Agrippa

Emergency Announcement! (Not Really)

Yet again, the end of the month has caught up with me and I still need to write a lot. This has been further complicated by my neighbors remodeling their whole flat and apparently deciding that walls are no longuer in vogue, which usually shouldn't be that much of an inconvenience, but... Well, you all know about my tendency to finish editing the chapters around five a.m.

Something I'm really regretting now that the the work on said flat starts at nine a.m. 2022-08-29 10:12:44 +0000 UTC View Post

Puella Monstrum Madoka Moecha – Chapter 5 – Sayaka’s Further Inquiries on Monstergirl Biology

Sayaka—The Morning After

“What the heck?!” Hitomi yells at me for what feels like the hundredth time.

Which… well, we left the hospital (by which I mean I fled and she chased me) about ten minutes ago, so… about ten times per minute…

Yup. Seems about right.

“Would you answer me already?!” she says for… I don’t know. Maybe a third of the times? Wait, no, that’s three ‘Hecks’ for every ‘Already,’ so a fou...

August's Plot Bunnies Poll

Yet again, I delayed a day in publishing the poll. In this case, it wasn't due to forgetfulness but due to my neighbors apparently deciding to reenact the destruction of the Berlin Wall throughout the week and me not sleeping a wink while desperately trying to push out the next Pure Knight chapter.

Yeah, I'm slightly sleep-deprived right now. Which will account for all the (hopefully few) missed updates once the week ends. Anyway! Once again, the poll is multiple choice, and I ...

A Pure Knight’s Natural Enemy – Chapter 5

This may come as a shock, but maybe

Wake-up Call – Chapter 51 – Fall

Crusader—Left Behind

“She isn’t there, boss,” I tell the infuriating man on the other side of the phone, my words echoing in the empty staircase.

“… Any traces of violence?” Kaiser tells me after a slight pause that is suspiciously close to the time it would take me to mutter, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ under my breath.

Yeah. Kinda been doing that for a while now.

So I focus on my ghosts and let their shared vision of Kay...

August 22th to 28th Schedule

Yet again, the end of the month nears, and there are an infinite amount of things I wanted to have done already.

Also yet again, my predictions for last week were off the mark, which I’m pretty sure isn’t a trend that will repeat itself in the current week.

Regarding the postmortem, last week more or less worked in that I wrote what I feel is a good output both in terms of quality and quantity. Wake-up Call in particular was quite a tour de force, if that’s someth...

Wordsworth – Chapter 19

“I think we can all agree that the house of mirrors was a bad idea.”

“It wasn’t myidea,” Lisa points out, tugging on my sleeve and being basically insufferable.

“I don’t point out all of your bad ideas,” I tell her as I pretend I’m not letting her drag me to wherever she damn well pleases in this dilapidated amusement park that should’ve been turned into a supervillain’s lair decades ago.

Yes, even before capes were...

Puella Monstrum Madoka Moecha – Chapter 4 – Tart’s Not Quite Heretical Adventures

Riz is elegant, agile, experienced, deadly—

“Tart! Move!”

… And slightly domineering.

Not that I dislike that.

“Tart!”

Ah! Yes! The phantom!

I throw myself to the right, dodging the slow blow by rolling on the grassy knoll of this sparse forest (oh, chestnut trees! I love chestnuts; I should treat Riz to some when autumn comes… do they eat chestnuts in Italy?), and… Wait, what was I…

Ah! Yes! The phantom!

.....

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 49 – Iroha Isn’t Doing a Porn Interview, Really

Photography is annoying.

There, I said it.

The concept is straightforward enough, isn’t it? You see something you want to… preserve, you point your camera at it, press a button, and done.

Except, not at all.

Because eyes lie. They constantly adapt to light levels, to the surroundings of the focus, to your mood, but cameras are machines. They don’t do that—or, if they do, they are only doing it according to the basest, most elementary setting...

Wake-up Call – Chapter 50 – Empire

Victor—Choice

Anti-Master training is not what most people think it is. For one thing, you can’t actually resist a Master’s power, much like you can’t resist being set on fire.

Though you can learn to stop, drop, and roll—useless as it turns out to be when you’re being cooked alive by a hellish swarm that—

Training. Anti-Master training.

The thing is, except for the more immediate applications of an offensive Master po...

August 15th to 21th Schedule

Hi there, sorry I skipped last week’s schedule, I was basically trying to frantically catch up to all the missed updates of the priorschedule, because it seems this summer is out to murder my productivity.

But, well, it’s been a few days without… healthissues (that is to say: I haven’t recently tried to unwisely salvage food from my fridge that should’ve been left for future generations to study), the visiting family is back on their continent, the...

Momo Won't Lose, Internet! – The Demon Girl Next Door [Complete]

Disclaimer: So that this story fits inside of Patreon’s Community Guidelines, it’s been revised so that it occurs in an AU where all the characters are legal adults. This includes the characters not involved in sexual events. Everybody is an adult, without a single exception. Sorry about the inconvenience.

Yuko Yoshida, also known as Dark Mistress Shamiko, also known as ‘that adorable cinnamon roll,’ also known as ‘that cute waitress who wo...

Wordsworth – Chapter 18

There once was a girl who looked into a mirror.

She had been playing with a kitten, and a flight of fancy took her to peer into the looking glass atop her chimney’s mantelpiece, where she wondered about the room on the other side and how much she would like it if the glass turned to silver mist and let her pass, how she’d love to explore and find out what the world upside down would be like.

It would be the second world she would travel to.

There was something...

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 48

The Demon Lord is a lonely existence, a being that exists merely to be defeated, to have all that they’ve worked for stripped away before they fall before the hero’s might.

But games have True Endings.

That’s an artifice that dates back to the very dawn of gaming, a way to challenge players to not just go through the obvious path, defeating challenges as they appear, but to look for the hidden keys to the underlying mystery, to, maybe, after time and again of futi...

Wake-up Call – Chapter 49

Colin has left for the morning shift, likely to seclude himself in his lab until the world starts making a modicum of sense. That is: the Tinker coffee reaches health-hazard levels.

Which means I’m currently alone in his apartment, handed the perfect opportunity to snoop and come up with some kind of blackmail material (friendly or otherwise), yet I’m not doing any of that.

Why is that, you say? Is it because I’m a good, respectful quasi-daughter? Is it because I�...

April Seventeenth – Chapter 5 – Barbara

Barbara Gordon, the first Batgirl and the only Oracle, was drunk.

It wasn’t as rare an occurrence as some may think, and not just because of the Irish stereotype. Yes, Barbara despised the alcoholic her biological father had been, yet… Yet she understood. The need to run away, to numb things. She understood that better than most.

And today… Today she had plenty of things to numb.

The… the bimbo had gone for a booty call, which shouldn’t have com...

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 47

Everyday life.

Everyday life is, by definition, uninteresting. You spend most of it going through a routine developed over the years, either submitting yourself to the whims of the educational system or bowing to your corporate overlords until you can get home and devote what little time remains to inconsequential chores or brain-soothing (in that death is, as far as we know, quite soothing to the one experiencing it) pastimes. Fiction rarely delves into everyday life for a v...

Poll Results, August 1st to 7th Schedule, and Thank You, Everyone!

So, first of all, thanks to all of you for sticking with me this far. Sometimes I get discouraged when the numbers drop unexpectedly, or when it seems like a particular chapter I’ve poured a lot into doesn’t work, or a thousand other things that someone more resilient wouldn’t even notice, but this… Well, this is kinda the anniversary of the Patreon page, and seeing how far this has gone is nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Of course, I want more, that’s a given, but ju...

Wake-up Call – Chapter 48 – Piggot Had a Plan

“Did you see the bitch?” a gruff male voice asks from right around the corner of the alley I’m hiding in. My currently enhanced hearing tells me the origin of the sound is about a head higher than mine, and I can tell he’s almost out of breath and trying not to show it.

Damn amateur. If you need to pretend this much in front of your subordinates, you don’t have as much of a grip on them as you should.

… The irony doesn’t escape me.

“No, she just va...

A Pure Knight’s Natural Enemy – Chapter 4

Japanese RPGs evolved after being inspired by the original Western tabletop pioneers in the genre. The first entries in classics such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest didn’t have much of a personality of their own, not until they managed to find their own voice, and so one could clearly see the D&D influence written all over them.

Why is it, then, that Western computer RPGs are so different from their Japanese counterparts?

There are many reasons for this—from ...

July's Plot Bunnies Poll

So, my apologies because I just realized this should’ve gone up yesterday. I warned you about how I am at keeping track of time…

Anyway, you will notice something a bit different with the poll this time around: there’s no Konosuba option.

“What?!” you’ll say. “But, Agrippa, that is one of your most popular stories despite it only having three chapters! Why would you do this? Is it because you have absolutely no idea how to balance the mess of relationships you’re g...

April Seventeenth – Chapter 4 – Dick

Dick Grayson was a man who had been defined, much like his mentor, by loss.

If somebody had asked him when he was ten years old if he would ever give up the excitement of being Robin, of regularly meeting Superman, traveling to the ends of the world, defeating evil time and again… for a single chance at a regular life with his parents? He would’ve accepted.

Without hesitation, without questions, and knowing that Bruce would understand.

Now? After so many years...

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 46

In the desolate wasteland filled with forced death marches that is the Japanese education system, there’s one shining, bright moment, an oasis, a refuge for weary hearts to rest and recover in the company of their comrades, enjoying the solidarity that can only be found in those who share trials and suffering.

I am talking, of course, about the lunch break.

It is a moment of socialization set aside so that order and caste can be properly and gleefully enforced. So tha...

Wake-up Call – Chapter 47

Colin barely has dinner at his apartment. The freezer is better stocked than his fridge, and his microwave is the thing most used in the whole kitchen.

“Can you pass the salt, please?” he says, dabbing his mouth with a red paper napkin.

Narrowing my eyes, I reach to my right and hand him the plastic disposable saltshaker. That he takes without further comment before sprinkling some of it on what is actually a very expensive frozen lasagna that would’ve tasted much...

July 19th to 24th Schedule

Whew, been a while since I did one of these, hasn’t it? Sorry about that; the truth is that I’ve been exhausted due to a mix of pushing myself too much at the end of June and the start of July, the heat wave and my nerves not letting me sleep too much, some family stuff, and… And, well, today’s July 19th.

My birthday.

And now I’m forty years old.

…

Yup, no panic attack incoming or anything like that. Really. It’s an arbitrary number th...

Puella Monstrum Madoka Moecha – Chapter 3 – Homura Gets Her Bearings

One of the first things I always do when I arrive at a new timeline is to hunt down any known witches that are weak enough not to pose too much of a threat. It gives me plenty of leeway when it comes to facing unforeseen crises later on, and it’s always a good way to gauge how my own abilities have grown—or haven’t, as the case often is.

It’s also a good first step to whatever plan I may be ruminating on. It lets me get my bearings, get back into a familiar rhythm and...

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 45

The Student Council is an ever-present enemy in nearly any high school manga—except the ones where they are the protagonists rather than the antagonist.

This shows us two things: the first one is that every young Japanese man understands, at an instinctual level, that authority, no matter how petty, is their born enemy and that any bureaucracy has been built around the ideal of crushing any aspirations to freedom and independence non-collectivist societies may or not be fou...

Wake-up Call – Chapter 46

Colin’s guest room is about as drab as his living room because, for some reason, the man whose power is obsessed with efficiency just decided that dark olive green is an excellent color for walls.

Dark tone apt to remain apparently clean for longer periods—

Oh. My. God.

No. No, I refuse to allow him to min-max interior decorating! This shall not stand! I’ll have him use pastel tones and a variety of colors according to each room’...

All Right! Fine! I Will Take You! – Chapter 44

Disciplinarian teachers are something that hasn’t survived the transition from the Showa era. Back then, the gruff, stubble-ridden, jersey-wearing, shinai-wielding gym teachers who would get hands-on with unruly students were either manly supportive of the (direly in need of a paternal figure) delinquent crowd, or comedic foils often obsessed with bloomers, but, to modern sensibilities, maybe the idea of dealing corporal punishment with an actual weapon to underage students may s...

Wake-up Call – Chapter 45

“Are you… all right?” I ask her.

And the question is stupid, something I berate myself for as soon as it leaves my lips, but I still need to say the words to beg her to tell me…

She nods, her chin briefly digging in the crown of my head as I lie on top of her, unwilling to move away from her embrace.

Ah, right. She lost her voice after that first shout.

Well, ‘lost’ from a certain point of view.

“Can you… can you use your swarm? To tell...