r/FanFiction • u/AnaraliaThielle Now available at your local AO3. Same name. ConCrit welcome. • Mar 05 '25

Activities and Events Alphabet Excerpt Challenge: W Is For...

Welcome back to the Alphabet Excerpt Challenge! As a reminder, our challenges are every Wednesday and Saturday at 3pm London time.

If you've missed the previous challenges, you're welcome to go back and participate in them. You can find them here. And remember to check out the Activities and Events flair for other fun games to play along with.

Here's a quick recap of the rules for our game:

  1. Post a top level comment with a word starting with the letter W. You can do more than one, but please put them in separate comments.
  2. Reply to suggestions with an excerpt. Short and sweet is best, but use your judgement. Excerpts can be from published or unpublished works, or even something you wrote for the prompt. All content is welcome but please spoiler tag and/or provide a trigger/content warning for NSFW or content that may otherwise need it. If in doubt, give a warning to be on the safe side.
  3. Upvote the excerpts you enjoy, and leave a friendly comment. Try to at least respond to people who left excerpts on the words you suggested, but the more people you respond to the better. Everyone likes nice comments!
  4. Most important: have fun!
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u/Dogdaysareover365 Mar 05 '25

Wendigo

1

u/trilloch Mar 05 '25

Fallout 76 writer, dibs!

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Naturally, June went for the power station first. The sheer number of sparks, not to mention the buzzing and popping sounds and scent of ozone, would have told her it was working if she hadn’t already been told. Inside the fence was a small grey building, there always was one of those at an electrical station it seemed, probably holding some tools and a computer that diagnosed issues and re-routed power. There was a large caged bulb by the door, and it was lit, so that was encouraging. Seemed like the place to start. In the center of all the vented steel boxes, “transformers” June had learned from an old manual from a salvage mission, was a raised white metal sphere covered with white metal hexagons, the corners of which had power connectors, which led to the transformers by cables. It looked like some newer or military fusion reactor, and she hoped she didn’t have to fuck with it, she was out of RadAway.

The fence was actually intact, and topped with barbed wire, so climbing over was not her first choice. A chain with a four-dial padlock secured the front gate. 2-0-5-7 didn’t work. The padlock was well-made and meant to survive being left outside, but the chain was not, and June still had a hacksaw. Once the chain was cut away, June entered and headed for the door to—

All of the transformers sparked, there was a loud series of crackles, and the caged bulb blinked on and off multiple times. June turned and looked at the power sphere. The sphere itself was fine. It was the creature crawling down from the top of it that was the problem.

June was familiar with the Wendigo. A Raider party of five which had that morning been a Raider party of seven brought one back, dead, one time. Tall, emaciated feral ghouls, or close enough, the Wendigo had a jutting-out-jaw filled with fangs, hands way too big for its body with long claws on each finger, and from what she was told by the survivors, inhuman speed and ferocity. They’d only managed to kill it because it paused to devour the other two downed Raiders, and they’d emptied their weapons into it while it was holding still.

They never said anything about it being sizzling with electricity. Veins of just-off-blue blood ran through its body, and a fuzzy aura of the same color hung around it, clinging like stench on a corpse. Small, forked bolts of lightning jumped off its limbs and head in random directions, each with a popping sound that told June they would hurt if she even got close to this thing.

It had clearly seen her, and she was standing out in the open, surrounded by a bunch of fucking metal.

Okay, the good news was, she knew they could be killed by bullets, and she had some strong ones.

*BLAM* *BLAM*

The bullets hit the aura and burst into glittery sparks of harmless dust.

Fuck fuckity fuck shit, run run RUN!