Young Writers Society

Ryder glanced at the others in the group.

"Then let's stay here for a little longer," he decided. "Anyone that's getting cold can go down into one of them and warm up in front of the fire, and anyone who's not as cold can help gather supplies from the bunkers. After we have all the supplies, and everyone is as warm as they're going to get, we can leave the bunkers."

Briar nodded along to Ryder's plan. He appeared to have some experience in leading semi-large groups of people. The way that he spoke reminded her a bit of her father on the rare occasion in which he decided to lead a team.

She decided to follow his instructions. She figured he was either in the same boat as she was, or he was working for her father. In either case, he was trustworthy enough not to bring her personal harm, at least not now. If this were a test set up by her father, he would instruct those he hired to be sure that she had dropped her guard entirely before staging a betrayal. If he was really clueless, just another person stranded in the snow, then he had no reason to wish her harm save, perhaps, her admitted status as a killer, but she predicted he would see her as the more minor threat than Nubes and go after him first if he wished to take either of them out.

He would likely be wrong, she thought, trying not to think about her kill count.

The number 365 bounced around in her head.

She forced it out.

She did as Ryder said.

Hng. Getting Lasan down the stairs had been a challenge (though a certain someone hiding in Lasan's coat had helped in pushing Lasan down the stairs), as had getting Lasan to sit down. But now Lasan was slumped in front of the fire, giving Nubes plenty of time to pry open boxes and pull out the packets inside.

Nubes could sympathize with Lasan. Lasan had just figured out several members of his group were not only dishonest, but murderers. It must've been hard for the lizard to sit there, back facing the stairs leading up to the others. But, as a dishonest murderer, Nubes was going to do his best to make Lasan feel a little safer.

Arms wrapped around a huge pile of packets, Nubes began to make his way up the stairs. "How is everyone else?" he called.

"The bunkers aren't half as filled as I was hoping they'd be," Ryder shot back, having just emerged from the one he had ended up in. That one was full of supplies. Lust's was presumably full of supplies, as well as Briar's. Lasan and Mal's had been raided for blankets, so he already knew what was there. Gluttony had eaten everything in his - Ryder really didn't want to imagine how that worked.

"What should we gather?" Lust suddenly asked. "We could wrap the blankets around ourselves, but there's only so much we can carry. How are we going to carry anything else we find?"

Ryder thought for a moment, glancing around at the bunkers in contemplation.

"...We could make makeshift bags with pieces of the boxes and any extra blankets," he suggested. "Then we could bring some of the food with us."

Briar was already constructing such a bag as the others spoke. She had apparently thought it more obvious a solution than it was.

Once her bag was completed, she got to work filling it up with anything useful. She went down her list. Medical supplies first.

She found a first aid kit tucked away behind some of the crates in her bunker and tucked it inside.

Next, water.

The liquid itself was more evasive than she would have liked, but she did find a collection of empty bottles, all made of sturdy metal with the twist-off tops designed to be clipped to bags or otherwise used for the kind of physical activity that required supplies.

She then added an extra blanket, to be either used for its intended purpose, cut into bandages should they need them, or to be used in the construction of a campsite.

After that, she added food.

She hadn't put the water bottles into the bag. There were enough for everyone to carry two, and she decided that everyone doing so would be less trouble than wasting space with them.

She approached Lasan first, already being in his bunker.

She set a pair of bottles down next to him, "You'll need these," she tried to say it gently, as he looked upset, but she wasn't sure if she succeeded.

Reaching the top of the stairs, Nubes crouched down and dumped his pile of packets into the snow. "Could you show me how to make one of those boxes?" he said, standing up and walking over to Ryder. "I was never good at building things."



Lasan nodded weakly, barely acknowledging that someone had talked to him or had set anything down in front of him. The paw that popped out from beneath Lasan's blankets, however, did - it stretched out along the floor, eventually snatching the bottles and slipping them into Lasan's coat.

"Thanks," Mal said from beneath the said coat. He knew that Briar hadn't exactly met him yet, but the situation was a little too serious for him not to make himself known. Especially with poor Lasan out of action.

Briar blinked her muted surprise.

A quick sequence of thoughts ran through her head. First, would they still have enough supplies? The answer was they didn't know if they had enough, to begin with. Briar couldn't calculate how much other species would need to eat, and then there was Gluttony.

Second, would the new (well, new to Briar) member of the group be of any particular use? If he was small enough to fit under Lasan's coat, then he might be helpful later with the kinds of things Briar or Queenie were always asked to do due to their small size, Briar more so than Queenie because of her more boyish figure.

And third, did the stranger know what was wrong with Lasan?

Briar decided proper introductions were in order. Never attempt to get information out of someone you haven't shaken hands with, her father's voice rang in her voice. Another rule.

She knelt down and introduced herself again, not risking an attempt at adding emotion to her voice. It was far too common for her to give the wrong impressions when she tried for a more 'natural' inflection.

"I'm Briar," she said to the person stowed in Lasan's coat. She then remembered her confession, and the possible reactions she could get. The worst that was likely to happen was a verbal attack. She could take that, easily. If this other person did get violent, she was prepared to take the hit. Or maybe it was Lasan who would get violent. Perhaps he would lash out in defense of his stowaway against the perceived threat that Briar had become. He was in unsteady enough mental state.

Either way, she would take the hit. For the other's benefit more than hers. A team couldn't focus when one of the members was a bloodsoaked question mark, it was her job to make sure that they were comfortable with the idea that she wouldn't hurt them, even in self-defense.

And if this was a test, if everyone here really turned out to be actors, paid off by her father, she could claim to be keeping her true skillset secret. It wasn't a lie.

"Of course," Ryder said, giving Nubes a strained smile as he went to get the supplies needed. A few bunkers away, Gluttony and Lust were doing the same thing, though Lust was doing the majority of the work. And while Ryder was struggling to remember how he had made them in the past, and struggling to find the right way to teach him, Lust had already finished one of the homemade bags.

He put the materials in front of Nubes, and in front of himself.

"First," he said, "you have to spread out the blanket that you're using."

Something in Lasan's coat shuffled. "Oh, uh, I'm Mal. Lasan's boyfriend. Don't mind me." He wondered if he should've acted more stressed and scared about being next to an assassin, mostly for Lasan's sake, but he couldn't muster the energy. He'd met plenty of assassins anymore, and Briar hadn't even wanted to be one.



Hmm. Ryder appeared to be rather uncomfortable. Not that Nubes could blame him. Hopefully the leopard could at least make it clear there wasn't anything to worry about.

Grabbing a blanket out from the pile of materials, Nubes stretched it out over the snow, patting it down where necessary. "And then?" Nubes said, looking up at Ryder.

Briar nodded. The polite thing to do would be ask Lasan himself what was wrong. The effecient thing to do would be to ask Mal.

She resisted the urge to take out her gun to clean it, just so her hands could have something to do. She kept them still and visible, with some effort.

"Is Lasan going to be alright?" she asked. The question sounded more sympathetic than it was, but that was a good thing. It was better for Mal to think that she cared about Lasan for some reason other than her own self-interest. People didn't respond well to selfish intentions.

A pause. "Yeah," Mal said. "He gets like this sometimes - he's sensitive to temperatures, and he was standing out in the cold for a while. He should be back to normal soon enough."

Briar filed that away for future reference and gave a nod. She got up, a bit awkwardly at the conversations lack of a real 'end', and went back to gathering supplies.

He glanced at Lust out of the corner of his eye to jog his memory. She was almost done with her second pack now, but he had seen enough of her doing it to figure out what the next step was.

"We just have to pull it up," he guessed, "and tie the top together with a piece of string or thread."

He fumbled a little, but he eventually managed to do as described.

Nubes nodded, following Ryder's eyes to see how Lust had done it, then started dumping packets onto the blanket. "Explaining something like this does not appear to be your specialty," he said, looking up at Ryder. "What all does the leader of a resistance do, anyhow?"

"It depends on the leader and the resistance," Ryder said as he watched Nubes put together his bag. "My responsibilities usually fall into recruiting, planning and training, though I'm also a fighter and main negotiator with the...people who own where our base is located underneath."