This is set in my Fae Apoc setting, which has a landing page here.

For zianuray‘s prompt.

Forget about how the tiger got his stripes, how the leopard changed his shorts. Today I’m going to tell you a better story, a more epic story: How the Bear Lost his Fuzz.

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wasn’t a bear, mind you, not like a grizzly or something, claws, sharp teeth, yadda, yadda, et cetera. Fuzzy-Wuzzy was a bear, still a teenager and already big, cuddly, and all over fur.

He had a name, a real name, I’m sure of it, but the point is, that the Fuzzy was a big man that everyone knew as Fuzzy-Wuzzy. You know what they say about puberty? Voice changes, hair in places you had no hair before, grow taller over night. All that. And then…

…well, you know how the rhyme goes. You knew there had to be an And Then that didn’t involve happily ever after at the local Bachelor Forum.

So, the thing about Fae is (or so I’ve been told), the thing you have to really pity them for is that they get puberty twice. First they get the normal sort, and then, sometime before their body’s all done growing (I’ve heard – I couldn’t tell you myself), they get to Change all over again. And here was Fuzzy Wuzzy, eighteen years old and 6 foot 8, furry as you could be, and…

…here we go with the And Then…

…and then when he was moonlighting at a local strip club as a bouncer (that tall, he had to be over 21, right?)… when trolls attacked.

And that was just about it for Fuzzy Wuzzy. He went to work a bear, and, three hours later, and I’m not saying he fainted, even if any sane person would, but this whole Change thing is like puberty all at once, it hurts (or so I’ve been told). He woke up stark naked, a foot and a half taller…

…and smooth as a baby’s behind. And, of course, because this is the way things happen, purple and with ram horns. But the important part about this…

… you guessed it….

…is that Fuzzy Wuzzy Had No Hair. Not a bit.

But he was still the favorite bear at the Bachelor Forum.

the leopard changing his shorts is a nod to Terry Pratchett. The Bachelor Forum is a gay bar near my old apartment in Rochester, NY.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/397099.html. You can comment here or there.

For flofx‘s prompt

“I have… forty feet of rope, my camelbak, and a jackknife.” Sancha turned her pockets inside-out. “Also fifty-seven cents and a movie ticket stub.”

“Save it all. We might be able to use it.” Fritz saw her look and correctly interpreted it. “Look, the first quest is always the hardest. you have to equip as you go, and by the time you’re done with this one, you’ll be a lot more ready for the next one.”

She couldn’t help but stare. “This isn’t a video game. This is real life. The really-real world.” Even if the really-real world was going all strange and upside-down lately.

“It’s still a quest. The same rules still apply.” He finished going through his own pockets. “Okay. Lighter. Multi-tool. Gloves. Butterfly knife. Two candy bars.”

“Shouldn’t a quest have a goal or something?”

“We are.” He gestured dramatically. “In a remote creek, having been abandoned by the school bus and everyone else after your little incident. We know which way we came, but also that the rest of the trip probably headed back that way, too. Yesterday, New York City vanished. I’d say our first goal is to find shelter and food, wouldn’t you?”

“My little incident.” She glared at him. “My little incident?” Her voice was rising, which made her lisp around her new teeth all the more obvious.

“Your little incident. Not that it was your fault – it was going to happen sooner or later – but it was definitely your thing.” He patted her head, between the new upwards-pointed ears. “So, our mission.”

She looked down the creek. “One way or another, we’ll get to shelter if we follow the water, right?”

“Right. See, grasshopper? You’ll get this questing thing down in no time.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/393058.html. You can comment here or there.

For moonwolf1988‘s prompt

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

“Look out for Captain Fuzzy.”

As advice went, it wasn’t the best their employer could have given them, but it was something. Something was more than they often got.

So they had a warning, a goal, and a direction – “When you find the wannabees, you’re probably going the right way.”

They’d found the wannabees, or at least a gathering of fuzzy-motive sorts that could definitely have been called that, full of tight clothes and a certain style of make-up that suggested inhumanity. They fit right in, which was funny, as long as nobody looked too closely at their leather, or their prosthetic ears, or the beads in Tinka’s dreads. They looked a little rough around the edges, truth be told, compared to the shining people, but wasn’t that always the case with originals against cheap imitations?

The crowd was surging towards the 51 Cards, bopping along like the world wasn’t ending, Tink and Rube moving with them, smiling and laughing and joking. If they could find the damn Mandrake, they could get out of here before the glow sticks came out and the wannabees started making fools of themselves.

Whoever had told some teenybopper than 51 Cards was a fae bar had a lot to answer for. And whichever teenybopper had then decided that, with Thor and Athena coming out of the woodwork, pretending to be fae was a brilliant idea – she had some pain coming to her, too. It made 51 Cards into a place that no true fae wanted to spend much time. It was like a football game being taken over by tutus.

Orders were orders, and the idea would appeal to Catnip anyway. Their boss liked making them uncomfortable.

They stepped into the club, into the thudding beat and the brightly-hued crowd. It was Real Night, but you can barely tell the unMasked from the made up in the strobe lights; were the DJ’s horns real or prosthetic? Was the bartender that color naturally? In this crowd, Tink and Rube were sparrows among peacocks. They slipped to the bar; there was always information to be had there.

The doors slammed open.

The man in the giant Captain’s hat with the rabbit ears strode in like he owned, not just the place, but the city.

Tink and Rube slipped behind a pillar, only to find their hiding spot already occupied.

To one side of them, somebody muttered something about a Mandrake and Lute. To the other side, a girl looked up, her ears perking.

The rabbit-eared pirate yowled into the music, and the music redoubled its efforts to deafen them all.

They crowded further behind the pillar, trying to dislodge the previous tenant. He, in return, was holding both hands to his ears while trying to curl up on himself. His drink spread forgotten over the floor, red as a pool of blood.

It was staining the smoke that had, presumably, at one time been his feet a sickly mauve.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/392429.html. You can comment here or there.

For wyld_dandelyon‘s prompt (most of them, really)

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

There were better things to do on a Saturday night than follow a neon-lime tart around the clubs. Cary was sure of it. There had to be; even staking out The Most Boring Man in the World was starting to look good after this.

But the boss had said to Follow the Rabbit, and the Rabbit was following the neon-green tart, so Cary and Usha were following her, too, and trying to ignore her ignorance.

The Rabbit, now, she was something else. She was dressed like the main course in an all-you-can-eat-pervert’s buffet: kitten-mittens and fuzzy cuffs, a tall leather collar shaped like the top of a tux and a tiny dress to match. If she weren’t with a pack of girls, she’d have gotten eaten alive in the first club they’d gone into. In the pack, however – the only reason Cary was tolerated was that he appeared to be totally under Usha’s thumb. Other guys didn’t get close.

“Where next?” They hadn’t so much gotten kicked out of the last club as moved gently aside – too young, too out-there, too loud.

“What about the Deck?” That was the Rabbit, voicing an opinion for the first time. “I want to go to the Deck.”

“The Deck is boring.” Lime had opinions. “And kind of skeezy. I want to go to The Briton.

“The Briton’s boring.” Wytton was smitten with the kitten-mittened Rabbit. “How about the place on Leviton?”

“Too much grit. I like the Briton.”

“There’s the vampire club? Bitten?” He didn’t know why Usha was putting in an opinion, but maybe she just wanted to annoy Lime. Maybe she didn’t think their goal was going to be at a stodgy pub. Maybe she just wanted to rhyme with kitten.

Rhyming.
Rabbit.
Jabot?
Sabot.
And rabbet.

“Let’s go to the Dutchman.” He tugged on Usha’s sleeve: two short tugs, one long, and just in case, reached out a hand to the Rabbit. “Come with us? It’s right behind the Deck.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/391712.html. You can comment here or there.

For rix_Scaedu‘s prompt

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

The streets were less wild than it seemed like they ought to be.

Marietta and Dominic slipped through the crowds, as noticed as they felt like being, as always. There were fae on the TV, returned gods and calling themselves exactly that. It seemed like cities ought to be falling into the sea, like Atlantis, or going up in flames, like Pompeii. It shouldn’t feel like an ordinary Saturday night.

“…bunch of nutjobs. Bunch of crazies, that’s all.” The girl in too little too-bright clothing had too-loud opinions, and her companions seemed willing to agree to anything she said.
“Gods. Who do they think they are?”

Marietta and shared a look that was half disgust, half interest. She might be fun, if they washed the makeup off. If only she could be coaxed to shut up.

“Ugh, my mother’s calling again. A-GAIN.”

Too much trouble, and besides, they were on a mission tonight. O had sent them out in the streets, looking for something (or someone) he called Mandrake Mauve.

“What does Lute know, anyway?” The name caught their attention – not the too-bright girl but one of her friends, muttering to his bored-looking buddy. “Mandrakes. Just roots, after all. Might as well bring home a parsnip.”

If Lute was sending his people out, and O had sent them out, chances were Catnip had sent out her people, too. And the only clue they had was the fifty-second card.

“We’d better be getting on.” Dom did something complicated with the straps of his bondage pants. “The first Fifty-One await.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/390344.html. You can comment here or there.

For stryck‘s prompt

Fae Apoc has a landing page here.

All My Friends Say

You know I don’t remember a thing
But they say I sure was raisin’ some cain
I was a rock star, party hard
Gettin’ over you comeback kid
Hey I musta did
What all my friends say

Jordan woke slowly, with a dull, niggling headache that just wanted to tell him all its problems, a whining thing that suggested he’d drank too much last night.

Last night. Last night, he had gone to The 51 Cards, because even if the news wanted to scream about people who thought they were Athena and Thor, he didn’t think it was worth not drinking over. He’d sat down next to a lovely girl with the best tattoos he’d seen in a long time. He’d ordered a drink.

He opened his eyes. The light was dim, and he couldn’t see much, but the shapes of the shadows suggested it wasn’t his room at home. So far, no surprises. He reached out one arm, and found the edge of the bed. The other arm found a nightstand, and nobody in bed with him. That was a bit of a surprise, but not horrible. He sat up, and swung his feet over the edge of the bed.

Even in the faint light, he could see that something was wrong. His feet were fuzzy, blurry. Was his vision off? Drinking enough to kill his memory could do that. He reached for the nightstand, found no lamp, but there was something… yes, a flashlight.

The bright LED bulbs revealed the room to be tiny, more of a cube than a room, with no furniture but the bed and the nightstand, no windows, and no discernible door. More immediately important, they revealed that his feet were missing.

“The hell!” The shout didn’t make his head hurt more, but it did echo unpleasantly. He’d woken up missing clothes before (not this time), his wallet (still there), his pride and his virginity (still missing), but never before had he looked down and seen mist where his feet were supposed to be.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/389982.html. You can comment here or there.