The new fashion was stripes, carved out of flesh and formed from the shadows that fell into the void. She didn't like it. She didn't like any of the really extreme fashions, and just from looking at it she could already tell that it would reduce her speed and strength and make some basic tasks difficult. But her job was to appear in the latest fashions as she sold them to others, so she dutifully signed up for a slot on the schedule to have the surgery. At least she knew for certain that all the normal extras would be saved and preserved to be replaced when fashion dictated, or at her request if necessary. The chunk of forehead worried her, and she talked quite a while with the surgeon until he agreed to shift the rest of her face forward instead of risking removal of part of a hemisphere. They could say anything about how effective the reroutes were, and how people discovered and kept new talents, but she wasn't so desperate for a job that she'd have cosmetic brain surgery! The slashes along the eyes and mouth, she acquired approval to imitate with temporary shadow tattoos--it would be another product sell for those who couldn't afford a full body job. When the work was done, she thought she looked like a mime in an old flattie horror movie, but her commissions went up when she went out on the floor, and soon she saw rich women walking around like a horror-show themselves. She didn't flaunt it, herself. She knew that some mugger would think it meant she was rich, and disappointing someone with a weapon held to your throat was a very bad idea. So she always covered up with base makeup for her face and wore clothing that would conceal the absences that other fashionistas flaunted.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/91240080@N03/10327289076/
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Eh.

How do you get the name Discoball? Well, you take drugs and go on a really bad trip, as my grandpappy would say, and you bash your face into a mirror. Let's not get into the deep-level analysis of what the drugs brought up, eh? Let's just leave it at this: now I'm straight-edge, and I've got a face cracked with scars that looked pretty ugly. I got sick of the pitying glances, so I went with inserts and piercings and tats and...well, pretty much anything I could think of. I don't get pitying glances anymore. It might hurt my job prospects some, but let's face it (ha-ha, see, I've still got a sense of humor), nobody was going to hire me for a receptionist even before I got a face full of mirror and the resulting jigsaw of scars. Basic medical wouldn't cover the plastic surgery to fix it, and besides, the idea of getting surgery to fix how I look felt--wrong. I came back to myself with a little bit more than a fucked-up face, you see. Well, I guess you don't see. I haven't showed you yet. Let's fix that.


Inspiration: "Here to Stay" - Korn
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Could be paranormal powers, could be mental for having crossed beyond, could be from some of the "inserts." Could be supervillain, superhero, or just a person with some extras. Eh.

It's quite hard to stand out, these days. Some go the reverse, shroud themselves almost like dark age Muslims with their hijabs, or they wear the full length robes of the Catholic popes of those times, full of gold embroidery and white, but still so shrouding that everyone inevitably wonders what's underneath them. Others go for minimalism, reducing their limbs down to the necessity for life support (zero), shrinking the torso as much as possible, and deskulling themselves so you can see the dance of neurons across their brains. Or so they say. Really, you just see whatever their programing replaced it with. Some of them have pretty nice conceptual ones, although the tweener with rainbows and unicorns shooting across her skull cap made me want to vomit. Sure, it's all reversible, but what kind of genetic precursor lets their successor do that?


Inspiration: Google tutu -> http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/04/hairy-man-in-tutu-raises-money-for-breast-cancer/
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Setting, I guess.

He knew he'd made the big time when they took away his hands. Oh, sure, eyes--eyes (one eye, psychologists said it was important to keep one original eye, even if it did look at the world from behind a streaming screen) came first. That was pretty much the hiring bonus. Here, have this check, go out and get drunk--take some sober-up and come in tomorrow for surgery at 2 PM. Ears, well, ears were optional. Not that much more useful than an earpiece, really, and you might even lose some hearing ability with it. He'd opted in. But hands--you didn't get hands until you were going to be accessing some seriously high-level stuff! His girlfriend wasn't as excited.

Inspiration: Thinking I hadn't done a body-mod one in a while.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: And then he loses his job/company goes under, and what's a poor heavily modded dude to do?

The sweat beaded along the ridges of her spine, rolling in the clefts beneath the armor plates and making the soft-born skin there itch maddeningly. The first thing most newborn tried to do was itch between their scales when they first went on-mission. The older ones knew that no matter what, they couldn't quite get the angle right, though an abrading shower after the mission would sluice away the sweat before it could dry out to an irritating salt residue. The younglings, though, still itched despite getting lectured again and again. She turned her eyes to the newest. Sure enough, the one at the far corner was surreptitiously rolling back and forth in the dirt, as if she wouldn't notice. As if it would do any good. She hissed.

Inspiration: I was thinking about summer and heat and sweat, I suppose.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Retrofitting the body. Could be aliens or just bod-mod