Young Writers Society

Syl yelped in surprise when he was grabbed, but allowed himself to be led nonetheless, stumbling wherever he walked. "If there are stairs you have to let me know! I can't really see them."

He hadn't expected this, to say the very least. He hoped the person who'd grabbed him would be kind enough to at least tell him when he needed to watch his step. He could only see the people around him, his vines, the racist person in the corner who seemed to be within an inch of his life, and a few insects crawling around the building. He couldn't maneuver at all. Not properly anyway.

"We have a breach in sector 4!" shouted Jerry's commander. Jerry powered up his gun and ran down a hallway to sector 4. A Blutrix drone crashed to the ground. Jerry opened fire on the invading Factored drones.

"What the heck is...? Jerry! Look out!" came a fellow member's voice. Jerry spun around to see what the threat was, and suddenly he was in the middle of a city. He didn't recognize it.

"Where the blazes am I?" he asked. Then he heard the groans, and he saw the animated corpses. "What are those?" he wondered. They staggered towards him. He pulled out his Delta-5. "Who are you! Don't come any closer!" he said to them. The only response was more groans. And they came even closer.

"I'll shoot!" he said. They ignored him, at least they ignored what he was saying, because they obviously knew he was there and were staring at him as they staggered closer. He noticed that, weirdly, they were green.

Since they were still coming closer, and he didn't like the look of them, he opened fire and blasted their heads off. the sounds of the gunshot echoed throughout the city. Jerry realized that there didn't seem to be anybody here, other than the weird green corpses that he had just exterminated.

However, just in case that someone might be home, he nonchalantly strolled into the nearest building.

Alex was quickly realizing how little there was to find in the building. She turned back to her brother and Brian, but quickly discovered that the second of the two was following the first ghost and the unnamed girl. Maybe someone should have asked for introductions at this point. Alex was having trouble keeping track of all of them.

"Where are you going?" Steve asked, rushing after Brian.

"With them," he said. "I'd be with them over him any day."

Steve let out a sigh and gave Alex a tired smile before following the two leaving, too.

That just left Alex and the second ghost.

She didn't make a move towards him. She was honestly disgusted by him, and not in the same way that Brian had been talking about earlier. Brian's version of disgusting was a childish recoil anytime something related to his brother came up; her disgust was something far more mature.

Something that bordered ever so slightly on hatred and scorn.

"She didn't make an attempt on your life," Alex softly said. "You're already dead. You were just too busy being condescending to notice."

She went to follow her twin.

Then she paused, her back turned to him.

"If I was in her shoes, I would have done more than cutting you through your stomach."

And, with that, Alex joined Steve and Brian.

Their somewhat peaceful trek back to the first floor was interrupted by the sound of gunshots coming from outside. The three of them hurried down the stairs, pushing past the ghost and the girl - with apologies only from Steve and Alex - as they tried to get to the first floor.

And, when they finally reached the bottom of the stairs, they found the shooter had entered the building.

"There are stairs," Kate grumbled just moments before heading down them. The blind kid stumbled on the first step, and she briefly pause, muttering curses under her breath as she steadied him for what was only a brief second but felt much longer. Her movements were sharp as she grabbed his arm once again and marhed him the rest of the way down the stairs.

The sound of gunshots hardly phased her. The fucking moronic piece of pretentious fae trash could find himself a ferry into hell and pay the ticket with his front teeth. It's what he deserved. She didn't call him baby-snatcher. Who the fuck gave him the right to call her anything at all? Who fucking let him talk to her? What fucker let him talk at all?

Gods bless his parents for not carving out his tongue the day he discovered pretentious poetry.

Someone shoved past her. "What's your problem?" she snapped at their retreating backs. A moment later she was in the room after them, still dragging the blind kid - she'd forgotten the unlucky fucker was there - facing the new guy. The guy with the fancy gun. Well wasn't that perfect. All this situation needed was another fucking weapon!

She released the blind kid and crossed her arms. She saw Connery come down, floating a few inches above the ground as he mimed walking behind the chick, going on a rant that she tuned out. She glared at him, the glow of her eyes brightening before she went to examine the newcomer.

"Who the fuck are you?"



Connery huffed indignantly and marched after the woman. No, not marched, strode. He was perfectly dignified in how he walked, his posture impeccable, perfectly aligned, after the woman out the door.

You're already dead. That might have been true, but that didn't mean that that insolent little girl - who looked precisely the way that she had the day she was removed from the school, with her permanent frown and those eyes like lanterns, two small spotlights ever on him - had the right to make attempts on, if not his life, his well being. There was no proof that the girl - who had most certainly been in love with him when they were students together - knew that her actions would not have immense and immediate consequences for his body. She could have, at the very least, put him in incredible pain!

"She is a foul creature," he insisted - and his voice was not a whine, let not the wench say otherwise - "She had no way of knowing her strike would do me no damage! It was she and her dark-dwelling kind that trapped me here, in this place. They've killed me! I have been murdered and still no one pays any mind to the injustice I suffered, and continue to suffer! How can you call yourself good when you are among those who would stand idly by as a soul-drinking fiend such as she walks free?"

They had made it down the stairs now, but Connery was too busy with his tangent to notice the new person, or the death glares the foul soul-drinker was giving him.

Syl was grateful, truly, to the girl who had led him down the stairs. He wished she'd been a bit gentler about it, but he couldn't truly complain. He could complain, however, about the pretentious, racist motherfucker who Syl had realized was a ghost by now, and who was trailing them all downstairs. Syl turned sharply to look at his mostly faded Whisp.

"Did you have a body and get bit or did you arrive here a ghost?" He didn't truly give a shit, but he had an idea to help his helpful acquaintance get back at him for his dreadful, horrid, racist insults.

Syl knew there was a guy who supposedly had a gun that had joined them but as far as he was concerned, taking care of this prissy ass bitch's ego was much more important. Besides, testing out if he could possess a zombie might be a fun and decently helpful experiment.

Jerry stood there in the doorway, gun slung over his shoulder, as everybody came down the stairs.

"The name's Jerry. Jerry Baker," he said, answering the girl's question. He listened as one of the guys finished their apparent arguing with the person who had asked him the question.

"Murdered? You don't look dead," said Jerry to the arguing guy. "Though I suppose you could've been resurrected by a witch, except that witches and other elixir troops haven't been around for ages." He paused. "Anyway, does anybody know where I am? I don't recognize this city. I also can't identify those weird green things I just killed."

Brian was trying his best to tune out the second ghost. He really was. But it was hard when the ghost kept going on a tangent about how horrible the girl - who maybe was a vampire? -was. The implications that the darkness was bad was also irritating. Brian knew most people were like that. He also knew that Steve and Alex were going to scold him if he kept lashing out.

But the ghost was really annoying, and really rude. He could hold back with a little hatred, but the hatred coming off of this ghost was as strong as his brother's light was.

And, of course, he had dared to insult Alex.

And you never insulted Steve or Alex.

Brian, who had been planning on being polite and actually introduce himself to Jerry, turned and glared at the ghost from behind his mask.

"Alex is good," he said, his voice little more than a deep growl at this point. Steve and Alex shifted behind him. Alex moved so she was closer to Brian; Steve tried to continue the conversation with the newcomer.

"We don't know where we are," Steve replied, his tone gentle and responsible. Brian was glad he was taking care of that - he didn't feel gentle and responsible right now. "The three of - my sister Alex, our friend Brian and myself - all woke up in another building in this city. I'm...not sure how you don't know what you killed, but those were zombies."

"The zombies didn't deserve it," Brian muttered. It was only for the briefest of seconds; his focus was still on the disgusting excuse for a person in front of him.

He raised his voice a little. "And stop insulting her-" He gestured at the girl. "-you light-infused, Notch-touched rooster."

Connery looked at this man, this masked person who now branded himself a foe, with a look of pure, wounded, offense. How dare the brute call him such names! The indignity of it was too much to bear with a grin. Oh how Connery's face twisted, morphed into such an expression that it was clear just how he was feeling behind the impregnable walls of stoicism that he had built to keep himself mysterious and to not let his foes be aware of when they'd wounded him. Those walls had been the red cloth he wore to keep others from knowing when he bled, but now they were replaced by white cotton, revealing his wounds for the world to see.

"You defend that horrible wench? The soul-draining creature who dwells purely in the realm of dark and lies does not deserve such pleasantries! She has made an attempt on my well being and indeed had me murdered on this, the night before the most important show of the year, in which I play a leading role! I am the victim of her treachery and yet it is me you choose to insult?!"



Kate's eyes were like the lamps of lighthouses as her knuckles went white on the grip of her cutlass. She had more than half a mind to fun him through. She'd use his entrails as a fucking feather boa.

Just when she was about to whirl around to give him a piece of her mind, a door on the other end of the room crashed open, and two more corpsified people stumbled unceremoniously into the open.

Kate's cutlass was out and ready for stabbing the moment she saw them, but before she could do anything, Connery charged forward, screaming something vaguely Shakespearian at the very top of his lungs, which sounded a bit like a shrill whine of nails scraping a chalkboard, and came to a halt in front of one of the people.

Kate groaned. There. Were. Fucking. Two. Of. Them.

Connery's Body was moaning and trying desperately to bite Ghost Connery, who was immaterial and yapping on and on, trying to persuade his body to let his soul back in. Or maybe he was just prattling on in self-pity. The glitter-drenched piece of shit was more than capable of either, and Kate was not inclined to listen carefully. Or at all. He was so fucking annoying.

Syl looked at the newcomer's whisps and snorted. God, this was going to be fun. Syl gently tapped the lady on the shoulder and asked for confirmation for which zombified corpse was this assholes, and once receiving confirmation, pressed himself out of his body and into the corpse of this Shakespearean motherfucker.

He dusted himself off. And turned, restraining the other zombie. He didn't enjoy murder, but he'd murder if necessary. It wasn't necessary here.

The zombie thrashed and groaned in his grip. Syl looked at the larger guy who had been so pissed when he'd killed a zombie in self-defense . "Unless you want me to kill this bitch, I'd suggest doing something with it,"

Jerry watched as the transparent guy verbally sparred with the masked guy. Jerry didn't know what zombies were, but two more tumbled in, and one of them looked like the transparent guy. this was all way too confusing. Jerry did know one thing, however.

"All right, that's enough. I don't know you guys, but you're acting like a bunch of little kids, constantly squabbling," he said. then he jabbed his chin towards the zombies. "And what are these so-called "zombies"? Should I kill them?"

He removed the elixir cartridge off his gun and attached it to his belt, which was a miniature elixir collector, to start filling up again. He grabbed a different cartridge and attached it onto the bottom of his Delta-5. Best to be prepared.

"No," Brian said, without missing a single beat.

"Brian," Steve said. "The zombie is going to kill us if we don't do something."

"...Where did the first ghost go?" Alex said, concerned, in the background. Brian had a sneaking suspicion that Alex partially knew that the ghost was in the zombie, but was just having trouble grasping all of it. That was how it had been when they first met, too.

Not that Steve was any different. Steve was just more preoccupied with the regular old zombie; he'd shift gears once the threat was taken care of.

Not that the zombie was a threat.

The zombie was far from a threat, as far as Brian was concerned. Sure, a zombie had bit him. But that zombie had been an outlier. Zombies loved him.

Brian opened his mouth to say what they should do, but never got a chance to elaborate.

Steve went up to the second zombie and gave it a whack in the head with his pipe. The zombie struggled some more. Steve retaliated by hiding it even harder. There was just a bit of movement, and then...

Nothing.

The zombie went still.

Brian blinked.

"Steve," he said, "you just killed a zombie."

"I had to," Steve replied, putting the tip of his pipe down on the ground.

Brian crossed his arms. The one that had been bitten was starting to feel a little strange, but there was no point in drawing attention to it now. "But it was a zombie."

"Zombies kill people, Brian," Steve said, like he was talking to a child.

Brian bristled with annoyance. He wasn't some kid. He had years on both Steve and Alex. "They only kill people because people killed them first!"

"So we weren't supposed to kill the mindless corpses of our loved ones that dug themselves out of their graves?"

"It was a gift!"

"A pretty creepy one," Alex absentmindedly commented.

Brian crossed his arms. "Notch doesn't give any gifts."

Connery gave a disgusted scoff, his face aghast. "You must release my body at once!" he demanded.

"Shut the fuck up, Connery," Kate snapped.

That aghast look turned to her, now, and looked to the others, a did-you-see-that look overtaking the look of horror as he looked for some sympathy.

Kate just scowled at him.

Syl looked at Connery, with a rather unimpressed expression. "Make me, you over-glorified cliche." He transfers into a mumble, "At least I'm an interesting ghost."

This bitch really couldn't be more dramatic, could he? Besides, he looked more like the kind of person who'd gladly bend over backward to please a pompous ass they found kind of attractive, as long as they had good "child-bearing" hips.

Jerry frowned. Apparently they were ignoring his advice on not bickering.

"They kill people, huh? Hm. They don't seem very capable of being able to hurt someone even if they tried," replied Jerry. "But you still didn't answer my question. Should I kill the other one? You killed one of them," he said to Steve.

Steve froze.

Just as Brian had predicted, he had shifted gears the moment that the larger threat - the thrashing zombie - had been taken care of. Now Steve was glancing between the zombie that looked identical to the guy Brian hated and Jerry, seemingly trying to figure out the answer to that question.

"You don't have to kill that one," Alex said.

"Thank you," Brian said.

Alex looked over at him. "I'm not saying that because you wanted me to," she informed him. "I'm saying that because I think the first ghost possessed the zombie."

Brian frowned behind his mask.