Young Writers Society

Terence's eyes widened. He knew it! He'd been positive today would be the day he finally got a lead on those elusive griffins and he'd been right. He hadn't expected it to come in the form of a mutant child who had delusions of being a superhero and a poorly disguised growth on its face, but hey, the world worked in mysterious ways... And that was when it hit him. The thing was a warning! A warning that when the apocolypse came, everyone would be mutated into things like this. The pieces all fitted together like a jigsaw, like how the taste combination of marmite and butter and cheese and bread made the world's most perfect, life extending breakfast; all he had to do was follow the signs he was being given.

"Hello? I can show you to the griffins, sir?" The boy looked at him nervously. Deferential. He liked that.

"Yes. Yes, take me to them. They're in a tree, in their eyrie, aren't they?" Terence said eagerly.

"Uh, yeah. Yeah! A tree! That's where they are. It's just down this way." The boy flapped an arm in the general direction of a patch of green, a wood just beyond the rooves of the town. Squinting, Terence thought he could see one tree reaching up high above the others. His eyes gleamed.

"Hop on!" He tapped the back of his wheelchair with a gnarled finger. The duck-boy hesitated, peering with trepidation at the exhaust pipe still sputtering out puffs of smoke.

"On!" Terence yelled. The boy jumped and stepped up onto the ledge at the back of the wheelchair, clinging on tightly to the framework. "And stop poking that bill of yours into my shoulder!"

"I-it's not a bill! It's - face decoration. It's all the rage where I come from, you know."

"What, the village pond?" Without waiting for an answer, Terence slammed a foot down on the foot pedal and the wheelchair jumped forward, winding drunkenly down the road. The boy screamed girlishly and then covered it with a nervous cough. Together they hurtled down the road, the boy's cape fluttering behind him.

Hannelore is a griffin who is a bit of a dodo. She has a habit of getting distracted easily and is fascinated by ‘miniatures.’ In Hannelore’s eyes, anything even a bit smaller than normal counts as a miniature, and especially so if it’s smaller than her.

Eve-12 sat in a small white room in the Omega Labs, consisting only of a few objects. The majority of the items were puzzles to test her knowledge and skills, while the rest were considered necessity items by the scientists - like her bed.

If you wanna be my lover, then you've got to get with my friends...


Letting out a huff, Eve-12 started pacing. That sound was always there. All her life she had heard the strange singing; wherever she went, it was there. She continued to pace, bored. Less than an hour before, she had been doing more tests for the scientists. She always had to run on treadmills or dodge attacks from strange machines to show the scientists how quick or strong she was. Or she would have to do strange mazes and brain puzzles to show how smart she was. She was sick of it. And that sound. The Omega Lab scientists were certain they knew everything about her, but they didn't know her mind. Eve-12 knew the ins and outs of the lab. Every entrance, every exit, every computer room and every experimenting room; and she had a plan. The Eves before her were either too stupid or too weak. Eve-12 was too smart and too strong for the scientists, but they didn't know that.

Walking up to the door, Eve-12 grabbed the locked handle and twisted it, breaking the lock and shoving the door open. She came face to face with a scientist who let out a startled gasp before he spoke.

"What are you doing?" He spluttered, taking a step back. Eve-12 paused, looking somewhat confused in how she was supposed to respond, before looking directly at the scientist again.

"I'm leaving." She said simply, turning away from the scientist to walk to the nearest exit she knew of. Eve-12 walked down the hall, glancing at the plain gray walls before continuing forward.

"You can't do that! You have to stay in your room." The man called after her, waving his arms. Ignoring him, she continued along the way, hearing his footsteps go the other direction soon after. She knew the scientists would be after her, but she was stronger and faster. Picking up the pace, Eve-12 ran through the hall, passing once through a larger room and startling a group of scientists, who just stared after her. Turning down a corner, she shoved a large door open, seeing the outside world. It was covered with snow outside the Omega Labs. Eve-12 paused to allow her sharp vision to adjust to the brightness before beginning to run again. She eventually made her way to a asphalt road, a few miles away from Omega Labs. She glanced around at what she knew to be a parking lot, from what the scientists showed her, and several vehicles; cars, trucks and types of bikes. Her gaze fell upon a giant semi-truck, with a strange name on the side of it.

Wal....Mart?

Shaking her head, Eve-12 walked up to this truck. Looking around once more to check for people, she forced the lock open and slid open the back of the truck, crawling in with all the merchandise before sliding the giant door-panel down. About ten minutes later, she heard the roar of an engine and felt the truck vibrate and begin to move. She was going to get out of Cleveland.

Teehee, you guys are crazy.

*Sweenie*

"Order, order!" a particularly harried gryphon called out, pounding his talon into a nearby tree stump. The sound that he produced was less than desired... it was dull and everybody still talked over him. His feathers fluffed in frustration. "I said, order! Doesn't anybo--"

"SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!"

The effect was immediate. Suddenly, the mas of gryphons fluttering around and chattering died down at that impressive shriek. I didn't do it... though I wish I had. My best friend, Julz, did. And, as anyone could tell you, her screams are particularly impressive.

The harried gryphon (named Mac) glared at Julz. "Now that we've calmed down, I suppose we can get on with our meeting."

Several of the younger gryphons groaned. Nobody liked meetings, nobody. Mac knew this as well as anyone, so he glanced around at the tops of our heads, making sure our ears were turned to him before he began.

"I wanted to talk with you about the human situation."

My feathers fluffed immediately. Humans. Was that all we talked about these days? "Shouldn't we be separated from them?" I called out, but Mac simply dismissed me.

"Now, as we know, we have a policy that no humans should be interacted with. They are highly unstable and as such we do not want to deal with them."

Just like we didn't bother with the elves or the dragons or the fairies. Oh, and don't forget the centaurs. Because, Anemoi knows that we didn't deal with any of those groups because they were unstable.

I am being sarcastic. In truth, we dealt with those groups. It was hard not to. But humans? They were the exception. They weren't magical. Never were. Plus, they were stupid. They didn't guess of our existence. In fact, they weren't even aware we existed! Oh sure, there were exceptions, but most of the people didn't care.

Someone else called out, "You called us here for that?" It sounded sarcastic and Mac's feathers fluffed in response.

"I said we do not want to deal with them. However, it looks like we're going to have to deal with them now."

My ears perked. I turned to Julz and swished my tail in an interested way. "What does he mean?" I hissed to her.

Almost as if he heard me, Mac set his beak grimly. "We underestimated their magic. They're not unmagical after all."

There was an audible gasp among the gryphons there, followed by an uncomfortable silence.

"How is that possible?" Julz asked.

"Details are few and far between. We've got reports from the third eyrie that one human was trying to hunt down their gryphons. We also have reports locally of an old man who is obsessed with one of our Aeries, does nothing but stare at it. Recently, a guy with the mark of the alpaca was sighted. Various strange humans seem to be living in the town nearby and our traditional magic safeguards appear to have no effect on them. Either the old magic is failing, or they have figured out some way to counter them magically," Mac said.

"So, what do we do?" Hannelore asked.

"Friends, I think I have a solution," Patrus said. He stood up. "If the humans are indeed magical, then we should waste no time befriending them. If the Council of Mythical Creatures hears of this, they will try to bring them under their hegemony. With the humans a part of their organization, how long would our own independence last?"

"That's not an option," Sweenie said. Patrus turned towards Sweenie.

"How would you go about doing this?" Mac asked.

"We start by studying the humans and begin looking for potential assets. Children or farmers might be a good start. Once we recruit them, we use them to gain information about human dispositions and knowledge. That way we can limit our exposure to humans while gaining useful knowledge about them. From that knowledge, we can determine how to proceed," Patrus said.

"Go ahead Sweenie," Mac said.

Eve-12 let out a puff as the truck jolted and shook, going down the highway. She had been in the truck for what felt like ages, but was most likely only a couple days. Already she had had to quickly hide in the back of the truck as the driver stopped to unload some items, and he had also managed to replace the lock with a much bigger and stronger one. Eve-12 had tried once already to break the lock from the inside, with no luck. Her head throbbed with the mixture of exhaustion and the strangeness of the lack of the music.

The truck jolted again and slowed down as it took an exit into another town. Eve-12 tensed and sat up, stretching quickly before getting into a crouching position. She swayed lightly every time the truck made a turn or hit a bump before eventually slowing to a hault. She had only one option, which was to get out of the truck. And only one way to do that. She waited tensely as she listened to the trucker fumble with the lock before it finally opened with a loud clank. As the door slid open, Eve-12 saw the trucker; a lightly tanned tall man with slight stubble. Before he could react, she shot out of the truck and took off running as quickly as she could, while trying to take in the sudden new environment. She was in what looked to be a small town, surrounded by forest. Eve-12 glanced around, following a pavement road leading outside of the town for a couple minutes before veering away, into the trees. From there she looked down onto the small town. On her way out, she saw a sign that read 'Leaving Lonesome'.

This could work. Would they look here?

Eve-12 pondered, leaning back against a tree as she surveyed Lonesome; the place she would likely stay near for awhile.

(Odd, outside of the actual thread, it says I didn't make the last post on here. =/)