Young Writers Society

"Okay, I have a bad feeling about those people, tell me I'm not the only one," said James, automatically reaching for his weapon. There was nothing. The gun have vanished when he'd been transformed. This was not a good situation to be in.

Roxanne turned around so quickly that she cricked her neck. A group of people in costumes were walking up to them. They were normal, except for the evil glint in their eyes and magic across their fingertips.

Out of habit, Roxanne stepped back and brandished her sword in front of her.

"Okay, I have a bad feeling about those people, tell me I'm not the only one," said James.

"You're not the only one," said Roxanne. She swept her eyes over the menacing group, who were slowly advancing.

"Who are these guys?" she asked.

"They're demons," Arthur said, hand unsteadily raising his sword up. He didn't really look like he knew how to use it. Rew was starting to get an idea in the back of his head; he hadn't ever really liked scythes, anyways. And if Arthur wasn't going to be using his very nice sword that was probably supposed to be Excalibur now, someone who did know how to use swords could use it instead.

So maybe he hadn't been lucky enough to get Roxanne's sword. That was definitely a shame. But he could get Excalibur, which was obviously the cooler of the two!

"The worst kind of demons," Puck said, his voice low and irritated. "They're purists. They hate demons who aren't full-blooded. They're probably here for me, but I'm sure they think we're all one big group."

Demons!

Autumn stumbled back a step as the demons approached. Those in the group with weapons brandished them warily. In response, what could only be magic glittered at the demons' fingertips and glinted in their glares.

Autumn gulped.

Alright, come on Autumn, you can do this. You're Spider-man now, right? Spider-man can handle a few demons... even if it would be nicer to have a weapon between me and them. Wait, but I don't want to hurt anyone... but I don't think they'll be that nice.

Having been at the back of the group when they investigated Puck and Arthur, she was now in the front as the demons continued to approach. She began to ready herself into a semblance of a fighting stance, drawing on what little training she remembered.

But before she could even take two steps, the closest demon lunged at her midsection, probably aiming to bowl her over.

Her new instincts kicked in with a snap. Using his momentum, she rolled over his back, kicked out to smash the back of his knees, and sprung into a front roll. He tumbled to the ground, letting out a shocked grunt. She popped back up and took a round kick to his side as he attempted to get up, flinging him a few meters away into a nearby tree. He rolled down the tree into a crumpled heap didn't get up. Autumn froze and stared to panic, but he groaned a little, at the very least confirming she hadn't killed him.

It took all of three seconds to go down, adrenaline and whatever skills she inherited making her reflexes outrageously quick and her strength way beyond her expectations. She didn't even know how to do a somersault, but yet she did. A look of pure shock was surely plastered over her features.

Nobody, not even the demons, moved for a few seconds.

In those few seconds, there was silence.

And then Puck, who had watched the attack while still trying to figure out how Loki's magic worked, gave a cry of, "Go Spider-Man!"

It seemed like the right thing to do in the moment. He still wasn't entirely sure how Loki's magic was supposed to work, especially when this version of Loki wasn't exactly the same as the Marvel movies one - despite him looking like one of the MCU's many Toms.

But, if he remembered right, Loki had a lot of...

He reached down to grab what he was thinking of. Without realizing it, he had narrowly avoided one of the demon's attacks. When he popped his head up again, he had come face-to-face with one of the demons hunting him down earlier. He took a step back and kept fumbling for what MCU Loki seemed so fond of, but he couldn't find a knife. He couldn't find anything-

He had walked right up against a tree.

And now he was walking up the tree because Agent of Asgard Loki had seven league boots that let him balance on anything.

The demon attacking him stared.

Puck grinned.

Backing a little farther up the tree with a surprising burst of speed, he got himself into position. A moment later, he was easily kicking the demon in the face.

A few feet away, Arthur was struggling to defend himself with his sword. Puck didn't notice the plight his boyfriend was in; he was too busy fighting his own set of demons. He had gotten too comfortable relying on Puck's magic to solve confrontations like this. With Puck distracted and his only weapon a sword he had never used before, Arthur was in trouble.

A demon lunged.

Arthur froze, sword awkwardly extended in what he hoped was a defensive position.

Then the grim reaper was suddenly in front of him, hitting the demon in the gut with the bottom of his scythe. The blade was dangerously close to Arthur's face, but the grim reaper didn't seem to notice or mind.

The demon went stumbling back.

"Could I borrow that?" the grim reaper said, glancing over his shoulder at Arthur. "I'm terrible with scythes."

Arthur would have argued otherwise, but he just nodded and handed the sword over. After spending so much time with Puck, he had just accepted that sometimes it was best not to ask any questions.

The grim reaper gave a surprisingly childish cheer as he took the sword from Arthur - his scythe being thrown off to the side. Holding the sword out in front of him, he waited for more demons to attack the two of them.

"I need a weapon," yelled James as demons came charging towards him. As a human in a world full of insanely powerful beings, James had come to rely on always being packed to the teeth in weapons, sometimes literally with the newly invented teeth mounted acid sprayer. At the moment however, he had a set of claws he didn't know how to use.

As a demon lunged at him he did the only thing that made sense and jumped, flapping his wings and rising up a bit before landing behind the demon. Operating on pure instinct, he let the body he was currently inhabiting take over as he slashed out, leaving a good sized cut on one of the demons. Okay, I can work with that.

"Belay that," shouted James, "I already have six weapons." He raised his clawed hands and let out a eerie shriek using his brand new vocal cords, spreading his bony wings for extra effect.

A demon swung a glowing fist at her, and Roxanne ducked. She spun around, holding her sword above her head until she slashed the demon across the chest.

The demon fell, but another three took its place. They surrounded her. Roxanne knocked one down with the blade and dropped to the ground. She stuck her leg out and kicked the second demon's legs out from under him.

Roxanne jumped up, ready to deal with the last one when she felt razor hot claws tear through her shirt and rake across her back. She cried in pain as she landed on the ground harshly.

The open cuts burned, and she hissed in pain, but she felt the wind pick up slightly. Roxanne rolled to her left just as a magic burst in the spot she used to be. Roxanne swung her legs up, wincing slightly as the grass dug into her injuries, and used her arms to jump into a crouching position.

She held her sword to the side and lunged out of the way as the demon hurled another ounce of magc at her. She sprung into the air, flipping over him and readying her stance.

The demon whirled around, but Roxanne was ready. She stabbed it in the gut, and the demon fell down.

Roxanne didn't stop to think about whether or not it was dead as she turned to face the oncoming enemies.

Kate was very confused. There were too many vibrations she couldn't tell who was friend and who was foe.

She took a deep breath.

In.

Out.

She grinned.

Boulders erupted around her.

One of the boulders almost slammed into Rew, but he narrowly managed to dodge it before it could hit him. Being around for so long had its perks; his instincts were pretty good.

Miraculously enough, the other boulders all hit the remaining demons. Their would-be attackers were in an unconscious heap on the ground. Puck, seeing that their group was victorious, hopped down from the tree he had been somehow climbing and grinned.

"Now that that's settled," Puck said, "I think it's time to start figuring out what to do next. If we're going to break the magic making us look like this, we'll need a little bit of extra help. I can't do any spells outside of illusions right now, but-"

"But you just did a spell," Rew slowly said. Puck raised an eyebrow in confusion. Rew just pointed at the tree in response. "You walked up the tree."

"Oh," Puck said. He glanced down, the grin still dancing on his lips. Becoming his costume hadn't been his plan, but he seemed to be enjoying it. Rew was admittedly enjoying this a bit, too. It had been awhile since he used a form that didn't have flesh, and even longer since he had held a sword as beautiful as Excalibur. "That was the seven league boots. They can balance on anything."

To give a demonstration, Puck backed up to the tree and started walking up its side. But he wasn't done just yet - he got as high as he could off the tree, and then jumped to where Rew was holding out Excalibur. It seemed impossible, but Puck managed to perfectly balance on the blade.

"I need a pair," Rew whispered. If he had eyes, they would have been alight with awe and childish wonder.

Puck looked back down at his boots.

"...Me too," he said, a certain glint to his eyes.

His boyfriend cleared his throat.

Puck froze.

"We should share our names first," Arthur said. "You know our names, but we haven't heard yours yet."

...Huh. That was a good point, wasn't it? He had already introduced himself earlier, but Puck and Arthur hadn't been part of their group yet.

Not for the first time, Rew wished he could smile. It would make his introduction seem far less intimidating when he was the grim reaper and holding Excalibur.

"My name is Rew," he offered.

Arthur gave a friendly smile; Puck just looked like he saw a ghost.

...Maybe sharing his name with the magic user who had both godly and demonic heritage was a bad idea. He had assumed no one here would know who he was, but someone who regularly looked into magic probably would have come across his name a few times. Plus, demons and some gods could often see souls. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for Puck to stumble across his name in a book.

Whoops.

...If Romi was here, she would have reprimanded him for not thinking things through a little more.

Roxanne wiped her sword on the grass. The strange thing was that, under a normal fight, she would have been exhausted. But, now, she barely broke a sweat.

Maybe there are some perks to being She-Ra.

She walked over to Rew and the other two, where they had finished introducing themselves.

"Guess I'm late to the party," she joked. "I'm Roxanne." She stretched her back, feeling a stinging sensation. "Ow," she muttered.

Those claw marks weren't going away any time soon. Guess she was carrying the sword in her hand for now.

"We'll wait for the others to get here, and then try to find a way out of the cemetery?" said Roxanne. "Seems like the best choice right now."

James let out a blood curling shriek as the demons were finally dealt with. He immediately shook his head. Whoa there. Human mode reactivate. He turned to the group and offered a very toothy smile.

"I'm Agent Khaos... with a K," said James.

Ah, I hate introductions.

Autumn walked up to the gathering group. Introductions were necessary, sure, but always unpleasant. Don't think, just say your name and move on. They don't need anything else.

"I'm Autumn and I'm usually not Spider-man." She snapped her mouth shut. Wow, Autumn, way to point out the obvious. It's not like we're all in the same boat here. The first good thing she noticed about wearing a mask was that they couldn't see how beet-red her face was. She ducked her head and scrunched up her shoulders, wishing she could melt into the ground, per usual.

Kate tried to open her eyes, forgetting for a moment that she was blind.

"...I'm not usually Spider-man." Kate heard. She turned her head to the sound.

"Um. Hi. I'm Kate. And I'm not usually blind. Where are all of you?"

Puck still looked absolutely horrified at Rew's introduction for reasons Arthur couldn't understand, but he knew Puck wasn't going to admit why when they were surrounded by people who were still technically strangers. Arthur would have to ask him later.

In the meantime, Arthur would focus on the others. He was still learning how to fight and couldn't offer solutions to their magical dilemma, but he could understand people. There was Roxanne, who currently looked like She-Ra. The...whatever creature that wasn't a human was actually named Agent Khaos. The "agent" title made Arthur a little worried and confused, but he pushed that thought away.

There was Autumn. If the typically feminine name was anything to go off of, Arthur might have just found a kindred spirit with someone who looked very different than they usually did. Being a different gender wasn't the same as being a different. much older age, but Arthur was still feeling off because of his sudden change in body and age.

And then there was Kate, who was probably going to have to adjust to a new disability in less time than was advised. She could probably do what Toph did in Avatar and sense the vibrations in the ground, but he had a feeling that took a little more practice than just a few minutes.

"We're right around you," Arthur said - not in a judging way, but in a much more calm way. "None of us went that far when we were fighting the demons."

He looked at the others again.

"Now that we have our introductions done, I think we should decide which god we're going to for help," he added.

The comment was enough to shake Puck out of his shock and horror. Without missing a single beat, he replied with, "Not the Norse ones."

"Not the Norse ones," Arthur confirmed.

Rew crossed his skeletal arms.

"We could ask Hecate," he suggested. "She knows a lot about magic, and helped me with magic problems in the past. She would know how to solve this."

"We can't just walk into the Underworld," Puck pointed out. "It's not like they're taking new admittees. Without any regular magic, we'd have to go through the Reaper Realm - and I don't think we should be heading there anytime soon."

If he had a mouth, Rew would have frowned. The reapers would have been cool with their little group. Rew was in it, after all. But if that wasn't an option, there had to be someone else they could rely on...

"I got it!" Rew said, straightening and giving his best skeletal impression of a grin. "We should go to Athena's library. I'm not sure where it is right now, but she would have the resources to get us back to normal. We just have to track it down. I think it was the Library of Alexandria last, but she would have moved it by now. So we just need to find her first. And if I was looking for Athena and didn't know where the library was, I'd hit up the Book Club."

"Oh wow, I've heard so many stories from older ag...I mean my older colleagues that I work with...about how the gods are real and how they've dealt with them in all sorts of ways. I knew they would never lie and I've seen enough strange places in my two...I mean several years of doing this jo...I mean living...but I never quite believed it. But it does sound like a great plan," said James, realizing he was probably rambling and thankful he wasn't a human because he was sure his face would be bright red if that was the case. As it were, if Chupacabra's could look embarrassed he would currently look embarrassed. "I guess we look for a book club then?"