Twenty-One

"Ghost deer"


He ran through the woods, feet pounding along the wet leaves of the path, praying he didn't slip and fall. If he could get back to his truck he'd be fine, if he could escape the woods...

Panicking, he'd lost the path and never saw the edge of the small quarry before he fell over it, arms flailing for an endless second before he landed in the large pond at the bottom. He came to the surface and struggled to find the shore in the darkness.

As the white deer approached, he realized shooting that doe had been a mistake.


Twenty-Two

"A situation where knowing many fairy tales is useful"


Jill air-pedaled wildly as she hung onto the protesting goose's legs, as it flapped to slow their descent out of the clouds. She'd known that trading her prize sheep for a handful of beans  had been a risk, but the reward had been worth it.

They hit the ground, and she came to her feet.

"Hello, little girl," said the wolf

"Wrong girl," she said, marching up the path. The wolf paced her.

If she could run, she might find the woodsman. If not, there had to be a high tower with a girl's hair hanging out of it somewhere...


Twenty-Three

"A character dealing with an impostor pretending to be them."


The elderly half-elf was fuming. "My gear doesn't break."

"Well, it did this time." Maria waved her splinted wrist, then winced.

Andrea grabbed the leather bracer from her, two buckles torn loose from the vanbrace by the stitches, and frowned. "That's my maker's mark on the inside yes, but the stitching is all wrong, and the dye is off. Someone is making this garbage and passing it off as mine!"

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Find the bastard and hang them from the ceiling by their own equipment. And then watch them fall when it snaps."


Twenty-Four

"Haggling"


"How much?"

"Two-hundred million credits a year," Mel told her sister-in-law. "That's for a minimum of one hundred dockings per annum with unlimited cargo. That's a bargain, Salli."

"I know it's a bargain." Her gaze sharpened. "And what are you sneaking in that makes undercutting yourself worth it?"

"Not in," Mel hedged. "Look, do you have any idea how much profit I can make shipping spiralwood back home if I'm doing it myself?"

"One hundred fifty per year," Salli declared, after a pause. "And you give me ten percent of your profit from the spiralwood. Gross."

"Done, damnit," she grumbled.


Twenty-Five

"A love potion working too well."


"I think we can count this as a success." The scientist watched through the monitors as the badgermorph puttered around the room, picking up the scattered books and placing them on the shelves. Better, the morph was completely ignoring its human sitting nearby, who sported the worst looking bleeding wounds that a makeup effects artist could produce. "Love Virus Number Nine redirects an individual morph's obsession with serving humans to inanimate objects."

"Don't be too sure about that," his assistant turned up the audio.

"You don't understand," the badgermorph said to its human eagerly. "I did this all for you."


Twenty-Six

"Big badaboom!"


He had to give the Groupmind this much. It might have have been a nightmarish, nanny-ish conqueror with a reach through space that would make Cthulhu pause, but it did have a sense of humor.

He sat at the control board on top of the hill, overlooking the city. Sitting in tiers below him in the natural amphitheater, the morphs of the orchestra finished tuning up, as the conductormorph raised her baton, and the strains of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture began to play.

Badadadadadadadah DUMDUM!

As the crescendo reached its peak, he pressed the detonators, and the office towers began to explode.


Twenty-Seven

"Language Barrier"


"I don't understand any of this," Maria muttered, looking over the ancient tome, the leather so dried out it nearly crumbled at her gloved touch.

"It's in Elvish," Tez said.

"I read Elvish."

"You read the current iteration of Elvish. This was written 10,000 years before the current vowel shift."

"So what is it anyway? Something valuable I hope. I paid enough for it."

"In a way. Valuable enough that any elf would kill for it." He flipped to a page of formulas. "This in particular."

"What is it?" she asked.

Tez grinned, "Have you ever heard of 'hair gel'?"


Twenty-Eight

"Sailing the high seas"


It wasn't quite as good as space, Mel reflected from the helm, as the catamaran skimmed over the waves. The oceans of their homeworld was microscopic compared to the universe at large. On the other hand, there was the same feeling of freedom, the ability to point in any direction and just go.

There was one other similarity to her old hobby as well, she thought, as she set the helm to autonav, and stepped to where Rolas waited, bound naked to the mast with coils of white rope.

"Arr," she purred, pressing against him. "Time to bury me treasure."


Twenty-Nine

"'That's my grandpa's teeth you got there'"


"It's what?" Teal asked, turning the heavy golden saber over in her hands.

My grandsire's fang, Philosopher replied. </i>He favored his Companion highly enough that when he passed from this mortal veil, he willed that his teeth be fashioned into weapons for his Companion's descendants to use. They're among the few weapons a human can wield that will penetrate a dragon's scales.</i>

Teal set it back down carefully on the stand. "And why would he deliberately make something that a human could use to threaten a dragon?"

Philosopher's mouth curved into a deadly grin. Who better to avenge his death?


Thirty

"Finding bones while gardening."


Well, if she was stuck on the Ring she could at least raise her own food. Genuine heirloom seeds with  had been supplied, and she'd gotten to work tilling her backyard, as her morph stayed in its corner.

Her shovel went clang as it bounced off a rock. She knelt down to pull it up, and found herself holding a very human thighbone.

"Groupmind, what the hell is this?" she demanded.

Her morph stared at the bone, and stated flatly, "I have no information on this subject."

"What? How could you not know?"

"I have no information on this subject."