Young Writers Society

"Sudden doesn't sound good," Taber said. He didn't have the slightest clue what Magic was talking about, but he thought it'd be rude to ask. Pretending to know things wasn't hard, right? "Can we get you out of the ship? I'm not really sure where you are."

Magic sadly shook their head. "You can't do anything. I've got to sort all of this out myself, and I'm not sure how long this is going to take." They crossed their arms and rested their chin in the cusp of one of their hands. "Hmmm. How to explain this to someone who's from a place that isn't tech savvy? Uhh, okay, how about this: take a regular ship, and infuse it with magic. It's literally everywhere in the ship now - the wood, the mast, the rooms - but it's not like an actual physical thing you can remove. It's just everywhere you can think of. Now replace that with me, since I'm the Personification of Magic, and maybe you can see why I'm struggling a bit right now? I can't just take myself out and put me somewhere else. I've got to take my entire self back out of this ship, and then I'll be able to send you guys back to your homes."

The wolf took a few seconds to process that. Then he stood on his tiptoes, horror creeping in raised hackles and a grimace. "I don't want to be inside you!" Taber said. "How do we get you out of here?"

"We don't know," James answered, his voice still the cool neutral it had been before. "We just have to wait until Magic figures it out. Until then, we just try to survive."

"I mean, it's not that bad," Magic hurriedly said, a sheepish tone lingering in their voice. They still didn't look in James's direction. "This ship is my baby. I've made a lot of cool adjustments to it lately, so you've got a bunch of things to do when you're waiting for me to figure this out. You just, uh, have to be prepared for really bizarre things to suddenly happen."

James stared blankly out past the screen. "Oh, joy," he said dryly.

"I can do surviving!" said Taber, still on his tiptoes. "And waiting! But, uh, this makes me a little bit uncomfortable. I'm also not a big fan of super weird things."

"I'm sorry, Taber," Magic apologized, sheepishly rubbing the back of their neck. They thought for a moment, and then promised, "After I get this all fixed and send you guys back to your homes, I'll make it up to you! I'm not sure how yet, but I'll cross the road when I get there."

They looked around at the people present in the hallway.

"In the meantime, I'll point you guys in the direction of something you might enjoy - I've got a holodeck on the next floor, along with some more stationary virtual reality things."

Maahes immediately perked up. "A holodeck?" he repeated, eyes shining with joy. "Like in Star Trek?"

They grinned. "Exactly like that! I'm glad that I'm not the only Trekkie here."

Now Runi's eyes were glittering too. "I have no idea what a Trekkie is, but I'm down for some good old-fashioned sparring with a hologram!" She cracked her knuckles. "I've been holed up in Haggar's ship for aaaaggeees. I could really use the change of pace."

Sune turned to Maahes. "You've mentioned that thing before," he said, a look of confusion on his face. "Same thing with Colonel Sheppard, and a couple of other personnel from Earth. What's star-trek?"

Maahes smiled even more at the comment. "I can show you when we get back," he said. "I think McKay brought a whole collection, so me, you and Arin can have a movie marathon-"

"Actually, this place has a lounge, too," Magic interrupted. "And it's stocked with whatever someone could ever want to watch. If it exists in any reality, it's there."

They gave a nervous glance in Runi, Maahes, and Sune's directions. "Just, uh, stay away from Voltron: Legendary Defender, Runi, and Maahes and Sune, don't watch Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, or Stargate: Universe. And probably Stargate: Origins, but that's a prequel, so I don't know how much that would apply."

James didn't know what magic was talking about. All he knew was that it was stuff that wasn't from his world, and was probably some kind of technology he was unfamiliar with. He had no frame of reference and no context clues to understand all of the words they were using. Trekkie, holodeck and movie meant nothing to him. The only thing he could understand was that somewhere in the holodeck, sparring was included. But it sounded like Maahes and Sune wanted to go to the lounge or something.

He sighed quietly. It annoyed him that they had an indeterminable amount of time to burn before the trouble came. He didn't want to just be... idle.

"Is there a map of this place?" he asked. If he was going to go places, he didn't want to just wander aimlessly until he found one.

Dante stood back from the group, not offering any sort of comment on the information that Magic was revealing. Her face gleamed in excitement, or rather- the parts of her face that showed did, and it was very obvious that she couldn't conceal her elation with the prospect of exploring the ship.

"What's this virtual reality thing?" said Taber. "Also, a map would be nice! I like maps!"

"Hmmmm," Magic mused, thinking over Taber's first question. "I'm not sure how useful this explanation would be, but virtual reality is kind of like a fake reality. It's not real, but it looks like it is, and you can pretty much do whatever you want with it. I may or may not have used it to insert myself into stories I like in the past, but you can do more with it, too."

"Like sparring," Runi helpfully added. An almost devilish grin was spreading across her face at the thought.

"Like sparring," Magic agreed. "Though I'm a little worried about how eager you are to fight people?"

Runi shrugged. "It's a stress reliever."

Magic gave Runi one last glance before turning their attention to Taber and James. "And to answer your questions about the maps, I can pull one up on this screen! That's not that hard to do. I'm pretty sure there's a room somewhere that has tablets with more maps on them, but it might be a good idea to just take a picture-"

They frowned.

"None of you have phones, do you? Shoot. Well, there's goes that plan. Just, uh, try to memorize it then." A map suddenly appeared on the screen beside Magic, several rooms accented by little red dots. It looked like there were multiple floors to the building, but Magic only paid attention to the one where the red dots were concentrated. They pointed at two in particular. "There's the lounge, and there's the holodeck."

James immediately stepped closer to the screen, looking closely at the map, doing just that: memorizing it. "What else is there?" he asked.

Dante silently scanned the map, downloading it into her databases. Thankfully, she had disabled the brightness on her scanner.

"That's a lot like dreams, isn't it?" Taber said. "I dunno, I feel like it'd be kinda weird to have a dream in a dream."