Daily Writing Prompt Thread Thingy It'll Be Fun

[Amer]

Spoiler: The story.

Rupert has to have a start somewhere. Maybe it'll be somewhere sometime later. For now, you're going to start in a random place in his life. It's not a great story, but one could make it worse.

Rupert lives in Gothic City. Gothic City is a strange place, located on the edge of a mountain, with fields down the mountain for growing and raising food, and a circular city at the top, centered on a cathedral. The whole city is surrounded by a wall, keeping it safe from invaders past, and keeping its current residents safe, for the most part. Rupert lived inside the wall, very close to it. He'd been able to buy his house cheap, as the city's main highway, designed only for bicycles, was built on top of the roofs of the houses around the edge of the city. The houses in Gothic City were mostly the same. Twenty or so townhouses, three stories each, all squished together. It wasn't bad living there, though the houses were a bit small. Most everybody was satisfied, and, if you had more money, you could buy a wider house or even two townhouses and smash the walls for more space.

That being said, Rupert left his house after grabbing his satchel and front-door keys, and walked to the subway station entrance, located a few blocks down in a block of shops, which looked similar to the townhomes. You have to look for the entrance. It looks like an ordinary storefront, though its only difference being its door bearing the logo of the rail network. He took the train straight to the city's library and town hall combo building.

Upon his arrival, he walked out into the main area outside of the subway station connected to the building. It looked like a mall, but with only three big storefronts, and a pair of escalators, an elevator from the 1940s, and a set of stairs leading up to an exterior entrance. Rupert walked straight into the library.

The library had been ill-maintained. A fool in the government had forced the city to remodel the building in the 1960s, and the remodel had been abandoned. It had looked awful until someone in the 2010s had designed a remodel that was implemented, adding modern yet warm LED lighting and a somewhat modern design to it. Since the majority of it was underground, there weren't any windows, and it was very quiet.

Rupert had quite a ways to walk. He needed the archive. He'd been reading through the city's archive books, trying to find the missing link he needed to find the story behind the abandoned subway station that was intended to be the main subway station. There were thousands of these books, and no one ever read them, even though they contained the most extensive details of the history of that city.

Hours upon hours had been spent, reading through these books. Yes, the city was paying someone to slowly digitize them, but they'd barely gone through five percent of them. Rupert had gone through far more of them. He'd spent hours, searching each one for the reason why that station was closed. He'd spent far too much time on it, but nobody cared. He wanted an answer, and he was going to get it.

After all, the city liked to keep this a secret. They treated it like it would cause a big collapse. Rupert had no care about what the city claimed. They'd offered him lots of money to quit his research, but he'd declined.

He pulled a book off the shelf. However, he'd noticed one was missing. No one knew when the city had actually cut the station off for good, as most trains there were rerouted silently, and most people didn't notice. As a result, nobody knew the exact day, or even the year it was finally cut off. It seemed that Rupert had, in fact, figured something out. The book for the 14th to the 20th of July 1968 was missing.

He'd thought it'd be simple, but now he realized it'd be far harder to get to it. He also realized that the city had, in in its ordinary behavior, put this book in front of his face the whole time. Ever since he'd moved there, the city had had a vault in the library. This vault was supposedly accessible to the public, though they carefully guarded the code to it. You had to crack it yourself, and the hints given were so complicated, that no one even bothered with the two-hundred page file on how to decode it.

Rupert had found the lost link, right in front of his eyes, locked in a vault he couldn't access.

That was an interesting story! I like the description of the strange city, it gets me thinking about why they designed it in such a way.

 

[notabitail]

That was an interesting story! I like the description of the strange city, it gets me thinking about why they designed it in such a way.

There's literally a backstory to everything in there and now it's sitting in the back of my head.

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

There's literally a backstory to everything in there and now it's sitting in the back of my head.

 

[Isabella7Storm5]

There's literally a backstory to everything in there and now it's sitting in the back of my head.

It will consume you

All that writing is, is the race to take the ideas from your brain and put them on paper before they fester and grow and ultimately end in complete destruction.
Once you accept the task it is already too late.

And yeah now I’m gonna have to harass you for the backstory cuz they’re like my favorite thing ever

 

[notabitail]

It will consume you

All that writing is, is the race to take the ideas from your brain and put them on paper before they fester and grow and ultimately end in complete destruction.
Once you accept the task it is already too late.

And yeah now I’m gonna have to harass you for the backstory cuz they’re like my favorite thing ever

 

[Eroica]

Same

 

[Somewhere_In_The_Clouds]

Spoiler: Lost Link

“Can you tell me what’s the matter?” He was concerned.

Thing paced around the room, circling on the rug before heading in the direction of the kitchen, when she reached the table, she made a sharp turn to head back towards the fireplace to repeat the process. She scrunched her nose and seemed to ignore Stephen’s question.

He sighed and leaned against the wall to watch her.

The room was mostly silent as she paced. Stephen glanced out the window after a moment beginning to wonder how long they’d be here for. Thing started muttering to herself and froze halfway across the house.

She spun around abruptly and looked him directly in the face, “Why can’t I remember?” she asked flatly.

“Remember what? You’ll need to be more specific if you’d like my help.”

“Anything! Everything!”

“That’s not-“

“Something is missing Stephen, or many things, I just can’t remember. Was I always like this or was there something before?” She closed her eyes. “Can you imagine what it feels like to think something important is missing but know there’s no way or no one to help you find it?” She dropped onto the floor where she stood and flopped on her side without opening her eyes. “I hate this feeling.”

I had about three different "this would work if we stretch the prompt" but this is the one you get

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

Well here you go. Clouds said to throw this prompt here so I'm going to:

"Lost link"

That's it.

"Thanks to some brave explorers, we have now found the lost link between the t-rex and the chicken!" Dr. Beakly exclaimed.
Lost link, can you believe this guy? I tucked in my fwingrs. This perch behind the curtains wasn't going to hide me long.
"Honds!" Beakly pointed to the screen. A bird, much like Flatty here beside me, huddled in a cage on the bright device. "And they have come back from extinction!"
"Yeah!" I stuck my head up. "We're here to haunt your little dreams, you-"
"Storm!" Iceberg shoved me down. "Not yet!"
"It's 'Eye of the Storm,'" my beak clicked.
"Shush!" Volcano shifted his fwingrs. "I think you got his attention."
I slipped out from under Iceberg. Mr. Beakly stepped away from his invisible crowd, peering at the dark stage below us. Shrugging his shoulders, he returned to his mic.
"This," he pointed at the screen, "is-"
"Some hostage!" I shouted.
Mr. Beakly spun around.
"Now, you've done it," Flatty gasped.
"I will finish it, too," I rocked my bum with every word.
"Who's there?" Mr. Beakly made his way toward our hiding spot.
"I am!" I took to the air, fwingrs flared. "Tell me where you're hiding Pavement!"
"Pave-" he glanced at the screen. "Oh," he turned to me. "That's your friend, isn't it?"
"Me-" I gasped, "friends with that guy? I could never be dead enough to make that wild dream come true!"
"Storm!" voices chimed from the curtain.
I tucked my head in. Oopsy. "Not friend, but a sibling to a friend. Return him and I'll leave your bogus show alone!"
Mr. Beakly chuckled like most villains do when they secretly have the upper hand.
"Stop that!" I swooped down and slapped him on the head.
"Gotcha!" he threw a hand up.
"Missed," I flew past.
He pulled out a shrinker-sizer. "Not forever!"
I perched on the yellow gadget. "Oh, yeah?"
He shook me off, but I refused to let go.
"Having some troubles?" I angled my horn at his face. Humans don't like to be watched.
"Noo..." Beakly smiled. "I don't have troubles."
"You don't?" I looked at him with both eyes.
"That's right. I don't." He lowered his gadget and set it on the stage. "I have dilemmas instead."
"Mm, dilemmas, those sound fun!" I shifted my feet. "How do they go?"
"Like..." he turned slightly. "This!" He spun back, dropping a net over me.
"Ack!" I jumped up. The net held me down. "Help!" I clicked.
Iceacle and Volcano rushed to the scene. Reaching Beakly first, Iceacle opened her horn, spraying him with ice. Volcano followed her lead and sprayed Beakly with fire, melting Iceberg's ice. Perfect. Even working together, they still messed things up.
Flatty landed next to me. Thank the feathers above. I'm rescued.
"I know you don't like my brother," he whispered, "but did you really have to say it like that?"
I blinked my horn. Hold on, he ain't thinking of not helping me, is he? "Uh... I don't know..."
Flatty stepped back. His beak shifted.
"Flatty?"
"Being nice is part of saving others."
"Are you serious?" My fwingrs dropped the net onto my face. Shoving them back up, I blinked my horn again.
"Yeah," he said, turning toward Iceberg and Volcano in their hopeless battle. "You're no better than Mr. Beakly."