Young Writers Society

"Oh, um, sure!" Kaya said, trotting along beside him. "A map. That's smart."

They started down the path lined with trees and benches, heading away from the greenspace. An intersection can be seen at the end of the trail, possibly leading to city streets.

"So..." Kaya said slowly, kicking the pebbles that crossed her path. "This is kind of awkward, isn't it?" She let out a stifled laugh. "I mean... where are we? And why are we the only ones here? I dunno... I just, don't really remember..."

Kaya paused and timidly looked up at Jacob.

Does he remember coming here?

James could tell Saya was trying to get information out of him, but it was information that he didn't have. He could pretend like he knew what was going on, but he could only see that ending poorly, likely with him becoming a subject of suspicion. At best, he'd be labelled a liar, and at worst, he'd be abandoned by Saya and whoever else they found.

"I don't remember either," he admitted, looking down at the ground. "I just didn't want to sound crazy saying so." The last half was a lie. He could care less.

"I have no idea where we are, but normally cities like this have signs and street names, which should at least give us something to go off of. I figure if we can get into the city, maybe there will be stores or something that could give us an idea of where we're at. As for other people... I have a feeling the only other people we'll find will be like us."

He paused.

"As in, they can't remember how they got here either. But - it's just a gut feeling."

He shrugged, looking to her with a small smile. "We'll just figure this out as we go. There's a lot we don't know. This obviously isn't your typical kidnapping, because otherwise, we'd be bound and held for ransom, or something else. And I don't think we were drugged and brought here either. Most people who kidnap don't have entire empty cities at their disposal to store their captives. So we're either looking at someone very rich and powerful or something bigger than that."

He avoided mentioning being in a different body for a reason. He had more than enough to hypothesize about without mentioning magic or some hyper-advanced science that could result in them being in different bodies. One thing at a time.

"That is, if it even is a someone who brought us here. I mean, something had to. It's either that, or this is all one big dream. But that means we'd have to figure out which one of us is dreaming, and I'm pretty sure we're both real people."

He smiled again and jabbed lightly at her with his elbow, laughing. Falling into character as 'Jacob' was coming a lot easier than he thought. It was nice.

He leaned away a little. "At least, you seem like a real person. Not a dream."

Milo and the two strangers stood in the alley in silence for a time period that felt so long you could fit a whole different plot arc into it, trying to piece together where they were and most importantly, why they were here.

"I... I'm sorry for how I smell," Milo said after a while, realizing he himself was holding his breath from the fisherman's smell. "I seem to look like one of my grandparents, but also... not?"

"So... here we are, three strangers in a strange alley in strange bodies. Strange." Milo said again, more narrating his own situation (as a coping mechanism to not go full panic attack) than talking to his companions.

Suddenly, an idea popped into his head, and he started feeling inside the trench coat for something. Looking up, he watched both his companions before realising how silly he must look.

"We can't say our names, right?" Milo said, continuing to feel around in his pockets (of which there were remarkably many), "But maybe we can write them?"

Before either could voice their thoughts on the idea, Milo felt something in a small pocket near his left side. Pulling out his hand, and seeing an old, rusty fish hook, Milo started looking around for a surface that looked... writeable. All the while, he was having an internal argument with himself.

Maybe this is an initiation test? Like, for the...
No! Don't even think the name.
Or maybe a weird dream where I can only wake up if I tell people who I really am. As in, really am.

Turning his attention back to the world around him, Milo noticed that he had wandered out of the alley-thing, and was standing in the middle of a long, broad street again, fish hook clutched in his gloved hands.

In that moment, Stephanie decided it would be best to just call the other two by the names that they had involuntarily given: Elliott and Anna. She knew those weren't really their names, but she also knew she didn't really have an alternative. She doubted they would be able to write their names out. It seemed too convenient, and her life rarely was convenient.

She let out a tiny sigh and started to head towards where Elliott was. This was just the latest strange, vaguely annoying thing to happen to her in the past week alone. There had been the mugging on Saturday, the fear gas attack on Monday, the kidnapping on Tuesday, and asylum breakout on Thursday. A strange body swap with a dead childhood friend on Friday just seemed to fit the week she was having.

...And the month.

...And the year.

...And the life.

She ran her fingers through her hair again, wishing that she was at least herself for this. She knew how to use her body's strengths. This body just felt so big and clumsy. But it was admittedly as alert as her own - possibly even more so. There was someone else in the shadows of the alleyway. Stephanie spun around, not quite sure how she was able to tell that the person was there when the person had been standing so still.

"Hi," Stephanie said, her tone as warm as she could make it with this voice. She wasn't really surprised by how warm it sounded; Jay had always gotten himself into trouble, but he was secretly one of the sweetest people that she had ever known. "Are you in the same situation as us?"

Kaya mostly nodded and responded with a "yeah" or "I understand" or "same here," letting Jacob talk for most of the walk down the path. So, he doesn't remember coming to this park either, but what really suck out was when he said:

"I have a feeling the only other people we'll find will be like us."

He said... us. Like us. As in, grouping the two of them as equals, and finding other people like them. It was obvious to her that other person would nonchalantly brush off being lost and maybe find their own way, but here they were walking together, and he mentioned like...us.. She's certain that she's like him—and she doesn't mean like him, as in outcasted like all the others, but rather that he was also in another body.

For the first time since arriving, Kaya truly started to question how she woke up in Saya's body. She thought perhaps this was a dream, or a trip, or maybe some kind of test, but it would be really bizarre for others to go through the same thing. Unless... he came from the same building? Not possible, she didn't know any Jacob. But maybe he's lying about his name? If so, he would be a very good liar...

But what is this about a kidnapping? She couldn't help but raise an eyebrow when he suggested it, because it was just too... obvious. No way he came from the same building as her; it made too much logical sense. She was certain that he was in the exact same situation as her with the body swapping and all, but he seemed to be hiding it with the bizarre kidnapping and robbery theory. No shame though, because she had no plan on revealing the situation either.

"Well, I think you're pretty real, too!" she chimed in. "I hope we don't run into the kidnapper..."

Okay. So they're both in the same situation. And they're going to find their way around and maybe meet other people? Suddenly this experience is not turning out to be very fun.

Kaya let that thought sink as as they approached the end of the path. She paused and looked around, noticing the intersection of what would have been a busy street littered with stores and crosswalks be so empty and quiet. "This is eerie," she said quietly to Jacob.

Right on cue, an old man wandered out from a nearby alley. He was a bit farther out, but it was easy to notice a living breathing person in an empty street.

Kaya gently elbowed Jacob, pointing at the man. "Hey, looks like there's someone there." She squinted, noticing he was holding something that glinted in the sunlight. "Is he holding a knife?" she wondered out loud. She looked back at Jacob with a puzzled face as if asking him: should we approach him?

Someone was talking to her. Someone who had been in situations like this before, it seemed. The entities behind all of these scenarios mustn't be able to reach for very many people, given how many of the people Queenie met in other worlds had been plucked from their own realities before.

She didn't try for a smile - it would probably look freakishly unnatural on Briar's features, given how unused her muscles were to it - but did give a wave.

"Um, what do you mean?" she asked, feigning ignorance. "I, um, don't know where I am, if that's it." An awkward shift, fidgeting with the cuff of her sleeve, and the act 'ought to sell.

James glanced over at Saya, then to the man standing in the middle of the street with the... hook? In his hand?

Under normal circumstances, James wouldn't approach him. But these were not normal circumstances.

"I don't think so," he whispered back to Saya. "But seeing as he's the first guy we've seen in this empty city, we might as well check it out. If he seems fishy, we can bail."

With that, he strode down the street towards the man with the hook.

"Hello there, stranger," he called out. "You seem a little lost."

There were voices coming from where Elliott had gone, but Stephanie kept her focus on the girl fidgeting on the other side of the alleyway. She was feigning ignorance. She had to be. She might have been in her own body, but Stephanie doubted it. It didn't make sense with what was going on right now. Narratively, they should have all been in the same situation. Going off the clues, they should have all been, too. If three people had ended up in this alleyway and looked like completely different people, the girl likely was in the same situation, too.

"That's partially it," Stephanie agreed. "But we also look like other people right now, and I have a sneaking suspicion you look like someone else, too. I'm not wrong, am I?"

Hearing several voices suddenly speak around him, Milo became acutely aware of how he must appear to other people: an old, fishy-smelling man in a dark, tattered trenchcoat, holding a fisherman's hook in his hand in the middle of a creepy looking street.

Looking in the direction of the voices that asked if (presumably) he was lost, he noticed two people very cautiously walking towards him, the grandma person, and the other guy (Milo never was good with names, and then he somehow ended up in this place). Trying his best to smile at them in a friendly manner, the looks on their faces as he smiled waving at them (admittedly, with the hand holding the hook) told him it was not working as intended.

"Hello!" he decided to call out, hiding the hook-holding hand behind his back. "I wouldn't say I'm lost per se. More like I've lost who I'm supposed to be, and trying to find a way to get it back."

Sure, because that sounds like something a "normal" person would say.

"Don't mind the hook and appearance. I'm not usually like this at all." he added quickly, trying to giggle nervously, but instead sounding like he's about to go into a raspy coughing fit.

Definitely making your story a lot more convincing and not at all creepy.

Stuffing the hook back in his trenchcoat quickly, Milo decided it would be much better to have his two... companions he had met in the alley, one of whom seemed to be talking to a shadow-lurking person, do the talking from now on, as he gestured for the two road arrivals to come closer.

Dude, you seriously need to work on your people skills in this weird simulation/initiation/dream thing. Can't keep fumbling on like you're rolling nat 1s the whole time.

More people had joined their group now, including a short dark haired girl that seemed to be staring at her. Or at least she was before Jason got her attention.

She felt dizzy. Maybe it was the fact that she was in her great-grandmother's body, or maybe it was the fact that she was surrounded by strangers who also seemed to be in different bodies.

"Excuse me, do I know you?" Lacey said to the dark hared girl.

Queenie's gaze flicked over the girl. Anna. Not Anna? Whoever she was, she must have noticed Queenie's gaze lingering a little too long.

"You looked familiar," she explained apologetically - a tone that felt horribly unnatural with Briar's vocal cords - "Sorry for staring."

James could hear the voices around the corner in the alley. It was strange for him - in that moment he could hear them with more clarity than he would've expected. Apparently this body had better hearing as well. Which, comparatively, wasn't that impressive, but still. It felt... advanced, for lack of a better word.

He continued to approach the fisherman, letting Saya follow at whatever distance she felt was comfortable. He did keep an eye on her though.

"No worries," he assured the man. "I think we man all be in a similar situation. By 'not usually like this,' I assume you're referring to the fact that you don't look like your normal self."

As he came up to the man, he caught a whiff of his scent. The man definitely smelled like he had been off at sea, working with fish.

He also could see the two girls in the alley along with another young man with a streak of white in his hair.

He glanced over at them, but looked over to the fisherman again.

"I'm Jacob," he said. "And this is Saya," he said with a small gesture behind him.

Stephanie had hoped that her accusation would get the still unnamed newcomer to admit that she was in the same situation as the rest of them, but it looked like that wasn't the case. Stephanie sighed again, ran her fingers through her hair, and decided to join Elliott at the front of the little alleyway.

She tried to imagine what Jason would have done in a situation like this. He probably would have approached it with far more gusto than she was. She could imagine him standing next to her, giving her a big wink and that smirk he never really wiped off of his face. The Jason she had seen on the stage felt different than that old Jason, but she still wanted to think that he would be just as comforting now as he had been back then.

She was taller than Saya and Jacob - or whoever they were currently stuck as. That would take some adjusting to get used to. She absentmindedly wondered how she'd ever be able to hold her own in a fight when she was this big. She didn't know what to do with all of the extra height and muscles.

Who knew that someone so small could grow to be someone so big?

"I'm Jason," she said. Introducing herself as Jay felt wrong. Jay was too personal - she didn't have the right to be sharing that nickname outside of her accidental comment earlier. And then, as a little bit of a instinctive reflex, she couldn't help but add, "Jason Todd."

She thought for a moment.

"I've been trying to figure out why we're here," she said, "but I haven't really gotten all that far. The only thing that I could think of doing something like this is maybe fear gas, but this doesn't really fit how that works. I don't think this is a hallucination. I'm also not scared right now, which defeats the whole purpose of it."

Milo for one, was glad someone else was doing the talking and thinking. Having already made a fool of himself with the whole "hook thing" (hey it got two other people to join the group, so in that sense the hook served an useful purpose at least. Maybe even a "plot hook", come to think of it)

Regarding what Jason Todd (definitely a name that would work well as a superhero alias. Better than Elliott at the very least) was suspecting this whole...place, event... thing actually was, Milo had his own idea of what might be happening.

Yeah, only probably with your idea that this is a video game is that there's no visible health bar, or floating exclamation marks.

"Oh really," Milo thought, and what would you know.

If his brain could through a sideways "really?" look at him, Mill's brain would be making that look at him

I know you know that I know more than you about these stuff.

Tuning out his brain as best he could, Milo decided to speak up some of his ideas. If only for the other people to continue talking.

"Maybe a strange interconnected dream, or even a simulation like a video game or something?"

Everything seemed to be revealed all at once when they approached the old man and two other people in the nearby alley.

Were they lost? Were there others who woke up in a different body? Was everyone in the same situation as them? Did anyone know what was going on? Apparently not, considering the old man revealed that he's not who he is, and Jacob agreed as confirmation.

Kaya lifted her hand up for a weak wave and let out a half-hearted smile when Jacob introduced her to the boy and girl down the alley, all the while trying to process the events happening here. It seemed too bizarre that they all were here in different bodies, and they were all strangers. Was this a test? Were they actually kidnapped, like Jacob suggested? Or a "fear gas" (whatever the hell that is) hallucination, like Jason suggested? Or maybe they really were dreaming, like the old man said?

Her head hurt.

"I don't know, you all seem real to me," Kaya said, glancing back at Jacob who was the one who told her that she seemed like a totally real person. "But if we're all lost, um... Jacob and I were going to find a map to see how we can leave this place. Maybe we can look around for a map or another clue out of here."