Young Writers Society

You wake up in an unfamiliar place.

You are sitting in some sort of hallway, either sprawled across the floor or propped up against one of the walls. The hallway is made of a metallic material that you have never seen the likes of before, and not a single window can be found. What can be found is assortment of bizarre characters. You might be able to name their species. You might not. But, despite your many differences, you all have two things in common: you have no idea how you got here, and have no idea where here even is.

It is only when you enter the room at the very end of the hallway that you figure out where you are.

There, to the very back of the room, is a massive glass screen that takes up the entirety of the wall. And through that screen you finally get a glimpse of what's outside the building – the vast emptiness of space, with a beautiful array of stars surrounding you as the the ship you're standing on slowly meanders through the darkness.



But you and your hodgepodge of companions aren't alone. A woman wanders the ship's halls, her form flickering in and out of existence as she tries to contact the unwilling passengers. Is she the last member of a forgotten crew, having all but perished with the rest of the ship's original people? Or is something else at play? The only way you'll be able to find out is by working with the others present, even if you don't trust them in the slightest.

She woke up.

This should have been the first sign that something had gone horribly wrong, but she was too disorientated to pay attention to such a minor yet important detail. She was propped up against a wall; she could feel the cool metal underneath her fingers as she pushed against it to get to her feet. Once she was standing, she took to peering down the hallways. There were other people there, too, but she was more concerned with figuring out where this place was. The architecture wasn't Galran. Nor was it Altean. That ruled out this being one of her experiments, while simultaneously ruling out the possibility of having been captured by the paladins.

So what did that leave? She had been in a fleet, only a few floors up from the witch. She massaged the back of her neck, trying to get out the nasty pain that was starting up. She thought this was more than a little unfair, since she had just taken the measures to assure that it wouldn't happen in the near future. Oh well. What else was there left for her to do?

It was as she was looking down the hallway that she saw the woman standing there.

She couldn't have been that old, but it was always hard to tell. Her hair was done up in a style that reminded her of how the Alteans used to do their hair – a coiled bun at the very top, with a braid trailing down to her waist. But she wasn't Altean. She looked a lot like those paladins: no pointed ears and no cute little colored markings underneath her bright blue eyes. Even her outfit looked a bit like the paladins, with a pair of those light blue pants, strange shoes and a jacket that vaguely resembled the blue paladin's – Lance, right?

The woman opened her mouth.

She said something, but her words were inaudible. She frowned, and tried to say something again. No words left her moving lips. Her frown deepened. She took a step forward, but just as she was starting to make some sort of progress, the woman flickered and disappeared.

She blinked.

“O-Okay, then,” she said, her voice shaky, “I've been brought to a strange place that's now apparently haunted. G-Great. And if the ghost doesn't get me first, Haggar's going to kill me for leaving.”

She gulped.

This wasn't gearing up to be a good day in the slightest.

Not for the first time in his many incarnations, Blue Twitter Bird von Pink Rabbit's Foot Keychain woke up on the floor. He roused himself quickly enough, and few moments later he was back on his feet. Once he was standing, he reached his arms up high towards the sky in a stretch. It was then that he opened his eyes.

When he saw where he was, Blue couldn't help but let out a loud string of obscenities. "What the —" He looked around for a moment, confused. This place was clean. Even worse, it was monochrome — a far cry from the colourful city Blue had lived in since her pact.

He noticed a hallway. Hitching the straps of his backpack over his shoulder, Blue walked towards it. He peered around the corner, and saw that there was a creature in the hallway. "Uhh." Blue looked at the creature for several long seconds before speaking. "Where are we?"

Her hand instinctively went for her blaster, but she rested it back at her side when the words registered. Turning, she found herself looking at someone who didn't quite belong to any race she knew of. She could technically have said he was some part Galran, given his skin color, but even that was a major stretch. But, hey. The universe was big, and she was just glad that someone else was trying to talk to her right now. The witch and her druids made for horrible company.

"I don't know," she admitted with an almost casual shrug. "I just woke up here. I bet the ghost knows, though."

Dante was rousing herself from a nightmare. She had dozed briefly in the pilot seat of her ship, but her rest had proved to be anything but restful. With a shrill scream, she opened her eyes and bolted awake, hitting her head on something hard.

It took a moment for her to register that she was not, indeed, sitting in the pilot seat. It took another moment for her to register that she wasn't on her ship at all, but laying in the middle of a sterile metal hallway.

Rubbing her sore head, which she had hit against the wall, she shakily stood to her feet. As she walked down the hallway, her boots clanked loudly, echoing down the seemingly empty space. Space... she looked toward the wide window behind her. Space- good lord, she was in space. At least, she was, if those windows were to be trusted.

Very alarmed now, Dante turned the hall and nearly ran into the people there- well, the creatures. Both of them had oddly-colored skin, and distinctively non-human features.

"Did you- did you just say ghost?" She intoned, ignoring the fact that she was in space with... aliens, for lack of a better word, and addressed the most unsettling notion by far.

"Wait..." Blue narrowed his eyes until all that could be seen was a sliver of his gold sclera. He was speaking slowly; the work required to avoid speaking in dialect was troublesome. "We're festering in some blasted corner of The Wheel." He ran a hand over his face, glaring at nothing and no-one in particular. "Taken from our homes. An now tha's— you're telling me there's a ghost?"

It wasn't that he didn't believe them or even that he was scared of a ghost; he had fought and conquered things much stronger than ghosts in his life. But Blue did not know where he was, or how he had gotten there. There were 777,777 universes branching from his city. It was unlikely that he'd be able to discern which one he'd had the misfortune to end up in. And although he would not admit it, that scared him.

She thought over it for a moment.

"Yeah, sounds about right," she confirmed with a nod, crossing her arms as she peered down the hallway.

She cast a brief glance in the newcomer's direction, but was much more concerned with the presence of the ghost than the presence of the tangible people there. It was easy enough to deal with them. Dealing with a ghost would probably be like dealing with a druid, and she really didn't want to end up running through the ship's ghost and into whatever was inevitably behind said ghost.

"She just kind of showed up there," she said, pointing at the spot where the ghost had been standing. "She tried tell me something before flickering and disappearing."

Dante frowned at the spot, a crease forming between her eyebrows. It sounded an awful lot like what had happened to her the first time she saw a holographic interface. Not that she doubted there could actually be a ghost, but she really would rather find an alternate explination, if only for her peace of mind.

"What did this ghost look like..?" She glanced at the purple one who had seen it, "was it... ahm," she guestured up and down her own torso, "transparent?"

She thought for a moment. "Think Altean, but without the face markings or the pointy ears." She looked at the woman. "And, nope, she looked pretty solid to me."

She thought hard over the woman's words, but couldn't find any relevance to her description of the ghost- the word Altean didn't mean anything to her. On the other hand, if the ghost had been solid, it gave a broader spectrum of possibility.

"Have you considered that fact that this... person- they might be a projection? Or something of the like."

Taber woke up slowly. His blurry vision caught a monochrome hallway without any doors. It stretched off as far as he could see (not very far), and a few people stood towards one end. He couldn't recognize them, nor was he quite sure he was on a cold metal floor, but he didn't let it bother him. For all he knew, he'd fallen off the bed, or maybe he'd passed out on the floor. He couldn't really remember last night anyways.

Getting onto his feet, Taber stretched and yawned, feeling the muscles in his back pop. When he closed his maw and opened his eyes, he found that he was even less sure of where he was. The smell of metal invaded his nostrils, alongside the strange scents of the unfamiliar people down the hallway. Oh, he might as well see what all the fuss was about.

"Hey!" he said, waving at them as he walked over. "Anyone know where I am? Also, this is kinda a neat place, isn't it?"

"None of us know where we are," Blue said, his sharp teeth flashing in the light. "We're trying to figure that out." He looked back to the purple creature, who hadn't yet given her name. "There's a ghost, according to this one." He nodded in the direction of Darunia.

Blue Twitter Bird von Pink Rabbit's Foot Keychain's voice was harsh, more akin to sandpaper than anything else. Despite this, his tone was neutral. "Where are you from? Perhaps we can get some context on what these 'Altean' are, and I can help discern what order of ghost we're dealing with."

She wasn't really surprised by the appearance of another person, and the question he had asked had already been answered by the guy with the horns, so there really wasn't any reason why she couldn't focus on just the questions that had been asked of her.

Which were really weird, now that she thought about it.

"Uh, hello?" she said, gesturing down at her uniform. "Zarkon's fleet, obviously. This armor isn't just for show. Well, it kind of is, but that's beside the point. I was on the main ship before I ended up here. I forget what quadrant we were in, but it's not like Haggar would have let me leave in the first place."

She narrowed her eyes. "You're pulling my leg, right? Because everyone in the Galra Empire knows about Altea - especially now that the Castle of Lions is flying around again, with Voltron never far behind."

"Aw," Taber said, standing between the blue fanged person and the purple person with cat ears. "Don't we have an idea? There's only so places we can be, right? Like, I was just in a castle of lions earlier. It wasn't flying or anything like that, but it's probably close enough?"

Dante rubbed her face in exhaustion- it was all she could do to follow along with the conversation- she didn't know of any of the places that were being named.

"Someone pinch me." She mumbled to herself, leaning against the cool wall and using it as an anchor.