Young Writers Society

This place is alive. It’s watching you. And it’s shipping you.

You have been kidnapped by a sentient high school mini-dimension, determined to facilitate the trashiest, rom-commiest, crack-fick-iest hijinks ever.

It has no boundaries. It has no respect for your age, personality, or sexuality.
It will ship you with your teacher, your sister, a lamp, whatever. It will not stop at sitting you next to your assigned shipmate. It will bend gravity to cause you to fall on top of each other every single day. It will rewind time if you upset it enough.

This school is alive. And it will not let you go until it gets its OTP.

SETTING MECHANICS-



DA RULEZ-



GO NUTS

“In your red, ass-faced face, bitch!” proclaimed Brian the fairy detective, planting a triumphant sneaker upon the muscular demon criminal, who lay horrifically burnt upon the subway bathroom floor.

“You just got lucky, dumb cunt.” said the demon in his panty-droppingly smooth bass tones. “If you didn’t bless the water in the bloody john I’dve atomised your face into the pipes.”

"Haha, no doubt. I've seen your work. Haha. Yeah. You're getting put away for a while. Where's the soul of Rasputin?"

"In my wallet. Right pocket."

Brian opened the wallet. There was nothing in it but a symbol. A banishing sigil. With an unspecified address. Oh, gods no. He could end up anywhere. He could end up in the stomach of Nyarlathotep. In the spleen of Zeus. In the bowels of Lucifer.

Rumbles of pained laughter, and echoes of ‘You dumb cunt’ were the last sounds Brian heard before he found himself in a school hallway, wearing some pale blue private school trust-fund-kid-ass looking uniform.

Brian began to sweat. It was a known fact among multidimensional investigators that the majority of dimensions dedicated to the eternal punishment of the wicked were designed to resemble that savage setting.

“Excuse me, God,” he whispered, “I’m sorry I cheated at Yu-Gi-Oh, can we please talk about this-”

He fell. He didn’t trip. No physical hand had pushed him. But he fell. Something squished under his hands. One breast, belonging to one girl. And another breast, belonging to another. The two of them gasped in unison.

“Oh! Damn! Sorry!” he said, and got up. Both girls pulled him back down, then slapped him away.

“PERVERT!” they screamed, breaking every window in the hall.

The technicolour haired student body served as a unified Greek chorus, laughing and ooh-ing mechanically at each cue.

A middle-aged woman of cultivated frumpiness strode sternly down the hall, and slapped him on the wrist with a ruler.

Brian made to get away quickly, before she called the cops on him. But when the teacher grabbed him, he was surprised to hear her screech-

"Brian! You no-good delinquent! Where is your homework for the last three years!"

“I don’t… I don’t go here?” said Brian.

“Don’t you try that one on me, delinquent!” barked Mrs Frump.

“I know I’m short, but I’m clearly an adult,” said Brian, so insulted he momentarily forgot that he was supposed to be evading arrest. “I’m almost thirty,” he protested.

The he zoomed into a classroom in the middle of a lesson, grabbed a whiteboard marker, and speed-drew a travelling sigil on the whiteboard. He set the destination to New York.

Nothing happened.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing,” said another teacher who looked suspiciously like a palette-swapped Mrs Frump with slightly different hair, “Sit down before I give you detention!”

“That should have worked,” said Brian, ignoring her. He speed-drew another, and another. Still nothing happened. This could only mean one thing.

He was stuck on the inside of a pocket dimension. A possibly sentient pocket dimension.

“Hey, look at me when I’m-” the teacher yelled. But he was already gone.

Brian flew down the hall, and out the first broken window to escape to the world outside.

There was nothing there but a vast field of paper cherry blossoms flying through the air, falling on a life sized backdrop of the Tokyo skyline, made out of crayons and cardboard. The rest was dead, and empty space.

Brian fell to his knees.

“There is no world outside,” Brian muttered to himself, grinning nervously. “Only the School.”

__

And thus, having no other option, Brian reluctantly attended classes and various schooling events with the intention of figuring out how this world worked.
Unfortunately the classes consisted mainly of word finds and connect-the-dot pictures. The closest thing to an actual test he had received was a questionnaire on what farm animals made what noises. No matter what he wrote on them he always got an F, so he ended up mostly drawing travelling sigils and scribbled pictures of dogs on them.

_____

He sat in the seat by the window, just far enough in the back to not be too preppy, but not far back enough to be unmarketable.

Today's lesson was a crossword puzzle. Brian considered just doodling on it, but was reduced to actually doing the puzzle for some semblance of proper mental stimulation.

Despite being clearly not a teenager, despite deliberately disabling the glamour spell that hid his wings and green skin and showing his secret interdimensional detective badge to everyone who would look at it, they all continued to insist he was a 16 year old delinquent with a complex and specific relationship to all of them.

The window had a prime view of cardboard Tokyo.

“You can see my house from here!” cried Lulubellamaria, pointing and bouncing.

Brian stared at the cardboard cutout, a man defeated.

“It’s lovely.” he said.

Puck was bored.

He knew he only had a few more minutes before Arthur would be out of class, but he was losing patience. He had been lounging around the senior courtyard for the past hour and a half, waiting for Arthur's second (and last) class of the day to finish. He had thankfully slept through the majority of the first one, so all he had to do was fend off the little bit of boredom he had left.

As of right now, he was sprawled out across the bench with the Switch he had bought the other day, playing some Pokémon Shield. He had just beaten Allister's gym when a shadow fell over him.

He looked up.

"Pres!" he exclaimed, sitting up and immediately slamming his head into Arthur's. The two of them both recoiled. Puck's head almost immediately stopped hurting, but Arthur's clearly hadn't - it must have been the healing kicking in.

"Are you okay?" Puck hesitantly asked, not quite sure he wanted to know the answer.

"I'm fine," Arthur said, wincing a little. He gave a tiny smile. "You have a hard headbutt."

Puck raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked, slipping his Switch into his pocket. It shouldn't have fit normally, but a little magic never hurt. "You got headbutted by me, Artie. We should go by the nurse's office before we leave."

"I don't need the nurse's office," Arthur argued. "It's probably not going to even leave a bruise, Puck-"

Puck grabbed onto his hand. "It might be the start of a concussion," he wisely said. "You never know. We should have her check it out to be on the safe side."

"I think I would know if it was a concussion-"

They suddenly found themselves standing in a nurse's office.

But there was one problem - Puck was pretty sure this wasn't the nurse's office in Arthur's school. It looked weird and vaguely cartoonish, like something he had seen in an anime. And when he glanced back to look at Arthur, he saw that he was wearing a uniform that he had definitely seen in an anime.

Arthur followed his gaze and stared down.

"...Puck, why am I wearing the Ouran High uniform?"

"I'm innocent," Puck hurriedly said, raising his hands up in mock surrender.

Arthur crossed his arms.

"I swear I'm not guilty," Puck insisted. "It wasn't me this time. I'm not trying to prank you, or be mischievous - all I wanted to do was get you to the nurse's office. Anyways, I'm wearing it too. And you know that I hate uniforms."

Arthur's shoulders relaxed a little. Puck resisted the urge to give a childish, triumphant grin when he saw that Arthur was convinced. He opened his mouth to say more - fully intend on complimenting Arthur for how good he looked in the uniform, and to suggest that he cosplayed in it at the next convention they went to - but he never got a chance to.

Because a girl suddenly showed up in the doorway to the nurse's office.

She was wearing the same kind of outfit the girls wore in Ouran, too. Same tacky yellow dress that didn't mesh well with the blue uniform at all. Puck didn't think they were suddenly living in a fanfiction, but he was starting to consider it.

"The teacher told me to come check on you, Arthur," the girl said, blushing a little. Puck narrowed his eyes in suspicion. From the way she was twirling her blond ringlets around her finger, and from that glint in her blue eyes, Puck knew exactly what she was thinking.

Puck slung his arm over Arthur's shoulder.

"He's fine," Puck reassured her, giving a very tense smile.

The girl faltered a little - she looked almost scared of Puck. Which was weird, considering he hadn't done anything potentially frightening. All he had done was just show how close he and Arthur were to make her realize that Arthur was already taken.

"...You should both come back to class," she said. "It's next period now - I took notes for you, Arthur. Since you always help me out with my notes..."

She blushed, ducked her head down, and hurried out of the room.

Puck looked over at Arthur. "...You don't know her, right?"

Arthur gave him a very worried, confused look back. "That was the first time I met her."

The two of them slowly glanced at the door.

"...Something tells me we should play along," Arthur finally said.

"For now, at least," Puck agreed. "A little acting never hurt."


They followed the girl to the classroom they were supposed to apparently be in. The teacher barely turned to look at them when they entered. She was writing something up on the board, but it was gibberish - just little lines and random shapes.

No one in the classroom seemed to notice.

The girl they had followed sat down in a seat towards the very front of the room. From the way she was looking expectantly at Arthur and sliding her notes across the desks, it looked like Arthur already had a seat he was supposed to go in.

Puck scanned the room.

There had to be an open one next to Arthur, right?

All the seats near him were taken.

Every time he made eye contact with one of the students, they turned almost comically pale and ducked their heads down. One girl started crying, and a boy almost passed out.

Then he finally found a free seat.

...Right behind a fairy.

...Who had to be older than everyone in the classroom, save for the teacher.

Why wasn't the fairy using some kind of glamour? This school was definitely just meant for humans - he had only seen humans on his walk from the nurse's office.

Was this guy in the same boat, too?

"Hey," he said, reaching over and tapping the fairy on the shoulder.

"We do not have the time," Cornyx snarled. Faint lines of silver streaked his otherwise black irises and his fingers tightened around the amber-tipped cigarette in his fingers, smoke swallowed by the shadowed stone ceiling. "There is unrest in Numar, and if we don't give them bloodshed, the Valyn will make it of their own accord. We do not need a civil war. We need order."

The already-angular lines of the king's face were sharpened in the white light cast upon him through the window where his companion stood. Dark eyes, boring into the polished oaken table that flickered in torchlight otherwise devoured by the cold and the damp, seemingly doing little to actually illuminate the place. His face was set in an apathetic expression cracked by agitation that would've sent his tail flicking back-and-forth like a feline's were he not in this human guise.

"I'm inclined to agree, sire, but to strike now would be reckless. Our legions are strong, but so are Edin's. Certainly, you've weakened them, but not sufficiently; you recognize this as well as I." His voice was a pleasant one to listen to, even when it bore unpleasant truths within it, a low and honeyed tone with a legato cadence and eternal calmness even in face of things such as this. He might've passed as human were it not for the telltale, two-inch-long horns jutting out of his umber curls, shimmering a dark, almost mahogany hue that mirrored the fur of his monkey-like tail. He was as tan as any demon could possibly get with a sun as dim as Sukur's and, although most of him was covered by a jerkin and long-sleeved, woolen shirt, the lines and toning of the muscles at his shoulders and wrists were still visible. He wasn't beefy by any means, and was much smaller than Cornyx himself, but looks were deceiving: in spite of his litheness, he could compete with the largest of his clansmen. He had to in order to wrangle the nightmarish beasts that he made his living with.

"If they don't go to war with themselves, they're going to war with another circle and they will raze anyone they target. That, or they will rebel, and no length of intelligence gives us certainty in such a conflict."

"Then find a third party. Abzu is all but defenseless."

"I'm not taking Earth, Jabril, no matter what name it goes by."

The other man fell silent, golden eyes falling to the ground. Cornyx, too, lapsed into the quiet, leaning his forearms on the table to take a long drag. The smoke seared his lungs, burning down his throat, tingling against his skin. The taste of it was as bitter as it was appealing--such was the nature of addiction, he supposed.

"With all due respect, your royal majesty, you're going to kill yourself with that habit of yours."

"Mm. You say that like anyone would object to such a fate."

The horned demon's brow furrowed in the slightest hint of concern and he stepped forward, leaning forward and wrapping his hand around Cornyx's. His fingers were warm on the cool skin of winter's sovereign and, although there was no force behind the gesture, it was a firm one, keeping him from taking another drag.

"I'd object."

Cornyx glanced up, momentarily meeting his gaze. A second, a fleeting second, of contact--and then he rose, pulling his hand back and striding towards the door. "Come, let us speak to Z'haadion about the state of the legions."

Jabril watched him, tail flicking in the air at his back before he fell in at his superior's heel. He didn't truly expect the Winter King to really acknowledge it, and the man had, at least, appeared to hear his words. He hadn't flinched or run away entirely. Progress, undoubtedly. He slid through the door and towards the lengthy corridor between the Council Hall and the Great Hall, soles of his boots clicking against the stone--

--and then they were on white linoleum, alabaster walls eye-blinding and buzzing LED lights washing the room in an almost bluish cast. Cornyx was still next to him, incredible height made suddenly more obvious by the human-sized environment in contrast to Sukur's somewhat larger structures, as appropriate for Valyn and Hundari.

For his part, Cornyx didn't seem to have changed all that much: he was still dressed in a suit, though this one was grey, with a white button-up and black tie. His hair was still back in a ponytail. The cigarette was gone, however, and the bitter scent had disappeared with it. The only obvious change was perched upon his hooked nose. Silvery wire spectacles with an exaggerated sort of glare on their lenses, as though someone was shining a light directly on them when, in truth, there was no such occurrence.

Jabril, however, wasn't quite so lucky. He, too, wore grey slacks and black dress shoes, similar to Cornyx's--some sort of uniform, perhaps--but he'd no jacket, and his shirt was open for the first several buttons. His sleeves were rolled most of the way up his arms to reveal the panty-droppingly toned curves of his muscles (where Cornyx's eyes may have lingered a moment too long) and the fine scars covering them. Unlike his sister's, these weren't from battle, they were merely nicks and pockmarks from his hellhounds' teeth and fangs that had pierced his flesh, both on accident and deliberately on the beasts' parts.

An edge of curiosity pressed against Jabril's mind. A feeling not his own, but that of his familiar, the one he didn't see yet could not travel to another world without. Strange, but he could still feel the hound, so he didn't find it terrifying so much as bizarre.

"Button up," Cornyx stated, eyeing his uniform--because that was what the demon king was looking at, certainly, and not the pecs beneath--and it was through a feat of great self-control that Jabril maintained a straight face while moving to do so.

Progress.

He buttoned it back up to the collar, leaving Cornyx to figure out what to do with this peculiarity, and no sooner had his fingers fixed the last one than he blinked to see his bare chest again. As though he'd not done anything at all. He frowned, then tried again, only to find similar results.

Alright. Weird.

"Sire...?"

The man glanced back towards him, opening his mouth to start to respond, but the words never left his throat.

"Boys!" It was a shriek, a feminine one, the sound of nails on a chalkboard, and the woman who strode up was waving a ruler as though it were a club. The only way to describe her aesthetic would be 'frumpy,' hair in a bun and voice positively unpleasant. "You're late for class!"

"I apologize, ma'm, but I don't believe that--" Cornyx began, the positive picture of cordiality.

Her attention turned to him, and although he fully expected another shriek, it wasn't what he received. It was a wide, starry-eyed stare. "Oh! My dear, utmost apologies, I'm afraid I just saw this one here and assumed he'd been avoiding his academics again. Oh, goodness, go on, do get to class! What would they do without you?"

Without...him? Class? Was this a school? It'd explain the uniform, but what manner of twisted magic would bring him here? And why? And how?

But before he'd the chance to ask, Mrs. Frump was ushering himself and his athletic companion towards the nearest door, into a classroom occupied almost entirely by humans in similar uniforms. Almost. Towards the front row, there was a green-skinned individual with rather obvious wings. A blue-eyed, messy-haired figure was leaning forward to tap the winged lad on the shoulder. Both seemed fairly young (if not high-school aged like everyone else), but more interactive than the other members of the 'class.' The teacher looked almost identical to the one in the hallway, old-fashioned and dowdy, although she had pink hair where the other had red, and her eyes were tinted more of a bluish hue. She was drawing squiggles and triangles on the board, and the words she spoke weren't any more understandable than her illegible lines.

Cornyx strode to the edge of the doorway, pausing at the threshold of the room as he tried to figure out where to sit, uncertain of what else to do. Maybe if they sat down, he could have an actual conversation with Jabril without getting interrupted. Yet, no sooner had he entered than Mrs. Pink-Frump was waving around her ruler and saying his name.

"Oh, Cornyx! We were afraid that we'd have to conduct class without you," she stated, bringing a hand to her chest as though she were just getting over a terrible panic. His black eyes turned back to his companion, whose shirt was still unbuttoned, but the Hundar looked as lost as his king did. More, even. Of course; he'd never even been to Earth. At least Cornyx had some context for what this place was mimicking.

"It's a school," he said softly, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Like on Abzu. A...high school. For adolescents."

"Come in!" the teacher was still saying, far too enthused about his sudden appearance. The other students were looking at him now, too, which was enough to make him start to feel self-conscious even if he recognized that they were probably simulacra of some kind. He stepped forward to enter, the movement of which was punctuated by a loud thwack! and his skull resounded against the wood. Right. The doors were shorter here.

He grimaced, then ducked, stepping through. Jabril padded in behind him, watching the murmurs going through the room. The giggles. The girls were giggling at him. For that matter, so were the boys. Why were they giggling?

"I believe they find you...noticeable, my king," Jabril murmured.

"Really? I hadn't noticed them staring at me."

"No, sire..." He shook his head, leaning to the side a bit and dropping his voice even lower. "I think they're noticing you."

Of course they were; he was a rather conspicuous figure--oh. Oh. Pink tinged his cheeks, his pale complexion only lending itself to how obvious his embarrassment was, but he didn't get the chance to dwell on it before Mrs. Pink-Frump was gesticulating wildly for him to go take a seat in the front row. The front. He never sat in the front.

God above, what sort of cruel and unusual torment was this?

"Come on," he said, gesturing for Jabril to follow him. Not because he wanted company or companionship, merely due to the fact that sticking close was beneficial to both of them. Of course. He strode to the front row, sliding into a chair nearby the green guy--he didn't seem like he belonged here, either. His legs were far too long to easily fit into the desk but he managed to fit himself with one straightened out and the other set something to the side. Jabril took a seat next to him, something the other students seemed to be jabbering about. The teacher turned back to keep squiggling.

This was going to be...interesting.

"Whatever it is, I didn't do it." said Brian, sullenly absorbed in the crossword he had been reduced to doing. "But actually, I really didn't."

And then he actually turned to look. His eyes dilated in wonder. This boy- he actually looked- awake. Real. Maybe he was real.

Brian squinted, and experimentally waved a hand back and forth in front of the boy's face to check for a human reaction.

Puck grabbed onto his wrist.

"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice little more than a whisper. Apparently, his whispering was enough to get everyone near them whispering, too - and not in a friendly way. They were all shooting him nervous looks still. Like he was some kind of bully, and the fairy in front of him was his next target.

Damned be the demonic creatures behind this deplorable news! The twisted beings with their treacherous claws and lengthened teeth, they have none of the grace, the flawless harmony that they once possessed. Truly, they were wicked!

And so Connery tightly clutched the declaration of the horrible news in his perfect hands. So hard did he squeeze the paper that, truly, his fingers punctured through it.



The headline of the school paper glared up at him. An omen of death foretelling the future of his social career, and, because this was verily the utmost important production of this treacherously agonizing year, it could truly tell of the death of his professional career. Who was to tell what opportunities would arise from the cheering crowds on that fateful day?

The answer, now, through the meddling of the fang-bearing nightwalkers, was none.

The props, the equipment, the whole of the production, it was all horribly damaged beyond ultimate repair, and it was all the fault of that awful girl.

No proof was left to pin the blame on her, but he knew. Only she was filled with such hatred, only she had such a twisted notion of morality, to do such a thing as this. A pipe slashed in the props storage, and the magic of the show was washed away.

He was broken from his heartbroken reverie when the woman herself passed by.

"You'll pay for this crime!" he said, thrusting the school newspaper in her direction.

She glanced at it, and her expression morphed into a sneer, "I didn't fucking do anything you glitter-licking piece of trash," she spat with such intense ferocity, he was now sure that she was the party responsible.

"Then explain it, blood-sucking fiend! Give an alibi worthy of your statement!"

Her eyes glowed the red of dying stars, the moment before the final supernova and the end of all who were near. Connery found himself taking a step back, though not out of fear. Clearly not!

She took a sip from her cup - a large styrofoam thing from some fast-food place or other - glaring at him all the while as she rolled her venomous words over her tongue.

She tapped her fingers against the styrofoam. The edge of the colorful label was just barely within his view, and he was trying to decipher from where she'd gotten her poisonous junkfood, when she suddenly thrust the cup out of his field of vision, and verily a moment later, he found himself drenched in a thick, red liquid.

He hadn't the chance to wipe it from his eyes before a hard blow was struck against his chest, and he slammed into the hard brick of the school hallway's wall.

"Fiendish brute!" he shouted at her before he could wipe the stuff from his face, but even those words were a mistake, for as soon as his mouth was open it filled with the taste of sugary syrup and blood filled his mouth.

He recoiled and spat the stuff out, simultaneously wiping it out of his eyes and flicking the disgusting substance away from him.

As soon as his eyes were open, though, his gaze was met by the shocked look on the face of a very pretty, but clearly adult woman. A woman with a glob if his red-tinged saliva dripping down the sleeve of her hoodie.



Raziel scanned the file laid out over her dining room table, papers methodically arranged to tell a story she now unraveled slowly in her mind. Like knotted string, this was a tricky business. To pull too quickly and too forcefully on one string could be to tighten the knot, or, possibly, to break the string.

As she puzzled over the paper before her, she sipped a concoction of every bit of caffeinated, consumable anything she could find. The teapot on the stove, which now simmered with more of this thick, blackened goop, would probably have to be thrown away once she'd finished it.

She hadn't been able to feel the effects of the caffeine in things like coffee or soda, so she had turned to this. The effects should kick in soon.

Slowly, the shadows shifted as the sun set outside the grand, stained-glass windows. The colors that adorned the walls moved to color the pages she observed, and the teapot, cup by cup, gradually emptied.

As the last rays of daylight filtered through the pictures of her last emotional memories, she turned away from the file. No progress made on that, and no effect from the caffeinated concoction, she placed the empty teapot in the sink. She knew from her observations, back when she'd been an observer, and from the many books she'd read, that this was the part where someone might sigh in defeat, or maybe break something in frustration. She felt no urge to do so, though she still looked down at the teacup in her hand, contemplating the order of events.

Did people feel angry, or frustrated, only when they performed the actions to express that?

She threw the cup against the wall, watching it shatter with a blank expression. The pixies who were near the place of impact scattered. She apologized and went to gather up the shards.

As she reached for a broom, it vanished. She turned around to find herself in a hallway. There was a clipboard in her arms, but the paper clipped to it was covered in a language she didn't know, which was to say, not a language at all. Not a human one, anyway.

She was in the process of looking around in hope of finding the reason she'd been transported here when suddenly, "Fiendish brute!" someone shouted in her ear and she turned around to have a boy dressed like he was about to step out onto a stage for some traditional - gory - stageplay, spit a glob of what she thought might be stage blood onto her sleeve.

She gave him a blank look, "Have I offended you?" She'd never gotten the hang of what did and didn't offend different sorts of people, and she couldn't think of any other examination for his outburst.

The boy suddenly looked sheepish, "N-no 'mamm," he said and first scurried, then strutted down the hall, where a shrill voice called out from an open doorway for him to 'come to class this instant!'

She looked down at the paper on the clipboard again, then back up at the boy, who was indignantly heating up the debate between himself and the shrill-voiced person within the classroom.

Raziel walked toward them, a thought in her head to try to sort out their disagreement, or perhaps to find out why she was here.

She came into view of the classroom and glanced between the arguing boy and the crone-like woman fighting with him from her place at the head of a class of students. "What's the problem here?" Raziel asked.

The teacher's face molded into a look of relief as soon as Raziel spoke. "You must be Miss. Genesis!" the woman turned to her class, which was made up of similar-looking students dotted with a few...less-similar students. And that was when she understood.

As the teacher woman guided her to the front of the classroom and introduced her as the new substitute who would be "...taking over for me when I go on my vacation later today," Raziel put the pieces together.

A dimensional trap. A place of altered reality outside of the regular dimensions. This one, it seemed, had a narrative in place.

Raziel didn't protest to the teacher's introduction until she abruptly glanced at the clock and announced she was actually leaving right this minute, leaving Raziel alone at the front of the classroom.

The gore-drenched boy was still standing defiantly in the hallway, so she gestured for him to come in. to her surprise, he did, taking a spot in the front corner closest to the door.

"It's such a pleasant day outside," the grandma said, gazing out Cecily's bedroom window.

"No it's not," Artemis said, leaning on the windowsill and looking at the old woman from the side. "It's raining outside. The front yard is mud."

It was true. The entirety of Cecily's house's front yard, which was usually covered in immaculate green grass, was now thoroughly drenched by rainwater. Artemis would be worried about a flood if they had ever had a flood before. Which they hadn't.

"Still," the grandma sighed, "rain is a beautiful occurrence. Perhaps you will learn the meaning of it someday."

Artemis huffed and turned away from the window, stretching her wings. Grandma, or so she and everyone Cecily created called her, seemed a little too wisdom-drunk to notice the downsides of the downpour. Like how shitty it's gonna be to walk to school today.

Cecily didn't know about the morning rain. She was still asleep in her bed, snoring ever so slightly. John was curled up at the foot of her bed like he was a damn cat or something. And Pen, of course, had fallen asleep at the desk. Which left Artemis, Granny, and the redneck awake.

Or, at least the redneck was partly awake.

"Rain, no rain, who cares." Brett sat on the floor, leaning against Cecily's dresser, screwing the cap of his beer bottle on and off. "School is torture enough anyway. I'm a thirty-year-old man and I have to go to school? Bullshit." He untwisted the cap and raised the bottle to take a sip.

Artemis snatched to out of his hand. "It is 6:24 in the morning," she reprimanded. "You had at least two last night. How are you not wasted?"

"Because only normal people get wasted," Brett said, still looking at his hand where the beer bottle had once been. "We're figments of a girl's imagination."

"Ugh." Artemis put the bottle on the desk next to Pen's sleeping head. Still, she knew that Brett was right. Technically, if anyone walked into the room right now, they would only see Cecily sleeping peacefully. They wouldn't see Artemis, or Granny, or anyone else.

"It doesn't matter," Artemis said, turning back to the redneck, who was still sitting by the dresser. "I don't care if you can't get wasted. You're not drinking until at least after school."

"Yeah, and I'm gonna listen to that?" Brett finally stood up and stretched. "Beer is the stuff of life, Artie." He knew she hated that nickname. He just just smiled at her as he walked over to get back his bottle. "And school is very much a black hole of death. So." He picked up his beer, uncapped it, and took a long swig in one swift motion.

"Ah." He wiped his mouth and held the bottle into the air. "Jesus juice."

The usage of "Jesus" caught Grandma's attention. "Did you use the Lord's name in vain again, Brett?" the granny asked, turning to face him.

Brett sighed and rolled his eyes before taking another sip.

"Don't worry, I'm praying." The granny turned back to the window. "Always praying for you helpless children, I am."

Brett and Artemis looked at each other.

And that's when the world around them changed completely. The bedroom melted away and was replaced by a hallway lined with linoleum tile. Granny, who was sitting on a stool, fell backwards onto the floor when it disappeared. Artemis, on reflex, jumped into the air and started hovering with her wings. Brett uttered a small, girlish shriek.

"What the hell?!" Artemis exclaimed.

Even their clothes had changed. Artemis looked down at herself and realized her normal attire had turned into a suit with a hot-pink tie, a black jacket and pants and smaller combat boots. Brett's clothes had changed into a plaid outer jacket for his suit and blue denim pants, and shiny shoes, although his baseball hat remained. Even Granny's outfit had turned into a beige suit jacket, pastel floral tie and pants, and shiny white shoes. The sight of the old lady in schoolgirl clothes might have made Artemis laugh if she wasn't so confused with the situation.

"Did Cecily imagine this? Is this an evolution of her powers?" Artemis asked. She didn't know who it was to. She was just flinging out options at this point.

"If so, perhaps this is a dream of Cecily's," said the grandma. "Perhaps we simply need to relax, focus, and meld, and we will become used to this new atmosphere--"

"Oh, shut it," Brett said, screwing the top of his beer on again. "We don't need that 'peace and harmony fixes all' shit right now. It's not gonna work."

Grandma simply narrowed her eyes at him and turned away, muttering something. Artemis was pretty sure it was something alone the lines of "Hail Mary."

"What we need to do is find out where the hell we are," Brett said. He looked up at Artemis, who was still hovering. "Get down from there and maybe help me a bit," he said. "It's not like the floor is lava or anything."

Artemis scowled at him. She dropped to the floor and looked around. "It looks like... it looks like we're in a school," she said.

"A school?" Brett's eyes were daggers. "We're in a f*cking school?"

"Yes, idiot!" Artemis said, putting her hands on her hips. "I just said that! Maybe if you weren't already drinking you could see that, too!"

Brett narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm not drunk right now. I'm just tired and I hate you, and I don't feel like thinking."

The grandma stepped in between them. "Let us not fight, my children," she said. "Do not say 'hate.' Never hate any--"

"Thank you, we appreciate it, love you too." Artemis pushed her out from between them. She refocused on Brett. "You can stay here and nurse your beer. I'm going to find a way out."

"Excuse me? Students?"

Artemis, Brett, and Grandma looked to one end of the hall. There stood a woman with pink, shiny hair, dressed in a sharp purple suit and had tiny little glasses at the end of her nose. The glasses looked to be wire, and they seemed highlighted even without any light. The woman was smiling cheerfully, her hands behind her back.

"You--you can see us?" Artemis raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, of course." The woman seemed a bit perplexed. "You need to come to class, students."

Artemis' head was spinning from the fact that the woman could see them, but she decided to act naturally. And politely. "We're not--" Artemis began, but Brett cut her off.

"Excuse me, Miss Anime Barney. You seem high and pretty and all," he interjected, batting his eyelashes, "but we ain't students. I think you got the wrong people. So thank you. Please leave us alone."

The woman frowned briefly, then a smile came back on her face. "Oh, no! No, I think you are my students. A bunch of 16-year-olds in front of me, trying to convince me they're not mine?" She beamed at them. "No, you need to come with me. You're late to class!"

Artemis raised her other eyebrow. She glanced over at Brett and Granny. They were both quite visibly 30-ish and 80-ish.

"M'am, um, we're not your students," Artemis said.

"We do not know how we arrived here," Granny said, bowing slightly. Her voice was as petite and shriveled as always. "Can you help us, please? We will do something in return if we must, for your favor."

"What? No! We're not giving her anything." Brett stepped forward. "We're not going with you, okay? So do you mind pointing us out? And then we'll be on our way." For good measure, he took another swig of beer.

The teacher shook her head. "Come on. Or I might have to send you to the office." She beckoned them forwards, then started walking down the hall.

Artemis watched her go, arms crossed. Things were getting very weird--

Suddenly, it felt like the entire hall pitched forward. Granny, Brett, and Artemis were thrown forwards down the hall, in the direction of the teacher. It was as if gravity had changed. Artemis tried to stay on the right plane by going into a hover, but eventually she too was shot down the hallway.

As they neared the teacher, who had slowed by a classroom door, the force pulling them got less and less. Once they reached where the teacher was, the strange force stopped completely. Artemis, Brett and Granny landed in a heap on the floor, gravity working right at last. Brett groaned.

"Come on into class!"

Artemis looked up to see their teacher towering over them, her hand reaching out. Artemis looked up at her, and ignoring the hand, reluctantly pulled herself to her feet. She narrowed her eyes at the teacher. The teacher just smiled back.

Well, I guess we have to do this.

"Come on, Brett. You too, Granny." She helped the old woman up and left Brett on the floor.

Together, they faced the classroom.

Artemis mentally sighed. "Let's go in. We kinda have to."

"Oh, thank Jesus." Brian groaned in relief.

"It's a real person. Three virtual weeks of this purgatory and finally, a real person. I could cry.

Kid, you're set. I'm Brian, an interdimensional detective. Badge and everything." he shamelessly bragged. "I know everything about pocket dimensions... except how to get out of them from the inside. I'll figure it out. Until then, we just gotta stay sane, okay?"

Brian noticed that despite his flawless display of effortless confidence, the boy was still checking uncomfortably on how their classmates were reacting.

"Oh. They seem to think I'm some hardcore bad boy so uhh... hanging out with me might nuke your reputation. Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, these people aren't real."

To excercise his point, Brian gestured at a girl with a ginger bob and a red hairbow almost bigger than her head. For no apparent purpose she stood up and walked backwards, knocking over her desk, then started clipping into a wall with a blank happy look on her face. In seconds she had walked straight through into offscreen territory.

"Lookin' good, Lulubellamaria." said Brian.

Despite the late hour, the city was still busy. Shadows flung themselves across her apartment, easily stretching from one end to the other.

After what felt like an eternity of staring at her ceiling, watching the little creatures do their dance in the meager amount of light cascading through her window.

They were amusing creatures, harmless and young.

Ezra hadn't been able to see them before the accident, but something in her brain had been knocked loose from her concussion.

It was if something inside of her made a connection to a deep source of power. All of sudden, she was seeing things and hearing things she'd never dreamed of being real. Faeries, monsters, demons... Magic.

At first, she ignored them, but curiosity grew inside of her until it was an unstoppable tide and she found herself googling all of her symptoms. Either she had cancer, or she had opened up a her third eye to the earth's hidden mysteries.

She didn't dare speak of it to anyone, lest they lock her up an turn her brain into pudding, like they did great uncle Ted.

Ezra sat herself up and stretched her limbs before crossing the small distance to her window and picking up half of a cigarette from the sill. She lit it with a snap of her fingers and inhaled the thick, addictive smoke.

Releasing the slow drag from her lungs, Ezra stared across the skyline.

She hated it.

Her eyes drifted shut for a moment, and with a start, she snapped them open. It was too late.

Ezra was no longer in her living room/kitchen/bedroom. On top of that, her cigarette had disappeared, and a new outfit had taken over the too-thin camisole and underwear she had previously donned. A frilly yellow dress now completely engulfed her body, and she cried out in shock.

"What the hell?" She spat, tugging at the sleeves. It didn't budge.

The strange girl scanned her surroundings and realized she was in the courtyard of a beautiful, yet expansive building. Something tugged in her stomach, almost as if she were wearing an invisible belt hooked to an invisible leash, and some invisible man was pulling her along, almost too quick for her to keep up.

Ezra found a stone corridor and began trekking toward the center until the tugging eased up and she found herself confronted by a frantic looking girl with orange hair and purple eyes.

"Ezra-chan, thank goodness!" She cried, latching onto Ezra's wrist.

"Frump-san wants you back in class, ASAP." The orange-haired girl explained, pulling the confused raven-haired girl into a nearby classroom before she could wrench her wrist free.

"Ah, Ezra-chan!" A woman with a forced smile greeted her. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd return from your 'bathroom trip'."

"Um." Was all Ezra could muster. She scanned the room and spotted a few odd people, but held her tongue.

"Take your seat, Ezra-chan." The teacher urged her, gesturing toward an unoccupied desk with books stacked neatly on top.

Uncertain, Ezra sat and glanced down at the books.

'E. Dexter' was printed across the front of the top book, scrawled in her own neat handwriting.

"What the fuck is going on here?" She blurted, jumping up from her desk.

Was this hell? This felt like hell. The human version of hell, anyways - Puck had never been to the actual hell, but he felt like human hell was supposed to be like this.

Everything was more chaotic than he would have guessed back in the nurse's office. People kept entering the room. New students would arrive, and desks with average looking people were suddenly empty for the new students to take. The teacher had technically been replaced by someone who was probably in the same boat as the rest of them, but the old teacher kept popping in so much that it was hard to tell if she had really been replaced or if they were teaching together.

From the way that his "classmates" had been looking at him before he sat down, Puck guessed they thought he was a bad boy, too. Which hit the nail a little too close on the head for comfort. But it wasn't like they knew the truth; their reactions were the comical kind of actions you'd get in an anime.

So they were playing some kind of convulted game of school, then.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Puck said to the newest student - leaning back in his chair as he looked over at her. Brian was probably right about this being some kind of pocket dimension, but Puck really didn't trust his skills. He had been stuck here for three weeks, despite being supposedly used to things like this.

"Brian says this is a pocket dimension," he said, gesturing at the fairy in front of him. He made sure to speak loud enough so everyone can hear. "Someone out there must have watched a little too much anime-"

His gaze landed on Arthur.

Arthur, who's deskmate was currently giving him a very innocent look of love-filled admiration as he mindlessly spun his pencil around in his fingers and looked at Puck. That girl definitely wasn't a person. She had to be some kind of NPC. Anyone with eyes could have gotten the subtext back in the nurse's office.

Arthur already had a special someone, and that special someone was the one currently glaring at the NPC.

"Should we still follow our plan and play along with it?" Arthur asked. The old teacher had left the room again, and Puck doubted the new one was going to tell them to be quiet.

"I don't know," Puck replied. "Brian's been here for three weeks and hasn't made any progress-"

The NPC girl next to Arthur suddenly dropped her pencil. She leaned down to grab it, but her chair wobbled and she went tumbling into Arthur. The two went crashing to the ground with a loud thud.

Puck stared.

They hadn't accidentally kissed, but they were close to it. And the NPC girl's face had gone bright, bright red.

Puck immediately hopped to his feet and marched over to the two - pushing the NPC off Arthur and pulling him to his feet.

From the girl melting through the wall to the eighty-year-old and the winged lass that walked into the room, Cornyx found himself all too quickly being surrounded by a crowd of individuals he could only describe as 'motley.' The ones with the wings caught his attention most for a moment, black eyes boring into them as he tried to identify whether or not either one could be an enemy, but then Jabril's purring voice was in his ear and murmuring in soft Demonic: they were no angels or, at least, angels of the proper kind.

He raised his fingers, pushing his glasses up his nose again--they couldn't seem to stay up for more than three minutes--and the light shimmered off of the lenses with an almost blinding brilliance to the onlookers. Mrs. Frump was still yammering on in gibberish, the crowd was getting bigger, and this, he decided, was enough of chaos. These people wanted him in class, fine--they could have him in the d*** class.

Cornyx rose, his height bringing up tall enough to be able to flatten his hand and a good part of his arm against the ceiling.

"Excuse me, miss, but I have something to add; do you mind?" he queried, eyeing the shapes and lines scribbled all over the bored. Ugh. He couldn't believe that he was playing along with this. The woman pressed her hands together in seeming excitement, smiling widely.

"Cornyx-san!" she said. "You never have to ask! Your intellect in this classroom is a blessing!"

A...blessing? His eyebrow gave the slightest of quirks before he strode over, picking up the whiteboard eraser and scrubbed off all of the lines she'd left, then turned back to the classroom.

There was green-skinned winged-guy (who had said something about pocket dimensions, if Cornyx wasn't mistaken), mess-black-haired-guy who'd been grabbing green dude's wrist, brown-haired dude, afro-lady-with-wings, Shakespeare-kid, redneck, second-wings, the grandma, and short-freckled-lass. Nine in all, not counting himself or his demonic companion. His eyes flickered towards the window. Pink flower petals, drifting outside against a cardboard cutout. He squinted, as though trying to ascertain that this was, indeed, what he was seeing. It didn't start making any more sense the longer he stared. To the contrary, it made considerably less; they weren't even actual flower petals, they were made out of what appeared to be paper.

Right, then. Whatever.

Hoping that now he had everyone's attention, he began to speak. His voice wasn't particularly loud or aggressive, yet it held a certain authority, the sort that would entice most to take pause and listen to what he had to say. It was a tone that had developed over years of long practice, a tone that any ruler needed to master.

"As many of you have presumably noticed or worked out by now, those of us in this room that are not simulacra or walking automatons or mere illusions have been, at least largely, brought here against our respective wills; to what end, none of us are certain, yet we find ourselves trapped in no company but our own and these..." he paused, eyeing the copies of the people in the room. "Human facsimiles. For those of you that have not heard or do not know, it appears that this is a pocket dimension, which ultimately means we are all trapped, hopefully temporarily. That being said, given that we are seemingly the only sentient and freewill-bearing individuals in this place, I propose that we form a temporary coalition with the goal of escaping and returning to our own homes, and, to this end, begin by introducing ourselves to introduce a level of familiarity within the group. We're likely more helpful together than alone. Some of us are quite familiar with the nature of pocket dimensions where others may not have heard of them; some of us recognize this setting, where others do not; and so on and so forth. Does anyone object to such a proposal?"

Brian sat, offended.

What did that kid know about pocket dimensions? Did he think they all came out of a neat little factory with instruction manuals and specialist helplines? That one could be expected to work the same as another?
Brian knew what his personal pocket dimension was, but his culture weren't the only bloody ones to invent them, there was thousands and thousands of ways to make the cheeky fuckers and what he was doing was tantamount to a veteranian performing surgery on another galaxy's version of a rabbit.

"Hey! For your information I've made a lot of progress-" Brian began, about to show his notes.

But the boy was more interested in saving his boyfriend from an imaginary girl. Pri-bloody-orities.

Then he heard what Pasty McStilts had to say, somehow, over the imaginary students' adoring claps.

Brian got up, particularly pompously.

"That's the best bloody idea I've heard all day. I'm Brian Flanagan, fairy, Interdimensional Detective from The Court of Oberon, interdimensional serial number #2487. Top graduate in the subject of pocket dimensions, I have already noted extensively some of the core principles of this one. Lookin' forward to working with ya, Stilts."

The imaginary students started clapping again.

"Oh, Cornyx-sama," cooed Frump-sensei, "Your group projects are such a good influence on the hooligans of the student body. An inspiration."

Arthur admittedly hadn't known his boyfriend for all that long, but Puck was easy to read. Most people could figure out what he was thinking - on the surface, at least. Puck was the kind of person who was good at masking his emotions when he absolutely had to. Arthur was sure he still had some secrets he hadn't shared.

But right now, Arthur was pretty sure Puck wasn't trying to hide any of his thoughts. The glare he had leveled at Emberly after she looked away, blushing, was the first hint that he wasn't in the best of moods. The look that he gave Brian immediately afterwards was an even better hint.

Arthur decided it was time to play mediator.

"I'm sure your notes will help," Arthur reassured Brian - grabbing onto Puck's hand and giving it a little squeeze. "My name is Arthur Croft. I'm, er, a high school student. I'm still a little new to magical things, so I apologize in advance if I'm behind on what's going on. Pocket dimensions aren't something I've really had experience with."

"My name is Puck," Puck offered, placing his hand on his chest and giving a little theatrical bow. "Puck Ward. Master sorcerer, all-knowing guide to the supernatural, and Arthur's boyfriend."

He popped back up.

"And don't you forget any of that," he said. Arthur couldn't tell if the warning was directed towards Emberleigh or Brian, but the entire student body seemed to assume that it was directed at them from the way they stared at Puck in horror.

"...I can't believe you're friends with him," Emberly whispered. "He's so...frightening, Arthur!"

"We're not friends," Puck replied, exasperated. "He's my boyfriend."

Emberleigh recoiled in her seat a little. "...That's what I said. You're boys that are friends."

"No, he's my-"

Arthur just shook his head and put his hand on Puck's shoulder. "I don't think you'll be able to convince her to change her mind," Arthur said. "Emberly is just an extension of this dimension. I don't think she's really, you know..."

He trailed off, shifting awkwardly at the thought of how he'd finish it.

Puck stared. "You know her name?"

"It was written on her notes," Arthur replied. "She spelled it differently on her notes, so I'm not really sure how it's actually spelled..."

Connery had nearly, tragically, missed the announcement of the gargantuan late-graduate, for there was a pretty girl with her fingers entangled in his hair. She fussed over him, saying things like, "You always do this!" and "Why do you have to be so clumsy?!" as she combed the partially-dried, sticky blood that matted his hair flat against his head.

He did take notice, however, when the tall many spoke, and when the others did their own introductions. At this, he scowled.

"Don't be so frowny, Connery-chan!" the girl whined above him, yanking at the comb that was stuck in his hair.

He, with all the dignity in the world, made a sound that some might call a 'yelp' or a 'whine', but those people were just mistaken. The sound he made wasn't so undignified as that.

Scratch that from the records! He made no sound at all. He simply scowled at the girl with a ferocity that made her sheepishly back away and offer an apology.

The apology she made, came in the words, "Don't be such a baby!"

The girl's name was 'Aika-something', if he could properly recall, and her brilliant red hair defied even the most basic laws of physics.

The other's, though, oh the others.

They claimed this was a 'pocket dimension' or something of such sort or kind. As Aika finished with his hair - which had abruptly and unsubtly become pristine the moment she stopped working on it - she looped around his desk to go to her own. As she made that simple trip, time appeared to slow. Connery saw the pencil on the ground, which seemed to pop into existence exactly in her path of walking, and then he subsequently observed her foot's descent upon it. There wasn't time to warn her of what was to happen before she slipped backward, right into Connery's lap.

Upon her cheeks was such a profuse blush, even as faux-anger rose her voice, "You tripped me, Connery-chan!" she shouted as she flew to her feet.

"Lies!" he shot back - the blush on his own cheeks being of no consequence or meaning whatsoever - "It was your own clumsy action that led you to trip, no, slip the way you did!"

She gave an indignant huff - something she surely stole from him, judging by the time which she claimed to have spent with some alternate version of him - and stalked out of the room.

The teacher made a feeble attempt to call after her, then turned a glare on Connery. "Detention, Connery-chan."

He threw his hands up in defeat and fell back in his seat.

Alternate universe, pocket dimension, whatever. Why bring him here only to torture him so?

"This is the nightwalker's doing," he grumbled to those who announced themselves at not-of-this-universe, "She is a callous, horrible being of treachery who takes delight in the suffering of others." He was thinking, of course, about those sets and costumes, props and lights, all destroyed by malicious action such as was in-character for that bloodsucker.

The winged woman at the from of the classroom stood from where she'd been sitting attentively at the teacher's desk, observing the lesson and occasionally awkwardly shifting or fluttering her wings, which were certainly not made for the chair in which she sat, now stood.

"I'm Raziel," she said, "I'm a..." she seemed to be considering her words, as though describing her occupation was some sort of careful task, as it only was for the liars of the world. Connery made note to keep an eye on this creature with her deplorably unkempt wings. "I'm from one of the dimensions containing Earth, or Terra, depending on which realm you're from."