#ReturnToTheFateGear

17: Burning down the Heavens

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

After that, things moved swiftly. A balloon ferried Captain Napier to the Fate Gear.

“You capitalist swine! How long have you been leading these running-dog lackeys?” Mina hailed Napier, embracing him. “Never mind. Wait till you hear what I’ve planned! We’re going after the ultimate tyrant. We’ll be burning down the heavens. My cabin, MiLord; the wind has ears. More importantly, I have a 100-year-old brandy looted from Emperor Muskrat’s yacht. Tiss sweet, like poetry, and smooth as silk.”

"#Better than yer rotgut grog and I'll hear yer plan. If it doesn't sound good after that bottle, we'll know it's Tommy rot," Napier said.

The two departed, leaving a scowling Nana with the Otherside pair.

“And what might you two be thinking, lollygagging in the rigging? You may be gunner’s mates to the Captain, but yer nothing but lumps of tar. Get ta polishing the brass or you’ll be wishing you were #home with the fishes.”

Soon, the two were polishing brass and whispering together.

“I don’t like how things look,” Sorawo said. “Mina’s plans to attacking a god.”

“Not just any god,” Toriko said. “The one they worship in Canada—well, actually all the West. He’s one mean hombre sending plagues, turning people into salt, and telling them to sacrifice their sons. His own son had to sacrifice himself to make God back off.”

“So you’re worried too?”

“A little,” Toriko said, putting her arms around Sorawo’s neck, burying Sorawo's face in her bosom. “Protect me.”

“Stop it, you perv,” Sorawo said, pushing Toriko away. “This is serious.”

“You’d better take my tits seriously.” Toriko pretended to pout.

“Whatever! Come on. I need you to stop messing around and listen.”

“Alright.” This time her pout was real.

“When I was looking for the mergaunt’s mother, I spotted a remnant of the portal the sorceress used. If things get bad, you can pull it open.”

“Not without Benimori”

Sorawo, about to protest, stopped. Caring about people was new to her. “You’re right, with Benimori.”

As they spoke, Napier and Mina left the cabin. Whether from the brandy or bravado, they both swaggered across the deck. Napier slapped Mina on the back, causing her to stagger. “I haven't heard anything so audacious in years. Here’s to burning down the heavens.” He raised the nearly empty brandy bottle and drained it dry. “Who’s the eunuch now!” he bellowed out, laughing as he slapped Mina on the back again.

“There she is!” someone shouted as the Fate Gear, Venus Falcon, and the two biremes raced away from Mercury.

Sorawo and Toriko looked up. Undulating in the sky was a black amoebic hole. The monstrous maw sucked everything around it into itself.

”I’ll get Beni!” Toriko said, heading for the galley.

Grand Conclusion Next Week.

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#UraPi #Steampunk #Pirates #Satire #PoliticalSatire

#ReturnToTheFateGear

16: Carson Napier

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

The trireme was now so close that the Otherside pair could read the name on the prow, Venus Falcon. The biremes had fanned out, threatening to flank the Fate Gear from the starboard and port. Meanwhile, the swift galleys marshaled to sweep in once the behemoth ex-prison ship was brought to heel.

“Hold your fire,” Mina bellowed. The order was as sudden as it was unexpected.

“Navigator, I wish to hail them,” the captain said.

Yuri flipped on the amplifiers.

"Hail, Captain Napier! You imperialist dog! Was Venus too hot a berth?" Mina’s voice boomed out.

The man at the prow of the Venus Falcon signaled, and a white flag swept aside the black. The thunder of a single cannon #report drew all eyes to the trireme.

Captain Carson Napier [Note 1] sheathed his sword before making a gesture not found in any book of signals.

“Fly the countersign,” Mina said into the hush that had fallen.

[Note 1] Captain Carson Napier: #Origin: The Venus series (also known as the “Amtor series”) written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Continued next week in Burning Down the Heavens.

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15: Pirates of Mercury

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

It was true. The mergaunts had delayed the Fate Gear just long enough for the pirate fleet to catch up. The fleet was a ragtag bunch, comprised of everything from decrepit galleys resembling junks to gold-embossed, three-tiered triremes. Small, swift galleys were already in position to cut them off. Like gnats, they encircled the Fate Gear above, to starboard, and to port. Below, on the #surface, having finished the fallen mergaunts, magma worms waited hungrily.

The Fate Gear could have plowed through the galleys ahead of them, but the resulting hail of arrows, bullets, and cannon fire would have been difficult to withstand. Staying would be suicide.

“All hands to their stations,” Captain Mina bellowed. “Yuri, get this tub of ungreased gears moving. If she blows a boiler, so be it.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Yuri replied, while Fate Gear whined.

(“All my gears are well oiled, and I don’t have any boilers.”)

“Get moving, you capitalist swine, or I’ll tear every one of your gears out and throw them overboard!”

(“Aye aye, Captain Tinbottom.”) The Fate Gear’s tone may have been sullen, and the insult ludicrous, but it surged forward. The beams creaked, and the generators throbbed as the ship threw every ounce of its power into outrunning the pirates.

“You two up there,” Mina yelled up at Sorawo and Toriko. “You are hereby #installed as gunner’s mates. If any of those mercurial scavengers come into range, pick them off. We’ll show them that the Fate Gear isn’t a lily-livered, limp-dick jellyfish. Our blood runs as true and red as any buccaneers.”

“I wish she wouldn’t describe our blood as running,” Sorawo said under her breath.

“It’s a saying,” Toriko responded, still smiling at becoming a gunner’s mate.

“Saying or not, I wish she wouldn’t do it.”

Behind the ship, the smaller galleys were losing ground. Ahead, many of the galleys turned away, fearful of the massive bulk of the repurposed prison ship hurtling toward them. The Fate Gear and its crew would have surely won free except for the trireme and two accompanying biremes. Their oars caught the ether, propelling them ever faster after the Fate Gear.

A simple skull and crossbones flew from the trireme's mast, and a muscular yet lean man stood at the bow. Unbound, his blond hair flew free in the wind. His bold face showed no signs of fear. His prey was almost within reach, and he would capture it as easily as a falcon snatches a dove from the air.

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14: Otherside Champions (Part 2 of 2)

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

“You mean use my eye?” Sorawo said.

“Yes, hurry,” Toriko replied.

Crack!—“That’s five!”

Sorawo peered at the mergaunts. None of them looked like an Otherside abomination, just every day “ordinary” monsters. This was an all #round waste of time, especially since they were gathering for a massive suicidal wave. It would be too #late if she didn’t find the mother soon.

“Maybe I can drive them insane,” she thought, and concentrated on a big, incoming bull.

Crack!

“Come on, work,” Sorawo muttered.

Crack!

“Don’t go to sleep up there. We’ve got a battle going, you scum-sucking lubber,” Nana shouted at Sorawo as the officers segued into a death metal version of “Twisted Sister Xmas.”

Crack!

“I’m wasting time,” Sorawo said. She was about to resume searching when the bull turned, screaming, and sank its teeth into the wing of the nearest mergaunt.

“Better than this stupid gun,” she said, dropping her weapon. It fell with a crash, missing Nana by millimeters.

“Better luck next time,” Sorawo thought. She couldn’t think of a better person to suffer a concussion than Nana. She glanced toward Toriko. “Well, maybe I’m glad I missed.”

For the first time that day, Sorawo felt excited. Until then, she had felt useless. Toriko could have fun anywhere, but not her. Parties were tedious, even Benimori’s; She didn’t enjoy Toriko being a perv; Captain Mina was a pain. Even the FATE GEAR was a horror.

“Where’s that mother?” Sorawo started working out the problem in her head. “Not in the suicidal waves… further back, near the middle. Ah, like that knot of bat things over there.”

Tendrils of psychic energy leaked from an individual guarded by a group of mergaunts.

“Found her,” Weird Eye Sorawo shouted. “To your right, the cluster in the back. She’s the one in the middle.” Sorawo’s voice was calm. The energy she was detecting was weak; it was nothing like the Kune Kune or Hasshaku-sama. There was no chance of her being driven insane or worse.

“Where…” Toriko responded immediately. “Oh, there they are, I think.”

Then she asked, “Which one is she? There’s more than one in the center.”

“The one on the right. It’s moving—just shoot them all.”

Crack!—“Did I get it?”

“To the left,” Sorawo replied.

Crack!—“Uwa, missed.” Crack!

“You got it!” Sorawo cheered.

All of FATE GEAR’s bells and whistles joined the officers playing “Super Sonic Samurai” as the mergaunts wandered off squabbling and biting at each other.

“And just in time,” Nana called up to them. “We have visitors—mercurial pirates.

Continued Next Week in The Pirates of Mercury

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#ReturnToTheFateGear

14: Otherside Champions (Part 1 of 2)

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

Desperate to hold the mergaunt away from the ship, a few of the FATE GEAR’s crew choked up on their halberds. The ship’s wood had begun steaming, and the faces of the brave souls holding the mergaunt back blistered in the heat. Only the drenching they had received saved them from worse burns.

Crack! “Dead-eye” Toriko fired.

Ichor oozed from the mergaunt’s eye. Then it vanished below them, joining the tangle of monstrous corpses floating on the sea’s surface.

“Got it, that’s four,” Toriko called out to Sorawo.

“Bravo,” Captain Mina called, her words accompanied by the FATE GEAR’s carousel whistles.

“Yeah. Good show,” Sorawo grumbled as she fought with her rifle.

“But I don’t have much ammo,” Toriko said.

“So? What do you want me to do about it? I don’t bring weapons to a costume party.”

“You should. We never know where we’ll end up—see if you can spot the mother.”

Continued in next post

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#ReturnToTheFateGear

13: #Pirates vs. Mergaunts (Part 2 of 2)

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

At the last instant, gravity claimed it, dragging the beast into the molten sea.”

The cheers, fist bumps, and cries of “#Excellent!” faded as a smaller mergaunt slipped through the hole the bull had created. Untouched by the polearms, the creature approached like a blinding comet.

As the crew tried to bring the mini-cannons to bear, the hoses tangled. Instead of hitting the enemy, they were drenched in freezing water. A cry of “Uwa... Nanda, kore...!” sounded as the poop-deck cannon’s traverse jammed. The officers’ amplified voices and guitars added to the chaos, ironically singing of the void:

          Have a hory, gory Christmas
          And in case you didn’t hear
          A blizzard made of cinders falls, the void is always here.

Continued Next Week in “Otherside Champions”

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#ReturnToTheFateGear

13: #Pirates vs. Mergaunts (Part 1 of 2)

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs

#wss366 #MastoPrompt

“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” Captain Mina exhorted her crew. “Fear is a tool of our overlords. We will not succumb to it nor to their blandishments of rewards in the hereafter. We are not the meek; we are the righteous. We will not inherit the earth; instead, the heavens will be ours. The ultimate tyrant who permits their abominations shall fear us, not us them.”

The crew responded by banging their long, diamond-tipped polearms on the deck, crying:

“Totsugeki jaa! Totsugeki jaa! Totsugeki jaa!”

“Oi! Oi! Oi!”

Those without diamond halberds held unwieldy water cannons designed for mercurial battles. Awkward inventions whose hoses writhed while pumping frigid water through their steel nozzles.

Even the FATE GEAR joined in clanging a bell in time with each oi.

Decked out in their most grim death-metal t-shirts, never had a band of brave buccaneers looked more ready for battle. With their glittering halberds and frost-covered water cannons at the ready, they awaited the mergaunts’ vanguard. The pirates of FATE GEAR had never looked prouder or more gallant. Their #bond as freebooters had never been stronger.

When the first wave of monsters was in range, the sailors did their part, holding off the foe with polearms and jets of freezing water, supplied by the FATE GEAR’s refrigeration unit. It was the officers’ job to supply the ship with the raw energy of metal to power it and all other battle functions. Which they did with vigor, belting out Christmas metal.

Cheers went up as the first wave of creatures was sent plummeting into the boiling miasma below, accompanied by the cheery refrain of “Have a holly jolly Christmas.”

“‘Dead Eyed’ Toriko hummed along, cheerful as ever, while Sorawo cranked and fired her plasma gun, too busy to complain about either the music or Toriko’s accompaniment.

“The second wave is thicker,” Toriko called to Sorawo.

The prediction was confirmed when a knot of mergaunts smashed through the diamond barrier. Most monsters fell prey to the halberds or were frozen in midair. Yet, one bull impaled itself on a blade. Its momentum carried it forward, snapping the halberd’s shaft. Even dead, it could set the ship aflame with its touch.

Continued on next post

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#ReturnToTheFateGear

Chapter 12: Bat’s of Mercury

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear

Toriko and Sorawo were soon high in the rigging. Sorawo, bilge-green already, grew greener still watching Toriko swing fearlessly from the ropes.

“Don’t ye get enough danger with youkai?” Sorawo asked, a trace of pirate creeping into her speech.

The question slipped away as they turned their eyes outward. FATE GEAR was sailing low past Mercury at an incredible speed. The ship’s generators labored and throbbed, and steam leaked in thin whistles from escape valves.

Below were molten lakes of boiling metal. Volcanic spires smoked, belching ash that fell sizzling into the lakes or blew across the volcanic plains in mile-high drifts. Above the plains drifted ships and tangled cities suspended from gargantuan balloons.

As they watched, the ships turned toward the pirate vessel. Unless fate intervened, their pursuers would fall behind the shrieking comet FATE GEAR. But ahead, fate took shape in swarms of rubbery, bat-winged creatures rising from the valleys laying between smoking volcanoes. Their screeches shook the sails and set the bells chiming on their own.

“We must win through quickly,” Mina thundered. “The time has arrived when patience becomes a crime and mayhem appears garbed in the mantle of virtue.”

(“Heaven help us, she’s quoting Edgar Rice Burroughs now,”) the ship complained.

“You up thar,” Nana called. “Focus. If a Mergaunt so much as grazes us, we’ll go up like a Roman candle. If ye find thar mother, bring her down. Mergaunt’s be no worse than fruit flies after that.”

In the background, Mina, whipped into a fiery #lather, ranted—“‘We called ourselves Soldiers of Liberty…I was chosen captain,’ and I say, ‘Death, only—renders hope futile.’”—but the Otherside pair, like most of the crew, focused on their stations rather than her words. That changed when the whistles blew all at once in a deafening cacophony and Mina’s voice thundered through the amplifiers, “Twenty thousand savage throats arose with the awful cries of battle…eighty thousand fearsome pirates set the heavens atremble…”

The first Mergaunts came into range as the pirates issued their battle cry with one resounding voice:

     Be invincible!
     Don’t say “impossible!”
     Trample the enemies of this world!
            (Be invincible!, Fate Gear, 2022)

Oi, oi, oi!

Note: Mergaunts: Bat-like creatures resembling night gaunts, from which they get their name. These hellish creatures inhabit the valleys of Mercury’s volcanic ranges. They are fire-resistant, and their mere touch will set earthly materials on fire. The Mergaunts possess little intelligence, instead relying on hive-mind and directions from a Mergaunt Mother. If their Mother is slain, they wander until they come into range of a new Mother. (“Bats of Mercury,” pg. 66, by Nara Moore.)

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Return to the FATE GEAR

Chapter 11: It’s life, Jim—but not as we know it

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #StarTrek

Things grew quieter after Beni announced what was for dinner. There were a few grumbles in the mess about the half-ration of grog, but the stew was warm and filling. It was much better than the maggoty biscuits, #spoiled potatoes, or the greasy #quagmire of pea soup they were used to. All-in-all the FATE GEAR’s crew was content.

In unison, the crew let their cutlery fall and sighed in pure pleasure. Benimori had become a favorite—(not as a dish, but as a cook).

Toriko had earned their respect by decking the purser for pinching her butt. (The purser may have mistaken her for a dish—the succulent kind, not the radish; perhaps a peach, a port belle, or a topgallant lass.)

Sorawo, on the other hand, was close to being keelhauled for the number of times she spilled stew on someone.

It wasn’t her fault; the FATE GEAR rolled suddenly every time her ladle was in midair.

(“That be fer yer cracks about me last time ye were here,”) the ship muttered. (“Think ye be a pirate? Ye’re nothing but a mess hall horny toad.”)

No one dared correct the ship, reminding it that this was a steampunk vessel, not a B-Western prairie schooner. Any of the crew who crossed the FATE GEAR were spoiling for trouble.

Meal done, the crew filed out onto the deck as a carousel whistle piped, “All hands on deck.”

Above them glowered a planet smoking in the sun’s heat. And beyond that was a black-hole, its amoebic edges undulating, as though lifted from a steerage-quality scifi film.

(“It’s life, Jim—but not as we know it,”) the FATE GEAR announced in a thick Glaswegian burr.

“That’s enough out of you, Scotty,” Yuri typed. “This be pulp steampunk, not Star Trek. Now hoist the gens—we’re gonna need a hunnert knots an’ more to clear Mercury’s stern, or she’ll drag us into her maw!”

(“I’m givin’ her all she’s got, Cap’n!” the ship retorted. “But the etheric coils are about ready to burst their corsets!”)

Sorawo overheard Nana grumble, “We don’t have etheric coils, and the corsets are just for show.”

She sympathized until Nana turned her evil eye on the Otherside duo and vented her ire on them. “Get to yer positions, you scurvy bilge-rats,” pointing to the rigging high above.

“Aye, Aye, Ma’ma. Beam us up, Scotty,” Toriko quipped.

Sorawo kicked her in the shins. “Pirates is bad enough; don’t go mixing in Trek-ese.”

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#wss366

Return to the FATE GEAR

Chapter 10: You say Mulligatawny; I say MullagaGEARy.

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear

Further talk was forestalled by noise from the mess. Bang! “We want grub!” Bang! “We want grub!”Bang! “We want grub.” Bang!

The three hurried into the mess. Seeing them Mina held up her hands. “Mates, we be going into a fine scuffle. The very heavens be our goal. We are on the #edge of a great revolution. Down with capital, down with landlords, power to the people. The Golden throne … and as someone said, ‘My name is Inigo Montoya. You Killed my Father. Prepare to die.’”

(“Get on with it; the vittles be getting cold.”) They all hear Fate Gear’s voice, edged with irritation, in their heads.

Bang! Bang! Went the crew.

“You’re not a eunuch,” Mina muttered. Then in a brighter voice, “Half ration of grog today. I want you bright and sharp as an edged cutlass.”

Bang! “Hiss!”

“But double rations for all survivors.”

Bang! “Yer the eunuch, cap!”

“What’s that delightful smell?” Mina asked as the cook and her mates began serving.

“Mulligan stew,” Beni said.

(“This be a pirate ship, not a B Western roundup!”)

“It’s special for steampunk pirates; it's MullagaGEARy,” Beni said with a straight face. [Note 1]

Bang! “Hiss!” Bang! “Boo.”

Note 1: Sorawo groaned, “Mulligatawny.” [Note 1]
Echoed by Toriko, “MullagaGEARy.” [Note 2]

Note 1 of Note 1: Mulligatawny: A spicy soup of Tamil ‘South Indian’ origin commonly including chicken, mutton, and lentils—nothing like Mulligan stew. [Note 1]
Note 2 of Note 1: MulligaGEARy: Ingredients unknown but savory and sure to delight the steampunker in your life. Not to be confused with MulliGEARy, a clear soup. But your steampunker won’t mind. They’ll just be happy that you finally cooked something rather than ordering takeout.

Note 1 of Note 1 of Note 1: Mulligan stew: A thick hobo stew with whatever ingredients are at hand. B Westerns often featured Mulligan stew as a special dish served from the chuck wagon. Not to be confused with Stone Soup, a European variation of the same theme.

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