We've come a long way, haven't we, SmackDowners? You've all written some pretty kickass stories so far, and you've all put a part of yourselves into ol' SD:MMR. So thank you for that, and I hope you're having at least a little bit of fun.

Let's welcome back elveloy, coming on in from Exile.

elveloy, used to living in the harsh, unforgiving lands of Australia, found her Exile experience to be a cakewalk. She'd gotten in a lot of reading and writing time, had even trained a snake to give her a pedicure, and now intends to take some ass and kick some names.

Well, elveloy, how was it?

"Pleasant. It's always a joy to receive a free, all-inclusive vacation," elveloy says.

I hear that, yo. And now let's welcome back bloodsword and AllanFisher, who—in a surprising twist—are both coming back from Redemption Island because I dun fucked up in not having a maximum word count for the third duel.

Welcome to The Merge, SmackDowners. And also the Final Six!

Ready to kick some asshole? Drop those buffs and put on these nice, clean, new ones. Your new name is Hermaphrodudecoreity, but at this point it's irrelevant.

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Prompts will be down at the bottom of this part.

Word count is: 3,500–4,000 words.

Due to the twist in allowing two back from Redemption, there will be two losers here—the two lowest-scoring people—and they will both be eliminated.

As usual, submit your stories to [email protected] in .doc or .docx form.

The deadline for this round will be September 9th at 6:30 PM EST/10:30 PM UTC.

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Judges, the people you will be judging this round are the following:

OutrageousOllo - AngusEcrivain, Reffster, bloodsword

JettaFrame - sigrist, elveloy, AllanFisher

HardeeBurger - Reffster, AllanFisher, bloodsword

MadMikeMarsbergen - AngusEcrivain, sigrist, elveloy

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This round is called "The Merge" for more than one reason. Yeah, the tribes have merged, and that's cool, but the cooler meaning is the following:

Quite literally drawn from a hat, you've been randomly given two sub-genres—one each from the -Punk and non-Punk categories. You must "merge" them for your story this round.

AngusEcrivain - GreenPunk + Dying Earth

sigrist - SteamPunk + First Contact

elveloy - MythPunk + Horror SF

AllanFisher - AcidPunk + Theological SF

Reffster - CyberPunk + Romantic SF

bloodsword - TeslaPunk + Time Travel

A lot of crazy shit there, eh? If you don't know what any of those are, I direct you to The Ooorah Guide to Sci-FI Sub-Genres, which I've attached as an external link. Be warned: AcidPunk is my name for TransistorPunk.

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Now, for the prompts:

1. You must utilize Peter, Paul and Mary's cover of the classic folk song, "500 Miles." I leave it to you how you do it.

https://youtu.be/ADN1lLEp3H0

2. You must choose two of the following images, to be used however you wish:

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Sound good? Get writing!