”

“I know, I just can’t believe they cancelled the game for this mess. It’s a drat shame.”

Deborah chuckled at Jed’s surliness, and he began to groan something in protest when the living room exploded with light.

* * *

There isn't much that goes on in Pleasant. It's a small town, with a smattering of people stretched out across 5 miles of interstate leading into more populated places, but it's home, and for the first time ever, the slow dying, nowhere town has more attention than it knows what to do with.

However, prior to all the excitement, you'd just find farmers, small business owners and oil-field workers trying to eke out a living. That was until today…

Staring at the ichor-covered mass that writhed on the floor in front of him Jed failed to stifle a scream that escaped from his throat as high-pitched whine that quickly modulated into a deeply unsettled baritone timbre.

One second, Jed’s complaining about the lack of programming to his wife, and the next he’s staring down something breathtakingly hideous. Pale-green, parchment-thin skin hung slack on bulbous segments of abdomen that seemed impossibly fused with the wood floor of the house.

Hooked, chitinous, appendages scrambled to move the organism as it reached some type of painful recollection of its surroundings. As it tried to heft its mass from the floor, it discovered its incomplete materialization as sections of its abdomen ripped open leaking out viscous orange innards.

Deborah was in the doorway to the kitchen now. She dropped a plate she was drying and the broken fragments of it scattered over the floor like fleeing rodents.

Her lips trembled as she struggled to find any words that could make sense of her situation, but as Jed reeled away from the injured creature, she could only muster a scream nearly as inhuman as the thing in her living room.

Jed had backed as far as he could into his recliner, and it toppled over giving him a moment of clarity as he was startled away from the waking nightmare.

He scrambled to the closet behind him. Clammy hands quickly grasped the worn brass handle and flung the door open.

His Remington and a box of slugs was locked away at the rear of it. His fingers flooded over the combination pad in frantic desperation. Deborah was still screaming. That thing was still bleeding. Nothing made sense anymore.

Then Jed sniffed at the air. Something tinged with subtle spice like cinnamon, but openly sweet like honey permeated the room.

Jed turned towards the thing at the center of his living room with the shotgun in hand, but seconds too late.

He loaded two slugs into the gun and leveled it at the creature and found himself unable to pull the trigger.

Then slowly, but surely, as he stared at the creature, intent on destroying it, he felt those feelings of fear and animosity slowly begin to fade as the scents overtook him.

He noticed strange nodules opening like tiny geysers on the creature, and from those orifices flowed that saccharine, mind-altering, mist.

He set the gun down, then fully aware that he was no longer in control of his own movements, moved to draw the curtains closed.

Deborah glanced at him with wary eyes then at her own limbs that jerked about as if they had a life of their own, and the realization crept over her that she too was no longer in control of her body. Jed and Deborah made their way towards the creature like clumsy marionettes.

Fell to their knees and began chewing free the fused flesh and kneading the masticated remnants back into the wound.

* * *

Jed rocked in his recliner with his shotgun on his lap. The postman was beginning to smell, but he had come to close. Came to the porch. Saw the chrysalis. It wouldn’t let him live. Jed had to kill him. He had to.

Clutched in the dead postman’s hands were two postcards and Texas Monthly. The postcards were mostly ruined, but Jed could make out block letters spelling Niagara Falls in the crimson pool they now laid in, and it donned on him for only a moment, that the world did still exist outside of their home.

Even with the dead man lying on their floor with a satchel of undelivered mail on his side. It was those postcards that managed to tether what was left of his frayed mind to reality.

That bit of consciousness was short lived, however. He fixed his eyes on the glowing cocoon and each throb and shift of it sent unspoken directives to its unwilling wards.

Deborah came and sloughed off orange excretions from the outer layers of the chrysalis with a plate fragment from the plate she had dropped weeks ago and manically devoured the otherworldly substance, leaving an equal portion for Jed to consume which he took eagerly. The event would happen soon. Soon their lives would return to… what would their lives return to? How could they explain any of this? Jed had murdered a man at the behest of a thing.

He and Deborah fed off it, relied on it, had even come to love it in the weeks they spent nursing it back to good health. Their whole world had been consumed by this creature, and now, it was coming to an end.

They both knew the change would occur any day now, and although deep, incomparable, relief was the unspoken gift that would accompany their freedom, they couldn’t help but also feel inexplicable pangs of loss.

They wept with crooked, forced, smiles at the insanity of their situation as Deborah used the plate fragments to retrieve more excretions.

* * *

The change occurred at night. Jed and Deborah stood motionless like mannequins for hours as the thick outer layer of the chrysalis began to decay and weaken allowing the form inside to break free.

Two clubbed antennae curled out from the chrysalis followed by a marble-smooth face with two black oval eyes. Four humanoid arms that ended in elongated inhuman hands peeled away sections of the remaining cocoon until a creature that resembled Jed and Deborah stood in front of them, somewhat human and somewhat insect.

Then voluminous wings unfolded from its back, bright and ornate. It flapped its wings, slowly at first, and then powerfully, fully, until it appeared as if it were flying in place.

Then as quickly as it had appeared, it had vanished leaving behind incomprehensible ruin.

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
Thank you for the crits

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
In, decisively engaged, fog of war:toxx:

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
Virtue & Vitriol
1,078 Words

Sigrid rowed slowly. Curling blankets of mist parted as the canoe moved forward through the cool, dark, water. Elof coughed at the rear of the canoe. He was bundled in furs, struggling with fever he had took on prior to Ulfgar the Great Wolf’s siege of their home.

Nearly spanning the length of Elof’s frail body was a long-hafted axe called Vithar, and it had been coated in more than one man’s blood. Even so, the silver filigreed head of the axe glinted in what little light hung over them in the clouded fjord.

Then the bird songs, sparse though they were, ceased altogether, and the fish streaming past the canoe were nowhere to be seen.

Sigrid’s breath began to show as the mist became so dense that only the water surrounding them was visible.

In the distance there were small ripples forming where the mist cleared off the water. Just beneath the surface of the water, pressed against it but not breaking through, something began to inch forward.

A wild sprawl of ink like hair contrasted against the pale flesh of a nude, elderly woman became visible. Its spine flattened and its arms and legs outstretched as it skittered towards the canoe on the underside of the water.

Sigrid reached for Vithar and stood at the center of the canoe feet on either side of her brother Elof. The canoe glided forward as the water hag made her presence known.

Staring up at Sigrid were two hateful, pitch-black beads stuck in sunken in jaundiced eyes that were glossed over with the sheen of death. A long-crooked nose with slack, water-logged skin twitched as a centipede broke its way free of a nostril and floated up towards the surface the water. Rotting and broken teeth made for a gnarled grin of decaying fangs in receding grey gum.

Sigrid’s heart was in her throat. She wanted to scream, but she tightened her grip on Vithar and kept her eyes on the hag as the boat drifted through the straight.

The hag opened her mouth and creeping rot bubbled out from it exploding into disconnected words on the surface of the water.

“Children… blessed of… Baldr… Hel awaits.”

Sigrid grit her teeth and raised Vithar overhead but the hag vanished, dispersing into worms and leeches in the water.

Sigrid lowered the axe slowly and got settled back alongside her brother Elof and took up the oars once more.

* * *

The inlet eventually let out into a forested clearing that led deeper into the mountains, but small columns of smoke and the scent of cooked meat promised signs of civilization. They had rested along the shore of the clearing until Elof had enough strength to travel on foot, and then they set off.

Warm sunlight diffused through the snow-burdened branches of massive pines and thin ice crunched underfoot.

The scents of a camp were drawing closer.

“Where are we headed, Sigrid?”

“To the East.”

“But where will we go? What are we to do?”

“We head East, away from Ulfgar’s conquest. Away from all of this.”

“But why? For what reason? Our parents are slain, our home destroyed, why must we go on?”

“Mother demanded it. She said ‘Sigrid, guard your brother’s life with your last breath, go East. Protect the Pure Dawn’.”

“Not this prophecy nonsense again, we’re not special Sigrid. We are refugees. Victims of a senseless war! Not some heroes of old–”

Elof’s protestations were cut short as he and Sigrid came across an empty camp. Flames from a waning fire still licked the underside of a spit-roasted boar. There were knapsacks and provisions left unsecured, out in the open.

Before either Elof or Sigrid could act, brigands, hiding in the surrounding trees, came out with notched axes and rusted swords.

Elof stepped nearer his sister and Sigrid unslung Vithar from its housing on her back. She flourished the large axe spinning it once across the front of her body before planting its weighted iron end into the frosted soil.

“Well, well, well… look at what we have here.” A bold bandit said stepping forward. His skin was pockmarked and covered in a layer of grime. He was missing more than a few teeth and had jagged ridges of smoothed flesh where an ear used to be.

Elof spoke up, “We don’t want any trouble… we’re just refugees. Our home was destroyed by Ulfgar, we are just looking for a village to lodge in.”

Some of the other bandits laughed.

“Ay, lad. Most people don’t want trouble, but it’s found you.”

“We…we’ll give you everything we can spare, but please just let us pass.” Elof continued from behind Sigrid.

He fell into a coughing fit then and braced himself against Sigrid who eased him towards the ground as he tried to regain his breath.

“Just a sick boy and a little girl. Easy pickings, eh Olaf?”

Olaf, the leader of the brigands had been silent during the encounter. Sigrid identified him immediately and he had been the one she issued challenge to.

While Elof pleaded and the others slavered at the prospect of violence, Sigrid had engaged in a silent duel with their leader.

Sigrid’s sharp green eyes met Olaf’s and the dispassionate glares they shared carved out a battle bloodier than either of them had expected.

While others looked on at two helpless children, Olaf saw a battle-hardened warrior serving as ward to one helpless child.

He saw in those calm eyes, heads crushed under pummeling blows from the blunt end of an axe too unwieldy for the girl using it.

He saw limbs severed, and throats rent open into crimson geysers as the specter of death itself hovered over the girl in her berserk approach.

He saw himself, overwhelmed, Sigrid burrowing her feet into his chest, biting into her lips until blood beaded up at the corners as she burrowed her axe into his skull, the iron biting through the bone, finding purchase in the soft grey matter.

Olaf felt fear staring at Sigrid.

“Let them pass.” He finally said, weakly like a whimpering dog.

Sigrid pushed past the bandit using Vithar like a walking staff, and Elof followed behind her looking back at the bandits who grouped around them like a pack of wolves.

Olaf spoke again with thunderous authority in his voice. “Let them pass!”

Then softly, almost inaudibly, he said “Hel awaits those two.”

And Sigrid and Elof continued East.

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
In :toxx: one of each, a regular cat

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
Feline Felons
1,129 Words
Deontology & Line-Fallacy

The trick was simple. I sat perched atop a shiny metal podium; chin raised defiantly against the weight of a tacky prop turban that was strapped to my head. It had a red plastic jewel with a comically large feather attached to it, glued at the center.

That’s when the show began… Mystery! Intrigue! The lights went out and an idiot in all-black hurried me off the podium, while another unseen hand guided all 600 pounds of Larry onto the podium in the span of two seconds. The lights come back on. The crowd goes wild! One second, your average cute cat, the next a man-eating tiger!

I went from being plain old Marvin, the washed-up alley cat that has used too many of his alleged nine lives, to being Mittens the Magnificent! The Magical Transforming Cat!

Sure, it might look like it’s really Larry’s show. He’s the one who does all the performing really, but for a deadbeat like me sharing the spotlight suited me just fine.

That’s done now though. Poor saps shilling out there hard-earned wages for parlor tricks would be a thing of the past.

Ol’ Marv was back on the hot streets of… grass-swept nowhere? poo poo.

* * *

I left the wreckage in a hurry. Figured, get going while the going’s still good. That said, I was never really too concerned about my newfound freedom coming under attack. I’m 14 pounds of pudgy tabby resembles a tiny tiger in the right, far away, light; not exactly threatening.

I figured the authorities and circus hacks might have their hands full with actual lions, tigers, and bears. What’s one stray gone back astray? Nothing.

That’s when Larry came bounding over on eager paws, bursting from dense foliage like a maniac, he tumbled in his enthusiasm rolling towards a line of trees before scrambling back to his paws and scurrying over.

He craned over me with his toothy, idiot, grin. “Marv! I’m so glad I find you, pal! This is exciting, yeah?”

“Look kid… it’s exciting now, but it won’t be for long, not for you and the others at least.”

“What do you mean, Marv?”

“Well, it’s really not that complicated, Lare Bear. Take for example Phil and Janice over there.” Marvin said raising a paw back towards the railway just out in the distance behind them.

Phil, a massive elephant was washing in a nearby pond, while Janice, a zebra was braying at gophers she had found on a nearby hill.

Larry looked, but hadn’t pieced together what Marvin was trying to convey.

“What about them? Looks fine to me. HEY PHIL! HEY JANICE! WHAT’S UP YOU GUYS?” Larry roared across the clearing.

Marvin cocked his head at Larry in disbelief.

“Quiet down you moron!” Marvin said swatting at the Tiger’s snout with his diminutive, genealogically domesticated, paw.

Larry frowned. “What was that for?!”

“You are being too loud! Do you want to get caught?”

“Caught?”

“Yeah, this is what I’m trying to tell you… In the circus, where we once lived and worked, it was normal for bears, elephants and zebras to walk around freely, doing tricks, being exotic by birthright alone, et cetera… that’s the norm, THERE.”

“OK… I get you, I get you. I’m following.”

“GOOD, so now think about where we are now… are there ring tents around?”

“No.”

“Are there any audiences?”

“Hmmm… Not that I can see.”

“That’s right. No audiences, no tents. We’re out in the wild, free. The curtains are forever closed. Only… problem is… I can traipse about your average country town with no questions asked. I could get sent back to the pound if I wasn’t careful, sure, but for the most part, the world is my oyster and I need only take it.”

“So, I’ll just do the same thing you do.”

“Bzzzt! Wrong. Not possible.”

“Why not? People love us! They literally pay money to come and see us… Now they get it for free! It should be great.”

“I definitely guarantee you that it won’t be, just…. If you’re going to follow along, keep quiet would you… sheesh! I can’t hear myself think with your questions and blind optimism.”

“I love you, Marv.”

“Yeah, yeah… I love you too, you big oaf. Let’s keep going.” Marvin sighed.

* * *

It was about a day into travel when the rumbling and squelching of Larry’s stomach could no longer be ignored and Marvin was beginning to worry that he might be looking more like a distant snack, than a distant cousin.

“Are we almost there?” Larry asked for the fifth time that hour.

“Define there, Larry?”

“You know, where the food is!”

“Well… we’ve been heading towards people, but as far as food goes, for both our sakes, I’m hoping we can find you a zoo.”

“A zoo? What’s a zoo?”

“It’s not great, but it sure as heck beats the circus. It’s like… it’s like you’re still putting on shows, but no tricks… you just get to be you?”

“Be me?”

“Yeah, you.”

“I liked doing the shows with you though, Marv. It was fun being Mittens!”

“It was, but I’m trying here, Lare. You really don’t have a lot of options big guy.”

Larry was licking his lips as he eyed Marvin. Marvin saw and took the opportunity to give an authority-establishing boop on Larry’s boxy snout.

“No… NO! I am not your food. Get that look out of your eye and keep quiet. I can smell the city, and you better not act crazy when we get there unless you’ve got yourself a death wish. Just keep it cool.”

Larry groaned and whined. For all of his giant size, he was still just an eager kid.

“Enough lip, Larry! You know I’m right about this. Just play it cool.”

* * *

Both their stomachs on empty, Larry’s more dangerously so, the pair eventually came upon civilization

Cutting through fields and woods for nearly two days. Marvin and Larry exited into a clearing where a man in tattered overalls, work boots and no undershirt tended to goats, birds, dogs and cattle. A farmer.

“Oh poo poo…” Marvin said fearing the worst as the man mumbled, “Well, I’ll be god damned. That’s a tiger! I’ve always wanted kitty cat. Here kitty kitty!”

“O… kay” Marvin said bemused.

Larry looked down at Marvin for approval.

“Well, go on pal! It’s no zoo, but looks like you might have found yourself a new home!”

“Dinner? This is dinner? Finally!”

Larry bounded over eagerly as the farmer knelt with open arms and an amazed smile on his face.

And Larry did except him, all 248 pounds of the farmer, proved to be exceptional.

“LARE! LARRY! THAT’S NOT WHAT HE- LARE! NO LARRY! LARRY NO!”

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
In

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
In :toxx:

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo


Contentment
1,074 Words

Grant was in his fifties, but still preferred the routine of patrol to being cooped up in the office doing paperwork. That wasn’t to say that patrol still didn’t have its share of paperwork, it just wasn’t the same.

His cruiser rolled to a silent stop at the intersection of Clark and Belltop when his radio came to life.

“Patrol Charlie 12, this is dispatch. Just checking in on you. How’d that 10-56 turn out?”

Even at 3 A.M., Ryan was as stiff as his too heavily starched uniform.

Grant chuckled to himself at the kid’s seriousness and picked up the handset.

“Good morning, Ryan. The 10-56 turned out fine. Store clerk just needs a new hobby. I’m out here, but I don’t see any, as he put it, ‘strange women walking about’.”

“10-4, Sarge. Should I put on a fresh pot for you?”

“No thanks, I’ll be there in about another hour. I figure since I’m out by the county line that I might as well make sure everything’s on the up and up. Might as well check now before I’m in bed in a couple hours.”

“Understood. Dispatch out.”

The clouds out in the distances crackled with electricity and the low boom of thunder wasn’t far behind. A strong gust of wind that seemed like it was going to put the car on two wheels startled Grant. The old deputy looked out towards a sparsely wooded field just ahead and saw the storm fast on the approach.
Grant eased off the brake and coasted onto the shoulder underneath the branches of a large bur oak that extended too far from wire fence it was closed in.

Sudden, heavy, drops of rain spread across the windshield turning the terrain into something akin to watercolor portrait. Grant switched on the wipers and they wiped the free-flowing landscape back into brief clarity.

A gust of wind, accompanied by another lightning strike signaled the end of the storm, but as the last drops of rain fell onto the cruiser, Grant couldn’t helped but get out to survey the damage the storm brought with it, when he noticed something glinting in his headlight beams just a bit further down the road when Belltop became another farm to market truck route.

He started the cruiser back up and inched down the road careful not to run over whatever it was he saw, then parked as he got near the object. It looked like a black marble.

He grabbed his flashlight from the backseat and got out of the cruiser, aiming the beam at the curious sphere.

Grant knelt down beside it and prodded it with the tip of the light and saw that its movement left a temporary trail of light that crawled back over the orb with a momentary delay. He was fascinated with the strange object so he picked it up and looked at it closely.

The unnatural film of energy that surrounded it felt cool in his hands, and the surface of the sphere rippled like water.

Then a woman spoke.

“Grant Hillock, fifty-four, divorced twice. No children. Fulfillment in your work, but you deserve more.”

Grant scrambled to his feet, starting away from the woman in terror and surprise.

Then he noticed how odd the woman appeared.

Human, but out of place, like a superimposed image of what a person thought a human looked like.

Grant locked eyes with the thing that looked like a woman and saw rows of obsidian spheres and gems adorning her face, not unlike the sphere he held.

Grant studied her face in awestruck silence and noticed pivotal moments from his life inside the bead like protrusions that sparkled in her face.

“What are you?” Grant finally managed.

“I am here to grant you a wish.”

“A genie? Are you saying you’re a genie?”

“A djinn, but yes.”

Grant laughed an unamused laugh then. A laugh tinged with painful disbelief.

Then it hit Grant. Even in his small town, there was crime. Pain without reason. Suffering.

“You’re a djinn then, okay. For my wish…”

“There are rules. Your wish can only directly affect you. If others would be indirectly influenced by your wish, so be it. Additionally, be specific with your wish.”

That put a hitch in Grant’s plan, but it made sense to him. Djinn or not, it would be impossible to make world changing wishes.

Then the images he saw in the woman’s face began to speak to him. Unrequited loves, loves gained and loves lost. Grant had always been in love with the idea of love but didn’t know what it actually meant to love someone.

If he couldn’t fix the world, maybe he could fix himself.

“I wish to be a man worth loving.”

The djinn scrunched up its features then.

“I’m afraid, that’s also a wish I can’t fulfill.”

“What? Why not? It’s about me, so what’s the problem?”

“You are already worthy of love. You have been loved before. I cannot give you what you already have.”

That was reassuring to Grant in ways he didn’t realize he needed to be assured, but that also left him no closer to making a wish.

Then it hit Grant. In one of those swirling bead-like spheres, he saw a time he was truly happy.

It was Christmas morning, 1972, at his grandfather’s farm down in Odessa. A golden-coated, bright-eyed puppy came galloping towards Grant on stocky legs and Grant and his sister Stefany who was too small to stand on her own, yelped out in excitement, but an even more welcome sight from that morning was his father, back in work, and with enough money to provide for the family.

Then Grant snapped out of it, pulling himself free of the fond memories to let reality sink back in. He turned towards the djinn with his mind made.

“I wish for nothing.”

The djinn looked surprised.

“Are you sure?”

“I should change my phrasing before I end up regretting the word choice…. I don’t want your wish.”

“What… why not?”

Grant handed her the stone from the road.

“You showed me what I’ve wanted, had and lost. What I’ve got… what little it is… is enough.”

And the wind began to whip so violently that Grant had to brace against the open air just to stop falling, but as quickly as it had started, it was gone and with it, so too was the djinn.

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
IN :toxx: flaaasshhh plz

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

NAGA LIU KANG fucked around with this message at 15:34 on May 19, 2020

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo

Saucy_Rodent posted:

I mentioned this in the discord, but please give me all the flash rules you can, make them all big and stupid as you please, I will incorporate all of them into my story

Speech is explosive. Interpret as you will.

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo

SlipUp posted:

Pirate battle!

yo I want two more flashes for myself, hit me peeps

Flowers are significant.

NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
I'd also like one more flash plz...

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NAGA LIU KANG
Jul 17, 2015

by Nyc_Tattoo
I'm IN

Give me a bone please.

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