Oct 2016 Archive, part c

English is my first language. I am conversant but not fluent in Spanish, which was required at my elementary and middle schools, and I chose it over French in high school, because when I do a thing, I like to get really good at it, and the idea of only half being able to speak Spanish was viscerally horrifying to me. Also, there's so much great Spanish literature that I can barely read even after six years of serious study (I'm not counting kindergarten through sixth grade as serious; I was such a small child). I've mostly learned through classes, and a couple of trips to Spanish-speaking countries, and have only recently realized that, hey, it would really help if I read and watched and listened to Spanish in my free time. (By the way, I have found so much Spanish badfic that I may have to eventually write an agent who speaks the language.)

--Key returns to her homework

English is my first language, and that was picked up with relative ease. After that, I began developing an interest in alphabets and other languages, specifically dead ones.

Being obsessed with ancient Egyptian culture, I began looking into Middle Kingdom heiroglyphics, and became relatively capable of reading it. I still have a copy of the book I used. "Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs: A Practical Guide-" I used it all through middle school, and it's quite good. I could write to some extent, but it was easier to work in the non-symbolic transliterated form. To this day, I can sound out Tutankhamun's cartouche, despite his having been a useless bugger of a pharaoh whose name deserves to vanish.

I took four years of Spanish, and after a few minutes of conversation I can usually follow what's going on, and participate to a horribly stunted degree. Never got much practice using it in conversation.

I learned a little Hebrew syntax in the church I did setup for when I was younger. I can recognize basic words like Jerusalem starting with the yud on the far end, along with the more iconic characters like shin and lamed. From there, I have context, and I am VERY good with context.

I also took a year of Mandarin in high school, but my teacher developed cancer, and I was unable to complete the course.

I also have a strange ability to work out most German, and most romance languages I can pick up quite easily, thanks to my spanish and ability to recognize roots.

So I suppose you could sum my ability as a linguist up most succinctly with the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none." If I get any ground whatsoever, I can usually read pretty much anything.

Maybe not the most relevant post, but I think it's interesting what you can figure out with a little basic knowledge.

I was born and raised in New York, so obviously, English is my first language.

Besides English, I know five other languages (to varying degrees of proficiency): Haitian Creole, French, Spanish, Latin, and Greek.

Being Haitian, I'm surrounded by Haitian Creole: my parents speak it at home and I go to a Creole-speaking church. (Oddly enough, as a child, I had no desire at all to learn Creole. My thought process was something like this: I'm American, and Americans speak English, so why do I need to learn some mumbo-jumbo language that nobody speaks?) I really got interested in learning Creole in my teenage years, and of course, taking French has only helped my Creole. Add to that the fact that my grandmother moved here from Haiti when I was in high school, and Creole is now my number-two language.

I started taking French in junior high school, as my only foreign-language options were French and Spanish. I took two years in junior high school, two years in high school, and a few courses during my junior and senior years in college to brush up on my skills.

I took two years of Spanish in college because I thought that it would be useful for me to be able to speak Spanish. I currently can read Spanish and speak enough to carry a very basic conversation; I need more practice.

Latin and Greek I took in college. I took them for the same reason: I was interested in Biblical languages. At first, I did not know that my college offered Greek classes, so I took Latin. When I saw that Greek classes were available, I started taking Greek as well. Nowadays, I can pick my way through a text in either language Greek Bible--as long as I have a dictionary by my side to help me with unfamiliar words or word forms.

I live in (and was born in) the US, and I'm actually a bit hazy on whether my first language is English or Polish. My parents mainly speak Polish at home, so obviously I picked it up. I'm not sure if I'd describe myself as 'fluent' in Polish, but I can certainly hold a conversation without sounding too silly. The occasional trips back to Poland to visit family certainly help with that.

I also learned some Latin in high school (because I didn't feel like taking any of the foreign languages that required actual speaking), but I forgot most of it, I think.

My native language is English, but I'm most comfortable in American Sign Language because my hearing is rather poor. My hearing started to decline after high school, and, while I can typically understand English if it's quiet, even if I might mishear a few words, if there's any noise above my hearing threshold I can't understand at all. I also know some Spanish, but it's limited to writing because I can't understand spoken Spanish well enough even in silence.

English is my first language, but I know French and I can read and understand a good deal of Latin.

As for French, I needed to learn a language in High School, and my choice were Latin, German, French, or Spanish. I had a bad experience with Spanish in grade school, didn't care for the way German sounded, and Latin is virtually useless. I also wanted to visit France so I chose French and stuck with through High School and College.

As for Latin, one of my schools required me to learn Latin for a few years and I also had to pick up a fairly large amount of Latin in Law School.

• My first language is Polish
  
  - I've started learning English in pre-school, when I was six. I hadn't had much of a choice, and it followed me ever since. Every school I went to had mandatory English. At first I started learning from Disney's Magic English tapes, but slowly I started going on English websites, then watching films (at first with subtitles), and finally to English novels.
  
  - If I am to count all languages I know how to express my thoughts it would be Polish, English and German. Even though Fangirl Japanese doesn't count, I do know enough Japanese to talk to natives (happened quite a few times when working at McDonald's), and bits and pieces of Russian and Italian.
  
  - English and German because it was mandatory. Italian because I have family in Italy. Russian because it's very similar to Polish. Japanese... well, I am a fan of the culture as a whole, not just anime and manga.
  
  - Eh, can't remember, really. I just tend to pick them up now and then. I don't simply sit in front of a book and study them anymore.

I was born and raised in Ohio, so English is my native language - but since my parents were both from Indonesia, I was able to pick up a few Indonesian words and have been learning since then. Sadly, I still can't hold a conversation in Indonesian (I wish I could, though!).

I also learned French from audiotapes as a hatchling, but obviously my skills with that language are really freaking rusty - pun not intended, of course. ;)

Right now, my only other language is Japanese, though I think I can still understand Spanish on some level. (Thanks, JumpStart and high school Spanish classes.)

I've been studying Japanese since my freshman year in college. I picked it because...well, honestly, because of anime. Of course, I'm hardly alone in this, and I've discovered that a lot of Japanese history, culture, and especially folklore/mythology is AWESOME. But really, my weeaboo phase is at the heart of it.

My first language is German.

I learned English in middle and high school (age ten to eighteen).

I learned French as a required second foreign language starting in third year of middle school (age twelve), but this may not count, because due to a lack of practice, I can’t hold a basic conversation anymore and I can’t read French without extensive use of a dictionary.

Nowadays, German education is much more flexible, but I wasn’t allowed to choose my languages at the time.

I also studied Swedish for one semester while I was at university anyway, before I went on a hiking tour north of the Arctic Circle. But again, this may not count, because I forgot most of it over the last four decades. I decided to learn Swedish because being able to read basic instructions and to understand people shouting warnings at me is a matter of politeness while traveling in foreign countries. I can’t expect the natives to translate everything for me.

HG

• My first languages are Corsican and French, though I sadly lost most of my fluency in Corsican. I can still carry out a conversation in it, but I lack vocabulary.
  - I've been learning English ever since primary school, but most of what I've actually learned is from the Internet and TV shows.
  
  - I'm fluent in both French and English, I can speak Corsican as mentioned above, and I can manage a basic conversation in Italian. I also took some Latin from 6th to 9th grade but it didn't stick.
  - Corsican and French are my first languages as mentioned above, and I took Italian at school because I had to pick between it and Spanish and I already knew enough Corsican that Italian was easier.

As mentioned by this very thread itself, as an Italian my native language is... well, Italian.

I learned English at middle and high school at first, and I made an effort to learn it well because many things are more easily available in English than in Italian - bonus points for me being an avid gamer and most games coming only in English, German, French and maybe Spanish at the time. Only the big ones had an Italian translation.

Then, in my last year of high school, I found the PPC and it helped me improve further (to the point an English coworker of mine was freaked out once. He says mine is the best English he has seen here in Italy... and we work in aeronautics where English is the first language wherever you are.). So... Thank you all guys and gals?

I have learned a bit of French and Latin in school too - the former in elementary and middle school, the latter at high school - but I've never been that good in either, and having the chance to drop both was actually a relief.

Well my first language is French.

And, while there was some mandatory English back at primary school, I didn't really begin it before the 8th grade, as a mandatory second foreign language. And next year, we moved up to a new town, leading me in a bilingual class English/German class, befoe the roles were reversed in high school because of a lack of options. Fun. After that, there was also the fact that a fantasy and RPG fan cannot hope survive without a knowledge of English, so now I read it fluently.

Sadly, this change and a lack of options later killed my German, despite the fact that was the language I wanted to learn first. The only other language I know is Latin, that I began in middle school.

English is my first language; should go without saying seeing as I was born and raised in the middle of the States to American parents.

As for other languages:

While my own grammar is atrocious, I took French, Latin, and Spanish in high school, and I've got two semesters of Spanish from college under my belt as well. I couldn't hope to speak or write fluently, but I can read extremely well; what I don't know, I can usually figure out from context.

I also took a week of Hebrew in my freshman year, but my teacher was nuts and I quickly transferred out. :P

1. Latin and Japanese, though not really to the level of basic fluency you mentioned anymore. That's more because of lack of practice than anything else. I can still recognize a handful of kanji and maybe have a very basic conversation, but not easily. Latin is probably one of those things that I'd remember more of if I actually tried to translate something, but I can't really remember much off the top of my head.
   
   2. Harry Potter and anime, basically. >.>
   
   3. Latin I started back in what would be the equivalent of third or fourth grade; I was homeschooling, and my mom thought I should learn a language. My choices were Latin, Spanish, or German; I picked Latin because, well, Harry Potter. I continued studying it until I graduated from high school.
   
   Japanese I tried to do a bit on my own via Rosetta Stone, but the combination of foreign language and kanji was more than I could retain with just that. I ended up taking it once I reached college, and even spent a summer in Japan; however, I eventually stopped taking the classes because, well, they weren't required any more, and if I wanted to maintain my GPA, I had to take easier electives.
   
   As far as how, mostly via textbooks and stuff. I've found flashcards to be a great memory aid, if that's the sort of thing you mean.

I took Spanish courses all through high school. Living in Arizona (a state with a heavy Mexican population), it seemed like a good idea to become fluent at the time. Unfortunately, I haven't kept up on it, and I would be too embarrassed to even try speaking with a Spanish-fluent person anymore. I can generally read Spanish with minimal trouble, but actively spoken Spanish tends to go too fast for me to parse out.

Latin, another option for the language credit at my high school, may have been the better option, at least for college. Some of the biology courses I took required learning the scientific names of specific animals, and since most Latin names are basically descriptions of their body parts, it would have been nice to know that Latin.

—doctorlit va a comer el tenedor que él encontré en un salmon si la fantasma de la col muerte venga.

1) My first language is Hebrew.
2) English is mandatory in schools here, but I started learning English earlier because the only TV we had was British satellite. I mostly learned by myself; school didn't do me a lot of good.
3) I know smatterings of Arabic and Japanese — not quite enough to hold a conversation, but close. I'm going to start studying Japanese at uni this year.
4) I took two years of Arabic in middle school because it interested me (and the other option was French, which gives me a headache when I hear it for too long). I had... four years of Japanese, in elementary and middle school, as mandatory and elective classes in a gifted children's school I went to.

how were the lyrics archaic? Was it old verb forms (similar to how English verbs used to end with "-eth" but now end in "-s" in the third person singular), or perhaps old words that nobody uses anymore (akin to, e.g., someone using "assay" instead of "attempt")?

However, I decided to not correct it as SPaG errors were somewhat frequent in the original - even if that chapter featured none.

While not faithful to the original chapter, i believed leaving the error in was more faithful to the fic as a whole - that particular part was actually of somewhat higher quality compared to the rest. (Especially considering the plot of the scene was still solid enough that I could write a remake of it rather easily - can't say that for 95% of the rest of that fic)

SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS

Yep. Yep she is. Those two scenes, orignal and remake? They feature the very same people six years, a lot of character development and a lot of writing improvement on my part later.

>Love the new character designs, with the shorts and pants instead of skirts.

>Not a fan of the Twilight/Brad/Other Dude love triangle. Bleh.

>Midnight Sparkle's presence is intriguing.

>Okay, Gloriosa is annoying me. -_-

>GO AWAY, OTHER DUDE, AND TAKE BRAD WITH YOU

>Please tell me Other Dude is the villain... wait, no, he's a red herring, isn't he?

>(OT: wait, they can get cell reception out in the woods?)

>HA! I KNEW IT! GLORIOSA!

>Does every Equestria Girls movie end with an evil transformation?

>"Freaky-deaky" made me crack up.

>Okay, Everfree!Gloriosa would be fun to cosplay. Nice villain song, too.

>APPLEJACK THROWING THAT BOULDER WAS AWESOME.

>Pony Magical Girl AU, anyone?

>OTHER GUY DON'T YOU DARE—oh, good on you for stopping that kiss, Gloriosa.

>So now the Humane Six have permanent powers? I smell sequels.

>Sunset Shimmer: DUN DUN DUN.

>Portal's glowing? I stand corrected: DUN. DUN. DUNNNN.

>Overall: Meh. I liked the first two better. Here's hoping the next movie's more entertaining.

Did your parents switched to an antenna or got a package without kids' channels?

Discussion's over, fellows. We got ourselves an answer.

Pack up, ship out, move on, thread's dead, let's all pretend this never happened.

So, for it to be a continuum, it needs to have a proper, consistent canon?
That, there, is intriguing. Hadn't thought of that.

I still reckon they ought to have some presence, though, right? Especially considering how closely related they are to actual continua.
P'raps they're ridiculously ridden with plotholes, being all inconsistent-like. Constantly warping all over the place, and practically unreachable.

Dunno what RPF is, or what the Rwandan Patriotic Front has to do with any of this, however.

Lots of crazy people knocking around, too. Quite the perfect environment for breeding that sort've stuff.
I mean, a swimming pool? In HQ?
Psssh. Everyone knows water's a myth.

I mean, there's also that Rule of Funny. The more someone believes one, the more bollocks it'll be, and vice versa. One've the best parts of PPC, that!

You find some kind of issue with the possibility that the world is actually flat, in spite of evidence being garnered from simply looking at the ocean?
And that the government is spending millions of dollars making sure everyone thinks it's round, just because they're a bunch of nobheads?
Or that the real truth behind everything we know actually sounds like really poorly written sci-fi?

Pssssh. Enjoy your cage, sheeple!

"Interesting," she says, and smiles. "Finally, someone who asks the right questions. You died, but you're not dead. Make sense?"

I look out over the tall, almost wispy-looking trees. "That's a hell of a long time to learn. A question; rather than fifteen thousand years, can we off ourselves and still retain our Breaker properties? That seems like it'd be more efficient."

Like Ix said, They certainly got the part about what else starstuff does to you—the floating, the happiness, the sounds, potential immortality and permanent flight—right.

In Peter and the Starcatchers, Peter gained the ability to fly and never age because he handled a trunk full of leaking starstuff. The overexposure (allegedly) made him the way he is in Peter Pan (though PatSc is more like an AU prequel of the book than anything).

Aside from flight and immortality, starstuff can turn birds into fairies and fish into merpeople. It also mutated a salamander into some sort of giant creature that escaped into Loch Ness. Along with that, it can also grant people enhanced strength and senses, be used to power rockets... basically, it's the Deus Ex Machina to end Dei Ex Machina.

I'm trying to see where I could possibly fit in a mention of what starstuff does without turning it into an "as you know" approach. I did kind of think this was enough, though:

“Aside from ignoring the part where handling starstuff with your bare hands is a Bad Idea, it seems like this author’s pretty familiar with the canon, from what little we’ve seen,” Ix agreed, nodding. “They certainly got the part about what else starstuff does to you—the floating, the happiness, the sounds, potential immortality and permanent flight—right. And I suppose if they were going to later show Kiki had similar ancestry to Peter, then her being able to handle it might be excusable. Maybe.”

Unless you think there's more that could be included?

I've changed "stared after..." to "watched..." because it flows better. I was thinking of something akin to "staring after the agents", actually, but I kinda tripped over myself trying to word it right. ^^;

1) Scabbard Fair the mini
This was supposed to be a bait-and-switch joke. Scabbard Fair and Vigrad basically switched places while nobody was looking.

2) Lapis's electrokinesis
Lapis is a Harmony. These enemies have electric powers in the actual game.

3) "Backslash the elitist"
Looking back, I think "highbrow" would've been a more appropriate term, since "elitist" implies someone who prefers rule by authority while "highbrow" is someone who looks down on others like \ does. This has been rectified.

4) "Whitney punched her fist,"
Should've changed that to "punched her palm", i.e. something like this.

On Lapis vs. Backslash: That was not planned, at least not initially. The initial argument in "The Gods Must Be Crazy" was basically to get Lapis out of the picture, give her a good reason to show up at FicPsych in her next appearance, and also give Backslash a facet to him to show that he isn't the goody-two-shoes Shulk duplicate he seems to be. It's nice to know that this conflict does work to my advantage to some degree, but I will concede that I may have overdone it in this particular mission. Lapis and Backslash are planned to work together again in the future as I noted in the Author's Notes, but Backslash will probably have more pressing matters to worry about first. Lapis IS scheduled to make one more appearance (once I get some illustrations finished up), and I can assure that her character arc is going to come to a head once I make it public, so hopefully she and Backslash will be able to interact on more peaceful terms afterward.

Lapis is actually speaking in Armenian there. I wanted to find a way to drop her ethnicity at some point, since my brother suggested a while back that it would be interesting if she were partially Middle Eastern due to her middle name, Armenus. Looking back, though, I think I may have forced it here, and I may have to tone down that particular aspect of her in the future. Likewise I may have overdone the "swearing in foreign languages" thing with my agents, because now I have three of them who do that and I guess it's starting to get a bit tiring, even for me. (Though if I end up being dumb enough to make any other agents do the same, I can assure that Falchion won't be one of them - I do know a smattering of Indonesian, but I can't speak it for squat, let alone curse in it.)

Whitney has been known to swear before when she REALLY means business. She's also the kind of person to snap HARD if she hears someone make threats against her partner, she's that possessive of those she cares about. I know a certain psychotic character replacement who learned that the hard way.

I'm honestly flattered that you feel that way about my handling of the respective continua, thank you! ^_^ This is why beta reading is important, folks - as noted in the A/N, I actually ran a lot of the canon information by my brother, who is a much bigger fan of Bleach than I am, and Matt Cipher took care of the rest. I'd have explained the plot a little better, but the badfic itself was so unreadable that I couldn't tell what the heck was going on half the time and ended up wringing a little less plot potential out of it than I would've wanted - which, come to think of it, may have been why I decided that having the agents interact with one another to a greater extent than usual would make the mission slightly more interesting.

Well, phobias exist, they are not always explained as easily as "Ron’s teddy bear was turned into a dirty great spider when he was three", and we have never seen Harry petting a pigeon in the books. I actually don’t remember to have seen any pigeons in the books. But I’m more concerned about Harry being afraid of the dark. Did we ever see a hint at that in the books? Maybe we didn’t notice, because whenever Harry was in the dark, there was something more specific to fear?

That’s what I meant when I wrote "sometimes it’s a bit unclear what actually is canon".

"While talking about fear with his son Albus Severus, Harry Potter mentioned that he doesn’t like pigeons and that they give him the creeps" is undeniably canon; we can’t pretend that it didn’t happen. But since JKR didn’t show us more,

• "Harry is afraid of pigeons" and
  
• "Harry made this up to make his son feel better"

are both valid interpretations of the canon sources.

I don’t like that ffnet forced me to choose "Delphi Riddle" from the characters list, and how the Harry Potter Wiki and even the Harry Potter Lexicon present speculation like it were canon. Actually, we don’t know whether "Delphi" is her true first name or whether it was just chosen for the alliteration when she pretended to be "Delphini Diggory", and concerning her parents, we only have her word for having Rodolphus Lestrange’s word for it. Since JKR deliberately didn’t show us which – if any – evidence Rodolphus may or may not have presented,

• "It’s true, she is Nofirstname Riddle",
  
• "Rodolphus lied about her father, she is actually Nofirstname Lestrange" and
  
• "Rodolphus lied about her parents, she is actually Nofirstname Somebodyelsesdaughter"

are all valid interpretations of the canon source, with varying degrees of plausibility (increasing from top to bottom, IMO). I don’t see how her name can be anything other than "Delphi Diggory", with the common understanding that it’s a chosen alias and her true name is unknown.

Thanks for the kind review.

HG

And listen to this one; it's a good sight more articulate, coherent, and polite than mine was.

--Key hides under a table.

Make Rassilon pay for it, and you've probably got the Reader's support.

~DF

Take a coal, now throw it into the fire that powers this locomotive!

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! You fools! Victory is mine!

*clears throat* Ah, er, right. Yes. Well, thanks very much then.

Thanks especially for your note about Jack. While he does have a steely edge to him, he's also incredibly concerned about other people. His description is an effort to present him as the heart to the Detective's head. But he wouldn't stand a chance if he didn't have some grit. Perhaps "concerned" is a better word here. I'll edit it when I get the chance- thanks again!

-Aegis, who is about to leave campus for home

Ladies and gentlemen and kids and boils and ghouls and slugs: Grant Permission has entered the house!
Yeah!
Love that bloke!

Good on ya, Aegis.

Please have this self-updating guidebook of all the deathtraps in the multiverse. Make sure you can always kill glitterbags in a spectacular and, most above all, ironic way.

And one more spin-off to follow...

Did you mean to say something about the line "you've got another think coming"? It's correct—and I know this because I just double-checked—so if you didn't mean to correct it, what did you want to say about it?

~Neshomeh

He's a Trekkie. That means deep down in his shriveled misanthropic heart, he wants to believe in humanity's potential to overcome all odds and maybe even get by without killing each other over really stupid things. Which is probably why it ticks him off so much when they keep doing really stupid things in fanfic. {= )

Thanks for the comment, and I'm glad you enjoyed the piece. ^_^

~Neshomeh

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

And don't worry, everything's going to be fine. He can change her, you see. She's good at heart, really, she just doesn't know any better. *g*

~Neshomeh, flipping the script.

Mesoamericarda is as accurate to American paleohistory as Standard Arda is to European. :D

I didn't know the timeline for American settlement had been pushed back, and I'm intrigued. What's the current method for them getting there?

(If you say 'submarines' I'm going to laugh so hard.)

hS

But the wizard isn't a native North American, and the native North Americans aren't wizards.

Keep on guessing. ^_^

hS

Glad to know that it's just some updates and not a bigger problem. :)

Warto najpierw zapoznać się z heksalogią o Dorze Wilk, ale chyba nie jest to aż tak wymagane :P

PC pointed out that having two agents becoming Speshul from the same author is Not Cool and I'll be taking the mission down and probably going to rewrite the interlude with Dawn

"Augh, Merlin, the Professor has to be around here somewhere." Doc pulled one of Lockhart's larger portraits away from the wall to glance behind it.

"Have you noticed," Vania asked, "that you have a tendency to imitate the local speech style whenever we go somewhere?"

"I don't know what you're bloody talking about."

"Right." Vania rolled her eyes and continued checking the drawers of Lockhart's desk. "Why does this guys need so many copies of his own books?"

Doc dramatically threw open the door panels of a large cupboard in the back of the room. "Hey, I think I found the plothole! I can hear something . . ." He peered closer into the darkness.

Then a tumbling cloud rose into the air around his head, buzzing furiously.

"Aaaaaaaaaaah! It was beeeeees!" Doc started a frantic run around the entire Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, flailing his arms in the air while the insect swarm pursued. "I thought it was a plothooooooole but it was only beeeeeeeees!" Doc ended by flinging himself out of the huge window that dominated one wall of the classroom. the bees returned to the cabinet while Doc's fading voice called, "Aaaaaaah! Castles are actually kind of sharp in placeeeeees. I feel like I should have known this alreadyyyyyyy . . ."

Vania gently closed the drawer she had just opened and started heading for the cupboard, a thoughtful look on her face. "You know, I can't for the life of me . . ." She frowned. "I just can't recall what my worst fear is."

She peered into the shadows of the cupboard.

". . . Huh. So that's what a boggart looks like."

Actually, Yocherry was doing a whole lot of things. Lying on the ground. Bleeding out. Steadily approaching death. Having a giant, smoking hole in his chest.
The gurgling was, however, in his opinion, the most important one of them all.
He was doing that, too, actually. Having opinions. And they were cloudy and weightless and as ethereal as ghosts, and they were drifting around his head like skybound porridge.

'Dude, ummmm, dude dude dude,' Maz was pacing around somewhere or other. Yocherry didn't really know. They could have been in space, right then. It felt a little like it.

'Oooh, duuuude, dude.'
She seemed terribly worried about something.
Yocherry twisted his head. It flopped, smacking an ear against the dirt. The vibrations warbled in his skull. Yocherry felt very strange.
He had something to tell her, he realised.

Yocherry gurgled at her.

'No, dude, don't, um, talk, dude! Just wait - I - it's, um, muscles, tearing. Um. Don't worry, uh, dude, it's alright!' She said, quivering like a leaf in an earthquake.

Yocherry gurgled at her. He thought that he smiled, but it came out as more of a crooked grimace.

'Dude, um, dude, please!'

Yocherry raised a smarmy eyebrow, and gurgled again.

'Dude, are you, umm, being sassy?'

Yocherry gurgled with even greater sass.
He was very interested in hearing her reply, but something inside of him gave up. Then the sun and the sky and the land and Maz all disappeared, and Yocherry was certain he actually was in space.




Maz was looking at the floor.
It had been a week since Yocherry had gotten thirty per cent of himself blown out onto the grass by an angry Stu with a very powerful gun, and he was as conscious as a brick, hooked up, plugged into, and being injected by some of the best medical equipment in the multiverse.
Yocherry hadn’t done much, except for wake up a few hours earlier, mumble about snails and batteries, and immediately drop back into sleep.
Maz had tensed up like a metal spring, listened sharply to the whole thing, and had remained tensed, prepared for any additions to his arguments and points, for the next hour. Nothing came up, needless to say.

‘Maaaaaaaz.’

Maz tensed up like a metal spring.

‘Heeeeeeeey, booooss,’ Yocherry murmured, eyes glassily staring in her direction.

‘Dude, um, are you, uh - you, um, I don’t think you should talk, um, dude,’ Maz babbled, dividing her attention between Yocherry’s sleepy, drooping face, and the plastic wires filled with odd liquids that were keeping it from giving up, rotting, and dropping off.

‘Got interuuuuupted…’ Yocherry said.

‘Um.’

‘You waaaaant…’

‘Um.’

‘To heeeear, booooooss?’
With that, he wobbled around slightly, attempting to gesture to her.
Maz stepped forward. She leant in. She was dead silent.
Yocherry was silent, too, for a few moments, remembering what he was about to say. He inhaled.

‘That ent nothin.’ His voice was low and secretive. He grinned sloppily. Maz stared at him.
‘I’ve had worse.’
His job finally done, Yocherry dropped back into unconsciousness.
Maz continued staring at him.

An evil spirit/alien takes possession of one agent, and the other has to find a way to free them.

So, this ended up being not only rather more suggestive than I feel comfortable just posting to the Board, but also rather long (more than two pages in a word document). If you want to read it, the link is here - it's safe for work, but contains discussion of sex.

Matthew nearly tore the RC's door off its hinges in his eagerness. "Ajax! Holy shpx!"

The beet red, stunned face of Levy and the rather ticked, though still red face of Ajax, who was unbuttoning Levy's shirt, was all Matthew saw before he slammed the door shut. "Just... check the Reddit when you're done," he yelled back into the RC.

He then punched out a text to Toby, over at DoSAT: Bruuuuuuuuh. You owe me 20 bucks.

((A/N: Revised version of what I posted in the chat. This is totally uncanonical, as I don't have Permission, and also because I haven't yet decided whether or not Meg exists.))

"You know, I've always admired you," T'Kat said. She glanced across the table at the other woman. Vulcan ideals were well and good, but this was definitely an occasion when she needed to figure out how emotional cues worked. She observed Meg look downward and start cleaning under her nails with her knife. However, she was nearly certain her mouth had twisted into a smile.

"Really? Why?" Meg asked offhandedly.

T'Kat shifted around to face her, almost knocking her cane from where it was propped against the table. She was surprised and pleased to see the wrinkles on Meg's forehead deepen with worry in the moments before she caught it.

"Well, you're a very creative exorcist, for starters."

Meg's laugh could almost be called girlish. It startled T'Kat to remember that the time-hardened woman she'd befriended was only thirty-six years old, less than a quarter her own age. Humans grew up so fast, especially in pre-modern continua.

"I have been impressed by how confident you are," T'Kat said, "Especially after having lived in such a repressive universe. I've heard Macbeth called Shakespeare's most misogynistic play."

"Oh, it wasn't so bad for me," Meg said, "According to the play, Lady Mackers had a hard time of it, but my husband was a good man."

"I'm sure that is true, but I would prefer you not speak of your husband unless it's strictly necessary." Meg looked up for a moment, and suddenly they were looking into each other's eyes. T'Kat looked away.

"My emotions are not the same as a Human's," T'Kat continued, "and I don't think that what I am feeling now is analogous to jealousy, but you are free to think of it as such."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Meg's cheeks growing pinker. Was that a good sign? It had been so long since she'd tried to seduce anyone but Anthek. And even that was years ago now.

"I suppose you're right," Meg said, "I have been making up for lost time." T'Kat furrowed her brow. Did that follow logically from what they had been talking about before? Perhaps this was one of those conversations that didn't need to make sense in the strictest way. She could use that to her advantage.

"Would you like to come over to my Response Center, feed each other chocolate, make out, and whatever would plausibly follow that?" Meg's eyes went wide at that, but she smiled.

T'Kat was about to wiggle her eyebrows suggestively when her partner galloped over, a bowl full of soggy enchiladas and what looked like an empty bottle of ranch dressing balanced precariously on eir abdomen.

"T'Kat! T'Kat!" Kebrdå stopped to catch eir breath for a moment. "T'Kat, what does a spoon look like? The cafeteria worker said I needed one."

T'Kat sighed. Not dramatically...but on the spectrum leading to that adverb. Meg burst out laughing.

T'Kat picked up her own spoon from her empty soup bowl and held it out in front of the still-woefully-undereducated Venusian. A piece of noodle flicked off and onto eir feeler. Ey pressed eir lips together in consternation.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Meg laughed even harder at that. Kebrdå's mouth opened slightly as he recognized her voice.

"Oh! That's the Human you are in a relationship with? Want to do a relationship with? I'm getting that wrong." Ey froze for a moment, eir feelers twitching from side to side, then turned and ran.

Dromeia
Beedrill @ Beedrillite
Ability: Swarm --> Adaptability
Jolly Nature (+Speed, -SpecialAttack)
EVs: 252 Attack / 4 Special Defence / 252 Speed
- Poison Jab
- U-Turn
- Protect
- Drill Run


Mooshroo
Amoonguss @ Black Sludge
Ability: Regenerator (well, how could one not?)
Bold Nature (+Defence, -Attack)
EVs: 240 HP / 252 Defence / 16 Special Defence
- Spore
- Sturn Spore
- Giga Drain
- Foul Play


Timewyrm
Dragalge @ Choice Specs
Modest Nature (+Special Attack, -Attack)
Ability: Adaptability
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Special Attack / 8 Special Defence
- Draco Meteor
- Sludge Wave
- Thunderbolt
- Focus Blast


Yssgaroth
Golbat @ Eviolite
Careful Nature (+Special Defence, -Special Attack)
Ability: Infiltrator
EVs: 236 HP / 44 Defence / 228 Speed
- Brave Bird
- Haze
- Defog
- Roost


Couldhavebeen
Nidoking @ Life Orb
Timid Nature (+Speed, -Attack)
Ability: Sheer Force
EVs: 252 Special Attack / 4 Special Defence / 252 Speed
- Stealth Rock
- Earth Power
- Fire Blast
- Sludge Wave


Adric
Drapion @ Choice Band
Adamant Nature (+Attack, -Special Attack)
Ability: Sniper
EVs: 248 HP / 252 Attack / 8 Special Defence
- Knock Off
- Cross Poison
- Rock Slide
- Earthquake

Ajax throws a ragtag Fairy team together, gets third, is dubbed Oberon The Fairy King

"I think I'd go for a fighting team," Matthew said, absent mindedly popping a Pokéball to from it's small to large forms and back again. "Most of my favorite Pokémon are in that typing."

Levy pondered for a moment. "I would say... Water," she said. "Sure they might not get my attack bonuses, but I tend to work well with watery things."

"Dragon, full stop," Nickul said, not even looking up from his book. "I mean, I am mostly dragon myself."

"Let's see, who's awesome... Mega Lucario, that'll be cool! And maybe a Primeape, or a Scrafty, or... hey, Mike, what are some cool Fighting-types?" Apecian asked his partner.

"I am not sure at the moment," Michael said, not looking up from the screen. "However, assuming they exist, I would recommend a Fighting and Rock-type or a Fighting and Electric-type to take on Flying-types, and a Fighting and Dark-type or a Fighting and Ghost-type to take on Psychic types," he said. "Now, please, Apecian, I hate to be rude, but please, may I have a moment? I have to run analysis on my team to see what happens if I replace Claydol with Gallade." Apecian sighed, and rolled over on the couch.

"You're no fun," he said quietly. Michael did not hear him.

"Steadfast, I believe, will be better than Justified. Hmm, I think Swords Dance will be very effective. Psycho Cut, of course, what kind of Psychic-type player would I be if I didn't have that?" Michael continued in this vein for some time, and Apecian kept sulking until Michael was finished, at which point he quickly began begging Michael to help him.

Apecian ran down the hall, gasping. True, he could clear up the tiredness with a bit of charge from his stone, but that'd be a waste, even when escaping from them. A line of red tape flew past him, narrowly missing entangling his legs. "Bunnies," he muttered between gasps.

“Get back here!” a voice cried. That voice belonged to the Notary, possibly the most annoying person in all of Headquarters, Flowers included.

“Nope!” Apecian yelled back, still running. Up ahead, he could see a split. Great! If he could just go through a few more of those, he could lose her! He should have known not to think that. The IO was always listening.

“We’ve got you!” The Notary cried, dashing out from the left corridor. She faced him, staser in her right hand and a ridiculously tall stack of paperwork hugged to her side by her left. Apecian turned, hoping he was wrong, but, of course, he wasn’t. The Notary was in front of him this way, too.

“Great,” he muttered. One of the Notaries has split off from the other one, and they’d somehow managed to trap him in this hallway. The Notary who had been in front of him, but was now behind him, walked up to him and pulled several papers off the top of the pile.
“These are the forms you’ll need to complete to get the item you requested,” she told him. She pulled even more papers from the pile. “And here are two extra copies. Please fill them all out.” Apecian looked around, trying to figure a way out, but it was no use. They had him boxed in, and without his hammer, he couldn’t even try and tackle one out of the way, because the other would shoot his feet off, and then they’d make him help put all the papers the one he’d tackled had dropped in order. He shuddered at the thought. No, better just to accept it. He sighed, and accepted the papers from the Notary.

“Do either of you have a pen?” he asked. The Notaries looked at each other. Should they…? No, that would be excessive, even for them. One reached into a pocket and pulled out a number two pencil, a pencil sharpener, and an eraser.

“Use these,” she told the Homunculus. “If you make a mistake, erase it thoroughly so that no confusion will result.” He groaned, and took it, and the forms.

“This is gonna suck,” he muttered.

“Would you like some help?” a familiar voice called from the end of the hallway. Apecian looked up, and grinned.
“Michael!” he cried, getting to his feet. Indeed, it was his partner, wearing his yellow Tracker’s Lenses, which explained how he’d managed to find his partner without getting lost. “Thank goodness. Could you fill these out for me? The Notary’s trying to get me to do it three times!” Michael smiled, and shook his head.

“I’m not going to do it all for you,” he said, walking to his partner. “But…” He paused as he bent down, then rifled through the papers, pulled out a number of them, and stood up again. “If you’ll do one set, I’ll do the other two.”

Apecian grimaced, but said, “Sure.” He snatched the writing materials from the Notary in front of him, and Michael graciously accepted a set from the other Notary. The two agents then sat down to work on them as the Notaries looked on triumphantly.

Kelly and September walked down the hallway.

September said, "It really wouldn't have been a violation of canon if she actually was an ancient sea goddess."

Kelly scowled. "We're just lucky that the story cut off before that."

September stopped as her foot encountered something small and warm. She looked down to see a puppy. "Oh how cute!"

"Don't even think about keeping him," Kelly said. "No minis and no pets. They'll tear up the RC."

September picked up the puppy, who seemed unphazed by the light kick. "We can't just leave him here."

"Then take him to the Cute Animal Friend Adoption Agency." Kelly began walking again.

He watched the little Absol run from the Pokémon Centre into the woods. Trainers often did that; Pokémon that didn’t make the cut when they were bred for specific natures or IVs were simply released into the wild— even if they were barely out of the egg. The little one darting to and fro, alone and confused, was obviously one of the undesirables. From his vantage point in the underbrush he watched her blindly flee deeper into the forest and disappear from his sight.

For a moment, he debated whether going after her— was it worth it in the end? The world was a cruel, harsh place. Things like this were commonplace. Not everyone had a place to go at the end of the day: case in point, the female Absol. Case in point, him. A sudden wave of curiosity overtook him: where did those without a place go to? He knew what his answer would be, but his circumstances were hardly normal. With that reasoning in mind, he silently left his hiding place and followed the young Absol’s trail, taking care to remain unseen and unheard.

---

She stopped her frantic race at the base of a tall tree and had tucked herself into a shallow hole by the roots. She sobbed quietly as she fearfully looked around at the sights and noises of the outside world. It was overwhelming: she had barely hatched when she was given a name— ‘Luna’— and her trainer had started studying her profile on their strange tablet-thing. The trainer looked at her, then at her profile, then back at her before going to the Pokémon Centre and releasing her into the wild.

Luna didn’t understand. What had she done wrong? Why was this happening to her? What had she done to deserve this? She felt the tears well up in her eyes and buried her face in her forepaws again. She wept for several silent minutes before she noticed another presence near her. A Zoroark had sat down next to her and was busy braiding several long pieces of grass together, weaving a few wildflowers into the design as he worked with his claws. Luna studied the newcomer closely. He wore a strange contraption on his snout: two circular pieces of transparent material framed by gold. He was clad in a large cloak that seemed to blend into the landscape and wore a vest that held several things in bulging pouches. He turned to look at her— Luna recoiled in fright but the stranger’s smile made her stop. He glanced back at his work and tied the two ends together, forming a little crown with the braided grass. With utmost delicacy, he placed the crown on Luna’s head and admired his handiwork.

The Absol looked up at him in wonder. “Are you my father?” she asked.

The Zoroark grimaced and briefly looked away before slowly shaking his head. He tucked his arms under his cloak and seemed to be debating something. Luna rose and took a step towards him. “Can I stay with you?” she said.

This question seemed to cause great distress with the older Pokémon. His grimace deepened and he removed his pince-nez, looking up at the sky as if it would give him answers. Again, Luna moved forward. “I think you’re nice,” she said softly.

He audibly sniffled at the comment and his eyes grew misty. Slowly— very slowly— he nodded. Luna padded over to him and looked at his teary face. This was a strange, strange ‘mon, but for some reason she felt safe with him. She settled in next to him and rested her head against his cloak.

---

And so they left, headed towards a new beginning for both of them.


((Not quite a puppy-- please forgive my liberal interpretation of the prompt.))

Tomash and Peregin were walking around HQ for some reason when they saw a small dog wandering the hallways.

"Aww, look, a puppy!" Tomash said, picking up the lost-looking dog. "It's so cute"

"Do you not think that we should report a stray animal wandering about Headquarters?" asked Peregrin.

"Well, yeah, maybe eventually. But we could keep it until someone shows up to claim the poor thing.?"

"I am not certain that we have the resources to care for it. And it would violate the — no, never mind, that doesn't apply here."

"You've got a point there. We've already got a bunch of other stuff going on. But he's cute, and I think we can hold on to him until we find someone who wants to take him in."

"I think that would be a reasonable solution. And much better for the young thing. I cannot imagine that there are many sources of food in the corridors."

(( Not sure if this is any good. Also, I can't endings. ))

Apecian looked down at the puppy in front of him. It was absolutely adorable. He couldn't tell what breed it was, but he knew it was perfect. "Awww," he cooed. He scratched the puppy behind the ears. "Who's a cute puppy? Who's a cute puppy? Are you a cute puppy? Yes you are! Yes you are!" The puppy's tongue slipped out of its mouth, and it rolled onto its belly, clearly asking for a belly rub. Apecian happily obliged. "Isn't he the cutest?" he asked his partner.

"Apecian," Michael sighed. "I don't think we can take care of a puppy. Besides, we already have Ron and Mayuku. Do we really need another pet?"

"Please," Apecian begged, looking up and trying to make his eyes wider. It didn't really work.

"No."

"Oh, come on! I promise, this is the last pet, and I'll take care of him!" Michael considered it for a moment.

"You'll feed him?" he asked.

"Yup!"

"And teach him to use Ron's box?"

"Of course!"

"And pick up after him when he forgets?"

"Uh huh!"

"And make sure he doesn't chew up my books?"

"Yeah!" Apecian said eagerly. Michael sighed.

"Alright, you've got a month. If you can prove to me you can take care of him by yourself for that long, you can keep him."

"Woo hoo!" Apecian cheered. He picked up the puppy carefully, and started scratching behind its ears again. "Aren't you just the cutest? Yes you are! Yes you are! You're gonna come live with us now, okay?" The puppy yipped. "I know! You'll love it. We'll give you food, and you can sleep in my bed, and- oh! You need a name. How about... Socrates?" The newly dubbed Socrates yipped again. Apecian smiled and kept scratching as he followed his partner to the next scene.

Wait, I don’t actually need that anymore. I got Permission now and can write them whenever I want to. Still, it’s a challenge, so here we go. (You may want to read this first.)

---

Increasing hunger is not a good distraction when one tries to find the cafeteria; it had delayed them further, making their hunger increase even more in an endless loop. Only when they had started to discuss recent developments in the Potterverse, they had suddenly found themselves in a large room full of tables and chairs, with a counter and some vending machines on one side. Hieronymus still wondered how he had not noticed passing a door, but a door was certainly there, since he had nearly been thrown out through it by a horde of angry agents when he had tried to jump the queue. After going through all this, Hieronymus was quite impatient when Androia, who had sneakily moved forward while half of the agents who had been in the queue were occupied elsewhere, finally put two dishes on the table. He grabbed the fork, but then he started.

"Are you sure that this is meatballs with mixed vegetables?"

"Yes, I am," said Androia, taking the seat next to him. "Why do you ask?"

"’cause it’s moving."

"Really? Mine only moves when I stir it." Androia stirred the food with her spoon to demonstrate the effect.

Hieronymus watched his dish suspiciously. "I hope this isn’t another meatloaf incident." He poked the vegetables with his fork. "What the F–"

"Watch your language! "

"–lying Featherduster is that?!"

A pair of triangular, furry ears peaked out between the broccoli, and a pair of wide, dark eyes lured form under the cabbage.

"Awww," cooed Androia and reached out to shift the vegetables aside and scratch the tiny head. "Who's a cute kitten? Who's a cute kitten? Are you a cute kitten? Yes you are! Yes you are!"

The kitten sneezed and shook off the carrots and cauliflower. Hieronymus glared at the mess on the table.

"Isn't it the cutest?" Androia asked her partner.

Hieronymus frowned at her. "Who are you, and what have you done with Androia?"

"Hey, I am trying to develop some personality traits. At home, I was never allowed to do that. It was all running and fighting and casting spells, and the occasional flower-picking to gain proficiency."

Oh, crap. That’s what happens if you don’t keep your Player Character on a short leash.

Androia picked up the kitten carefully, and started scratching behind its ears again. "Aren't you just the cutest? Yes you are! Yes you are! You're gonna come live with us now, okay?" The kitten purred. "I know! You'll love it. We'll give you food, and you can sleep in my bed, and – oh! You need a name."

"Look," said Hieronymus carefully, "we can’t keep it. Seeing how we always skip months of HQ time while we are on a mission, who should be in charge of its litter box?"

At another table, Apecian nudged his partner. "Did you hear that? This plagiarizing b–"

"Stop!" Michael interrupted. "Give her some slack, she’s still learning."

"But that plagiarizing beast took all my words to put them in the night elf’s mouth!"

"Oh, that you meant. So you think it’s a copycat, then?”

---

HG, never resisting an opportunity.

This got long, folks. I'm not even sure it will fit in a single post, and I don't know what happens when it doesn't. It got long enough that I probably should have gotten a beta for it, but I want to hit as many of these prompts before the thread falls off the front page as possible.

I also know this is throwing a lot of new characters at you all. I've tried to balance explaining a bit about them without bogging down the pacing. I'll be making a separate story eventually about Millie/Mollie and Olsen/Ollie adjusting to life in the Nursery that will hopefully flesh out the other kids better. For now, enjoy my token single story of the year!

"Fake-A-Wish Foundation"

Sunday
"So . . . this clearly doesn't have an actual plot."

"Yeah," said Laquisha. "It's super-fun, though!"

Mollie and Ollie exchanged a glance. Ollie asked, "But . . . aren't we supposed to be learning new canons?"

"This is a canon!" Laquisha protested as her Lucina launched Mollie's Villager off screen. "Agents have done Smash Bros. missions, I swear! I can pull some mission reports off the net if you want."

"That's all right," Mollie said. "Just—"

"Relaaaaaaax, girl," Laquisha interrupted. "It's the weekend. That means—"

She cut off as a ghostly wail sounded around them. An orange figure flew through the door to Mollie's room. It had large, exaggerated facial features, turned down into a heavily pronounced frown, and a swirling hairdo that pointed upwards. Its torso trailed off into a little wisp at the end.

Mollie and Ollie ducked down against the floor, but Laquisha just said, "Time?"

"Yup!" replied the orange figure.

"I wish for a mozzarella-flavored lollipop."

"Done!" the floating creature replied happily.

A whitish lollipop appeared in midair next to Laquisha, who grabbed it and popped it straight into her mouth.

The ghostly figure, who was now the same off-white color as the sucker, clasped his hands and said, "Thank you!" Then he sank through the floor.

Mollie and Ollie stared at Laquisha as she swirled the lollipop around in her mouth. She stared back for a few seconds, then finally relented. "His name is Banda. He's a genie—Augh, I mean jinn. Grants one wish a day."

The new kids sat up straighter. "Any wish?" Ollie whispered reverently.

Laquisha glared. "It's not for fun. Banda hurts until he grants the wish."

The pair shrank a bit. "Oh," muttered Ollie.

Mollie asked, "But why mozzarella?"

Laquisha raised her eyebrows. "Because it tastes good? Obviously. Pick up your dang controllers, I'm unpausing in three, two . . ."

Monday
"Yikes," Mollie said as she left the classroom. "An essay on how the Mane Six's personality traits match up to their Elements of Harmony? This is going to take all afternoon." She marched along between Ollie and Laquisha through the corridors of the Nursery's classrooms hallway.

"Don't forget the extra credit question about Spike!" Laquisha chimed in.

Ollie scoffed. "There's no way I'm spending time on—"

"I always do the extra credit!" Laquisha continued. "It's fun."

"Good for you, Hermione!" Mollie teased.

"Psh. Hermione's got nothing on me."

"Wish!" came a cry from a side hall. Banda flew around the corner, still white like the previous day. "Someone wish something!"

Laquisha tapped Mollie on the shoulder. "Go."

Mollie froze. She stared at the jinn for a moment, then realized he was clutching at his stomach. She blurted out, "Uh, I wish for a, uh, a, hot dog?"

“Done!”

A hot dog appeared before her, sans bun or any condiments. She grabbed for it, but jerked her hand away as the meat burned her a bit. She fanned her hand as the hot dog fell to the ground.

Banda, now a pinkish-brown color, frowned. "A thousand pardons!"

"Don't apologize, honey," Laquisha said gently, then turned to Mollie. "Need to be specific. Banda doesn't control the wish, he just lets it happen."

Mollie noticed Banda's gaze drop to his right wrist, and the stamped gold circlet around it.

Tuesday
“What do you think?”

“Still reading.” Marty flipped to the next page of Ollie’s essay. “It’s good so far.”

“Just good?”

Marty glanced up briefly. “It’s homework. It’s never as good as when we’re writing something for fun. But it’s good so far. No worries.”

“Mm. Yeah.” Ollie put his head in his hands. “Sorry.”

Marty shrugged.

There were still a few minutes left before class would start. Although Professor Beans hadn’t shown up yet. Another group of their classmates trickled through the door, chatting. Banda floated in the air above the heavily dressed Riso and Edwin, the little rolling robot. Ollie waved to them as they all moved to their usual places, still talking.

Suddenly, Banda went ramrod straight, then hugged himself, making a slight “urgh” noise. Ollie felt Marty’s fist pound into his shoulder. “Go.”

Ollie straightened up. "I wish for a soda."

"Done!"

A green and pink metal can popped into existence on Ollie’s desk. He picked it up and read the name. “Slurm?”

I think not. A slim, leafy vine snaked around the can and pulled it away. Professor Beans lobbed it through the portal it had just used to enter the classroom. I’m told it’s highly addictive!

Marty pointed in Ollie’s face. “Specific.”

Wednesday
Ollie chewed. “Wow.” He chewed some more. “Wow,” he said again. “This is so much worse than I even imagined.” He pulled a white chunk out of his mouth. “Why is there cartilage in this cabbage sandwich?” He let it drop into the pile of grey film the bluish bread of his sandwich had left on the tray.

“And the grown-ups actually eat here? Every day?”

“Shush!” Anne whispered. “We don’t need the agents finding out about the secret good food in the Nursery.” Anne was a middle eastern girl who kept her black hair short and really liked wearing denim.

“And keep in mind,” Riso added, “the smell’s not usually this bad.” After the kids had sat down, a hulking, demonic agent dripping with yellowish fluids had arrived and claimed the table directly behind them.

“It’s not exactly helping,” Ollie admitted, forcing down another bite.

“So, um, with Banda . . .” Mollie began.

“Ugh,” said Riso.

“Newbies always get so hung up on that.”

Mollie plunged forward anyway. “It seems like no one ever wishes . . . big?”

Anne and Riso sighed. Anne fixed Mollie with a hard stare. “You’ve already seen how it is. The wishes don’t always come out right. It’s King Solomon’s fault.”

Riso corrected, “Suleiman the Great. Banda’s magic isn’t supposed to be used like this. Suleiman enslaved all the spirits in his empire to serve people.”

“Typical grown-up,” Anne muttered.

“It’s not that Banda is screwing things up on purpose. The magic itself is fighting back against being forced to do things the wrong way.”

“And the bigger the wish, the bigger the screw-up. Banda feels awful when he messes things up, so there’s no reason to make things harder on him and risk causing a big problem. And if you really have to go for it for some reason, you have to be a total lawyer about it.”

A Slurm-green figure rose up through the table. “Sorry to interrupt . . .”

Anne leaned in close to Banda and whispered, “I wish for this agent—” She pointed directly to the demon. “—to have a smell that smells good to the majority of human noises until he leaves the Cafeteria.”

Banda grinned. “Done!”

Behind them, Agent Chliever raised a pulsating arm and sniffed under it. “Ugh,” he growled, “better get that checked out.”

The human students all inhaled, then sighed in relief. Anne said, “Banda, thank you. That was perfect!”

Banda, now unfortunately the same color as the demon agent, moved into a reclining position in midair. “I have my moments.”

Thursday
For P.E. that day the class split into two teams of seven to play baseball in the Miss Cam Courtyard. Edwin sat out, due to its inability to roll fast enough to participate, but robots don’t need exercise anyway. Alfajiri, having no hands, remained in the outfield all game and played against whatever team was batting at the time.

Up to bat, Mollie talked quietly to Fox, who stood behind her as catcher. “So, Banda . . . his wish thing goes off a different time every day?” She let Anne’s pitch fly past, and heard Fox shift as he caught the ball.

“Ball one!” called Who.

“Um. I guess?” Fox said quietly as he returned the ball to Anne. “I mean, if you’re still trying to measure time . . . don’t try measuring time.”

From the outfield, Harry called, “So if I catch the old bally baller, I brosat to Who?”

“It stopped being funny the first class period, Harry,” Anne called over her shoulder. She threw again.

Mollie hit it this time, and the ball headed for the left side of the outfield. Banda floated over the ground towards it, with Harry and Alfajiri heading the same way.

“I’ve got it!” the jinn yelled. “I’ve goooaugh!” He clutched at his head, and the ball passed straight through him.

Alfajiri brought all four legs to a skidding halt. “Wish time? I’m hungry! I wish for a zebra!” Then Harry slammed into the young spotted hyena, leaving them both prone on the ground as a striped unicorn with a scraggly black beard appeared next to them, towering over them.

Who called out to the Courtyard, “Someone contact the Waterlily Commander!”

Harry swore as the zebra unicorn raised up and on its hind legs, but Marty suddenly appeared out of nowhere and yanked both his classmates away with a savage twisting motion, leaving the unicorn to stomp down on empty grassland. It gave a high, yelping cry and pointed its horn at the three students. It started to charge just before a pair of snow wolves crashed into it from the side, latching onto its neck and hind leg. The unicorn stumbled, then turned its horn towards the side of attack.

“Now, sisters! Strike at the exposed flank!” Five small, bronze wolves ran in from the other side and got between the unicorn’s legs, biting into its stomach.

Alfajiri was giggling. “Yeah, yeah, a hunt a hunt!” He ran forward to join roman’s pack

Mollie had been watching over Anne’s head, but suddenly realized the other girl was giving her a hard look.

Friday
“Now then, let’s have a bit of a review from last week,” said the male copy of Professor Vector who had been recruited from the Rose Potter missions. “What is the one number you can never divide with?”

“Zero!” Laquisha blurted out.

“Correct! Incidentally, you also can’t divide by skadzz, but most universes haven’t discovered that number yet. We won’t be covering it for several years. Now.” Vector wrote “1/0” as a fraction on the whiteboard. “In World One, it was Brahmagupta who first examined the concept of dividing by zero, though of course the wizarding world had a for more complex understanding centuries earlier, thanks to arithmancy . . . how curious . . .” He leaned closer to the whiteboard, where a tiny dot had appeared in the middle of the “0” he had drawn.

Banda dropped his pencil and grabbed one zebra-striped hand with the other, wincing.

“All right, keep all your rots closed,” Harry yelled, leaping from his seat. “It’s my turn, and I’m like wishing for Superman and Goku to reenact their Death Battle right here in the skolliwoll!”

Meanwhile, Professor Vector was distracted watching the hole on the board slowly widen. He gently felt the edge of the opening with one finger, which was promptly sucked into it up to the knuckle. “Oh, Merlin.”

Laquisha slammed her pencil down and stood up, glaring at Harry. “That. Isn’t. FUNNY. Make a real wish. Now.”

Harry smiled smugly. “Make me, little kisa.”

Laquisha stepped around her desk to stand over him, and Harry returned her glare. She quietly said, “You know that wish won’t work. He can’t pull main characters out of their worlds. Make a real wish.”

Harry blew a raspberry. “You all assume like, but we haven’t tried everything. Maybe a great, bolshy wish takes a while longer. Shall we have ourselves a little nokky?”

Vector’s hand was now up to the wrist in the slowly spreading hole. He held his wand awkwardly in his other hand. “Carpe retractum!” A rope slithered out of his wand, but was sucked all the way into the hole like a wet noodle. He stared for a moment. “Finite Incantatem?” He aimed at his wrist. “Accio hand! Impedimenta! . . . Ow.”

“Banda is hurting.”

Harry shrugged. “I’m not.” He smiled and folded his arms behind his head, leaning back.

The jinn held his hurting hand in close to his stomach, and tears dripped from his eyes as he looked from Laquisha to Harry.

Marty started to say, “I wish—”

“NO.” Laquisha’s gaze never left Harry’s face. “Harry will do it.”

“Aaauugh!” Professor Vector cried. His entire shoulder had sunk into the whiteboard, and the edges were straining against his neck and ribcage. He had dropped his wand in favor of pressing his hand against the board, trying to shove himself out of the ever-widening hole. He cried, “I wish this wasn’t happening!”

“Done!” Banda cried desperately.

Professor Vector fell to the floor. The hole disappeared. He stiffly got to his feet and said, “And to, er, to summarize, it’s an . . . exceedingly poor idea to divide by zero. Er, yes.” He took in the shocked expressions of his students, and the very perturbed looks worn by Laquisha and Harry. “Oh, there’s no need to be upset, children! See: I’m perfectly fine!”

Saturday
From their seat on a couch, Mollie and Ollie watched across the main Nursery room as Laquisha talked to Banda. She was in tears, and Banda was holding her shoulders, looking down with a look of pity.

Eventually, Laquisha gave Banda a sad smile and left for the girls’ dorms. The jinn began to float away through the crowd of children.

Mollie and Ollie looked at each other for a second. Then Mollie called, “Hey, Banda!”

Banda heard and peered at them, then floated closer. Once he reached them, he said, “Greetings, new classmates!”

“Hello,” Ollie said, awkwardly. “Um, have a seat?”

“Surely,” said Banda. His wisp trail immediately popped into a pair of legs, which were white with math equations all over, like the rest of him. He floated down gently into a reclining position on the cushions between the human kids, who giggled.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” Mollie said.

Banda shrugged. "We haven’t really had a chance to speak before, no?”

“No,” Mollie admitted. She cleared her throat. “So, how . . . have you been?”

Banda didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the coffee table in front of the couch for a few moments. Eventually, he just said, “I am well.”

“Mmm.” Now Ollie cleared his throat. “So, um, Mollie and I wanted to ask—”

“You have a wish,” Banda stated, not looking at either of them.

“Well, kind of,” Mollie said. She took Banda’s hand. “We wish . . . we could get to know you better . . . and be your friends?

Banda raised his eyebrows and look both kids in the eyes, one after the other.

Then, he smiled.

"Done."

((A/N: Obviously uncanonical, I have no Permission to write for the PPC.))

The plastic bottle spun around, periodically throwing droplets of ranch dressing onto eir legs. Agent Kebrdå used to be proud of feeling things more strongly than other people. Ey felt as if ey had access to a higher plane of understanding. Why wasn't everyone else crying at the end of "A Rambunctious Animal Travel" [rough translation from Eastern Venusian]? They must be missing out on something. But right now, if Kebrdå had one wish, ey would get rid of all that just to not be paralyzed in the center of the Cafeteria, crying over a spilled and broken bowlful of enchiladas and a spinning salad dressing bottle.

Gaspard turned the cube over in his hands, studying the intricate carvings inlaid on five of the faces and the ornate ruby with the immaculately polished facets on the sixth. He looked at the cloaked figure in front of him.

“One wish?” he said.

“Only one,” said the man. “Say it aloud and press the button.”

“And this works?” said Gaspard, placing the cube button-up on the table in front of him. “Just like magic?”

“It is magic,” said the man, crossing his arms. “Go on. Make a wish.”

Gaspard looked back at the cube. There were a lot of things he wished for-- an end to war or to disease or to unhappiness. Or perhaps food for everyone on Earth or even--

The cloaked man leaned in. “You can be selfish, too,” he said simply.

Gaspard leaned back a little, wondering if this man was able to read minds. His gaze fell upon the cube again as he wondered-- what would make him happy?

“I... I’m not worth spending a wish on,” he said slowly. “I’m not the smartest or kindest or wisest person here-- there must be someone better qualified than me to be entrusted with a wish. I don’t deserve this.”

Even though the man’s face was obscured by his cowl, Gaspard could feel the disappointment in his eyes. “Are you sure?” he asked.

The Spy returned the gaze. “Give it to someone who really needs it.”

The man wordlessly pushed the cube back towards Gaspard, who seemed to recoil from it. “I’ll say it again. You are allowed to be selfish.”

Gaspard stared at the wish-cube in silence for a long few minutes. Then, ever so slowly, he raised his hand and placed it on the big red button. “I wish to not die alone,” he said in a tiny voice as he pressed the button.

(Since I haven't changed them from their original author's portrayal yet.)

—doctorlit is working on that interlude

Feel free to use Marvin and Printworthy.

Finch and Bingle and Maz and Yocherry and John Johnson from Accounting. Those fellows.

Er. Assuming this's under same rules as the Discord one.

iTunes and Amazon video, and there are also DVDs.

"If I give my Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus even one flaw, they will fail!"

A. The person wants proofreading before or after it's published.

B. The Person still cares about the story. If it's discontinued or hasn't been updated since like 2014 or earlier there is no telling that the author actually cares about it. They might not have even remembered it existed.

C. The person still has access to the story. I made like a fanfic account very young and used it for one terrible drabble and to tell a group some of the ocs who applied were stolen from a friend. I have zero access to that account now so I don't even know the status of the story.

and D. The Author is okay with people they don't know well looking over their unpublished stories.

Did the reviewer want you to volunteer to proofread before the story was published? That would make sense in that that's when beta-reading is supposed to happen, but unfortunately, unless you know the author personally, you'd have to be psychic in order to know the fic needed help before you even saw it.

Or, did the reviewer want you to volunteer after it was published? That suggestion presumes that an author who apparently didn't seek beta-reading at the appropriate time will accept it after the fact because... reasons? Not saying it's impossible, but it's a bit of a stretch.

Either way, it's not anyone's responsibility to go around offering to beta for random strangers. It's the author's responsibility to make sure their work is in good shape before putting it out there for anyone to read and react to. Not that you shouldn't offer concrit or even editing if you feel so moved—that's a really great thing to do—but as the FAQ says somewhere, if it doesn't look like the author put any effort into making the story good to begin with, why should you put in the effort to write a thoughtful and detailed review that will be ignored at best or met with tantrums and flaming at worst? Writing a mission is at least entertaining and may benefit someone else who actually does care about learning to write better.

If you're worried about it, though, you might adopt Araeph's policy of reviewing a fic and seeing what happens before you spork it. If the author responds positively, great! You've helped someone and improved the average quality of fanfiction. If they don't respond or if they get nasty, you can go ahead and spork their work with a clean conscience, knowing that attempting to be nice would be a waste of everyone's time.

~Neshomeh

I wish I could point out an example but I can't find it at this time. I assume that this is the reasoning behind many different Mary-Sues'/Gary-Stus' powers even if it is rarely said aloud.

I've even replied to the concrit, so I don't know what you want from me.