Young Writers Society

"Hello."

It was the first word he had uttered since this new adventure began. In fact, it was the first sound that had escaped his lips as not even a sigh or scoff had been offered.

Just that one hello, so far, and it was almost involuntary as it came in response to the timid girl's sudden outburst of her name. Sophie, it seemed, was eager to join the strange dynamic of conversations that had so readily erupted just moments into their meeting. Why people, and Austin's mind used the term people with a tinge of disdain as several of them were most obviously not human, or perhaps human in a very loose sense.

Was he any different, though? The metallic plates showing beneath layers of charred skin on his arms, the broken and useless eye formed from spiraling rings which limited his vision to only one side...it seemed he also fit the theme of this uncalled for party.

Several of the group had already asked questions such as "why are we here" and "do you know what's happening," as anyone might, but these questions seemed trivial as they all were in no immediate danger. Rather, what was on his mind, and what should have truly been on all of their minds, was what the function those masks held, or perhaps offered.

Each was different, though fitting to somewhat gothic era. Each remained attached by no visible or apparent means. And each seemed to hum with a dense furiousness like a fire, moments before it crackles and sprays hot embers into the air.

The day was getting stranger and stranger. Add in all the people, including the cyborg-like man, Violet's head began to spin. But the ghost girl seemed nice enough, albeit a bit nervous and shy towards her and Sophie, who was also a little shy.

"Skull, huh, that's a cool name," she said, nodding to the tall man. "Nice to meet you and Sophie and everyone else." She could feel the tension between the two men, and she desperately wished it would dissipate.

As if reacting to it, one of the scars on the back of her hand started to itch, and Violet absently scratched it. "I'm Violet, and I think we can all agree that none of us have any idea what's going on or why these masks are stuck to our faces. Also," she kindly added in a low voice to Sophie, "your shoes are on backwards."

Vankous POV

Vankous burst into a laughter when the man called him a "kid". That settled his place as someone who was very unlikely to be a threat. Not even Harry, who was so old that compared to him Vankous really was an infant called him that.

"I don't know what right you think you have to talk about ghosts, I won't claim to have any in general for ghosts, that's Hurricane's thing. But, she is under my protection so I have much more of a right to not tell you anything, especially since you clearly have no actual authority. Believe me, the ones who you shouldn't underestimate, you can feel it, you strike me as some few century old...umm...I don't think its polite to say. I'd say you should be a bit careful who you threaten in the future, not everyone is forgiving out there. But...I do have to agree with Violet here. Skull is a kind of cool name, matches your mask rather well. Not bad considering your otherwise questionable choice of fashion."

Susan POV

"Violet, Sophie...wow, those are cool...cool names," Susan managed. If she'd been alive she was sure she would been burning up with the force of her blush. "I'm uhh...Su..." Susan. Remember our little chat from earlier. Sorry...I umm, got distracted.

"Sorry...I..I uhh..baa," stammered Susan, knowing this was now going to sound incredibly suspicious. "I go by The Phantom." Somehow she managed to get the last bit out straight, maybe she'd just been used to declaring that name out loud to strangers at this point.

"And...umm..." began Susan, before deciding to focus on the floor for a bit. That would make things a little easier. "Umm, yeah, I think the masks are important somehow, but umm, there's no way to find out. Maybe we should find a way out of here."

The air temperature dropped.

It was only by a few degrees, and likely unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't used to ghostly powers (mine or Asmira's pseudo ones) acting up. I pushed against my unease and forced the temperature to return back to normal. Even though I wasn't a fan of the lab coat guy, it sounded like he wasn't like Fittes or Bickerstaff. He had gotten upset when it sounded like I was implying his friend was a monster, and had said that she was under his protection. That wasn't something you say about a ghost you treated as a tool.

I could have questioned The Phantom's name, but my name was short for the skull in the jar.

"Thanks," I said, both to Violet and lab coat guy. I could bug the second of the two later on. Asmira had probably woken Natty boy up at this point. There was no way they could find me this time around—I'd have to find a way back before they worried too much.

"Or we should keep looking around here," I said. "We're all wearing masquerade masks and standing in a ballroom."

Part of me wondered if it was a ghost, but I couldn't explain how a ghost would create and keep masks on our faces. Even Type Threes wouldn't have been able to do something like that. It could have just been an illusion created by a ghost, but we would have all gotten ghost lock (save for the actual ghost and maybe me) from the close contact.

After several attempts of trying to get this mask off, I start to let the image before me sink in. Instead, interacting at first I want to observe everyone. So I'm capable to play my fair share. Learn their weakness and their strengths, hopefully, pick up a few allies.

As I look around my eyes, settle on this Girl? She looked very unnatural if I do say myself. She somehow looks like a Ghost. She seems no more than 5 feet tall, being that my figure will most likely tower over her. She has this unreal bright red hair and really pretty blue eyes. She kind of reminds me of someone I used to know back home. So before I realize what I was doing. I started to make my way over there. So here I am walking towards this strange girl. I put on a smile that didn't reach my eyes. Push a strand of hair behind my ear.

"Hello, I'm Katherine Petrova but, you can call me Katherine"

Sophie felt a pang of shame run through her body from top to bottom. Nevertheless, she tried to be unconcerned and not to have heard Violet's comment.

However, her concern grew as she stared at Violet longer, trying to produce a smile that died just thinking about it.

What is wrong with me? I'm not that nervous! Normally I'm brave and outgoing and here I've already made a fool of myself within the first few seconds.

Maybe because it's a situation that's going to be dangerous? Maybe we're going to die? No one knows what's happening here right now. Everyone is wearing masks and they all seem so calm despite this cluelessness. I think if I pinch myself again, I might wake up from this dream. Maybe I shouldn't have eaten all those cookies last night. But they were...

Sophie didn't know how long she stood there now, staring at Violet when an idea occurred to her after she got reminded that the box of cookies was empty, so there was actually no reason to pinch herself. As she slowly knelt down to put her shoes on properly, she spoke to Violet.

"Thank you for that. But we don't exactly have much time to talk about private trivialities. So, should we get together and find out if there's any way we can get out of here?"

The shoes were finally on the right feet, but the laces had only been stuffed in. Sophie felt confident again when she presented herself like this and noticed how her confidence grew stronger. As Sophie stood up straight again, she heard a person introduce herself to Susan as Katherine.

"But I have one small question." said Sophie in a whisper to Violet, "What kind of mask am I wearing? Everyone wears such fancy masks and I haven't seen mine yet."

Susan POV

I'm doomed. I'm doomed. I'm doomed. Yet another pretty girl had walked up and introduced herself and Susan was surprised she hadn't fainted already. Then she remembered she could no longer do that due to being dead.

"Umm...hiii..." she stammered for the third...or was that the fourth time that day. She was starting to lose track. All she knew is that whenever she got back home, her sisters were going to tease her for years about this.

Vankous POV

Vankous sensed the temperature in the air change ever so slightly. It was barely anything. Nothing compared to anyone competent trying to use necromancy or even the "cute" attacks Harry preferred to use, but it was noticeable nonetheless. This Skull dude had tried to do something or suppressed something, he couldn't really identify which. Where is a damn celestial when you need one?

"While we are wearing masquerade masks in a ballroom, I hardly think that's reason to suspect we were summoned here for a ball or something. There's something more to this, especially the masks. People don't expend the magic required for a spell of this magnitude to dress up random strangers for a ball. We should..."

Vankous never got to finish his sentence. The floor dropped out from underneath him and he found himself falling down into unknown territory for what was probably the fourteenth time this week.

Before his posterior could connect with whatever was below him he slammed a palm doing, shouting the command for cushion in a rush, knowing he could never focus in time to use a silent spell. "Varjaryiara"

The bright purple word, written in Old Notpyrkian burned bright on his palm before suddenly a cushion appeared fused to his backside. Before he could properly express his frustration at having implied the wrong meaning in his spell, said cushioned backside hit the bottom of what felt like some sort of slide and began sliding down, gaining speed rather rapidly.

Perhaps the mistake in the spell was actually a blessing in disguise after all, his magic did have a tendency to do its own thing sometimes and end up being more useful than annoying. The are they were sliding through was pitch black, not a single light source in sight and his eyes had no chance of spotting anything whatsoever.

He whispered a spell, giving himself temporary nigh vision, just in time to see what looked like the inside of an old rusted pipe. A very large pipe, he imagined judging from the sound of several others also sliding down with him.

He reached out mentally to Susan to see if she was fine. An impromptu slide shouldn't have done much to the girl, but she had been very distracted, so one could never tell.

Susan POV

Susan wanted to melt into the floor as she smiled at the girls in front of her, at a complete loss for what to see. She really wanted to melt into the floor out of embarrassment.

For a change, the floor actually obeyed her as she suddenly found herself falling down. It took her a second to realize her wish was not, in fact, coming true but rather she was plummeting down some sort of slide along with everyone else, only she went fully down. In her only half corporeal state, she suddenly found herself sinking right through whatever thing everyone was sliding down and before she knew it, she was surrounded by darkness on all sides.

She tried not to panic, she'd fallen into things plenty of times before back when she didn't have full control of her powers. This was nothing new. Focusing on keeping herself calm, she let herself become fully intangible and invisible, gently sinking through whatever she was trapped in.

Without warning, she found herself in an opening again and realized by the sound of sliding that the slide was probably some sort of spiral that wrapped around. Not wanting to chance sliding down in her slightly disoriented state, she let herself sink right down when she heard Vankous call for her.

"Susan, you alright?"

"I'm falling through whatever this is instead of sliding down it, but good

"Well that could be worse I suppose. I sense this infernal slide won't go down for too much longer. Be ready for some sort of landing."

Susan gave her best mental nod and let herself sink further down.

Sure enough, it wasn't long before, she found herself sinking onto a dimly lit street of some sort as she willed herself to sinking down, while still remaining in her invisible, intangible state.

Above her, she could see a large opening to some sort of enormous pipe. The first one out was Vankous who landed flat on his...for some reason he had a large cushion attached to his backside and he didn't look very happy about neither that nor the impromptu fall. Susan could hear more people coming and decided to step away from the hole. Vankous, unfortunately was too shaken from his landing to have a chance to move.

Violet rubbed her hands together as she studied Sophie's mask.

"It's really pretty and elegant color black," she began, "and there are black feathers that go above your head and connect at the top with a small...crown, I think. The jewels on the crown are white. Also, in the middle of the mask above your eyes is a black swan. That's probably the theme of your mask, the swan. There are white sequins against the eye holes. The mask itself is very sparkly."

Violet nodded resolutely and felt her own mask. Before she could ask Sophie to describe hers, Vankous started theorizing why they were all stuck inside the ballroom wearing masks. Except, he couldn't finish the sentence because the floor dropped out from underneath them all.

She was weightless for just a second before gravity made its move. The scream died in her throat as she slid down a very dark slide of some sorts. She and the others spiraled down faster and faster until Violet spotted a dim light right below her. Vankous and Susan were already at the bottom. Violet turned as sharply as she could, and she barely avoided the man, landing roughly next to him. She rolled away until she was right next to Susan to avoid the others.

A sharp pain shot out from her hands when she moved her fingers, and tears pricked the edges of her eyes. She hissed softly and rubbed her eyes with her wrist. When the pain died down to a low dull, Violet looked around at the dimly lit street. She stood up again.

"What the hell is going on?" she asked.

Magic, as far as I was concerned, didn't really come at a major price. My powers might have, but that made sense. There was a price to coming back from the dead, even if some sort of cosmic error had let me keep some of my old ghostly abilities.

But before I could point this out to Vankous, the floor gave out from underneath us. I was suddenly plunged into darkness. Even weirder, I felt like I was falling and sliding. When the sensation finally stopped, I went flying out of whatever I had been in and slammed face first into the ground.

I gave a groan of pain and uttered a Victorian swear.

When I sat back up, hand going to my aching nose, I saw what had sent me flying out from the ballroom. It looked like something from one of those play areas for kids. I hadn't ever been to one, of course—I didn't have that luxury. But Lucy had brought me to one for a case, so I was familiar with the structure.

Not that knowing that explained what had just happened.

I unsteadily got to my feet. My face still throbbed, but I did my best to ignore it. I also did my best to ignore the cushion that was attached to Vankous now; if I wanted to handle this like Lockwood and Co would have, I wouldn't laugh-

Then I remembered how immature the whole lot of them were, so I let myself smirk and snicker at the sight.

Once I got that out of my system, I turned to Violet.

"Good question," I said. I rubbed my nose one last time before letting my hand rest at my side. "I wanted to know the same thing."

Sophie listened carefully to Violet as she described the mask. But the longer she listened, the more she disliked the idea of wearing something like that. She remembered the last carnival where she was seen as a swan, even though she wasn't dressed like one at all. It wasn't even a bird that her costume was supposed to represent.

But she couldn't think any more about it, because suddenly it seemed as if the people around her were disappearing one by one. But before Sophie could say anything to Violet, she too was gone.

Sophie tried to hold on somehow as she fell through the hole and suddenly realised that she was on something like a slide. She twisted and turned back and forth, but she couldn't slow down. In the end, she had managed to fall further down with her head turned forward.

It reminded her of a day at the swimming pool, where they also have slides like this. She was a bit excited to race down at this speed, but at the same time, she didn't know where she would end up. While euphoria and fear shared in her body, she, fortunately, forgot about the pain.

There was a small thud when she hit the ground. Everything was still spinning around her, and while staggering a little trying to get up, a shoe came crashing down behind her and landed on her head.

Sophie saw everything twice. Everyone who had fallen in front of her was here twice. In a frantic back and forth, Sophie looked around to see if there would be doubles of her. However (and fortunately) she was alone.

It took a while longer, and she remained sitting on the floor listening to Skull and Violet. She wanted to say something, but her head said that she should remain calm until she recovered from the fall.

Susan POV

Susan's forms shimmered rapidly from invisible to visible as she took in their new surroundings. She didn't have the senses for evil someone like Jennifer, or even Vankous here did, but even she could tell this place wasn't a good one. There was just a horrible feeling in her gut she couldn't quite shake.

Vankous also got to his feet next to her muttering something under his breath to make the cushion vanish before turning to glare at Skull for some reason. Susan assumed it had something to do with the smirk from earlier.

The cushion promptly disappeared from Vankous backside and fell onto Skull's head.

"Oops, sorry my bad," said Vankous, doing a rather convincing performance of being sorry before he vanished the cushion for good. If Susan hadn't seem him put on similar performances a million times before in front of Harry and Jennifer, she'd have almost believed him.

Susan then focused on the question everyone seemed to be asking at the moment. She was thinking along the same lines herself. It wasn't like they'd specifically done anything or said anything to trigger this slide thing, which suggested some sort of outside influence, unless they'd done or said something by accident.

Before she could voice those thoughts, Vankous spoke up.

"I have no idea what the hell is going on, but I suggest we get moving, I don't think another slide of this nature would be healthy for anyone.

I glared at Vankous. Even though he was playing apologetic, I didn't trust him in the slightest. If I hadn't been more concerned with getting out of this place, I would have picked the cushion back up and chucked it right at him. Then I would have liked to see his face.

"I agree," I said, turning to the ghost girl. "There's just one problem with that—we don't know where we are. I'll go out on a limb and guess that none of us have ever been here before. That's how things like this usually work."

While Sophie's head was still spinning a little, she didn't notice that the mood within the group had changed somewhat. If she had still been sliding down with a certain joy, this feeling had now completely departed and a certain hesitation and fear appeared in her.

She believed that the person called Susan was somehow changing, but Sophie did not know if it was still the side effects of her fall.

As she listened to Skull talk to this ghost, Sophie was convinced that she had retained a bruise from the fall. No one would speak so normally to someone who somehow resembled a ghost.

She stood up slowly and looked around. Only now did she examine the various figures that had plopped down with her, noticing that some were somewhere between clueless and nervous. Sophie wasn't sure if she should show excitement now, she got a kind of tingling in her stomach that reminded her of one of her video games and hoped to get a power-up soon. Or she really felt sick... She didn't really know.

Sophie walked in a wide arc, which was supposed to be straight, to Skull and the ghost called Susan. Sophie could just overhear Skull making a guess.

"If that's the case, then we need to be the first and start investigating this place. It won't do us any good to discuss it at length now, but get into action, will it?"

As Sophie said the words aloud (probably louder than she intended), she realised that the excitement of anticipation was not there, however, but her stomach, which still needed to recover.

She sat down on the floor again.

"Should we become a kind of search party and start looking?" she added in a whisper and stared at the floor.

Vankous POV

Vankous sniffed the air. It was indeed a place he'd never seen before, but once you run around the multiverse enough times, you get a sense of most places, even if you're never seen them before.

"This place is far better than a lot of places I could name, so honestly, the situation isn't that dire. We just need to be careful because we don't know why we're here and on who or what's orders."

Susan POV

"That's a goo...good idea," managed Susan, smiling at the girl. Gah. She really needed to get her act together or she was going to end up getting killed...well she couldn't be killed, but that was besides the point.

"umm.....hi"

As I smiled at the strange girl getting ready to ask her for her name.

People around me started to drop like bowling pins. Weird as I would say before I can adjust to what's happening the ground began to consume me whole. Whirling my arms to try to catch my balance, I pitched towards the floor throwing out a hand to stop my fall I felt a sharp pain in my wrist.
I groaned in pain as I craddled my wrist.
"damn It!"
Just give it a couple of minutes it will heal
just a couple of minutes i keep telling myself.

As I slowly got up I start to ask


"What the hell Just happened?"