Young Writers Society

He was being generous with himself, assuming they didn’t think he was crazy.

Of course they did and of course he was. The AU had made all of them nicer and more sane than normal, not less. Which meant this man was a right proper psychopath beneath it all. Ted Bundy anyone?

Why did she know who that was? Jerica shook it off.

“Yeah.” Jerica held up her right hand, showing it was unbroken. “But if I’m not hurt now, that means he’s not, either. So I vote we stab him again.”

"Stab him aga-" Lordy looked at Jerica, much less like a mashed potato as she had been the last time he saw her.

"I like the way you think, LET'S BE ON THEN."

"Let's hold off on stabbing," Bo said. "We don't know where anyone is yet or if this is one of those situations where everyone's needed to get out of it. And Lordy, we already tried getting out of this room. It's sealed shut. The only way we're getting out of here is when whoever put us here decides to open the door. I really don't think there are any hints we're missing. The only things in this room are us four and the pods."

“Which could also double as battering rams,” Jerica pointed out, glad that she finally had someone being reasonable about this. “Just saying.”

Lordy chuckled, "Well Andrei, that's because you didn't have me before."

He waved everyone away to make some space as he turned to face the door. Slowly he began waving his arms around as if picking fruit off of an invisible tree.

"Back in my land, I'm one of the greatest sorcerers there ever was. Watch this."

With one swift motion he shot his hands forward, straight out at the door and watched as it... did nothing.

Lordy straightened himself out and turned to everyone else, "Nah I'm just messing with you guys... but imagine?"

Bo watched as Lordshire pretended to use the force, accomplishing nothing. With a sigh, he folded his arms and leaned back on his heels.

"Well. At least you tried," he said.

Meanwhile, Jerica had this energy as she watched Lordy's lame magic be broken too, a sneaking suspicion that he was an unimportant loser in his world, too.

Once everything started to fade, a strange sense of calmness seemed to overtake Morri. It was something that felt familiar yet something he hadn't felt in a long time. The feeling of emptiness that he had forgotten that he knew so well started to return to him.

He was dead.

Not in an I'm gone and I'm never coming back, sort of way, but as if he'd stop existing as a being and was now more of a memory. One that didn't know how to go away, just always lingering. Never to leave. He was a ghosts. That's it. The ghost of a dead pirate.

And just as the memories came flooding back to him, his transparent eyes shot open and he found himself encased in glass. What he assumed was a liquid, one that he could hardly even feel, began to recede to somewhere he didn't bother trying to figure out. And with that, the bottom of his container slid open.

He was free... ish.

Morri floated down and rested his feet on the floor beneath him, much more gracefully than he thought anyone with a meat suit would have been able to do. He took one look around and as ghostly a voice as he could muster he spoke, "What in the hell is this?"

Benji froze.

If he wasn't so panicked by everything that had just happened, he might have assumed that Morri was asking about the lives they had all just lived or the lab they were currently both in. Instead, he was all too aware of how not human he looked right now, and how Morri had no idea who he was looking at. There was no way to identify the cryptid sitting on the ground as Benjamin Frost, unless Benji opened his mouth and answered the question in a voice that was undeniably his.

There was the sound of liquid moving behind him.

Benji rushed to his feet. Daniel blinked as he surveyed the scene—seeing the lab, Benji, and ghostly Morri—and took an uncertain step forward.

And tripped over his own hooves.

Benji couldn't help it—a tiny laugh slipped out of his lips. Daniel always fell after not using his hooves for awhile, and frequently mentioned how hard it was switching from two legs back to four.

James watched the door to their cell slide open slowly, receding into the walls with a soft thunk, like they were being locked in place. It looked like the door opened into an empty hall with metal walls, and the same, beige walls. But across from them, there was another cell, and its doors opened in like kind.

He could see Elias and Mel standing on the side of the cell, by what looked to be a pod, still-sealed.

Their was a cell right next to theirs too, and he could see four more figures inside. He recognized them to be Rek, Jerica, Bo, and Lordy. He slowly got to his feet and stepped out, looking to the sides.

There was another cell beside theirs, but the doors hadn't opened yet.

When he looked down the hall, it appeared the hall was very short. It had one dead-end that met a wall, and the other end had another door, still sealed shut.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to others apart from Morri, Daneil, and Benji, a small box materialized in the middle of their room, small enough to fit into someone's hand.

Well, a human's hand.

Daniel looked up from his spot on the ground. His face was just a few inches away from the box that had suddenly appeared in the middle of the room. He blinked, stared at the box, and then reached a hand out-

No, wait. That was a leg. Daniel groaned and put his head back down on the ground. He hated not having hands when he was in his first form. That's why he liked staying in a more humanoid one. And considering that Morri was apparently a ghost—something that Daniel was still trying to wrap his head around—there was a chance that he was more of a partial than a full-on ghost and wouldn't be able to touch something like that.

"Can you pick that up?" Daniel asked, turning to Benji. Benji was in his first form right now, too, and Daniel would have been more concerned by everything and the realization that they had been stuck in a simulation for who-knows-how-many real months.

Benji hesitated and glanced at Morri.

A moment later, he crouched down and opened the box. Inside of it was Benji's crystal necklace and Daniel's ring.

"We don't have to put them back on," Benji said, voice quiet.

Daniel glanced at Benji. "I want hands." He thought for a moment, glanced at Morri, and then realized the dilemma. He sat himself up and tried to look comforting, which was hard when you looked mostly like a goat. "Morri's a ghost. I don't think he'll judge."

Benji bit his lip.

"If we're not the only ones here," Daniel pointed out, "we'll want to look human."

Benji faltered again, but didn't argue. He reached into the box and removed his necklace. Slipping it over his neck, his form changed in a blink of an eye. Daniel followed suit a second later. It was different for him, seeing that he couldn't actually slip a ring on. But he could touch it and think of changing his form, which was enough for the ring to do its magic. It took barely time at all for Daniel, now sitting cross-legged on the ground, to slip his silver ring onto his finger.

The doors opened.

Bo was relieved at first, but apprehensive when the doors opened up to only reveal an empty hall and a bunch of other cells containing others they saw in the simulation.

Things weren't developing just yet, but they were all going to meet each other as their real selves, and he had a feeling that it would get very chaotic very quickly. He hoped that the Ainsleys had gotten all of their violent panic out and that everyone else had too, but he wasn't going to bet on it.

With hurried footsteps but a great hesitance in his chest, he stepped out into the hall, taking it all in.

James and Evaline. Elias and Mel. Carter, it seemed, was still stuck in his sleeping pod thing.

Huh. That was odd.

Did it have anything to do with him being mortally stabbed before waking?

He supposed they'd have to find out.

Bo looked into Elias and Mel's room and gave them a little wave, then looked to Evaline and James with a small smile.

"Well, looks like we're all in the same boat," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear as he continued to look around the hall. Just a dead-end and another closed door on the other side.

"Welcome to the waking world I guess. Wherever this world is, anyway. Since I think none of us know where we are."

Just when Mel was about to give up fruitlessly yelling at Carter to wake up, the metal door of the tiny room they were in slid open. Instinctively, Mel stood in front of Elias with her hand out in front of her, protecting him like he was her young son... or a little dog.

Considering he was a soldier, Mel was sure Elias was much stronger than she'd ever be, but he was just... so... hollow, and fragile. Like a kid stuck in an adult's body, or someone who was so attention starved, or not allowed to lead their own life. For all Mel knew, maybe this was all true. If they had more time in a safer setting, she'd delicately ask him questions and get to know him again.

But not now. They had to figure out where they were and why they were here first. After that, they could catch up and even talk about what happened in the simulation.

The door opened, revealing a hallway filled with more of the same room -- this time with the others in the simulation.

Bo. Jerica. Rek.

James. Evaline.

Evaline! She was here too. A sudden spike of rare anxiety suddenly shot up when Mel had to really take in the fact that Evaline was here, because, well... the last encounter she had with Evaline wasn't pretty. And it was even worse with Elias.

Mel caught Evaline stiffly standing up straight and staring wide-eyed at her and Elias, unmoving or saying anything. Bo then stepped into the room, welcoming everyone.

Mel huffed in a big breath of air, sensing pure unadulterated chaos in a few seconds once everyone saw each other. If things were going to be chaotic, she'd prefer to at least be the starting source so she could best control it.

"HEY!" she yelled at the top of her lungs at no one in particular, looking up as she marched forward. "Show yourself! I know you put us in here! Why don't you come out and let us see you!"

The instant the doors open, Jerica and Rek exchanged a glance, then sprinted for them. They both stopped just inside the room, though, peeking as much as they could without revealing themselves to whatever enemy might be lurking.

But they only saw the others and the pods.

Who among them was going to be a threat? Carter, obviously. But he wasn’t awake. Yet.

Maybe Evaline, too. With how petty she was in the simulation, she must be ten times worse in reality. Maybe Jerica would beat her up, too.

Was Elias still a goober? Or was his chaotic energy ominous now?

There were so many moving pieces. So many people. And neither of them had any weapons. They hoped none of the others did, either. That’d make it easier.

Jerica and Rek both slowly exited the room, eyes peeled, at high alert. Then stepped to the side, assessing the room, and silently watching the scene unfolding around them, getting progressively uneasier.

Morri watched as the creatures that surrounded him a second a go turned into the familiar faces of his old students. Or... his fake students? He looked between the two of them as they wore their jewelry, seemingly relieved at the change.

"This doesn't seem very fair," Morri said, peering down to the now empty box, "Where's my loot?"

As if on command, a pirate hat gracefully fell from the ceiling, swaying side to side even though there was no wind. After a few moments of dramatic staring, it landed atop Morri's head, allowing him to feel the weight he had forgotten he had.

Morri stumbled a bit at first. He wasn't used to feeling, well, anything. Even back in the other world they had just left, everything sort of felt... numb. Having the ability to touch again was almost overwhelming.

Morri looked back up between the boys once more and took a deep breath, "What in the hell is this??"