Stolen from Kat

[malapropism]

Give me a character or pairing and I will write snippets of ten different alternate universes for it. One line, ten lines, a ficlet if you're lucky.

01. Wild West
02. Cyberpunk
03. Shapeshifters
04. Pirates
05. …In SPACE!!
06. Born Another Gender
07. Schoolfic
08. Police/Firefighters
09. Urban Fantasy
10. Harem

Original characters only. Not up to fanfic lately, I don't think.

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[malapropism]

01. Wild West

In the end, she stole a horse and the sherriff's revolver - it wasn't as if that bought and paid for layabout was going to use it - and rescued herself. California was vast enough that she need never look back, and she planned to do exactly that.

02. Cyberpunk

The sky city of Neon Olympus was bright and sterile, and the air smelled faintly of smoke and apple blossoms. It took some doing, adjusting to clean air when she'd lived among the ruins and pollution of the lowcity, but Kristen Morrow was a woman with a mission and no mission had ever been stopped by good living conditions. The sky city was rich with technological wonders foreign to the lowcity, air cars and clockwork policemen and every now and again real, live cyborgs, and she wished she had more time to admire everything. She'd be out of town entirely by dusk, and in honesty she would not be sad to see the last of Neon Olympus. Come next morning, she would not have to remember what her parents had condemned her to, the two years she had spent in enslavement before escaping. First her godhood, then her freedom, and then her happiness. Thrice now her due had been snatched out from her hands and thrice she was betrayed, but she still lived and that was a mistake of her parents'. She will make them see that. She will force her head up by her hair if she has to and she will walk away from this but she has had her fill of being broken and she will not break, she will not.

Cliff Knight's office was a small, crowded affair, messy enough that Kristen wondered if it had been freshly ransacked. It looked like he hadn't had many clients outside cat ladies - indeed, he'd made a wanted, dangerous fugitive poster for fat, glaring Persian named Django - but Kristen would take what and who she could get. She had escaped the lowcity for this, and she intended to scale all the way to the top. She had made her godhood out of clockwork and salvaged junkyard scraps; she could make do with a novice detective, surely. And even if his clientele were few and uncomplicated, he'd been praised by everyone she spoke to of him. Inexperience didn't mean incompetence, not really. Maybe a little overeager to impress, by his manner, but Kristen could tell he was kind, and she could do with kindness.

"I'd like to hire you to find my parents," Kristen said, once she had been bade to sit. "I think I have enough for five months, to start. That should be okay, right? They might already be in the floating heaven, so I'd like you to begin there."

"Only gods can make it to the floating heaven," Mr. Knight said, slowly. "No one could help you if that's the case."

"That's something I can do. I know I don't look it, but I can. I just want them found," Kristen said. "I don't want them killed or punished. All I really want is to just be able to forget them. I want my life back. I just want what I'm owed, Mr. Knight. Godhood, nothing more, nothing less."

03. Shapeshifters

People often remark on how painful it must be to experience the change, how awful it must be to become so unlike herself; this is where they err, for when Kristen shifts into a sparrow it is nothing that has not forever dwelled deep in the bones of her.

04. Pirates

Kristen had lived so low and shamefully for the greater part of her life that when she attained employ as a scullery maid there were whispers of her being unworthy. Here with the wind in her hair and the sea bright in her eyes she cannot imagine even queenhood would be a higher privilege. Her sea legs have not grown, but she stands tall. There is no shame upon the sea, but what shame Sir Morrow must endure, to have his beloved daughter risen fully grown from grisly childhood death only to fall to piracy!

05. …In SPACE!!

Kristen loved Earth. She loved the green of its fields, the feel of her body embraced in leaves and earth, and she equally loved the bright, smoke-hazy lights of its cities; she even liked people, mostly. But there was nothing in any far-flung galaxy or earthly nook that could keep her away from her ship and the infinite paths of stars she had come to truly think of as home.

06. Born Another Gender

Christopher Morrow
mired and raised in sorrow
thought the worst behind him
but as his thoughts turned grim
and the chance of a future grew dim
oh, how he wished for those terrible days!

07. Schoolfic

It only occured to Kristen Robinson partway through sitting through the Parent Trap in a substitute's English class that she ought to be more concerned about the nature of her biological parents. In truth, she hadn't given any thought to them in sixteen years. They hadn't wanted her, and that was fine. She didn't even know enough to blame them, really. She didn't know enough to work up any interest, for all she knew was that she was not wanted.

When she got home from band practice, she kissed her mother and father on the cheek and went on not knowing. She slept as well as she always did that night.

08. Police/Firefighters

Kristen Morrow was a good, honest cop who did good, honest work. She suffered no corruption and let no corruption work its way through her, and she was as diligent and relentless as the crime in her city. And let it never be said she was entirely unwilling to listen, to give anyone a chance.

But woe betide the man that ever he was born who thinks himself so high above women that he should strike them freely and use them up like cigarettes, for Kristen knows well that rages may make certain otherwise reasonable and honest women forget the existence of mercy.

09. Urban Fantasy

There was a hole in Kristen's wall, and inside was the land of the Unseelie.

She wondered what she had done last night, too idly to be a product of anything but shock.

10. Harem

Don Reynaldo was admired by certain young miscreants for ever being surrounded by beautiful women. Kristen knew better; she had been one of those women many times. No one, man or woman, flocked to the side of Don Reynaldo because they liked him.