Young Writers Society

Once upon a time in the land of young writers,
a Junior Mod door-to-door sold Fiction Log Lighters.
The economy was tough, though, and profits were down,
and despite his best efforts, the J-Mod succumbed to a frown.

Then to much surprise, he heard jingles and jangles!
There were hoof-clicks and fawn bleats and bam-boom-bum-bangles!
To the roof set the J-Mod to see what had landed,
and with shock and great awe, he discovered old Santa!

Unconscious was he, where the sleigh team had crashed;
on his face were light bruises, on his chin was a gash!
"Oh, Santa!" cried @Lumi as he bandaged him up,
"Christmas is ruined!" he yelped and threw his hands up.

To @Big Brother ran @Lumi to find reinforcements!
He found @Iggy and @Audy and old @StellaThomas.
"Big Brother!" he yelled with a passionate plea,
"You all have to rally the writers to help me!"

They plotted and schemed and spent hours on planning,
and new writers joined in and began a scheme-scanning.
"Aha!" shouted @Birkhoff as he held up a scroll,
"This way we'll get presents to the young and the old!"

Young Writers joined hands as the snow started falling,
and watched in the streets as the mods came a-calling.
This Christmas is in trouble, you discover with shock,
and it's all up to you to get Santa back on the clock.

YWS Christmas is in trouble, and The YWS Team needs YOUR help to save the day! There are several missions that you can join in order to save Christmas!

1. @Rosey%20Unicorn and @SparkToFlame are decorating resources and experimenting with an untested Hall-Decker 9001. When the machine goes haywire, it's up to you to save Resource Road from utter destruction!

2. @Lumi and @Griffinkeeper have discovered an airborne Christmas Virus that is infecting unsuspecting YWSers. It's your job to stop the Humbug from ruining the holiday cheer!

3. @Iggy and @Birkhoff are rallying troops to take on TeenageWriters in the annual Holiday Hungry Games. If you choose to accept, you must pillow-fight against friend and foe alike in order to claim victory for YWS!

4. @StellaThomas and @Lauren2010 have sewn a building-sized plushie that has come to life and is wreaking havoc in the Fiction District. It's your job to stop Julius before the holidays come apart at the seams!

5. Finally, @AriaAdams and @Elinor%20Brynn are investigating Storybook City where people are mysteriously freezing solid. After finding an open-and-frosty copy of Frozen in Aria's library, they believe that Elsa is on the loose and out of control.


You may choose which mission you want to carry out, or mix and match. You are as much a star as you want to be. Be sure to follow the rules:
1. Keep it family-friendly.
2. Include others by tagging them (i.e. @Name)
3. Be considerate of others.
4. Have tons of fun!

Beware the Harfluptuous Humbug

"I don't know what candy cane you've been licking," teased Lumi, "but your brain must be fried because my mission is ten times harder than your little Falalalala-o-tron."

@Rosey%20Unicorn humphed and turned her back, hair slapping Lumi in the face. "I'll have you know that my team of resource mods spent days designing and fine-tuning the Hall-Decker 9001. Why, even @Kyllorac gave it a stamp of Science Approval...and you know how rare those stamps are.

"I do. They cost like forty-nine cent at the post office." He crossed his arms. "Anyway, I'm teamed up with @Griffinkeeper on this one. Even though it's perilous, we're sure to have it done by sundown."

Rosey made a sleek face. "Would you like to wager on that?"

Lumi took a sip of his cocoa. "Alright. If my team doesn't cure the disease before you decorate Resource Road, I'll join your squad for one whole week."

"And if you cure your little sniffle before our machine triumphs, I'll clean your trophy case."

Lumi stuck out a hand. "It's a deal." They shook. "@Blackwood and @Holofernes should be here anytime now to join up with the rest of the guys down where the outbreak started. I guess I'll leave you to your...tinsel."

"Don't forget," winked Rosey, "the mistletoe."

After they left, Grif coughed to get Lumi's attention. "I didn't want to say this while you were casting lots back there, but since we received our mission, the outbreak has doubled in size."

Lumi flatlined. "Doubled...in size?"

"Yeah, as in the number of infected."

Lumi pulled out his iPhone.

"Who are you calling?"

"@Craz, @ShadowVyper, and @ScarlettFire. We're gonna need...firepower."

Grif waited patiently while @Snoink examined the disease.

"It's the strangest thing I've ever seen," Snoink said.

"All I need to know is what it is."

"It's called the Poet's Verse Nightmare," Snoink replied. "Whomever contracts it is only able to speak in rhyme.

"Is there a cure?" Grif asked.

"None that I've found. Apparently Doctor Seuss became infected at an early age and spoke like that the rest of his natural life. At least that's what wikipedia said. He wrote;

'I do not mean to seem so terse,
but my symptoms are getting worse.
If I can't control this poet's verse
then I might end up in a hearse," Snoink recited. Grif nodded solemnly.

"I see. Our best bet is to place the Poetry section under quarantine. How contagious is it?"

"It's an airborne virus that gets in your ear. As long as you can't hear the poetry; you should be safe. Be careful that you use voice to text software when you diagnose a patient; otherwise you run the risk of infection."

I looked at my phone for a moment before I answered it, wondering why @Lumi was calling me. Phone calls were rare, and usually ended in me getting dragged into some scheme he'd devised to keep from losing a bet. I muttered at my phone before answering it. "'Ello?"

"Shady!" He sounded too perky. He needed help.

"What did you do?"

"Nothing."

"Mm..." I totally believed him. "Alright. What's up?"

I casually strolled over to the table and poured myself a glass of eggnog that I'd infused with many spices. It made my head feel nice.

"Have you ever heard of the Humbug?"

"Bah?"

"Shady."

"Fine, serious. Virus. Epidemic." I figured I knew what was coming next. "So what?"

"Well, you see, I'm working on finding a cure for it. So I was thinking about who I could call to help figure this out, and you were one of the first people to come to mind."

I smirked, considering making him shamelessly flatter me. But he sounded desperate. I walked towards my couch. I was starting to get bored anyway. A new project would be a nice change of pace. "Fine."

"So you're coming?"

"Yeah. Eventually." I hung up the phone after he said a goodbye, then looked around the room. I picked up an empty Coke bottle and chucked it at where @megsug was sleeping in my recliner. I leaned over the back of the couch and hit @fortis . "Come on guys. We've got a job."

Lumi pressed the plunger on the hypodermic needle and watched, with a bit of squeamishness, as the candy cane-colored serum fled into the little YWSer's vein. "There's gotta be a non-medical cure for this." He had griped for a while now--mostly because he couldn't stand needles, but mostly because the little poets wouldn't stop slamming him.

"It does seem that these YWS diseases have non-traditional cures," said Grif.

"Like seriously," groaned Lumi. "Remember the werewolf outbreak a ways back? And we found out after Halloween that all you had to do was cut the wolf's toenails? Why can't we figure that stuff out during the epidemic?"

@Griffinkeeper put a finger to his scruffy chin and shrugged. "Maybe if we fed these guys candy canes."

"Or replaced their earrings with Christmas ornaments."

"Or read them Dickens' Christmas Carol."

"Or beat them over the head with gingerbread men."

"Or something that wouldn't get us banned."

"You never did tell me how you got back after banning yourself during the YWStival."

"It's a great story, actually. See, all I had to do was--"

"THEY'RE FASTER THAN @Blackwood. THEY WERE FASTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE BUT I'M FASTER I THINK AT LEAST I HAVEN'T BEEN CAUGHT YET PRAISE PEPPE."

"Oh. @Holofernes."

@ShadowVyper, @fortis, and @megsug looked up to the hill where @Holofernes was tumbling down, chased by a horde of foamy-mouthed infected Humbugs.

Lumi instinctively reached for his SPEW laser gun at his belt, but came up empty. "No! I left it in the camel exhibit!"

"@Snoink let Mary play with my gun, and now she's stitching together cloth diapers with holes in the butt. You wouldn't believe how much poop--"

"GRIF!" shouted @fortis, "BIGGER FISH TO FRY."

"Right!" affirmed Grif, and grabbed their entire container of peppermint serum. "We'll throw these like grenades. The fumes should fend off the Humbugs long enough for us to make a tactical escape."

Lumi had a lightbulb above his head. After a few rotations, it was snug back in its proper place in a nearby lamp. Then, he had an idea!

"That could be it! Our oversimplified tactic to beating the Humbug!" He was giddy. "THIS IS OUR TOENAILS!"

Grif lobbed a peppermint grenade over @Holofernes' head and hopped in the Jeep. "Worry about toenails later! Let's go!"

Holofernes flung himself into the jeep, vaulting over a very concerned @Craz. He sat there for several minutes, taking gasping breaths.

@ShadowVyper looked down on him, her face a cross between concern and amusement. Once he had enough energy to, Holofernes rolled his eyes at her.

"The zombies... they were reading Dante! I think they grow stronger whenever they witness masterful rhymes. I left @Blackwood with my Sword of just ire, but I don't think he's very good with sharp objects."

"Did you see anything else?" asked @Lumi, turning from the wheel. Griff turned his head around, alarmed, muttering something about fragile short stories.

"Well... I think they were going after a book," Holofernes said, slowly. "I believe it was an anthology of Ungaretti's poems."

Lumi snapped his fingers. "That's it! If they grow stronger by reading rhymes, they must hate free-form poetry."

"So all we do," @fortis said, slowly, "is throw free-form poetry at them?"

"We have to get to the speakers!" Griff shouted. "@MarbleToast might still be there setting up the audio for the parade!"

Biscuits Batchavoy turned her head from chapter 1 of her NaNo novel and set down her pencil. She'd heard a noise somewhere. Far off in the distance, true, but she thought she should still check it out. She'd upload the chapter later. It wasn't really ready yet, anyway, she thought. Much better to put it off until the last possible moment of interest she had in it.

A massive thud sounded again. Okay, Biscuits was really getting scared now. Rows of novels and short stories stretched out all the way to the horizon. Thud. Whatever was making that noise must have been far off. She hated to think how loud the noise must have been when it was right next to you. Thud. She could have sworn it was getting closer.

Thud, thud.

She saw something brightly coloured blink into existence at the horizon. What on Earth?

"Biscuits!" cried a voice.

Biscuits whirled round and spotted @StellaThomas staring at her.

"Stella?"

"Run, Biscuits!" Stella cried.

Biscuits glanced at her novel. She couldn't just leave it there to be at the mercy of whatever was thudding towards them. Thud. The bright shape, light pouring out around its edges, had almost halved the distance between itself and her.

She'd been going to rewrite it anyway.

She turned and ran, passing rows and rows of literary works that were sure to be squashed by thudding feet, or hooves, or paws. A figure caught her eye down a row marked 'SiS'.

"Rave!" Biscuits shouted.

@RavenMoonStone whipped her head around and her eyes widened, probably at the sight of Biscuits' fright.

"Rave, we have to run!" Biscuits yelled.

Raven took one look at her, then her eyes glinted and she called, "Allons-y!"

"Geronimo!" Biscuits replied.

"Oh for Gods' sakes," @Lauren2010 muttered. "Guys we have to go!"

Thud. Raven stopped in her tracks. She turned to face the bright shape. It had taken a firmer form... It sort of looked like a giant soft toy, like something from Toy Story 3.

"Now do you see why we have to go?" Stella urged.

"Wait!" Raven shouted, "@ddman18 is down there."

She pointed down the aisle towards the soft toy. A figure emerged from behind a shelf, facing towards them. Thud! It spun around and jumped a mile in shock.

"Dd!" Biscuits cried.

He spun around again to face them and started to run without questions.

Thud.

A marble throne sat in the middle of an ornately-decorated room. Moving slowly, the ever-regal King Richard lifted a hand to pet the fat tortoiseshell tabby cat, Mischief, who was currently sitting on his lap. She purred and rumbled in content as his hand dragged across her fur, though his eyes were trained on the paper in front of him. The paper read, as follows;

Dear King,
Help! The fiction district is under attack! Some giant plushie is going Godzilla on everything in here!
Love,
@Alpha

"Oh, for Chrissakes." First the virus, now this? King looked down at Mischief, giving her a pat, before getting up and setting her on the marble throne. She squeaked and meowed in protest, looking up at him with a glare in her yellow-green eyes. Now was not the time. "I'll be back, ma-ma. Hold down the fort."

With that, King grabbed his walking stick, threw on his overcoat, and began to walk out through the halls of his great castle, the tapping of his stick making an even, staccato rhythm on the tile floors. Paintings of great kings and leaders from all over the world stared down at him as he went. King stopped only to look at a single painting, click his tongue, and say,

"Hand in there, Dr. MLK, Jr." He was pointing, of course, at a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in all of his great glory.

Finally, with that done, King exited the castle, standing on the outside, looking for any signs of people. His domain sat right at the edge of the Fiction District, but he didn't see any signs of distress. Yet.

"What on earth was Alpha yelling about," he muttered, shrugging his shoulders as he continued his walk down his massive front lawn, hoping to see some kind of a struggle, hoping that this venture wouldn't turn out to be just as boring as the last one.