Young Writers Society

"Come at me, you mangey—"

Out of the corner of her eye, Clarice saw the ultimate shield creep up the stranger's arm. She froze mid-insult. Her eyes widened, and her face turned deathly pale. There was only one creature that she knew of which could possess that ability, and that was a homunculus.

There had been a time when Clarice had found homunculi to be fascinating. If she was the same as she'd been back then, she probably would've been begging to examine their ultimate shield. It had all been so fascinating, then, and so new. But that time had passed. The novelty of artificial life had long since worn off. She feared homunculi, now. And herself, for having created one.

But she feared the implications of a homunculus' presence even more. Her 'family' had been known to use them to hunt runaways down, and Clarice didn't doubt they'd use one to find her.

"Who sent you?" Clarice's grip on her knife remained steady. She narrowed her eyes, grit her teeth, and widened her stance. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't mask her fear. It stuck to her like glue, permeating each of her actions with its tell-tale stench.

Oh, fun. The girl with the knife had decided to threaten him instead of Lunis, which he guessed should have been some sort of a victory. She did seem to be afraid of him, which was a bit odd - it wasn't like he had done anything to terrify her. There was the other him, but he was relatively chill from what the Elrics had told him.

"I don't even know who you are, kid," he said, trying to ignore the music blasting from the speaker that Arthur was still holding. Even though the owner of said speaker had said not to break it, Arthur looked suspiciously like he was thinking of chucking it at the nearest wall to get the music to stop. "So how could I have been possibly been sent by someone to get you or whatever you think I'm here for? My brother and I just woke up out there in those woods - we don't even know where here is."

"And the last time I checked," Arthur loudly said over the music, "you were the one who came in here. Not us."

"Wait, what?" Clarice's fearful expression morphed into one of confusion. She lowered her knife and dropped her fighting stance, and regarded the homunculi with a mix of indignancy and curiosity. "What do you mean you just woke up?"

Had someone just created them?
If so, the homunculi were the least of her worries.

"He meant exactly what he said," Arthur said, suddenly coming to the brilliant conclusion that he could just put the speaker back where it had come from. He started to head back to the crack in the wall. "We just woke up here. One moment we were traveling. The next, we were here."

"Oops." She said. Cole glared. "Sorry?" Serena apologized

Mangey? Okay, his patience had just about run out. If she said one more insult, it'd take a heck of a lot of willpower not to hack away. "Same," he said, gritting his teeth. "I got dumped here, I've been wandering around for the last couple hours, and I want to go home. So don't pick a fight with me; I don't have much to lose."

Clarice ran her knife-free hand through her hair and let out a sigh. She'd seen and been through her fair share of weird experiences, but people being randomly dropped in an abandoned forest was a strange concept for her to wrap her head around. If it were just one person who'd woken up she'd just assume it was some rogue alchemist who was to blame, but that wasn't the case. There were too many people for this not to feel like a pattern.

"Where were you?" Clarice asked. "Before you woke up, I mean."

Arthur, having returned the speaker to its original location, joined Julius by his side. They exchanged a brief look. It wouldn't be too risky to say where they, would it? This girl had no idea who they were, or what they had been looking for in the first place. "We were heading down from the north," Julius said. "Near Briggs. We had just gotten out of the colder parts of the area - there was still snow on the ground, but it wasn't thick."

"We're not sure exactly what that area would be called," Arthur added. "Neither one of us has been to the north before."

Lunis knew it wouldn't be the greatest idea to explain where he'd come from, given the risk of exposing his identity and home. Then again, he was fairly sure he'd traveled a far distance to get here (if he was in the same world at all, but why wouldn't he be where he'd always been?). It was also an easy question to answer. "I was at home," he said. Lunis switched to mumbling, "In the biggest pile of mud I've ever seen, but Zech likes it," and then spoke normally again. "I'd just woken up and got dressed, then leaned back on a chair and landed in the middle of this place." He gestured to the building around him.

Riku stopped the music. He decided to observe for now.

Clarice pursed her lips. She'd grown up in a very isolated environment, without access to anything that even remotely resembled a map. Even if there was a place called Briggs, she wouldn't know it.

"I, uh. I don't know the names of cities. Or towns." She said. "Or anything geographic, really. But I used to live in the north."

They were silent for a moment. How could they not be? The information given was barely useful, but they still needed to figure out a plan of action. Julius, for once in his life, was trying to mull things over and come up with a reasonable response to what was going on. But Arthur was already a few steps ahead of him, having had time to think about what was going on while his brother had been dealing with Lunis and then the strange girl.

Arthur crossed his arms. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we're from different realities," he said. "The technology used with that speaker is more advanced than anything I've ever seen, and Lunis, despite looking exactly like one, isn't a chimera. It goes everything Julius and I know about how our world works."

"It wouldn't be the first time we've ended up in a different one," Julius added. "Just came from another one, actually. We don't know how it happened or why it did, but I think Arthur's on to something when he says we're not in our original realities."

Were these people crazy? Alternate realities? Strange technology? Creatures that looked like him, but were something else? Maybe he'd have better luck in the outside world after all.

Lunis slipped his daggers back into his pockets, crossed his arms, and scowled. "I've seen plenty of weird things," he said, reaching a foot back to test the integrity of the stairs. It held, so he eased his foot on the step. "But I've been in the same world my whole life, and I don't see why that's changed." He pressed down on the step with his other foot; still okay. Hopefully they wouldn't notice his escape attempt. "So I don't believe you."