Young Writers Society

I stopped in mid-step just when I heard a low growl.
I scoffed

"fantastic, just what we needed"

I watched as the horrible beast stared at us like it just found its entire meal for the day.
Out of instinct, I took a step toward the beast. Not too close but enough to drive its attention off of everyone else.
I need to be a distraction
they need time to figure out what the hell they are going to do with themselves

You know you are a dummy
You don't need to be a distraction
you need to see how everyone else is going to react to this.

You have a good point but the thing is if we wait too long we will all end up dead.


I glanced across the room

I need a weapon

I looked back at skull then I looked towards where Violet and Sophie were at.

ok,time we need time

they need time


I need to do something and it needs to be quick if not someone is not going to make it out of here.

Sophie was still trying to sit up when she suddenly heard this growl and thought someone was hungry. Full of unease, she stood up and tried to get some dust off herself.

For a moment she was engulfed in a blur, as if she had someone very close in front of her, but when she shook her head (and the attempt to see her eyes was undone by the mask) there was no one to be seen and only the strange black dots floating around her.

"What's wrong?" Sophie asked as she turned and caught sight of the huge behemoth. She was startled, she couldn't help but squeal in that way, breaking the monstrous wolf's growl with a shrill squeal. She hoped fervently that no one had heard and tried to pretend that her legs were not suddenly made of jello.

She could still hear Katharine speaking and it seemed like Sophie was unsure but also full of drive.

Suddenly everything seemed as if there was a slow-motion going on. Everything went slower, from frame to frame, without changing anything directly and Sophie remained in her stupor while the movements of the others changed like in a stop-motion film.

Where have I ended up here? What am I supposed to do?

Like an echo, this thought rumbled through her head, unable to understand why she, of all people, was here now, causing nothing but problems with her clumsiness. Her head, where everything continued to run in slow motion, changed more and more. Her thoughts, just level and orderly, fell together like a ball of wool and changed her vision.

The beast entered deeper into the room, almost as if it were an enemy army occupying territory piece by piece. Only then did Sophie realise that the others seemed to be looking for a weapon, or at least an object, to defend themselves while she stood there waiting to be eaten or killed.

She didn't know which was worse and tried to stay a little clearer in her mind.

"I need a gun! Now!"

Sophie stormed behind the counters.

Violet gaped at the wolf as it lumbered inside the room, snarling at everybody. But, when Sophie and Katherine snapped into action, something stirred inside her chest. It was exciting.

She flipped her knife into the air and caught it effortlessly. The blade glinted sharply underneath the dim light.

"I don't know if there's a gun back there, but there are plenty of knives," she said. Violet planted her feet into a wide stance and crouched a little, drawing her knife parallel to her chest.

"Now, we have some action." She grinned.

Vankous POV

Vankous cancelled his invisibility spell with a very loud. "GAHHHHH"

"Ms. Phantom, you just had to go and jinx it didn't you?" he said, stomping his foot in frustration. "It was all going perfectly."

"Excuse me," said Susan, "I had nothing to do with, and things were already going, very wrong. There was nothing perfect about this."

"Sorry," said Vankous, "that was a bit uncalled for. I was thinking of The Darkness, cause that man would 100% have been the one to summon the wolf."

"I don't doubt that. I've seen you four try to buy ice cream before," said Susan, chuckling. She willed herself to be more visible, although she kept herself intangible just to make sure the wolf didn't end up munching on her. It didn't seem that impressive compared to some of the creatures she'd seen before but Harry and Jennifer had drilled it in her head pretty solidly to absolutely never underestimate any opponent no matter how big or small.

Vankous smiled sheepishly at the ice cream memory. "That one was on me, I enchanted the ice cream to repeatedly hit Agent Khaos on the..."

"Big bad wolf on your six, maybe we deal with that one first," suggested Susan.

"Oh I forgot about that part," said Vankous, facepalming. "Umm...so yup, I have a plan."

"That's very rarely a good thing," said Susan, " no offense."

"None taken," said Vankous, "but this time umm." He proceeded to raise his hands as he took a few steps forward, coming to the front of the group and facing the wolf.

The thing tensed, clearly ready to attack. He smirked at the wolf. Directing his hands toward it, he shouted the command word for shield, a glowing purple sheet of energy coming to life in front of him. Just in time. The wolf immediately jumped, smacking its head into the shield. It shuddered a lot more than it should have for an animal of that size but it held.

"I saw a staircase somewhere," said Vankous, raising his voice and addressing everyone, "I think we should probably start running up that, try and find a place with a bit more space to properly fight these wolves. I don't doubt you all can handle your knives well, but this guy..." He sniffed the air. "..who was terrible breath by the way is a bit mad and I think we should not be fighting it in this tiny space."

Susan floated on behind Vankous.

"That was actually a good plan for once," said Susan, sounding surprised before turning to everyone else. "Yup, I have to concur on both the fighting strategy and the smell. Wow, this thing has never heard of a toothbrush."

I didn't have enough time to process my feelings on this whole situation. The wolf hadn't broken through the shield yet, but it was trying to—it was repeatedly slamming up against it now.

"I don't want to agree with you," I said to Vankous, "but that's a good plan."

I scanned the room for the stairs, then darted to them as soon as I saw them. If the wolf broke through, we'd want a more open room to fight it in. And, if we were lucky, it would give up as soon as it couldn't see us anymore.

Sophie remained hidden behind the counters, frantically searching for something that looked like a weapon, but she found nothing more dangerous than a bottle of high-proof liquor. She had the insane idea of throwing it at the monster so it would get drunk, then she thought of the old Bud Spencer films she had seen as a child and thought she might get stronger with it herself.

For a moment, she stared out over the counters and saw Skull running towards a staircase.

"Hey, what are you doing?" she yelled, trying to make herself heard.

Sophie wasn't sure if she should do that, but she wanted to get to Skull as quickly as possible to get to safety. A plan was forming in her brain that she wanted to carry out.

"I'm coming!"

With a scream that must have been reminiscent of Tarzan, she threw the liquor bottle against the wall, right next to the monster, and charged across the floor along the counters, the tables and chairs like a turtle, reaching the first step in a totally sweaty state.

Ok, great they thought of a plan.


I need to get behind that counter where Sophie was at. So I quickly headed over towards the counter and slid over it.
Guns Katherine look for guns

Where is it?
I started pulling everything out plates, bottles, and napkins.
[b]
Ooh, napkins grab some. I'm sure your makeup is probably running by now.[/b]

Good idea
I stand up and look around again. What the hell?

"Come on this is a bar and they have no type of guns"
" All I see back here is plates and bottles of liquor."

Let us not forget we do have angry most likely hungry wolves ready to feast on anything on site.

Yes, I know that, but if I'm going to help them out I'm going to need something sharp.


Alright, I opened the bottle of liquor took two sips and put the top back on the bottle.

I Wrap the top two fingers of my right hand around the neck of the bottle. So I will prevent shards of glass from stabbing me. I Hit the opening of the bottle hard with my left hand. Now I can work with this. I guess that's one thing I can learn from living with sadists for 7 years.


I jumped back over the counter and quickly made my way over to Sophie.

I reached my hand out

"Here come on, get off the ground"

"Woah!" cried Violet as she jumped away from the glass shards. The wolf snarled, reared it’s head, and smacked into the shield again. “Hey, where are you guys going?”

Skull, Sophie, and Katherine dashed towards and up the stairs. Violet glanced back at the wolf. It howled angrily as its prey ran away and increased its vigor. She sighed and turned away.

“You know, we’re probably going to get trapped up there!” she yelled to the others, but she ran after Katherine and Sophie anyway. With any luck, the rooms upstairs would be more open, giving them a better chance of fighting or escaping.

Sophie was sure she was going in the right direction, no matter what the others claimed. There had to be a window somewhere, where they had magically provided a large dustbin to jump out of. So somewhere there had to be a way to get on. At least to escape from this beast.

The wolf was briefly distracted by the bottle but seemed to focus back on the people in the room.

Sophie climbed the next set of stairs, still lost in her tunnel vision of what would happen next. With each new step, she felt courage fill her, thinking she could escape as if with each new step she would gain strength and single-handedly beat the wolf and defeat it. But luckily she kept her fantasies in her head at that moment and made it to the top.

Once at the top, she stood up and saw Violet coming up behind her and Katherine just managing to get to the top.

"OK, what do we do now?" asked Sophie, looking around.

There were a few doors, but it didn't seem like a TV show where everyone could bring a win.

"Let's all try this and see if we can get away. Or maybe we'll get lucky and find some flamethrowers."

Sophie laughed in tears at her own joke and watched the wolf move towards the stairs.

"Oh, no..."

Vankous

"Alright, everyone is on the stairs, I'm gonna break this in a minute," he said turning to look pointedly at Susan. "You can run off now. Go, I don't want to hold this for any longer than is strictly necessary. This thing is good."

"No, you run off first," said Susan, " we both know you can't outrun a wolf, I'll hold it while you get to the stairs and join y'all in a second."

"Excuse me, I am not that slow," said Vankous, trying to look offended. He knew she wasn't lying, but he didn't exactly want that to be public knowledge to everyone else.

Susan gave him a look that reminded him entirely too much of one Jennifer Hardy. This girl spent entirely too long with her.

"Fine...I'll count to ten. You better know what you're doing Danvers..." he began, before realizing entirely too late that he'd slipped up. "I mean Phantom..."

Susan waved it aside with a smirk. "One of us was going to accidentally say it anyway, I'm just happy it wasn't me, now scram Frost."

Vankous gave her one last offended look for good measure. Gosh it was hard to pretend to mad at this one. Turning serious after that, he gave her a nod, and began to count down.

"Five, Four, Three..." he began. He watched as Susan started channeling energy into her. He couldn't help the proud smile that worked its way onto his face as he watched her change herself from the ethereal floating ghost into what would be a nearly impenetrable barrier for the wolf, charged with a very specific type of energy that glowed that eye melting shade of hot pink gifted to her by a very specific someone. He could still remember when the poor girl could barely walk ten feet without accidentally sinking into the ground.

"Vankous, you should be at like minus five by now, what is going on?" demanded Susan.

"Sorry," he said, flashing her a sheepish smile," before turning to his shield. "Two, One."

Vankous lifted his arms, making a large sweeping motion. It sent the shield bashing into the nose of the wolf, sending it flying back a few feet. It wasn't going to buy much time but it would be enough.

He ran for the stairs as fast as he could, which compared to most humans was just barely walking speed.

Susan

Susan braced herself for impact as Vankous ran for the stairs. Energy flowed through her in a mesmerizing swirl of pink as her form charged itself up, becoming more and more solid to the point that it was hard to break with most attacks, at least that's what she'd seen so far, and this wolf didn't seem to be much tougher than things she'd held up against in the past.

She only needed to deflect the thing once anyway. That should buy her enough time. At least so she hoped. She braced herself, the eerie chill of the only feeling her dead form could feel surrounding her as the energy reached its crescendo just in time for the wolf to get up from Vankous' impromptu shield bash.

The wolf charged towards her and she charged to meet it, getting down on one knee and planting her hands firmly on the ground as if she was about to headbut a bull. The wolf's teeth snapped at her face with deadly accuracy.

With a satisfying crunch on if its fangs snapped off, leaving a few drops of acidic looking green blood on the floor sizzling and steaming. This thing definitely was going to be an absolute nightmare to fight.

The force of the impact knocked the wolf back a few more feet, and beast seemed to have been at least partially disorientated from that. Grabbing the nearest object, a bar stool, Susan dissipated the energy around her. It was a good thing she couldn't feel tired or she'd be collapsing on the floor right about now, that sapped entirely too much energy from her.

Hefting the bar stool in the air, she made it to the stairs just as Vankous did. Unfortunately for her, it was also around the same time the wolf managed to arrive. Luckily, she'd picked up the bar stool for exactly that purpose and she dived for the foot of the stairs, turning intangible at the last second, causing the wolf to charge through her and into the opposite wall. Turning solid long enough to slam the bar stool on the wolf's head, she floated up the stairs as fast as she could. At the top of the stairs, she saw as Vankous levitated the stool back into the air and slammed it down once more for good measure.

"RIght, so we should find a more open space to fight this thing before it wakes up," she said, looking at the rest of them.

I scanned the doors on the floor we were on. We were technically on the top floor according to the amount of stairs, but I could have sworn I had seen some sort of structure on the roof when we entered earlier. Something that looked like a door leading out.

I focused.

When I thought like I was still on the Other Side and not here, I became more aware of sensations other people might not have.

Like how there was a rush of air coming out from underneath one of the doors right next to me.

I smirked.

Perfect.

"This door leads to the roof," I said, pointing at the one next to me. "We should have enough space to fight the wolf there."

I eyed the hallway again, looking for a makeshift weapon to use. My gaze eventually landed on some nearby pipes protruding from the wall. I was nowhere near strong enough to tear one of those free on my own, but I could tap into some powers of mine if it was just for a handful of moments.

The air temperature plummeted. Frost appeared on two spots on the pipe. I grabbed onto the center of the pipe and tugged. The frosted metal snapped. A moment later, I had a ready-to-use segment of pipe.

"See you up there," I said, waving my pipe. I pushed the open door and went up the last flight of stairs.

At first, all I noticed was how open the roof was. It was perfect for fighting an angry sick wolf. But when I looked around past the roof, I saw we were on the very edges of what appeared to be a deserted, overgrown city.

And just out of the corner of my eye, I saw something that almost looked like a barrier. It was out past the part of the city we were in. It wouldn't have been too wild of a guess to assume the barrier covered the entire city.

....Just where were we?

Sophie was still caught in her trance and realised that a possible fight could not be ruled out. It seemed as if only now the real fight would begin. As the wolf lay there on the ground, looking as if it would jump up again at any moment and chase after them, she noticed how Skull disappeared and now assumed that we had a real fight.

But Sophie had no weapons. She was too focused on the moment at hand to think beyond whether it wouldn't make sense to actually run. Didn't wolves have something like a territory where you could get away if you were far enough from it?

Sophie watched the others and thought to herself that it couldn't get any worse. A kind of hope was already present, together they could surely achieve more. In her own imagination, as she moved further away from the stairs to where Skull had disappeared, she thought of perhaps creating some kind of distraction, or sacrificing someone in the group to get away herself.

And in the end, it will be me...

These were her last thoughts as she saw the steps ahead of her and went up, ever mindful not to lose her gaze from the beast. At the top, it seemed as if everything had changed. It seemed fake and like a veritable nightmare. A gigantic city, lost in such a gloomy darkness that it seemed fake and almost eerie. And yet, for a short time, Sophie thought she was in her element.

As long as it's dark, there's nothing to be afraid of because you can't see anything!

She looked around on the roof and it almost seemed like an arena, still without weapons. And at the same time another thought occurred to her, which she directed at Skull.

"Will that monster even fit up through the stairwell here?"

I tore my gaze away from the city beyond and glanced over at Sophie. Then I turned to the staircase, pipe still in my head.

"Good question," I said. I couldn't really tell. "It could probably force itself through. It would hurt."

I directed my attention back to Sophie.

"But if it was hungry and we looked dinner, that might change things," I determined.

Sophie remained convinced that one could at least benefit from the passage being narrow enough to stop the wolf for some time. Thoughts began to form in her head that could amount to a classic comedy where, and really only there, would the mad plan work. She tried to at least keep it in the back of her mind when suddenly everyone would start laughing out of sheer desperation.

"We need to get everyone up here first, then we can see what happens next."

Sophie looked around.

"Or we could jump and run away, but I´m not good at running with broken legs."

"We're not running away," said Violet stoutly. "We might run into it again. We'll either have to kill the wolf or knock it unconscious," she said, "or drive it over the edge."

She leaned over the side of the roof, glancing down at the dark street.