Write Your Butt Off 358/II.8 prompts HD Final Chapter Prologue

[AnonymousSpeed]

In fact, given the number of things which are to need doing, I might need to request a two-day extension rather than just one. I apologize for this.

[Benice]

OP is updated! Voting will end midnight of March 1st.

EDIT: Also, no worries about the delay, @AnonymousSpeed! You'll get it in when you get it in.

---

 

I had an idea I really wanted to follow through on, but I just really didn't have the time for it...

Edited February 26, 2023 by Benice

[SoulWeaver]

Hey, uh, @Benice.

You know Candle's Flame wasn't actually an entry, right? I didn't get this round's done in time so I don't have anything.

Edited February 26, 2023 by SoulWeaver

[Benice]

3 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

Hey, uh, @Benice.

You know Candle's Flame wasn't actually an entry, right? I didn't get this round's done in time so I don't have anything.

Oh.

A big, hearty

for me!

[TheSilentChloey]

Nice!

[AnonymousSpeed]

Alright boys and girls I hope you're ready to get banned. Introducing the ~5,500 word epic:

The Hardest

Spoiler

The Hardest

Jenny was sitting at a bar, sipping at a cold cranberry juice. She didn't even really want to be there- she was there to be designated driver for a friend who was probably puking her lungs out in the bathroom after just a few drinks. She'd just gotten back from checking on, having kept her glass in hand the whole time, just in case some creep tried anything funny. It was then that she was approached by a funny looking creep.

"Hey," he said. "How are you?"

His voice was reasonably deep, confident, somewhat attractive. There was a certain brightness, crackling electricity, which shone in his dark eyes, exciting and unpredictable, wild and free in a way which seemed totally off-putting to Jenny.

"I'm...fine," she said hesitantly, looking him up and down. Despite her better judgement, she continued the conversation by asking the most obvious question. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

The man smirked and flexed his moderately-sized muscles. His skin was totally exposed above the waist, and his pants were a bit droopy on top of that. The only thing covering his chest was a long mane of black hair and an excess of ink. "I like to give people a view."

Jenny spoke with trepidation. "A view of your muscles?"
"Well, those too, but mostly my tattoos."

He stepped back and indicated to the waterfall of ink which covered his torso. It was an intricate web of various occult and spiritual symbols- Buddhist, Kabbalist, Nordic runes and African charms, with no shortage of others. A massive Pheonix was spread prominently across his chest. The whole thing produced a wicked tapestry which moved across his skin as if it were alive, and rendered his pale flesh almost completely invisible underneath its darker tones.

"They give me magical powers."

"...oh." Jenny then realized for the second time that she was talking to a crazy person, and very politely took a drink of her juice.

"There's some other ones," he said, a hand on his belt. "But I can only show you those if you're really interested." He winked, then outstretched his hand. "So, sweet thing, what's your name? Mine's Rockhard Thunderdick."

Jenny sprayed cranberry juice across the counter.

"What? It's my real name."
"No it isn't."
"Yeah it is. My dad's last name is Thunderdick."
"You're joking."
"No." The man narrowed his eyes. "I'm serious."

Jenny stood up and grabbed her glass. "Uh, look. Sorry, but I've got to go check on someone."
"Wait, let me help you."
"No, I'm okay, really, it'd just bore you."
"It's no problem, really-"

The door to the bar slammed open. Loudly. All eyes turned to the source of the sound, even Rockhard Thunderick's.

"Oh, fuck."

The intruder was long, tan, and handsome, dressed in presentable white-collar clothes tied together with brown wingtip shoes. He had dark hair which was short and combed, and carried himself sternly but with restraint and straight posture all the way until he was standing right in front of Rockhard Thunderdick.

"Rockhard."
"Fuck you."

The man turned to Jenny. "I'm sorry miss. Is my brother bothering you?"

"Brother?" Jenny was only growing more confused.

"This is Superhot Fieryballs," explained Rockhard Thunderdick, staring down the man. "He's my half-Hispanic half-brother."

"Uh..." Jenny looked between the two. "You two are clearly busy, I'm just going to...let you get to it." Then she quickly stepped away.

"Great job, Superhot. I was just about to score!"
"You don't need to be scoring like some kind of STD-ridden pinball machine. She wasn't even into you."
"I am immune to STDs," Rockhard said defiantly. "It's a property of my magic enchantments."
"Your enchantments can't protect you into eternity," said Superhot. "Only God can do that. Your demons will turn against you eventually."

"Yeah yeah, say it another hundred times, why don't you? What do you want?"
"You know what I came to talk to you about. Mom has been trying call you for weeks! Don't you think you owe her at least phone call in all this time?"
"You really chased me down to another dimension just to lecture me about grossly neglecting my obligations to my family?"
"Yes, I did. If I tried a phone call, you might not have picked up."

Rockhard adjusted his stance, swaying around angrily. "You know, why don't go back to your white picket fence and sit on it."
"Excuse me?"
"That's right, take one of those boards and shove directly up your-"
"I know you meant. It's not as clever as you think it is, but I know what you meant."
"Blow me."
"Just call mom."
"Fine! Say hi to the kids for me."
"I'll talk to Wendy about it."
"Cuck."
"You should be glad we'd consider it at all."

***

Rockhard Thunderdick once tried to find work as a gigolo. On his second day trying to do this he accidentally became a wizard and invented time travel- but that is a story for another time. Ever since, he had been traversing the dimensions of time and space in pursuits of pussy and magic, and sometimes really expensive steak, but usually the first two.

On occasion he'd also go for drugs, which was how he found himself standing opposite a squad of Columbian drug dealers. They were in a Panzer IV they had acquired from a contact in Argentina, and had the main gun aimed at Rockhard Thunderdick over a matter of 1.5 million dollars worth of cocaine that he hadn't paid for.

"Where's the rest of it?" Asked leader of the cartel. He said this in Spanish, but fortunately Rockhard Thunderdick spoke fluent Spanish as part of an elaborate ploy to bang his half-brother's cousins on his father's side to whom he had no biological relation. Unfortunately, he only spoke Cuban Spanish, which is not interchangeable with Columbian Spanish, and this sometimes produced awkward situations when attempting to buy cocaine from Columbians. That was not the cause for this current lapse in payment. He just didn't feel obligated to pay them.

"I snorted all of it," Rockhard Thunderdick defiantly scowled.
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did."
"You cannot snort fifty pounds of cocaine in two weeks."

"I can snort all the coke I want!" Rockhard Thunderdick puffed out his chest and pointed his thumb at it. "You can do that kind of thing when you have magical regeneration powers."
"Give us the coke, give us the money, or we chop off your balls and make you swallow them."
"Try me, bitch."

The cartel had no actual interest in Rockhard Thunderdick's balls, which they assumed were ridden with STDs. So instead they just shot him with a 75 millimeter shell traveling at two-thousand-five-hundred feet-per-second. His chest was instantly vaporized.

Sheer magical power stopped the rest of his body parts before they could go flying off in different directions. They instead hovered in the air before sowing themselves back together around a brand new torso which bore identical tattoos to the previous one.

"Oh, shit," said the cartel leader. "He actually is magic. Put the tank in reverse."

The Panzer IV rapidly moved backwards and soon spun around so it could charge away from the angry wizard.

Rockhard Thunderdick reared back his hand, lightening crackling from his fingertips. "Now it's my turn." He felt that should be punctuated with a swear. "Bitch." Throwing his hand forward, a massive beam of lightening shot forth and struck the tank, coursing through the steel plating and causing all the fuel and ammo inside to explode. Shrapnel flew in all directions and cut through him, leaving comparatively small wounds which quickly healed.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was at the bar when he started talking shit, and after a few drinks was egged on by his fellow patrons to take the following bet: That he could not use his time travel powers to get his name in the Bible.

His first idea was the punch Jesus. However, a drunk Baptist in seminary pointed out to him that most events in the life of Jesus were not recorded, because there would not be enough room in the world to store all the books it would fill. Therefore he decided to try his luck in Bronze Age Israel instead.

The prophet Isaiah had just finished his business with Hezekiah, king of Judah, when a portal through space and time opened in the sky ahead of him. Rockhard Thunderdick fell out of it and landed face-first in the dust. Isaiah could instantly tell this guy was a complete joker, and that he was not to be taken seriously as a human being.

"Rise up," said Isaiah in Biblical Hebrew. Fortunately for Rockhard Thunderdick, he spoke fluent Biblical Hebrew thanks to an ill-fated attempt to bang Ben Shapiro's sister (to whom he has no biological relation) from a few years ago. She did not actually speak Biblical Hebrew, so this plan did not go very far.

Isaiah really had no response. "Depart ye, having made yourself unclean."
"Go to hell, old man." Rockhard Thunderdick used "Sheol" as his Biblical Hebrew word for hell. "I just took a bath, uh...last week? Whatever. Anyway. I don't do what anybody tells me. I only got up when you said because I was going to do that anyway. Bitch."

Isaiah raised a hand and pointed at him. "Surely, until the Earth passes away, you shall remain on it."

Rockhard Thunderdick stared at the prophet. Then he glanced from side to side. He almost chuckled. "Uh...sure, I'm fine with immortality."
"You will also have erectile dysfunction."
"No!"

He collapsed to his knees and wept.

He did not get his name in the Bible.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was in a state of shock as he left Bronze Age Israel, heading for another time and place. "No way," he told himself, "there's no he actually gave me ED. Believing what prophets tell you is stupid." He went to another bar in another realm and tried to bag a twin-tailed ginger chick with a nasally voice and parental issues. He even got her into a private room when he discovered that the prophet spoke the truth. "Loser!" She jeered, snorting while laughing, leaving him to beat his pillow and scream into it and cry all on his own.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was wandering the dimensions in suit of something stronger than Viagra, which had proven ineffective even when snorted. A general cure for ED would've been great too, but he kept his expectations closer to what he thought was reasonable.

From a crackling of thunder came a tear between dimensions, and from it Rockhard Thunderdick stepped onto the deck of a ship, and that began his fateful encounter with Captain Hellfish.

The dread pirate captain had commandeered King Desmond of Bern's Epstein boat and had been dragged away from his stolen harem by his crew after Rockhard Thunderdick had proven impossible for any of the mere moral men on the deck to keep down.

Hellfish stormed up with his trousers half on and grabbed his signature weapon, a massive wrought-iron anchor. His eyes quickly landed on Rockhard Thunderdick, who was surrounded by his crew...from a safe distance. "What be the meanin' of this? You all can't handle this spindly little weakling?"

Rockhard Thunderdick would have been offended if he hadn't been so disgusted. "Wait. You're the guy who's getting all the pussy here?"

"Mind your manner, scallywag! I be the captain. Everything on this ship is mine by right o' plunder to do with as I please." Captain Hellfish lifted his anchor and swaggered over with a looming glare. "Their booty be my booty, and you'll kindly see yerself into the deep unless ye want yer booty joining theirs."

Now. Rockhard Thunderdick might have been a slut. But he didn't do rape and he didn't do child pornography.

"What are you, a virgin?"
"What are ye? Deaf or dumb?"
"Being a rapist makes you an incel," said Rockhard Thunderdick. "Maybe if you weren't such a fat ugly fuck you actually get some consensual sex, but then again-"

Captain Hellfish dropped his anchor on the wizard's head, the tip cracking his skull open and the massive iron weight splitting Rockhard Thunderdick in half as it lodged itself deep in the deck. Blood went everywhere, and it was hard to tell the two mutilated piece had ever been a human being.

"That'll teach ya to interrupt me sexin', you landlubbin' dog. Maybe had ye any booty of yer own, you wouldn't have made the fatal mistake of gettin' between me and mine."

The captain, smug and content, turned his head and began to walk away, hand loosely on his anchor with the intent to pull it out, but was stopped by a sickening and fleshy sowing sound. He turned around to see those two mutilated halves almost completely restored into one whole Rockhard Thunderdick. A few moments more and he was back as he was, except now obviously seething.

"Don't talk down to me you subhuman rat bastard ball of lard," he snarled. "I am not a dog. I am not a loser!" He threw his hands onto the anchor which was now between his legs and sent untold volts coursing through it. Lethal amperes raced through the iron shaft and into the fatty body of Captain Hellfish, the intense power and heat turning his skin into cracklings, and instantly rendering him dead.

It also conducted downwards into the deck, setting the entire ship on fire and causing it to sink. That was how hundreds of innocent human trafficking victims were burned alive or drowned, and how Rockhard Thunderdick found himself stranded on a piece of burnt driftwood. Unfortunately for him he had never learned how to swim, though he had learned to speak to fish for reasons which were actually entirely unrelated to sex.

Eventually he did manage to float to shore. Wet, tired, and angry, he crawled onto the beach, spat the seawater out of his mouth, and brushed the sandy hair from his face. After making sure he still had pants (he did not), he decided to try another dimension.

***

"So let me get this straight," said the drunk Baptist from seminary, who was now sobered up and watching as Rockhard Thunderdick drowned his sorrows in absinthe and apple juice. "You meet the prophet Isaiah. He says you will have erectile dysfunction. You notice that same day that you now, suddenly, have erectile dysfunction. And you're saying that God doesn't exist?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's just a coincidence!" Rockhard Thunderdick hiccuped and swayed. "I was probably gonna develop erectile dysfunction anyway. Y'know, from having too much sex or something. Maybe an STD."
"Are you of all people implying that it's possible to have too much sex?"
"Just go back to whatever stupid bullshit you were saying earlier."

"Alright, fine. Where was I? Oh yes. I don't think 'red pill' is a term the right should adopt. The original red pill is clearly a reference to the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Regardless of any post-Enlightenment ideas, it was clearly a sin for Adam and Eve to eat it-"

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was wandering through the dimensions, searching for magic and pussy and expensive steak and drugs and the cure for ED. Somewhere along the way he'd taken a wrong term and gotten really lost- he'd barged his way into a pocket dimension within another dimension, which was something you normally had to try to do. He had strange abilities when drunk.

The realm he entered was a small medieval courtyard dotted with small buildings in districts. An armory, a forge, a comically small pasture of grazing cattle, etc. He appeared there suddenly in a bolt of lightening, standing atop a large pile of rocks.

"What's up bitches!"

An old man was chipping away at the mound with a pickax in search of diamonds. He dropped his tool and shielded his eyes from the sudden light, which had also drawn the attention of several others at the camp.

"It's your boy, Rrrrrrockhaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrd Thuuuunnnnnnnnnderdick!"

Everything was quiet for a bit. Rockhard Thunderdick looked around, downed the last half of his beer, and hobbled around on the rock. "What? No respect?"

"Lord Popcorn," said Jakob. "What do you make of this intruder? Shall we dispose of him?"

"I heard that!"
"Let's calm down a minute Jakob," said Popcorn. "He might not be an invader. Let's try asking his name."
"It's ROCK. HARD. THUN. DERDICK."
"He doesn't seem hostile, at least not like those illusory warriors."

The army muttered amongst itself about this strange arrival, who was himself growing quite irritated with being the center of attention yet not actually being engaged with by any women.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Selena shouted. "I know you! You're that guy from the bar with erectile dysfunction!"
"Shut up!" And then he vaporized her.

The army gasped. "It's an enemy!" Popcorn shouted. "Everyone, get ready for battle!"
"Oh boy, it's time for killing!"

A lance was thrown through the invader's chest. He stumbled back and fell of the rock, grunting repeatedly in pain as he hit several stones on his way to the bottom. Once there, electricity burned the weapon to ashes and the wound sealed shut. Growling with anger, he crawled back on top of the rocky mount, where he found himself surrounded. Arrows, spells, and throwing weapons came at him in a ceaseless barrage, but no matter the number of stab wounds sustained, he stayed standing. He even managed to keep his footing.

Player phase ended. Enemy phase began.

All wounds healed. Rockhard Thunderdick threw his arms to the side, a surge of electrical power flowing through him, blasting away all the weapons still lodged in his body. Lightening crackled all around him, his body rising from the ground. He started to scream, and kept screaming, and screamed some more, all in one continuous battle-cry. The aura of electricity got brighter and more powerful until he thrust his hand into the air, and bolts went flying from his hand into the sky before descending back down in a deadly barrage.

Everyone struck died. Some ran for cover only for their cover to be vaporized or the the lightening to chase them around it. Arthur covered his head and prayed and pleaded as hard as he could for deliverance. All of the luck from all of versions and all of the moments of his life was siphoned into his body at that moment, so that as the storm concluded, he looked around and saw that he was the only one who had been there to remain. Everyone else was ash, but he was completely untouched.

Rockhard Thunderdick floated back down to the ground and panted, mostly to calm himself down. He looked around the ruined field, covered in small fires. Most of the buildings had been destroyed too, and the cows were turned into steaks.

"Aw, shit. I did it again."

Rockhard Thunderdick didn't like losing control like that. It was honestly a little embarrassing. It had only gotten worse since he'd gotten ED, which he also found embarrassing for reasons he couldn't quite discern if they were similar or not. To hide his face, he opened a portal to the dimension the pocket dimension was contained in- called its Pants Dimension- and vanished into Fateslandia.

Shura walked over to investigate all the ruckus that had just happened. He was carrying a pot of beans that he'd been cooking. Through the steam wafting from the pot, he stared at the smoking, smouldering ruins of the camp. "Yeah. I'm gonna take my leave." Then he did, and Arthur ran after him, since he didn't really have anywhere else to go.

There was one one other survivor- a red-headed merchant hiding in a chest, who waited for Rockhard Thunderdick to depart before crawling out of her hiding place. She would have to report this strange and previously unknown danger to the Council.

Rockhard Thunderdick would go on to have many more adventures in Fateslandia, but that is a story for another time.

***

Being a Paradox Agent was a generally comfortable gig. You had even more benefits and vacation than a federal employee, though not as many as an employee of the Spanish government. But with the ability to move across space and time with relative ease, your vacation and work schedules were ultimately very flexible. However, there were a few headaches about it.

"I hate filling out my timesheet," said Orson. "I start work a mission at 10:00 AM. I go back to 8:00 AM last Thursday and take two hours. Then I return to the day I started from at 11:00 AM so I don't miss the Taco Tuesday lunch. How are you supposed to put that on your timesheet?"
"You actually eat those tacos?" Zelda said. "They look disgusting."
"Looks can be deceiving. They're very good. Did you know that Gomez is actually from Cuba?"
"Gomez the cook?"
"That's right. They're authentic tacos."

"Hm." That didn't seem to shake Zelda's convictions about the tacos. "Well, regardless. That's why you should carry the Punch Counter with you. If you turn it on when you start working and turn it off when you're done, it will calculate your hours automatically."
"But you can't falsify a Punch Counter."

Zelda rolled her eyes. "You should be glad I don't want to go through the paperwork of reporting you to management- though I would if you were Senan."
"Understandable. He does still owe you 10,500 credits."
"Regardless-"
"Do you like that word?"
"Don't interrupt," Zelda said with a glare. "But yes, I do. Regardless, we have a mission in 32 tierces. HQ has located a Stellar Freighter carrying an Out-of-Place Artifact which is emitting several femtofathoms through space-time. We need to recover the artifact and interrogate the crew to find out where they got it."
"Sounds easy enough."

Meanwhile, in the hold of a Stellar Freighter far, far away...

"Damn," said Rockhard Thunderdick, admiring a pot. "This is a nice fuckin' pot. I think I'm gonna put this on my mantle." He grabbed it from its pedestal, which triggered some blaring red lights and other security alarms he didn't really care about. He was just going to seer a portal in the fabric of reality with the magnitude of his lightening magic and escape through that.

That was when the door he'd entirely circumvented open behind him. Two people in weird clothes stepped inside.

"Who's there?" Rockhard Thunderdick asked, spinning around and clutching the pot against his phoenix tattoo. "Oh. Hey sugar, how's it going?" He winked at Zelda. "Are you Jewish?"

The two agents ignored him. "Hand over the pot," said Orson.
"Excuse me?"
"Let me try," said Zelda. "Sir, uh...you're very handsome."

Rockhard Thunderdick smiled, instantly ingratiated, which was the intended effect.

"But we need that pot from you. It's very serious and important."
"It's no mere pot," Orson added. "You don't know what you're holding."

Ingratiation ruined.

"Uh, yeah I do. It's an ancient Chinese silver alchemical pot. I'd reckon it's was used to mature lead into silver and was itself made from transmuted lead. Based on the inscriptions, it's from modern-day Manchuria around the third century BC."
"BCE," said Orson.
"Fuck you. I like this pot and it's mine now. It's going on my mantle."
"You're going to put an OOP Artifact...on your mantle?"
"It's called a conversation starter. Dumbass."
"It's kind of ugly. You have bad taste."
"Yeah? Well your whole family is ugly but I still fucked your mom and your dad and your sister last night. Bitch."

Orson slammed a button on his wrist and erased Rockhard Thunderdick from existence. It wasn't that he's caused it to cease, but rather through his paradox gauntlet had changed the past so he'd never existed. His mother's husband hadn't died for another 10 years, so she never had that three-year drunken stint with Rockhard Thunderdick's father, Tim.

The silver pot fell towards the ground, but Orson managed to catch it before it hit the floor and sustained any damage.

"How many credits was that?" Zelda asked.
"213. Another less-than-important person."
"Don't you find that a little mean-spirited to say?"
"I don't see how it's worse than preventing him from ever being born. Now let's hurry to the bridge."

The two ran back down the hall. Meanwhile, splinters of bone formed in the primordial lightening between dimensions. From splinters grew a full skeleton. Flesh wrapped around it. Then it was covered with tattoos and droopy jeans.

Rockhard Thunderdick was back, baby.

He tore another hole between dimensions and stepped out from around the corner across from the same two paradox agents. "I know you motherfuckers didn't just call me unimportant."

The two of them stopped dead in their tracks and stared at each other.

"Am I so cool and handsome that you have no words? If you just hand over that pot-"

Zelda tapped a few buttons and once again Rockhard Thunderdick disappeared.

"How many credits was that?"
"Still 213."
"Correct me if I'm mistaken. Did we prevent that man from ever existing, and then he came back?"
"I'm not sure I want to believe it, but it seems like, somehow, he did."
"Hm...I wonder how..." Orson mumbled.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. We need to report this to HQ, but let's spend some credits to Quantum Funnel to the bridge. He could be back any second."

Zelda nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, Rockhard Thunderdick again reappeared from the primordial lightening between dimensions. "Okay," he told himself. "No more Mister Nice Dick." He tore open a portal, jumped into the corridor, and instantly blasted it with lightening, scorching the whole hallway black, but through the smoke and smell of burnt plastic he was still able to realize he hadn't actually killed anyway. Probably because the amperage hadn't been enough to vaporize a human body.

He looked around the room like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. "Where the fuck did they go?"

Zelda and Orson were on the bridge. They had quickly cornered the captain- due to the class of the freighter he was the only living creature there. They'd tied him up and warped away, and it took a few minutes for Rockhard Thunderdick to reach the bridge and realize what had happened.

He narrowed his eyes. It looked like he was going to have to track them the old fashioned way- by sense of smell.

And divination.

Thankfully, Rockhard Thunderdick was an expert at divination. He pulled out his Ethically Sourced Mole Blood and poured it directly into his eyes. Then he screamed, for this was unpleasant. Using his second sight, he quickly located a long, curly strand of hair. He sniffed it. Gave it a little taste. "Oh yeah," he said. This would be more than enough.

***

Orson and Zelda returned to the Paradox Agency's home ship.

"One of us is going to have to tell Director Roslyn about that creepy guy," said Zelda.
"Indeed. Rock paper scissors?"
"Fine. And no redos, got it? If you lose I don't want to see you suddenly have fewer credits and a winning hand instead."

They agreed and checked how many credits each of them had, then made their moves. Orson took rock and Zelda took Flugauto, which meant that Zelda would be the one to tell the director while Orson took their prisoner to the bridge and put the pot in inventory.

"I should've taken rock," muttered Zelda. Nothing beats rock.

She marched in a semi-hurried manner towards the bridge, as as she entered saw Senan filling out some paperwork. She stopped and kicked him in the shin.
"Ow," said Senan.
"You still owe me those credits, you dick."
"Are you still mad about your slave?"
"You're lucky I'm busy."

Glaring at Senan one last time, Zelda turned to see the director walking towards them and scurried to intercept her. "Director!"
"Zelda, report. How did your mission with Orson go?"
"We retrieved the artifact," answered Zelda, somewhat awkwardly. That was also about the time she noticed the bottle of cheap vodka in Director Roslyn's hand. "Orson is processing it and the smuggler. Um...has it been a hard day?"

The director groaned. "What is it you need to tell me?"

"We encountered a strange man during the mission. Orson erased him, but then...he came back."
"What?"
"I erased him again after that, but I'm not confident he's stayed gone. I think we should compare the logs in Orson's paradox gauntlet against our scanners to check."

"A full scan would be fairly intensive," said Roslyn. "Jenny. How long do you estimate that would take?"

"More than thirteen quadrillion candelas," answered the AI.
"Thanks Jenny. Dismissed."
"Of course director," Jenny said, turning off her holographic display.

The director turned to Zelda. "He might have just had a twin brother who happened to fall into a similar lifestyle without the other around. Either way, we can't spend those kinds of resources right now, we need our scanners for some other urgent matters."

Zelda knew better than to ask for clarification, but something about that still didn't sit right with her.

It was then that lightening shot down from the ceiling. Everyone covered their eyes, even the otherwise unmovable director, and watched as the form of a heavily tattooed man stood up. "I hope y'all bitches didn't miss me. You know what I've been missing? My fucking pot!"

The bridge rushed to action.

Senan stood up as best he could with a wounded shin and activated his paradox gauntlet.

However, Rockhard Thunderdick was in full sicko mode.

He perceived these intentions by the movement of electricity through Senan's brain, then altered the current in his nervous system so that he did not use his gauntlet but instead punched himself in the face.

Zelda tried reached for her gauntlet...

...but Rockhard Thunderdick snapped and fried the superfluid circuits inside it.

He didn't make her hurt herself, since she reminded him a little bit of Ben Shapiro's sister.

"Everyone, hold!" Director Roslyn said, holding up her hand. Everyone in the room froze. "What is your name and what do you want?"

"My name is Rockhard Thunderdick and I want my third century BC Chinese alchemical pot back. I stole it fair and square!"

Director Roslyn looked at the strange and furious man. "Give us some time to discuss it," he told him.

"Director," whispered Zelda. "That's the guy that Orson and I saw."
"I was about to ask," murmured Roslyn.

The director kept her eyes on the wizard the whole time. "Jenny!" Once again the holographic image of the AI appeared.

Rockhard Thunderdick's eyes went wide. "Hey, I recognize you!" He exclaimed, indignantly pointing to the holographic woman. "You're that girl from the bar who wouldn't have sex with me!"
"I'm afraid there's no record of you in my memory banks," answered Jenny. "Besides, I am an APP- an Assistant Personality Program. I have no sexual functions."
"What?"

Rockhard Thunderdick had turned at least one girl gay before, but to fuck up so badly that she turned herself into an asexual AI and then would gaslight him about it? Now that was a pretty serious insult.

"I am an Assist-."
"Shut up."

Being an AI with limited freewill, Jenny did.

"Now then. You guys have twenty seconds to start getting my pot back, or I'll send some much lightening up your asses your eyes will explode. And it'll turn you gay. I will JK Rowling this bitch and nobody can stop me unless they get my pot back!"

Director Roslyn realized here was clearly no sense trying their usual methods against this strange tatted fellow. She would attempt diplomacy, which was usually reserved for soft-hearted newbies.

"We can't give you the pot back, but perhaps we can offer you something else. How about the cure for cancer?"
"The cure for cancer?" Rockhard Thunderdick seemed indignant. "Fuck that. I've seen people cure cancer with prayer and fasting. What I want is my pot."
"Perhaps there is something you haven't seen cured by prayer and fasting?"
"Erectile dysfunction."
"What?"

Some people on the bridge chuckled.

"Y'know, when your dick doesn't work?"
"Do you suffer from erectile dys-"
"No."

Roslyn blinked at him. "Alright. If you leave and let us keep the pot, we will give you the cure for ED. It is a pill which will make it so the causes of your condition will have never existed in the first place. Senan can testify to it's effectiveness."
"I do not consent to do so."
"I can testify to it's effectiveness on his behalf."

Full of seething hatred as he was, Rockhard Thunderdick really wanted to have sex again, so he agreed. He went to his apartment and found the pill on his desk, where it had been left that morning. It was Viagra blue and glowed faintly with some sort of pseudo-scientific energy. Immediately he took it and went out to the club.

He was not cured of erectile dysfunction.

"Woe is me!" lamented Rockhard Thunderdick. "Life is hard because my dick is not!"

 

[TheSilentChloey]

6 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Alright boys and girls I hope you're ready to get banned. Introducing the ~5,500 word epic:

The Hardest

  Reveal hidden contents

The Hardest

Jenny was sitting at a bar, sipping at a cold cranberry juice. She didn't even really want to be there- she was there to be designated driver for a friend who was probably puking her lungs out in the bathroom after just a few drinks. She'd just gotten back from checking on, having kept her glass in hand the whole time, just in case some creep tried anything funny. It was then that she was approached by a funny looking creep.

"Hey," he said. "How are you?"

His voice was reasonably deep, confident, somewhat attractive. There was a certain brightness, crackling electricity, which shone in his dark eyes, exciting and unpredictable, wild and free in a way which seemed totally off-putting to Jenny.

"I'm...fine," she said hesitantly, looking him up and down. Despite her better judgement, she continued the conversation by asking the most obvious question. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

The man smirked and flexed his moderately-sized muscles. His skin was totally exposed above the waist, and his pants were a bit droopy on top of that. The only thing covering his chest was a long mane of black hair and an excess of ink. "I like to give people a view."

Jenny spoke with trepidation. "A view of your muscles?"
"Well, those too, but mostly my tattoos."

He stepped back and indicated to the waterfall of ink which covered his torso. It was an intricate web of various occult and spiritual symbols- Buddhist, Kabbalist, Nordic runes and African charms, with no shortage of others. A massive Pheonix was spread prominently across his chest. The whole thing produced a wicked tapestry which moved across his skin as if it were alive, and rendered his pale flesh almost completely invisible underneath its darker tones.

"They give me magical powers."

"...oh." Jenny then realized for the second time that she was talking to a crazy person, and very politely took a drink of her juice.

"There's some other ones," he said, a hand on his belt. "But I can only show you those if you're really interested." He winked, then outstretched his hand. "So, sweet thing, what's your name? Mine's Rockhard Thunderdick."

Jenny sprayed cranberry juice across the counter.

"What? It's my real name."
"No it isn't."
"Yeah it is. My dad's last name is Thunderdick."
"You're joking."
"No." The man narrowed his eyes. "I'm serious."

Jenny stood up and grabbed her glass. "Uh, look. Sorry, but I've got to go check on someone."
"Wait, let me help you."
"No, I'm okay, really, it'd just bore you."
"It's no problem, really-"

The door to the bar slammed open. Loudly. All eyes turned to the source of the sound, even Rockhard Thunderick's.

"Oh, fuck."

The intruder was long, tan, and handsome, dressed in presentable white-collar clothes tied together with brown wingtip shoes. He had dark hair which was short and combed, and carried himself sternly but with restraint and straight posture all the way until he was standing right in front of Rockhard Thunderdick.

"Rockhard."
"Fuck you."

The man turned to Jenny. "I'm sorry miss. Is my brother bothering you?"

"Brother?" Jenny was only growing more confused.

"This is Superhot Fieryballs," explained Rockhard Thunderdick, staring down the man. "He's my half-Hispanic half-brother."

"Uh..." Jenny looked between the two. "You two are clearly busy, I'm just going to...let you get to it." Then she quickly stepped away.

"Great job, Superhot. I was just about to score!"
"You don't need to be scoring like some kind of STD-ridden pinball machine. She wasn't even into you."
"I am immune to STDs," Rockhard said defiantly. "It's a property of my magic enchantments."
"Your enchantments can't protect you into eternity," said Superhot. "Only God can do that. Your demons will turn against you eventually."

"Yeah yeah, say it another hundred times, why don't you? What do you want?"
"You know what I came to talk to you about. Mom has been trying call you for weeks! Don't you think you owe her at least phone call in all this time?"
"You really chased me down to another dimension just to lecture me about grossly neglecting my obligations to my family?"
"Yes, I did. If I tried a phone call, you might not have picked up."

Rockhard adjusted his stance, swaying around angrily. "You know, why don't go back to your white picket fence and sit on it."
"Excuse me?"
"That's right, take one of those boards and shove directly up your-"
"I know you meant. It's not as clever as you think it is, but I know what you meant."
"Blow me."
"Just call mom."
"Fine! Say hi to the kids for me."
"I'll talk to Wendy about it."
"Cuck."
"You should be glad we'd consider it at all."

***

Rockhard Thunderdick once tried to find work as a gigolo. On his second day trying to do this he accidentally became a wizard and invented time travel- but that is a story for another time. Ever since, he had been traversing the dimensions of time and space in pursuits of pussy and magic, and sometimes really expensive steak, but usually the first two.

On occasion he'd also go for drugs, which was how he found himself standing opposite a squad of Columbian drug dealers. They were in a Panzer IV they had acquired from a contact in Argentina, and had the main gun aimed at Rockhard Thunderdick over a matter of 1.5 million dollars worth of cocaine that he hadn't paid for.

"Where's the rest of it?" Asked leader of the cartel. He said this in Spanish, but fortunately Rockhard Thunderdick spoke fluent Spanish as part of an elaborate ploy to bang his half-brother's cousins on his father's side to whom he had no biological relation. Unfortunately, he only spoke Cuban Spanish, which is not interchangeable with Columbian Spanish, and this sometimes produced awkward situations when attempting to buy cocaine from Columbians. That was not the cause for this current lapse in payment. He just didn't feel obligated to pay them.

"I snorted all of it," Rockhard Thunderdick defiantly scowled.
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did."
"You cannot snort fifty pounds of cocaine in two weeks."

"I can snort all the coke I want!" Rockhard Thunderdick puffed out his chest and pointed his thumb at it. "You can do that kind of thing when you have magical regeneration powers."
"Give us the coke, give us the money, or we chop off your balls and make you swallow them."
"Try me, bitch."

The cartel had no actual interest in Rockhard Thunderdick's balls, which they assumed were ridden with STDs. So instead they just shot him with a 75 millimeter shell traveling at two-thousand-five-hundred feet-per-second. His chest was instantly vaporized.

Sheer magical power stopped the rest of his body parts before they could go flying off in different directions. They instead hovered in the air before sowing themselves back together around a brand new torso which bore identical tattoos to the previous one.

"Oh, shit," said the cartel leader. "He actually is magic. Put the tank in reverse."

The Panzer IV rapidly moved backwards and soon spun around so it could charge away from the angry wizard.

Rockhard Thunderdick reared back his hand, lightening crackling from his fingertips. "Now it's my turn." He felt that should be punctuated with a swear. "Bitch." Throwing his hand forward, a massive beam of lightening shot forth and struck the tank, coursing through the steel plating and causing all the fuel and ammo inside to explode. Shrapnel flew in all directions and cut through him, leaving comparatively small wounds which quickly healed.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was at the bar when he started talking shit, and after a few drinks was egged on by his fellow patrons to take the following bet: That he could not use his time travel powers to get his name in the Bible.

His first idea was the punch Jesus. However, a drunk Baptist in seminary pointed out to him that most events in the life of Jesus were not recorded, because there would not be enough room in the world to store all the books it would fill. Therefore he decided to try his luck in Bronze Age Israel instead.

The prophet Isaiah had just finished his business with Hezekiah, king of Judah, when a portal through space and time opened in the sky ahead of him. Rockhard Thunderdick fell out of it and landed face-first in the dust. Isaiah could instantly tell this guy was a complete joker, and that he was not to be taken seriously as a human being.

"Rise up," said Isaiah in Biblical Hebrew. Fortunately for Rockhard Thunderdick, he spoke fluent Biblical Hebrew thanks to an ill-fated attempt to bang Ben Shapiro's sister (to whom he has no biological relation) from a few years ago. She did not actually speak Biblical Hebrew, so this plan did not go very far.

Isaiah really had no response. "Depart ye, having made yourself unclean."
"Go to hell, old man." Rockhard Thunderdick used "Sheol" as his Biblical Hebrew word for hell. "I just took a bath, uh...last week? Whatever. Anyway. I don't do what anybody tells me. I only got up when you said because I was going to do that anyway. Bitch."

Isaiah raised a hand and pointed at him. "Surely, until the Earth passes away, you shall remain on it."

Rockhard Thunderdick stared at the prophet. Then he glanced from side to side. He almost chuckled. "Uh...sure, I'm fine with immortality."
"You will also have erectile dysfunction."
"No!"

He collapsed to his knees and wept.

He did not get his name in the Bible.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was in a state of shock as he left Bronze Age Israel, heading for another time and place. "No way," he told himself, "there's no he actually gave me ED. Believing what prophets tell you is stupid." He went to another bar in another realm and tried to bag a twin-tailed ginger chick with a nasally voice and parental issues. He even got her into a private room when he discovered that the prophet spoke the truth. "Loser!" She jeered, snorting while laughing, leaving him to beat his pillow and scream into it and cry all on his own.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was wandering the dimensions in suit of something stronger than Viagra, which had proven ineffective even when snorted. A general cure for ED would've been great too, but he kept his expectations closer to what he thought was reasonable.

From a crackling of thunder came a tear between dimensions, and from it Rockhard Thunderdick stepped onto the deck of a ship, and that began his fateful encounter with Captain Hellfish.

The dread pirate captain had commandeered King Desmond of Bern's Epstein boat and had been dragged away from his stolen harem by his crew after Rockhard Thunderdick had proven impossible for any of the mere moral men on the deck to keep down.

Hellfish stormed up with his trousers half on and grabbed his signature weapon, a massive wrought-iron anchor. His eyes quickly landed on Rockhard Thunderdick, who was surrounded by his crew...from a safe distance. "What be the meanin' of this? You all can't handle this spindly little weakling?"

Rockhard Thunderdick would have been offended if he hadn't been so disgusted. "Wait. You're the guy who's getting all the pussy here?"

"Mind your manner, scallywag! I be the captain. Everything on this ship is mine by right o' plunder to do with as I please." Captain Hellfish lifted his anchor and swaggered over with a looming glare. "Their booty be my booty, and you'll kindly see yerself into the deep unless ye want yer booty joining theirs."

Now. Rockhard Thunderdick might have been a slut. But he didn't do rape and he didn't do child pornography.

"What are you, a virgin?"
"What are ye? Deaf or dumb?"
"Being a rapist makes you an incel," said Rockhard Thunderdick. "Maybe if you weren't such a fat ugly fuck you actually get some consensual sex, but then again-"

Captain Hellfish dropped his anchor on the wizard's head, the tip cracking his skull open and the massive iron weight splitting Rockhard Thunderdick in half as it lodged itself deep in the deck. Blood went everywhere, and it was hard to tell the two mutilated piece had ever been a human being.

"That'll teach ya to interrupt me sexin', you landlubbin' dog. Maybe had ye any booty of yer own, you wouldn't have made the fatal mistake of gettin' between me and mine."

The captain, smug and content, turned his head and began to walk away, hand loosely on his anchor with the intent to pull it out, but was stopped by a sickening and fleshy sowing sound. He turned around to see those two mutilated halves almost completely restored into one whole Rockhard Thunderdick. A few moments more and he was back as he was, except now obviously seething.

"Don't talk down to me you subhuman rat bastard ball of lard," he snarled. "I am not a dog. I am not a loser!" He threw his hands onto the anchor which was now between his legs and sent untold volts coursing through it. Lethal amperes raced through the iron shaft and into the fatty body of Captain Hellfish, the intense power and heat turning his skin into cracklings, and instantly rendering him dead.

It also conducted downwards into the deck, setting the entire ship on fire and causing it to sink. That was how hundreds of innocent human trafficking victims were burned alive or drowned, and how Rockhard Thunderdick found himself stranded on a piece of burnt driftwood. Unfortunately for him he had never learned how to swim, though he had learned to speak to fish for reasons which were actually entirely unrelated to sex.

Eventually he did manage to float to shore. Wet, tired, and angry, he crawled onto the beach, spat the seawater out of his mouth, and brushed the sandy hair from his face. After making sure he still had pants (he did not), he decided to try another dimension.

***

"So let me get this straight," said the drunk Baptist from seminary, who was now sobered up and watching as Rockhard Thunderdick drowned his sorrows in absinthe and apple juice. "You meet the prophet Isaiah. He says you will have erectile dysfunction. You notice that same day that you now, suddenly, have erectile dysfunction. And you're saying that God doesn't exist?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's just a coincidence!" Rockhard Thunderdick hiccuped and swayed. "I was probably gonna develop erectile dysfunction anyway. Y'know, from having too much sex or something. Maybe an STD."
"Are you of all people implying that it's possible to have too much sex?"
"Just go back to whatever stupid bullshit you were saying earlier."

"Alright, fine. Where was I? Oh yes. I don't think 'red pill' is a term the right should adopt. The original red pill is clearly a reference to the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Regardless of any post-Enlightenment ideas, it was clearly a sin for Adam and Eve to eat it-"

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was wandering through the dimensions, searching for magic and pussy and expensive steak and drugs and the cure for ED. Somewhere along the way he'd taken a wrong term and gotten really lost- he'd barged his way into a pocket dimension within another dimension, which was something you normally had to try to do. He had strange abilities when drunk.

The realm he entered was a small medieval courtyard dotted with small buildings in districts. An armory, a forge, a comically small pasture of grazing cattle, etc. He appeared there suddenly in a bolt of lightening, standing atop a large pile of rocks.

"What's up bitches!"

An old man was chipping away at the mound with a pickax in search of diamonds. He dropped his tool and shielded his eyes from the sudden light, which had also drawn the attention of several others at the camp.

"It's your boy, Rrrrrrockhaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrd Thuuuunnnnnnnnnderdick!"

Everything was quiet for a bit. Rockhard Thunderdick looked around, downed the last half of his beer, and hobbled around on the rock. "What? No respect?"

"Lord Popcorn," said Jakob. "What do you make of this intruder? Shall we dispose of him?"

"I heard that!"
"Let's calm down a minute Jakob," said Popcorn. "He might not be an invader. Let's try asking his name."
"It's ROCK. HARD. THUN. DERDICK."
"He doesn't seem hostile, at least not like those illusory warriors."

The army muttered amongst itself about this strange arrival, who was himself growing quite irritated with being the center of attention yet not actually being engaged with by any women.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Selena shouted. "I know you! You're that guy from the bar with erectile dysfunction!"
"Shut up!" And then he vaporized her.

The army gasped. "It's an enemy!" Popcorn shouted. "Everyone, get ready for battle!"
"Oh boy, it's time for killing!"

A lance was thrown through the invader's chest. He stumbled back and fell of the rock, grunting repeatedly in pain as he hit several stones on his way to the bottom. Once there, electricity burned the weapon to ashes and the wound sealed shut. Growling with anger, he crawled back on top of the rocky mount, where he found himself surrounded. Arrows, spells, and throwing weapons came at him in a ceaseless barrage, but no matter the number of stab wounds sustained, he stayed standing. He even managed to keep his footing.

Player phase ended. Enemy phase began.

All wounds healed. Rockhard Thunderdick threw his arms to the side, a surge of electrical power flowing through him, blasting away all the weapons still lodged in his body. Lightening crackled all around him, his body rising from the ground. He started to scream, and kept screaming, and screamed some more, all in one continuous battle-cry. The aura of electricity got brighter and more powerful until he thrust his hand into the air, and bolts went flying from his hand into the sky before descending back down in a deadly barrage.

Everyone struck died. Some ran for cover only for their cover to be vaporized or the the lightening to chase them around it. Arthur covered his head and prayed and pleaded as hard as he could for deliverance. All of the luck from all of versions and all of the moments of his life was siphoned into his body at that moment, so that as the storm concluded, he looked around and saw that he was the only one who had been there to remain. Everyone else was ash, but he was completely untouched.

Rockhard Thunderdick floated back down to the ground and panted, mostly to calm himself down. He looked around the ruined field, covered in small fires. Most of the buildings had been destroyed too, and the cows were turned into steaks.

"Aw, shit. I did it again."

Rockhard Thunderdick didn't like losing control like that. It was honestly a little embarrassing. It had only gotten worse since he'd gotten ED, which he also found embarrassing for reasons he couldn't quite discern if they were similar or not. To hide his face, he opened a portal to the dimension the pocket dimension was contained in- called its Pants Dimension- and vanished into Fateslandia.

Shura walked over to investigate all the ruckus that had just happened. He was carrying a pot of beans that he'd been cooking. Through the steam wafting from the pot, he stared at the smoking, smouldering ruins of the camp. "Yeah. I'm gonna take my leave." Then he did, and Arthur ran after him, since he didn't really have anywhere else to go.

There was one one other survivor- a red-headed merchant hiding in a chest, who waited for Rockhard Thunderdick to depart before crawling out of her hiding place. She would have to report this strange and previously unknown danger to the Council.

Rockhard Thunderdick would go on to have many more adventures in Fateslandia, but that is a story for another time.

***

Being a Paradox Agent was a generally comfortable gig. You had even more benefits and vacation than a federal employee, though not as many as an employee of the Spanish government. But with the ability to move across space and time with relative ease, your vacation and work schedules were ultimately very flexible. However, there were a few headaches about it.

"I hate filling out my timesheet," said Orson. "I start work a mission at 10:00 AM. I go back to 8:00 AM last Thursday and take two hours. Then I return to the day I started from at 11:00 AM so I don't miss the Taco Tuesday lunch. How are you supposed to put that on your timesheet?"
"You actually eat those tacos?" Zelda said. "They look disgusting."
"Looks can be deceiving. They're very good. Did you know that Gomez is actually from Cuba?"
"Gomez the cook?"
"That's right. They're authentic tacos."

"Hm." That didn't seem to shake Zelda's convictions about the tacos. "Well, regardless. That's why you should carry the Punch Counter with you. If you turn it on when you start working and turn it off when you're done, it will calculate your hours automatically."
"But you can't falsify a Punch Counter."

Zelda rolled her eyes. "You should be glad I don't want to go through the paperwork of reporting you to management- though I would if you were Senan."
"Understandable. He does still owe you 10,500 credits."
"Regardless-"
"Do you like that word?"
"Don't interrupt," Zelda said with a glare. "But yes, I do. Regardless, we have a mission in 32 tierces. HQ has located a Stellar Freighter carrying an Out-of-Place Artifact which is emitting several femtofathoms through space-time. We need to recover the artifact and interrogate the crew to find out where they got it."
"Sounds easy enough."

Meanwhile, in the hold of a Stellar Freighter far, far away...

"Damn," said Rockhard Thunderdick, admiring a pot. "This is a nice fuckin' pot. I think I'm gonna put this on my mantle." He grabbed it from its pedestal, which triggered some blaring red lights and other security alarms he didn't really care about. He was just going to seer a portal in the fabric of reality with the magnitude of his lightening magic and escape through that.

That was when the door he'd entirely circumvented open behind him. Two people in weird clothes stepped inside.

"Who's there?" Rockhard Thunderdick asked, spinning around and clutching the pot against his phoenix tattoo. "Oh. Hey sugar, how's it going?" He winked at Zelda. "Are you Jewish?"

The two agents ignored him. "Hand over the pot," said Orson.
"Excuse me?"
"Let me try," said Zelda. "Sir, uh...you're very handsome."

Rockhard Thunderdick smiled, instantly ingratiated, which was the intended effect.

"But we need that pot from you. It's very serious and important."
"It's no mere pot," Orson added. "You don't know what you're holding."

Ingratiation ruined.

"Uh, yeah I do. It's an ancient Chinese silver alchemical pot. I'd reckon it's was used to mature lead into silver and was itself made from transmuted lead. Based on the inscriptions, it's from modern-day Manchuria around the third century BC."
"BCE," said Orson.
"Fuck you. I like this pot and it's mine now. It's going on my mantle."
"You're going to put an OOP Artifact...on your mantle?"
"It's called a conversation starter. Dumbass."
"It's kind of ugly. You have bad taste."
"Yeah? Well your whole family is ugly but I still fucked your mom and your dad and your sister last night. Bitch."

Orson slammed a button on his wrist and erased Rockhard Thunderdick from existence. It wasn't that he's caused it to cease, but rather through his paradox gauntlet had changed the past so he'd never existed. His mother's husband hadn't died for another 10 years, so she never had that three-year drunken stint with Rockhard Thunderdick's father, Tim.

The silver pot fell towards the ground, but Orson managed to catch it before it hit the floor and sustained any damage.

"How many credits was that?" Zelda asked.
"213. Another less-than-important person."
"Don't you find that a little mean-spirited to say?"
"I don't see how it's worse than preventing him from ever being born. Now let's hurry to the bridge."

The two ran back down the hall. Meanwhile, splinters of bone formed in the primordial lightening between dimensions. From splinters grew a full skeleton. Flesh wrapped around it. Then it was covered with tattoos and droopy jeans.

Rockhard Thunderdick was back, baby.

He tore another hole between dimensions and stepped out from around the corner across from the same two paradox agents. "I know you motherfuckers didn't just call me unimportant."

The two of them stopped dead in their tracks and stared at each other.

"Am I so cool and handsome that you have no words? If you just hand over that pot-"

Zelda tapped a few buttons and once again Rockhard Thunderdick disappeared.

"How many credits was that?"
"Still 213."
"Correct me if I'm mistaken. Did we prevent that man from ever existing, and then he came back?"
"I'm not sure I want to believe it, but it seems like, somehow, he did."
"Hm...I wonder how..." Orson mumbled.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. We need to report this to HQ, but let's spend some credits to Quantum Funnel to the bridge. He could be back any second."

Zelda nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, Rockhard Thunderdick again reappeared from the primordial lightening between dimensions. "Okay," he told himself. "No more Mister Nice Dick." He tore open a portal, jumped into the corridor, and instantly blasted it with lightening, scorching the whole hallway black, but through the smoke and smell of burnt plastic he was still able to realize he hadn't actually killed anyway. Probably because the amperage hadn't been enough to vaporize a human body.

He looked around the room like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. "Where the fuck did they go?"

Zelda and Orson were on the bridge. They had quickly cornered the captain- due to the class of the freighter he was the only living creature there. They'd tied him up and warped away, and it took a few minutes for Rockhard Thunderdick to reach the bridge and realize what had happened.

He narrowed his eyes. It looked like he was going to have to track them the old fashioned way- by sense of smell.

And divination.

Thankfully, Rockhard Thunderdick was an expert at divination. He pulled out his Ethically Sourced Mole Blood and poured it directly into his eyes. Then he screamed, for this was unpleasant. Using his second sight, he quickly located a long, curly strand of hair. He sniffed it. Gave it a little taste. "Oh yeah," he said. This would be more than enough.

***

Orson and Zelda returned to the Paradox Agency's home ship.

"One of us is going to have to tell Director Roslyn about that creepy guy," said Zelda.
"Indeed. Rock paper scissors?"
"Fine. And no redos, got it? If you lose I don't want to see you suddenly have fewer credits and a winning hand instead."

They agreed and checked how many credits each of them had, then made their moves. Orson took rock and Zelda took Flugauto, which meant that Zelda would be the one to tell the director while Orson took their prisoner to the bridge and put the pot in inventory.

"I should've taken rock," muttered Zelda. Nothing beats rock.

She marched in a semi-hurried manner towards the bridge, as as she entered saw Senan filling out some paperwork. She stopped and kicked him in the shin.
"Ow," said Senan.
"You still owe me those credits, you dick."
"Are you still mad about your slave?"
"You're lucky I'm busy."

Glaring at Senan one last time, Zelda turned to see the director walking towards them and scurried to intercept her. "Director!"
"Zelda, report. How did your mission with Orson go?"
"We retrieved the artifact," answered Zelda, somewhat awkwardly. That was also about the time she noticed the bottle of cheap vodka in Director Roslyn's hand. "Orson is processing it and the smuggler. Um...has it been a hard day?"

The director groaned. "What is it you need to tell me?"

"We encountered a strange man during the mission. Orson erased him, but then...he came back."
"What?"
"I erased him again after that, but I'm not confident he's stayed gone. I think we should compare the logs in Orson's paradox gauntlet against our scanners to check."

"A full scan would be fairly intensive," said Roslyn. "Jenny. How long do you estimate that would take?"

"More than thirteen quadrillion candelas," answered the AI.
"Thanks Jenny. Dismissed."
"Of course director," Jenny said, turning off her holographic display.

The director turned to Zelda. "He might have just had a twin brother who happened to fall into a similar lifestyle without the other around. Either way, we can't spend those kinds of resources right now, we need our scanners for some other urgent matters."

Zelda knew better than to ask for clarification, but something about that still didn't sit right with her.

It was then that lightening shot down from the ceiling. Everyone covered their eyes, even the otherwise unmovable director, and watched as the form of a heavily tattooed man stood up. "I hope y'all bitches didn't miss me. You know what I've been missing? My fucking pot!"

The bridge rushed to action.

Senan stood up as best he could with a wounded shin and activated his paradox gauntlet.

However, Rockhard Thunderdick was in full sicko mode.

He perceived these intentions by the movement of electricity through Senan's brain, then altered the current in his nervous system so that he did not use his gauntlet but instead punched himself in the face.

Zelda tried reached for her gauntlet...

...but Rockhard Thunderdick snapped and fried the superfluid circuits inside it.

He didn't make her hurt herself, since she reminded him a little bit of Ben Shapiro's sister.

"Everyone, hold!" Director Roslyn said, holding up her hand. Everyone in the room froze. "What is your name and what do you want?"

"My name is Rockhard Thunderdick and I want my third century BC Chinese alchemical pot back. I stole it fair and square!"

Director Roslyn looked at the strange and furious man. "Give us some time to discuss it," he told him.

"Director," whispered Zelda. "That's the guy that Orson and I saw."
"I was about to ask," murmured Roslyn.

The director kept her eyes on the wizard the whole time. "Jenny!" Once again the holographic image of the AI appeared.

Rockhard Thunderdick's eyes went wide. "Hey, I recognize you!" He exclaimed, indignantly pointing to the holographic woman. "You're that girl from the bar who wouldn't have sex with me!"
"I'm afraid there's no record of you in my memory banks," answered Jenny. "Besides, I am an APP- an Assistant Personality Program. I have no sexual functions."
"What?"

Rockhard Thunderdick had turned at least one girl gay before, but to fuck up so badly that she turned herself into an asexual AI and then would gaslight him about it? Now that was a pretty serious insult.

"I am an Assist-."
"Shut up."

Being an AI with limited freewill, Jenny did.

"Now then. You guys have twenty seconds to start getting my pot back, or I'll send some much lightening up your asses your eyes will explode. And it'll turn you gay. I will JK Rowling this bitch and nobody can stop me unless they get my pot back!"

Director Roslyn realized here was clearly no sense trying their usual methods against this strange tatted fellow. She would attempt diplomacy, which was usually reserved for soft-hearted newbies.

"We can't give you the pot back, but perhaps we can offer you something else. How about the cure for cancer?"
"The cure for cancer?" Rockhard Thunderdick seemed indignant. "Fuck that. I've seen people cure cancer with prayer and fasting. What I want is my pot."
"Perhaps there is something you haven't seen cured by prayer and fasting?"
"Erectile dysfunction."
"What?"

Some people on the bridge chuckled.

"Y'know, when your dick doesn't work?"
"Do you suffer from erectile dys-"
"No."

Roslyn blinked at him. "Alright. If you leave and let us keep the pot, we will give you the cure for ED. It is a pill which will make it so the causes of your condition will have never existed in the first place. Senan can testify to it's effectiveness."
"I do not consent to do so."
"I can testify to it's effectiveness on his behalf."

Full of seething hatred as he was, Rockhard Thunderdick really wanted to have sex again, so he agreed. He went to his apartment and found the pill on his desk, where it had been left that morning. It was Viagra blue and glowed faintly with some sort of pseudo-scientific energy. Immediately he took it and went out to the club.

He was not cured of erectile dysfunction.

"Woe is me!" lamented Rockhard Thunderdick. "Life is hard because my dick is not!"

 

Lmao

 

Wtf did I just read lol

[AnonymousSpeed]

12 hours ago, TheSilentChloey said:

Lmao

 

Wtf did I just read lol

I feel like a lot of my entries yield that kind of response in people.

[SoulWeaver]

On 2/26/2023 at 8:53 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

Alright boys and girls I hope you're ready to get banned. Introducing the ~5,500 word epic:

The Hardest

  Reveal hidden contents

The Hardest

Jenny was sitting at a bar, sipping at a cold cranberry juice. She didn't even really want to be there- she was there to be designated driver for a friend who was probably puking her lungs out in the bathroom after just a few drinks. She'd just gotten back from checking on, having kept her glass in hand the whole time, just in case some creep tried anything funny. It was then that she was approached by a funny looking creep.

"Hey," he said. "How are you?"

His voice was reasonably deep, confident, somewhat attractive. There was a certain brightness, crackling electricity, which shone in his dark eyes, exciting and unpredictable, wild and free in a way which seemed totally off-putting to Jenny.

"I'm...fine," she said hesitantly, looking him up and down. Despite her better judgement, she continued the conversation by asking the most obvious question. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

The man smirked and flexed his moderately-sized muscles. His skin was totally exposed above the waist, and his pants were a bit droopy on top of that. The only thing covering his chest was a long mane of black hair and an excess of ink. "I like to give people a view."

Jenny spoke with trepidation. "A view of your muscles?"
"Well, those too, but mostly my tattoos."

He stepped back and indicated to the waterfall of ink which covered his torso. It was an intricate web of various occult and spiritual symbols- Buddhist, Kabbalist, Nordic runes and African charms, with no shortage of others. A massive Pheonix was spread prominently across his chest. The whole thing produced a wicked tapestry which moved across his skin as if it were alive, and rendered his pale flesh almost completely invisible underneath its darker tones.

"They give me magical powers."

"...oh." Jenny then realized for the second time that she was talking to a crazy person, and very politely took a drink of her juice.

"There's some other ones," he said, a hand on his belt. "But I can only show you those if you're really interested." He winked, then outstretched his hand. "So, sweet thing, what's your name? Mine's Rockhard Thunderdick."

Jenny sprayed cranberry juice across the counter.

"What? It's my real name."
"No it isn't."
"Yeah it is. My dad's last name is Thunderdick."
"You're joking."
"No." The man narrowed his eyes. "I'm serious."

Jenny stood up and grabbed her glass. "Uh, look. Sorry, but I've got to go check on someone."
"Wait, let me help you."
"No, I'm okay, really, it'd just bore you."
"It's no problem, really-"

The door to the bar slammed open. Loudly. All eyes turned to the source of the sound, even Rockhard Thunderick's.

"Oh, fuck."

The intruder was long, tan, and handsome, dressed in presentable white-collar clothes tied together with brown wingtip shoes. He had dark hair which was short and combed, and carried himself sternly but with restraint and straight posture all the way until he was standing right in front of Rockhard Thunderdick.

"Rockhard."
"Fuck you."

The man turned to Jenny. "I'm sorry miss. Is my brother bothering you?"

"Brother?" Jenny was only growing more confused.

"This is Superhot Fieryballs," explained Rockhard Thunderdick, staring down the man. "He's my half-Hispanic half-brother."

"Uh..." Jenny looked between the two. "You two are clearly busy, I'm just going to...let you get to it." Then she quickly stepped away.

"Great job, Superhot. I was just about to score!"
"You don't need to be scoring like some kind of STD-ridden pinball machine. She wasn't even into you."
"I am immune to STDs," Rockhard said defiantly. "It's a property of my magic enchantments."
"Your enchantments can't protect you into eternity," said Superhot. "Only God can do that. Your demons will turn against you eventually."

"Yeah yeah, say it another hundred times, why don't you? What do you want?"
"You know what I came to talk to you about. Mom has been trying call you for weeks! Don't you think you owe her at least phone call in all this time?"
"You really chased me down to another dimension just to lecture me about grossly neglecting my obligations to my family?"
"Yes, I did. If I tried a phone call, you might not have picked up."

Rockhard adjusted his stance, swaying around angrily. "You know, why don't go back to your white picket fence and sit on it."
"Excuse me?"
"That's right, take one of those boards and shove directly up your-"
"I know you meant. It's not as clever as you think it is, but I know what you meant."
"Blow me."
"Just call mom."
"Fine! Say hi to the kids for me."
"I'll talk to Wendy about it."
"Cuck."
"You should be glad we'd consider it at all."

***

Rockhard Thunderdick once tried to find work as a gigolo. On his second day trying to do this he accidentally became a wizard and invented time travel- but that is a story for another time. Ever since, he had been traversing the dimensions of time and space in pursuits of pussy and magic, and sometimes really expensive steak, but usually the first two.

On occasion he'd also go for drugs, which was how he found himself standing opposite a squad of Columbian drug dealers. They were in a Panzer IV they had acquired from a contact in Argentina, and had the main gun aimed at Rockhard Thunderdick over a matter of 1.5 million dollars worth of cocaine that he hadn't paid for.

"Where's the rest of it?" Asked leader of the cartel. He said this in Spanish, but fortunately Rockhard Thunderdick spoke fluent Spanish as part of an elaborate ploy to bang his half-brother's cousins on his father's side to whom he had no biological relation. Unfortunately, he only spoke Cuban Spanish, which is not interchangeable with Columbian Spanish, and this sometimes produced awkward situations when attempting to buy cocaine from Columbians. That was not the cause for this current lapse in payment. He just didn't feel obligated to pay them.

"I snorted all of it," Rockhard Thunderdick defiantly scowled.
"No you didn't."
"Yes I did."
"You cannot snort fifty pounds of cocaine in two weeks."

"I can snort all the coke I want!" Rockhard Thunderdick puffed out his chest and pointed his thumb at it. "You can do that kind of thing when you have magical regeneration powers."
"Give us the coke, give us the money, or we chop off your balls and make you swallow them."
"Try me, bitch."

The cartel had no actual interest in Rockhard Thunderdick's balls, which they assumed were ridden with STDs. So instead they just shot him with a 75 millimeter shell traveling at two-thousand-five-hundred feet-per-second. His chest was instantly vaporized.

Sheer magical power stopped the rest of his body parts before they could go flying off in different directions. They instead hovered in the air before sowing themselves back together around a brand new torso which bore identical tattoos to the previous one.

"Oh, shit," said the cartel leader. "He actually is magic. Put the tank in reverse."

The Panzer IV rapidly moved backwards and soon spun around so it could charge away from the angry wizard.

Rockhard Thunderdick reared back his hand, lightening crackling from his fingertips. "Now it's my turn." He felt that should be punctuated with a swear. "Bitch." Throwing his hand forward, a massive beam of lightening shot forth and struck the tank, coursing through the steel plating and causing all the fuel and ammo inside to explode. Shrapnel flew in all directions and cut through him, leaving comparatively small wounds which quickly healed.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was at the bar when he started talking shit, and after a few drinks was egged on by his fellow patrons to take the following bet: That he could not use his time travel powers to get his name in the Bible.

His first idea was the punch Jesus. However, a drunk Baptist in seminary pointed out to him that most events in the life of Jesus were not recorded, because there would not be enough room in the world to store all the books it would fill. Therefore he decided to try his luck in Bronze Age Israel instead.

The prophet Isaiah had just finished his business with Hezekiah, king of Judah, when a portal through space and time opened in the sky ahead of him. Rockhard Thunderdick fell out of it and landed face-first in the dust. Isaiah could instantly tell this guy was a complete joker, and that he was not to be taken seriously as a human being.

"Rise up," said Isaiah in Biblical Hebrew. Fortunately for Rockhard Thunderdick, he spoke fluent Biblical Hebrew thanks to an ill-fated attempt to bang Ben Shapiro's sister (to whom he has no biological relation) from a few years ago. She did not actually speak Biblical Hebrew, so this plan did not go very far.

Isaiah really had no response. "Depart ye, having made yourself unclean."
"Go to hell, old man." Rockhard Thunderdick used "Sheol" as his Biblical Hebrew word for hell. "I just took a bath, uh...last week? Whatever. Anyway. I don't do what anybody tells me. I only got up when you said because I was going to do that anyway. Bitch."

Isaiah raised a hand and pointed at him. "Surely, until the Earth passes away, you shall remain on it."

Rockhard Thunderdick stared at the prophet. Then he glanced from side to side. He almost chuckled. "Uh...sure, I'm fine with immortality."
"You will also have erectile dysfunction."
"No!"

He collapsed to his knees and wept.

He did not get his name in the Bible.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was in a state of shock as he left Bronze Age Israel, heading for another time and place. "No way," he told himself, "there's no he actually gave me ED. Believing what prophets tell you is stupid." He went to another bar in another realm and tried to bag a twin-tailed ginger chick with a nasally voice and parental issues. He even got her into a private room when he discovered that the prophet spoke the truth. "Loser!" She jeered, snorting while laughing, leaving him to beat his pillow and scream into it and cry all on his own.

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was wandering the dimensions in suit of something stronger than Viagra, which had proven ineffective even when snorted. A general cure for ED would've been great too, but he kept his expectations closer to what he thought was reasonable.

From a crackling of thunder came a tear between dimensions, and from it Rockhard Thunderdick stepped onto the deck of a ship, and that began his fateful encounter with Captain Hellfish.

The dread pirate captain had commandeered King Desmond of Bern's Epstein boat and had been dragged away from his stolen harem by his crew after Rockhard Thunderdick had proven impossible for any of the mere moral men on the deck to keep down.

Hellfish stormed up with his trousers half on and grabbed his signature weapon, a massive wrought-iron anchor. His eyes quickly landed on Rockhard Thunderdick, who was surrounded by his crew...from a safe distance. "What be the meanin' of this? You all can't handle this spindly little weakling?"

Rockhard Thunderdick would have been offended if he hadn't been so disgusted. "Wait. You're the guy who's getting all the pussy here?"

"Mind your manner, scallywag! I be the captain. Everything on this ship is mine by right o' plunder to do with as I please." Captain Hellfish lifted his anchor and swaggered over with a looming glare. "Their booty be my booty, and you'll kindly see yerself into the deep unless ye want yer booty joining theirs."

Now. Rockhard Thunderdick might have been a slut. But he didn't do rape and he didn't do child pornography.

"What are you, a virgin?"
"What are ye? Deaf or dumb?"
"Being a rapist makes you an incel," said Rockhard Thunderdick. "Maybe if you weren't such a fat ugly fuck you actually get some consensual sex, but then again-"

Captain Hellfish dropped his anchor on the wizard's head, the tip cracking his skull open and the massive iron weight splitting Rockhard Thunderdick in half as it lodged itself deep in the deck. Blood went everywhere, and it was hard to tell the two mutilated piece had ever been a human being.

"That'll teach ya to interrupt me sexin', you landlubbin' dog. Maybe had ye any booty of yer own, you wouldn't have made the fatal mistake of gettin' between me and mine."

The captain, smug and content, turned his head and began to walk away, hand loosely on his anchor with the intent to pull it out, but was stopped by a sickening and fleshy sowing sound. He turned around to see those two mutilated halves almost completely restored into one whole Rockhard Thunderdick. A few moments more and he was back as he was, except now obviously seething.

"Don't talk down to me you subhuman rat bastard ball of lard," he snarled. "I am not a dog. I am not a loser!" He threw his hands onto the anchor which was now between his legs and sent untold volts coursing through it. Lethal amperes raced through the iron shaft and into the fatty body of Captain Hellfish, the intense power and heat turning his skin into cracklings, and instantly rendering him dead.

It also conducted downwards into the deck, setting the entire ship on fire and causing it to sink. That was how hundreds of innocent human trafficking victims were burned alive or drowned, and how Rockhard Thunderdick found himself stranded on a piece of burnt driftwood. Unfortunately for him he had never learned how to swim, though he had learned to speak to fish for reasons which were actually entirely unrelated to sex.

Eventually he did manage to float to shore. Wet, tired, and angry, he crawled onto the beach, spat the seawater out of his mouth, and brushed the sandy hair from his face. After making sure he still had pants (he did not), he decided to try another dimension.

***

"So let me get this straight," said the drunk Baptist from seminary, who was now sobered up and watching as Rockhard Thunderdick drowned his sorrows in absinthe and apple juice. "You meet the prophet Isaiah. He says you will have erectile dysfunction. You notice that same day that you now, suddenly, have erectile dysfunction. And you're saying that God doesn't exist?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's just a coincidence!" Rockhard Thunderdick hiccuped and swayed. "I was probably gonna develop erectile dysfunction anyway. Y'know, from having too much sex or something. Maybe an STD."
"Are you of all people implying that it's possible to have too much sex?"
"Just go back to whatever stupid bullshit you were saying earlier."

"Alright, fine. Where was I? Oh yes. I don't think 'red pill' is a term the right should adopt. The original red pill is clearly a reference to the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Regardless of any post-Enlightenment ideas, it was clearly a sin for Adam and Eve to eat it-"

***

Rockhard Thunderdick was wandering through the dimensions, searching for magic and pussy and expensive steak and drugs and the cure for ED. Somewhere along the way he'd taken a wrong term and gotten really lost- he'd barged his way into a pocket dimension within another dimension, which was something you normally had to try to do. He had strange abilities when drunk.

The realm he entered was a small medieval courtyard dotted with small buildings in districts. An armory, a forge, a comically small pasture of grazing cattle, etc. He appeared there suddenly in a bolt of lightening, standing atop a large pile of rocks.

"What's up bitches!"

An old man was chipping away at the mound with a pickax in search of diamonds. He dropped his tool and shielded his eyes from the sudden light, which had also drawn the attention of several others at the camp.

"It's your boy, Rrrrrrockhaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrd Thuuuunnnnnnnnnderdick!"

Everything was quiet for a bit. Rockhard Thunderdick looked around, downed the last half of his beer, and hobbled around on the rock. "What? No respect?"

"Lord Popcorn," said Jakob. "What do you make of this intruder? Shall we dispose of him?"

"I heard that!"
"Let's calm down a minute Jakob," said Popcorn. "He might not be an invader. Let's try asking his name."
"It's ROCK. HARD. THUN. DERDICK."
"He doesn't seem hostile, at least not like those illusory warriors."

The army muttered amongst itself about this strange arrival, who was himself growing quite irritated with being the center of attention yet not actually being engaged with by any women.

"Hey, wait a minute!" Selena shouted. "I know you! You're that guy from the bar with erectile dysfunction!"
"Shut up!" And then he vaporized her.

The army gasped. "It's an enemy!" Popcorn shouted. "Everyone, get ready for battle!"
"Oh boy, it's time for killing!"

A lance was thrown through the invader's chest. He stumbled back and fell of the rock, grunting repeatedly in pain as he hit several stones on his way to the bottom. Once there, electricity burned the weapon to ashes and the wound sealed shut. Growling with anger, he crawled back on top of the rocky mount, where he found himself surrounded. Arrows, spells, and throwing weapons came at him in a ceaseless barrage, but no matter the number of stab wounds sustained, he stayed standing. He even managed to keep his footing.

Player phase ended. Enemy phase began.

All wounds healed. Rockhard Thunderdick threw his arms to the side, a surge of electrical power flowing through him, blasting away all the weapons still lodged in his body. Lightening crackled all around him, his body rising from the ground. He started to scream, and kept screaming, and screamed some more, all in one continuous battle-cry. The aura of electricity got brighter and more powerful until he thrust his hand into the air, and bolts went flying from his hand into the sky before descending back down in a deadly barrage.

Everyone struck died. Some ran for cover only for their cover to be vaporized or the the lightening to chase them around it. Arthur covered his head and prayed and pleaded as hard as he could for deliverance. All of the luck from all of versions and all of the moments of his life was siphoned into his body at that moment, so that as the storm concluded, he looked around and saw that he was the only one who had been there to remain. Everyone else was ash, but he was completely untouched.

Rockhard Thunderdick floated back down to the ground and panted, mostly to calm himself down. He looked around the ruined field, covered in small fires. Most of the buildings had been destroyed too, and the cows were turned into steaks.

"Aw, shit. I did it again."

Rockhard Thunderdick didn't like losing control like that. It was honestly a little embarrassing. It had only gotten worse since he'd gotten ED, which he also found embarrassing for reasons he couldn't quite discern if they were similar or not. To hide his face, he opened a portal to the dimension the pocket dimension was contained in- called its Pants Dimension- and vanished into Fateslandia.

Shura walked over to investigate all the ruckus that had just happened. He was carrying a pot of beans that he'd been cooking. Through the steam wafting from the pot, he stared at the smoking, smouldering ruins of the camp. "Yeah. I'm gonna take my leave." Then he did, and Arthur ran after him, since he didn't really have anywhere else to go.

There was one one other survivor- a red-headed merchant hiding in a chest, who waited for Rockhard Thunderdick to depart before crawling out of her hiding place. She would have to report this strange and previously unknown danger to the Council.

Rockhard Thunderdick would go on to have many more adventures in Fateslandia, but that is a story for another time.

***

Being a Paradox Agent was a generally comfortable gig. You had even more benefits and vacation than a federal employee, though not as many as an employee of the Spanish government. But with the ability to move across space and time with relative ease, your vacation and work schedules were ultimately very flexible. However, there were a few headaches about it.

"I hate filling out my timesheet," said Orson. "I start work a mission at 10:00 AM. I go back to 8:00 AM last Thursday and take two hours. Then I return to the day I started from at 11:00 AM so I don't miss the Taco Tuesday lunch. How are you supposed to put that on your timesheet?"
"You actually eat those tacos?" Zelda said. "They look disgusting."
"Looks can be deceiving. They're very good. Did you know that Gomez is actually from Cuba?"
"Gomez the cook?"
"That's right. They're authentic tacos."

"Hm." That didn't seem to shake Zelda's convictions about the tacos. "Well, regardless. That's why you should carry the Punch Counter with you. If you turn it on when you start working and turn it off when you're done, it will calculate your hours automatically."
"But you can't falsify a Punch Counter."

Zelda rolled her eyes. "You should be glad I don't want to go through the paperwork of reporting you to management- though I would if you were Senan."
"Understandable. He does still owe you 10,500 credits."
"Regardless-"
"Do you like that word?"
"Don't interrupt," Zelda said with a glare. "But yes, I do. Regardless, we have a mission in 32 tierces. HQ has located a Stellar Freighter carrying an Out-of-Place Artifact which is emitting several femtofathoms through space-time. We need to recover the artifact and interrogate the crew to find out where they got it."
"Sounds easy enough."

Meanwhile, in the hold of a Stellar Freighter far, far away...

"Damn," said Rockhard Thunderdick, admiring a pot. "This is a nice fuckin' pot. I think I'm gonna put this on my mantle." He grabbed it from its pedestal, which triggered some blaring red lights and other security alarms he didn't really care about. He was just going to seer a portal in the fabric of reality with the magnitude of his lightening magic and escape through that.

That was when the door he'd entirely circumvented open behind him. Two people in weird clothes stepped inside.

"Who's there?" Rockhard Thunderdick asked, spinning around and clutching the pot against his phoenix tattoo. "Oh. Hey sugar, how's it going?" He winked at Zelda. "Are you Jewish?"

The two agents ignored him. "Hand over the pot," said Orson.
"Excuse me?"
"Let me try," said Zelda. "Sir, uh...you're very handsome."

Rockhard Thunderdick smiled, instantly ingratiated, which was the intended effect.

"But we need that pot from you. It's very serious and important."
"It's no mere pot," Orson added. "You don't know what you're holding."

Ingratiation ruined.

"Uh, yeah I do. It's an ancient Chinese silver alchemical pot. I'd reckon it's was used to mature lead into silver and was itself made from transmuted lead. Based on the inscriptions, it's from modern-day Manchuria around the third century BC."
"BCE," said Orson.
"Fuck you. I like this pot and it's mine now. It's going on my mantle."
"You're going to put an OOP Artifact...on your mantle?"
"It's called a conversation starter. Dumbass."
"It's kind of ugly. You have bad taste."
"Yeah? Well your whole family is ugly but I still fucked your mom and your dad and your sister last night. Bitch."

Orson slammed a button on his wrist and erased Rockhard Thunderdick from existence. It wasn't that he's caused it to cease, but rather through his paradox gauntlet had changed the past so he'd never existed. His mother's husband hadn't died for another 10 years, so she never had that three-year drunken stint with Rockhard Thunderdick's father, Tim.

The silver pot fell towards the ground, but Orson managed to catch it before it hit the floor and sustained any damage.

"How many credits was that?" Zelda asked.
"213. Another less-than-important person."
"Don't you find that a little mean-spirited to say?"
"I don't see how it's worse than preventing him from ever being born. Now let's hurry to the bridge."

The two ran back down the hall. Meanwhile, splinters of bone formed in the primordial lightening between dimensions. From splinters grew a full skeleton. Flesh wrapped around it. Then it was covered with tattoos and droopy jeans.

Rockhard Thunderdick was back, baby.

He tore another hole between dimensions and stepped out from around the corner across from the same two paradox agents. "I know you motherfuckers didn't just call me unimportant."

The two of them stopped dead in their tracks and stared at each other.

"Am I so cool and handsome that you have no words? If you just hand over that pot-"

Zelda tapped a few buttons and once again Rockhard Thunderdick disappeared.

"How many credits was that?"
"Still 213."
"Correct me if I'm mistaken. Did we prevent that man from ever existing, and then he came back?"
"I'm not sure I want to believe it, but it seems like, somehow, he did."
"Hm...I wonder how..." Orson mumbled.
"What was that?"
"Nothing. We need to report this to HQ, but let's spend some credits to Quantum Funnel to the bridge. He could be back any second."

Zelda nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, Rockhard Thunderdick again reappeared from the primordial lightening between dimensions. "Okay," he told himself. "No more Mister Nice Dick." He tore open a portal, jumped into the corridor, and instantly blasted it with lightening, scorching the whole hallway black, but through the smoke and smell of burnt plastic he was still able to realize he hadn't actually killed anyway. Probably because the amperage hadn't been enough to vaporize a human body.

He looked around the room like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. "Where the fuck did they go?"

Zelda and Orson were on the bridge. They had quickly cornered the captain- due to the class of the freighter he was the only living creature there. They'd tied him up and warped away, and it took a few minutes for Rockhard Thunderdick to reach the bridge and realize what had happened.

He narrowed his eyes. It looked like he was going to have to track them the old fashioned way- by sense of smell.

And divination.

Thankfully, Rockhard Thunderdick was an expert at divination. He pulled out his Ethically Sourced Mole Blood and poured it directly into his eyes. Then he screamed, for this was unpleasant. Using his second sight, he quickly located a long, curly strand of hair. He sniffed it. Gave it a little taste. "Oh yeah," he said. This would be more than enough.

***

Orson and Zelda returned to the Paradox Agency's home ship.

"One of us is going to have to tell Director Roslyn about that creepy guy," said Zelda.
"Indeed. Rock paper scissors?"
"Fine. And no redos, got it? If you lose I don't want to see you suddenly have fewer credits and a winning hand instead."

They agreed and checked how many credits each of them had, then made their moves. Orson took rock and Zelda took Flugauto, which meant that Zelda would be the one to tell the director while Orson took their prisoner to the bridge and put the pot in inventory.

"I should've taken rock," muttered Zelda. Nothing beats rock.

She marched in a semi-hurried manner towards the bridge, as as she entered saw Senan filling out some paperwork. She stopped and kicked him in the shin.
"Ow," said Senan.
"You still owe me those credits, you dick."
"Are you still mad about your slave?"
"You're lucky I'm busy."

Glaring at Senan one last time, Zelda turned to see the director walking towards them and scurried to intercept her. "Director!"
"Zelda, report. How did your mission with Orson go?"
"We retrieved the artifact," answered Zelda, somewhat awkwardly. That was also about the time she noticed the bottle of cheap vodka in Director Roslyn's hand. "Orson is processing it and the smuggler. Um...has it been a hard day?"

The director groaned. "What is it you need to tell me?"

"We encountered a strange man during the mission. Orson erased him, but then...he came back."
"What?"
"I erased him again after that, but I'm not confident he's stayed gone. I think we should compare the logs in Orson's paradox gauntlet against our scanners to check."

"A full scan would be fairly intensive," said Roslyn. "Jenny. How long do you estimate that would take?"

"More than thirteen quadrillion candelas," answered the AI.
"Thanks Jenny. Dismissed."
"Of course director," Jenny said, turning off her holographic display.

The director turned to Zelda. "He might have just had a twin brother who happened to fall into a similar lifestyle without the other around. Either way, we can't spend those kinds of resources right now, we need our scanners for some other urgent matters."

Zelda knew better than to ask for clarification, but something about that still didn't sit right with her.

It was then that lightening shot down from the ceiling. Everyone covered their eyes, even the otherwise unmovable director, and watched as the form of a heavily tattooed man stood up. "I hope y'all bitches didn't miss me. You know what I've been missing? My fucking pot!"

The bridge rushed to action.

Senan stood up as best he could with a wounded shin and activated his paradox gauntlet.

However, Rockhard Thunderdick was in full sicko mode.

He perceived these intentions by the movement of electricity through Senan's brain, then altered the current in his nervous system so that he did not use his gauntlet but instead punched himself in the face.

Zelda tried reached for her gauntlet...

...but Rockhard Thunderdick snapped and fried the superfluid circuits inside it.

He didn't make her hurt herself, since she reminded him a little bit of Ben Shapiro's sister.

"Everyone, hold!" Director Roslyn said, holding up her hand. Everyone in the room froze. "What is your name and what do you want?"

"My name is Rockhard Thunderdick and I want my third century BC Chinese alchemical pot back. I stole it fair and square!"

Director Roslyn looked at the strange and furious man. "Give us some time to discuss it," he told him.

"Director," whispered Zelda. "That's the guy that Orson and I saw."
"I was about to ask," murmured Roslyn.

The director kept her eyes on the wizard the whole time. "Jenny!" Once again the holographic image of the AI appeared.

Rockhard Thunderdick's eyes went wide. "Hey, I recognize you!" He exclaimed, indignantly pointing to the holographic woman. "You're that girl from the bar who wouldn't have sex with me!"
"I'm afraid there's no record of you in my memory banks," answered Jenny. "Besides, I am an APP- an Assistant Personality Program. I have no sexual functions."
"What?"

Rockhard Thunderdick had turned at least one girl gay before, but to fuck up so badly that she turned herself into an asexual AI and then would gaslight him about it? Now that was a pretty serious insult.

"I am an Assist-."
"Shut up."

Being an AI with limited freewill, Jenny did.

"Now then. You guys have twenty seconds to start getting my pot back, or I'll send some much lightening up your asses your eyes will explode. And it'll turn you gay. I will JK Rowling this bitch and nobody can stop me unless they get my pot back!"

Director Roslyn realized here was clearly no sense trying their usual methods against this strange tatted fellow. She would attempt diplomacy, which was usually reserved for soft-hearted newbies.

"We can't give you the pot back, but perhaps we can offer you something else. How about the cure for cancer?"
"The cure for cancer?" Rockhard Thunderdick seemed indignant. "Fuck that. I've seen people cure cancer with prayer and fasting. What I want is my pot."
"Perhaps there is something you haven't seen cured by prayer and fasting?"
"Erectile dysfunction."
"What?"

Some people on the bridge chuckled.

"Y'know, when your dick doesn't work?"
"Do you suffer from erectile dys-"
"No."

Roslyn blinked at him. "Alright. If you leave and let us keep the pot, we will give you the cure for ED. It is a pill which will make it so the causes of your condition will have never existed in the first place. Senan can testify to it's effectiveness."
"I do not consent to do so."
"I can testify to it's effectiveness on his behalf."

Full of seething hatred as he was, Rockhard Thunderdick really wanted to have sex again, so he agreed. He went to his apartment and found the pill on his desk, where it had been left that morning. It was Viagra blue and glowed faintly with some sort of pseudo-scientific energy. Immediately he took it and went out to the club.

He was not cured of erectile dysfunction.

"Woe is me!" lamented Rockhard Thunderdick. "Life is hard because my dick is not!"

 

@Shoblongoo You might want to see this.

@Jotari I think you probably don't want to see this, but I feel obligated to offer you the chance to be here for it since your old entry has now been extra-reintroduced so you may as well see what you've unwittingly helped create.

For myself, this.

This is Pootis Engage levels of madness.

This is the kind of circlejerk nonsensterpiece I aim to one day create.

[TheSilentChloey]

17 hours ago, SoulWeaver said:

@Shoblongoo You might want to see this.

@Jotari I think you probably don't want to see this, but I feel obligated to offer you the chance to be here for it since your old entry has now been extra-reintroduced so you may as well see what you've unwittingly helped create.

For myself, this.

This is Pootis Engage levels of madness.

This is the kind of circlejerk nonsensterpiece I aim to one day create.

That sounds fun.  LOL

[Acacia Sgt]

Oh, voting time is over, right? I guess congrats are in order, Anon.

[AnonymousSpeed]

21 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Oh, voting time is over, right? I guess congrats are in order, Anon.

why

how

i do not know

Your prompt is:

Funeral(s)

This is to be distinguished from death. The ceremony is at least of some importance here.

[Benice]

Congrats to @AnonymousSpeed, and thanks to all who participated! The prompt is now up. The writing phase will end midnight of March 28! Happy writing, all!

[TheSilentChloey]

Okay.

[Acacia Sgt]

Uh, yeah, I think I'll pass on that prompt.

I'm fine my entry got no votes this time around. It's being a success elsewhere!

[indigoasis]

Definitely some tonal whiplash, but I think that's a welcome change of pace. Could be a great opportunity for some more intimate storytelling. Not sure how to approach it, but I like it.

[SoulWeaver]

I know exactly what to do. I just need to go finish the entry from last round first.

[AnonymousSpeed]

I'm glad to see there's some good feeling going into it.

[TheSilentChloey]

I do not know how I'm going to do this without it hurting....

[AnonymousSpeed]

I have a serious question: Do we still judge stories based on loyalty to the prompt?

I understand the voting is essentially a matter of opinion, and the recent lack of critiques (of which I apologize for my neglect) makes it a little hard to tell why certain things are voted for. However, while I as the author might have an opinion on how the Hardest is about an outcast, that might seem ridiculous to some people.

[Acacia Sgt]

I'll be honest, part of me always doubted my last entry would fulfil the prompt properly.

[SoulWeaver]

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I have a serious question: Do we still judge stories based on loyalty to the prompt?

I understand the voting is essentially a matter of opinion, and the recent lack of critiques (of which I apologize for my neglect) makes it a little hard to tell why certain things are voted for. However, while I as the author might have an opinion on how the Hardest is about an outcast, that might seem ridiculous to some people.

I think it depends on the person and the prompt, honestly. There are some prompts which are very specific(read: My horrible prompt that has so far resulted in me being Elincia and still will result in me being Lissa because Chloey didn't go back and read what the prompt in question was), in which case sticking to the prompt is very important, and there are some prompts which are fairly open-ended(I think it was Jotari who did one about any sort of holiday festival with the caveat that you didn't use a popular one) where one can be a little more lenient. Hard to tell.

[Acacia Sgt]

I remember that prompt. I partly regret not participating in that one, haha. It was an interesting one.

[TheSilentChloey]

Welp this is bad... freaking bad time.

[AnonymousSpeed]

2 hours ago, TheSilentChloey said:

Welp this is bad... freaking bad time.

Everything okay?