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Round two! With a minor adjustment to the word limit. The objective here is to write a story a few words at a time, working on the fly. Periodically, I'll post and update with the complete story up to it's current point.

For those of you who haven't done this before, here are the rules:

1. Each new post adds a segment of story to the post previous to it.

2. The segment must be *exactly* twenty words, even if this cuts off the segment mid sentence.

3. You may not double post and continue your own segment.

4. You can add comments and such in your posts, just make sure people know they are separate from your story addition, such as changing text colour or adding "OOC" to the front.

5. This is a story, not a role play, so everyone will be working with the same characters as they appear or disappear. This is not the place for original characters that you don't want other people to mess around with.

Ninja posting can happen. Don't panic. In that case, just continue according to the last post. It's hardly going to be smooth sailing the entire time. You can change perspectives and such from time to time, but please don't ignore someone else's post since a lot of this is improvisation, and working with what you get handed.

Off we go!


=====================

Leo stared at the blood coating his knife, his hands trembling, his breathing shallow and rapid. What had he done?

It was all a dream, of course. It had to be. He pinched himself, hard, to make sure, but

((Oh boy. This might be interesting.))

there it was. Hernando, the most feared octopus swordsman in the archipelago, bleeding out in front of him. How

many men and women had been sliced open by his blades? Or skewered on his hooks? Leo was not a


can't say I saw that coming.

warrior, had just bumped into Herando. Stepped on a tentacle by accident, really. And then, with hardly a warning, he

was holding a severed tentacle, eye to bulbous eye with someone who was. He reached a radical conclusion: Hernando had

((balls. hold on)

(keep going; ignore this post))

been taking drugs, and couldn't watch where he was going. In his inebriated state, he was a mere shadow of

his grand reputation. He had walked into the knife, he must have, but that still left Leo with a bloody

cephalopod who no doubt had students who would now be seeking to avenge his... let us be blunt, dishonorable death.

The realization left him where he started, staring at a bloody knife and willing his feet to move. Hernando would

not be soon forgotten. The story of the Duel Atop the Waterfall was still being told in every tavern from

Brunsai to Gadilee. There, old salters would clatter their chipped pints of rum together while listening to the legendary ballad.

There was no choice. Leo needed to get a rocketship. A rocketship to Mars. Pigfarts was the only place he

heard could offer interplanetary travel. However, when he arrived there by steamboat, he found the place a hoax. He turned

and saw a humanoid shadow on the horizon. Not a hoax, it seemed, but the directions had been. Then there


this is getting a little bit silly.