Carrot and Stick: How to Assist Law Enforcement While Breaking Several Magical Laws - Chapter XVI
Ehhhh, no, too long.
***
Iris reached into the pockets of her grey coat and grabbed a small totem. It was one of the only ones she had left, but this moment called for its use, didn’t it?
Before her was her enemy and she wasn’t going to hold back against them... her?
She didn’t want to think of herself as too prejudiced, but when sh...
Hmm, one or two more chapters, then the end of this volume! I have suuuch a cool idea for the next arc! Big powerup, too!
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“What do you mean, the portal was done?” he asked.
His secretary, a young--mundane--man that he’d only just hired recently flinched. He had been an intern at one of the larger corporations in Fortress ENE for almost two years when he had been sniped away from them because he had talent...
He wished that he had some more equipment with him. There were more expensive but more accurate sensing devices that would let him pinpoint the nature of the magical residues they were dealing with. As it was, he had one device, his own healing sense of magic, and Carrot.
Not exactly the ideal toolkit, but it was what he had.
Silas knelt next to a swing set with a slide mounted to the side of it. It...
Emily was anxious until the moment Aurora and Trinity returned. “How did it go?” she asked.
Aurora nodded seriously. “It went well. We got three devices into the warehouse. I don’t think any of them were noticed?” She said the last while glancing at Maple.
The little beaver-girl blinked, then jumped with an ‘oh!’ and scrambled to turn on the radio-like device she’d put together. The room filled with feedback, and Map...
Interlude - Francisca Ojou the Nightshade Part Two
She executed a textbook-perfect lunge, the tip of her glowing sword skewering into and through the ice elemental, then in a move that was very much not in the book, she twisted around, starting at the hip before using her entire upper body to move her sword in a sharp arc.
The blade made a beautiful sound, like hot metal quenched in water, as if carved its way out of the elemental’s side.
So, I'm still on my Forced Vacation Time (There's only three Sleepy Birds right now, but they conspired together, and now I have three days off in a row. Today is the last of those, so expect a buncha chapters tomorrow at the stroke of midnight... well, I'll start writing them then, but like, soon after?) and... yeah, been a little bored?
Mostly I've been playing Old School Runescape and some Helldivers 2 and... thinking?
It wasn’t long before Gomorrah arrived and with her the entire army.
There were some large gates around the city, but most of them were for smaller overland transports, so a larger set of doors further in had to be open to let the army column enter. It all happened rather efficiently, though. The militia cleared out, and soon enough Juno was chatting with the local c...
Hmm, trying to write fights in a new way? More like the... manga-style battle shounen fights? idk what that's called. Anyway, lemme know what you think!
***
The doe slammed a hoof into the ground, and the paint bottles on her back rose up, then exploded.
Carrot pulled the brim of her hat down to protect her face as paint and glass flew everywhere. UV lamps and little table-top decorations fell off tables and one of the stools tipped over...
The next couple of weeks went well. Silent, sure, but well. The weather was growing warmer, and with that the mood across the city seemed to be on the rise. It was a... not a good time, necessarily, but not the worst time in the life of a City Nineteen citizen.
The early harvests were in, and the price of many staple goods were down.
I was keeping an eye on such things, of course. My business was selling food, and when people ...
Silas didn’t think he’d ever entered a nail salon before. It just wasn’t his kind of place. He was pretty sure there were at least two of them within the magic community, because he had a vague memory of seeing them in passing, but other than the occasional visit to a barber, he wasn...
I stepped out of the Bastion to Fortunate Son shouting about how the lead singer wasn’t a senator’s son. There was probably some level of irony there, but I was a bit too preoccupied with piloting a multi-ton mecha to really deep dive that at the moment.
The MEOW was the mech of choice for the moment. It was tankier, and even if it didn’t pack quite as much of a punch, there didn’t seem to be that
2026-01-14 16:58:53 +0000 UTCView Post
Gonna need some suggestions/ideas for names for Fran and Becky at the end there. Anything cool? Thematic? Just... fitting? idk!
***
Ernest hated few things, but high among those was his name. It either made people think he was truly honest, living up to the name, or they joked that he had a name better suited to an octogenarian.
In any case, it was a weird thing to be focused on when he should, instead, be focused on the a...
My friends started to look, but while they did that, I... kind of just wandered off to a corner and stood there, staring at a wall.
The wall was interesting, granted. It had been painted over with a sort of mural, images of knights with swords and shields on the walls of a castle and before it. Each level of the mural was a different story. People walking towards the castle and the knights... defending it?
Also, art! Just some early sketches by the very super talented Zara! Probably gonna go with the version with the bow, and the Mister Roger's blouse! Oh, she has a portfolio: https://zarwilsonart.format.com/
“Quiet,” Deadline murmured. She carefully pulled a sharp bit of glass out of the bottom of the window-frame, then reached into the little backpack she was carrying to pull out a bundle of cloth that she draped over the will.
She was the first in, moving as if she broke into homes every morning.
Becky glanced over to Fran, then grinned before moving up to help her. “Need a hand, my’lady?”
Libre seemed to think that everything was going well, and Cecilia was very much of the opinion that they were a hair’s breadth away from being chewed on.
“We need more ammo at station six!” she shouted our the constant din of gunfire even as she scampered along the inside of one of their exterior trenches. She turned, then sighed as she saw two militia members stumbling over with a crate of 7.62 between them. They fell, spilling...
Becky was so ready for some action, which was a little weird, because it was like, five AM, and usually she’d either be very much asleep or about to go to bed. Waking up at four in the morning was not something she did.
Still, she was hyped as hell, so it didn’t matter.
Actually, it wasn’t just that she was hyped, she was also a little... stressed? She wasn’t too used to feeling that.
Carrot made it home around noon-ish. She might have hoped to spend more time with Mister Silas learning magic, but he had been almost nodding off on his chair after two hours, and so she had bundled him up in even more blankets and tucked him in bed.
She didn’t need her new friend and magic teacher getting properly sick. He did tell her to show up again tomorrow at noon to start their searc...
Aurora sat on a couch and tried not to appear too bored, or too worried. Not that she was all that worried. The thing was... how could she put this?
She wasn’t doing anything, and that bothered her.
Big Sister Emily had gotten them into an apartment across the street, and now they were spying on the building where that suspicious woman had hidden herself. That was fine. It made sense to her, and to her sisters.
Just wanted to know what people think of Carrot and Stick so far?
I'm having fun with it (Obviously) but I'm genuinely curious to see what everyone else thinks! I've gotten some fantastic feedback, and lots of good ideas on the discord, but I could always use more <3
There's art on the way as well, but it's not done yet!
Silas woke up the next day feeling, if anything, worse.
Part of that was physical. Sure, the Ordo’s training had included plenty of running and some amount of physical exercise. The Ordo Venator was one of the only ones that actually insisted that its members learn the basics of some martial arts. Partly to help its members keep fit and partly because there may be a time against certain daemons where knowing how to throw a punch could come i...
He’d been in his share of suspicious bars, of course. It was part of the job. In fact, it was so much part of the job that those who knew very little about actual detective work tended to romanticize this part at their own leisure.
The pub was called the Wellspring under previous ownership. It was just a few blocks over from the exclusion zone around the Ditz dungeon and had been a popular destination f...
Minor edit to previous chapters: Carrot is wearing a fingerless glove on her right hand... for reasons~
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Carrot didn’t know what was going on, but she did know that she didn’t like it very much. She was on the floor, face pressed into the floor, and head spinning.
“Carrot!” Mister Silas said. She felt hands touching her back, and noticed that the wizard was on his knees next to her. Aw! He was helping, that was nice! ...
