Broadway Was Waiting For Me

A superpowered cat sucked back in time is introduced to the high society of the Roaring Twenties. (And also turned into a girl.) Mature.

A wave of gray slush crashed up over the curb, then hung, frozen, an inch from colliding with the young cat.

The businessmen on the corner stared from beneath their dark-brimmed hats. A fox clutched at the fur stole draped around her neck, like she had been frozen in place along with the water. Someone let out a low whistle of amazement.

This was worse than the cell phone.

Today was Celsius's bad day. Number one, it was the twenty-third of December and he'd had a final to take this morning. Come on, you couldn't schedule it any earlier?

Number two, he'd ran out of people to ask to the school's Holiday Bash. Stupid party. He didn't want to ask the cute archaeology major to the party anyway.

Number three, he'd missed his bus stop, and the next stop was all the way down in the historic district, so he'd either have to go to an ATM and get change for the bus fare back, or spend half an hour walking home.

And number four, he was stuck in a time-warp to the Roaring Twenties.

Marian

Robin Hood fanfic, oh no! Sir Hiss hypno-corrupts Maid Marian. Mature.

Prince John had a gallows grip on the gold coins between his fingers. One wrinkle creased his brow just above his snout. His lip curled, just a little. With each breath, an uneven whine left his throat, like a wet log steaming in a hot fire.

Sir Hiss grinned as ingratiatingly as he could.

"Sssire, you've counted that gold twice already. I think it'sss time sssomeone went to bed," he said.

Prince John didn't look at him. Hiss peeled back the corners of his mouth harder.

"Come now, sssir, you need your beauty sssleep," Hiss said.

Hiss's tail draped across the line of gold rings that Prince John held. He hooked the coins against his tail and tugged. Prince John held on tightly. His mouth stayed closed, though his lip had started to wobble.

Hiss had hoped the prince would have taken rejection better, but there was nothing the lion reacted to pleasantly.

Redder Than Gold

A wolf enjoys his Argentinian vacation once the music turns him into a colorful vixen. Mature.

He put his feet on the dance floor and the trumpets flared against the beat.

Roland had stumbled through his second day in Buenos Aires with half-remembered high school Spanish and the clothes that he'd taken in his carry-on bag.

The percussion stomped along and he lifted his feet. He drew deeper into the crowd.

Roland had spent the entire day on his feet between trying to walk to museums and trying to get his lost suitcase back from the airport.

There were people dancing all around him now. He couldn't turn back.

Subject #39-01-4

A parasite slowly converts a feline test subject into a gooey, draconian form as he tries to escape. Mature.

AFTER ACTION REPORT

SUBJECT #39-01-4

DOCTOR ???????

NARRATIVE:

The subject was received from the retrieval team operating in ?????????, ?????? on March 30, 20??. The subject was unconscious as per protocol, identified as biologically male, feline (domestic cat), age approximately eighteen to twenty-one. All identifying documents had been properly removed by the retrieval team. Doctors Allbright and Kim were on hand to transport the subject.

Specimen Room A3 was reserved for the initial procedure. Upon entering, we learned that during processing #39-01-1, the previous team of Doctors Lee, Mayers and Reyes had neglected to properly clean all equipment. At this point, Allbright and Kim finished the work left undone by the previous team, where I filed a disciplinary report which has yet to be processed at the time of this writing, but can most likely be found by accessing my record.

Pacem Per Tyrranidem

A hacker discovers a Reptilian conspiracy. She can't beat them, but she does join them. Mature.

Four in the morning was a terrible time to be awake. It was when Alyssa worked best. The noise from outside her windows, the endless waves of the city's shore, was quiet, reduced to a ripple when a wayward car meandered through the tight streets. Anyone with sense was sleeping, but Alyssa was searching.

But it was alys_null who was really searching. Alyssa was the young woman, the stringy dark hair, the hunched back, the salty noodles and empty soda cans congealing behind her keyboard and around her monitor. Alys_null was her on the inside, the more accurate approximation of who she was. Alys had no creed and she was not fed by ego. She wasn't looking for fame. She wanted a challenge, and here she had found one.

A program on a computer, an average node in a banking network, was running a peer-to-peer file transfer. Each chunk of the file was copied and sent, and once the 'received' message from the computer at the other end came through, the chunk was deleted. The same program was running on the other computer. The file was stuck in constant motion, scrambled between the two computers.

Don't Enable Magic Animals

A cautionary tale about wishing that girls would find everything you say cute. Mature.

"That's not fair," said the young man.

"That's the rules," said the fox.

The fox was lying. There were no rules. Thus, there were no rules against lying about there being rules to get out of granting terrible wishes.

The little red beast stood atop a small boulder, which put him about at eye level with the man. The young man was standing on the ground, arms folded over a rough cloth tunic. A strip of fabric had been torn from the hem of his tunic and was now wrapped around the fox's left paw.

"That's the fourth one," the man complained.

"And all four of them were against the rules, so if you want a wish you'd better come up with one that isn't," said the fox.

"Can you tell me what the rules are?" the man asked.

"No. That's against the rules."