Young Writers Society

When you open your eyes, you find yourself lying in a dirty back alleyway. You’re surrounded by other people who seem just as out of it as you are. After finally getting your bearings, you realize the rest of the city is as dark and grimy as this brick alleyway is. As you look to the night sky, you see a giant light with the outline of a bat symbol on the horizon.

That’s when it hits you, if you’re from Earth. This isn’t just any city. This is Gotham, the home of Batman. Even if you don’t know much about him, you know enough to know that you’ve somehow ended up in a comic book. You’ll have to rely on the group you’ve ended up with to figure out a way to get back home.

It’s also up to you to figure out what exactly your game plan is. You could reach out to the Bat. You could reach out to other superheroes. You can try tracking down Gotham’s on your own to force them into telling you how they brought you here, or you can just accept your fate as Gotham’s newest citizens.

The ball is in your court.

1. Keep all out-of-character discussion over in the OOC thread! It keeps this thread nice and easy to navigate. As a bonus point, it makes rereading the roleplay a little bit smoother.

2. Please include a description of your character’s appearance in your first post and/or the OOC thread! I’ll throw together a formal list of them in the post before this one, but we need to know what your character looks like so we can describe them in our posts. You can put the description in a spoiler with the code down below:

Code: Select all

[spoiler]Enspoilered text goes here![/spoiler]

3. Speaking of characters, feel free to pick characters from whatever you want. They can be from another roleplay, a storybook, a novel or even a fanfiction of yours. The only reasons I’ll say no to a character is because they’re either a) too powerful for this roleplay or b) somehow conflict with the plot I have planned. But I’ll definitely let you know if that’s the case!

4. Please don’t write for anyone else’s characters. It's hard to predict what someone else might have their characters do, and it takes away some of the fun for the other writers.

5. Your character can guess what the plot is, but don’t make any plot-altering decisions without checking with me first! Some of my roleplays have more group scheming involved than others. I usually run roleplays like a DM runs a Dungeons & Dragon campaign. There’s some things that absolutely have to happen in a certain way to progress the plot, but the other writers have a lot of flexibility with other parts of the story.

(For example, you might not be able to add an NPC, but you can choose how your character interacts with them—save for if that interaction somehow conflicts with the plot!)

I’ll do my best to communicate how flexible a certain part of the story is, but always check with me if you’re not sure.

6. Don't post multiple times in a row. Make sure everyone has a chance to get a response in. There's going to be times where it makes more sense to post back-and-forth between two people, but please be courteous of your fellow roleplayers! If you want a faster-paced roleplay, Roleplay Hollow roleplays might be more of your cup of tea.

7. Posts should be on the longer side and be easy to read. Since this is a Roleplay Realm roleplay, longer posts are the norm. Occasionally, a sentence reply might work best, but the goal is to have longer posts. As for the easy to read bit: don’t worry! Just follow grammar rules and you should be all set.

8. Communicate with your fellow roleplayers. Ever have to take a break from the roleplay or realize it’s not really working out for whatever reason? That’s okay! Just let us know ahead of time so we can naturally write your character out of the story or give you the time you need to write your post. The key to a really fun and finished roleplay is communicating with the other writers.

Bobby awoke in an alley. That in itself wasn't usual. Just...he hadn't gone to sleep in an alley last night.

His heart beating in his ears, he dragged himself to his feet. Someone must have moved him? But no, he would have woken up. Was he drugged? He'd taken a cup of water at the shelter...but why would someone drug him just to leave him in an ally? He had to move.

There was a gutter in the back corner of the alley, which Bobby quickly clambered up. Once atop an unfamiliar rooftop he brushed the dirt off his hands and looked around.

The sky hung heavy with clouds. Clouds onto which a spotlight shone. No, not a spotlight. A batsignal.

As he looked around it dawned on him.

Not a. It was the Batsignal.

When Dresden opened his eyes, he found himself lying in a dark alley. He wasn't sure what felt weirder: the sudden switch in location, or the fact that he had to wake up in the first place. He still wasn't entirely used to being like this yet.

He sat up. He stretched. Being like this was limiting, and he was still getting used to this body. The last thing he remembered was going to bed in the Black Dragon Inn—and the nightmare, but he wasn't going to let himself think of that now. As soon as he caught Cassius Jones, he'd be on the path to getting Arthur back.

"Bartimaeus," he hissed as he got to his feet because this felt like exactly the kind of thing that djinni would do to him. Never mind how Dresden couldn't even wrap his head around getting brought to a build like this in the first place—they had just been in the woods before.

Starting to get his bearings a little more, Dresden finally did the smart thing and looked up.

And then he stared.

That was the Batsignal. Maybe this was a mod, but this didn't feel like a mod.

"What the..." Dresden just barely managed to get out.

Risius bolted upright, eyes wide.
Step One: Analyze Your Surroundings
Instructions from RHUH (Ris’ Handbook For The Unintelligent and Helpless) flashed through his mind (specifically Part 22 - Waking Up In Strange and Unknown Places) as he took in his surroundings, bleak as they were. It was a dark alleyway, something which Risius was quite accustomed to. What was strange, however, was that he did not recognize this particular alley.

He knew every single alley in Azeria, and this… this wasn’t one of them.
“All right, look, if you wanted to rob me, couldn’t you have at least left me inside the city?” he said into the darkness. His eyes were slowly adjusting to the area that seemed… too bright.
Step Two: Go Back Home
“Well now, that one’s gonna be tricky…” Ris said to himself.
Finally, he stood up and dusted himself off. It seemed as though he was not, in fact, robbed. He still had several things on him, including a piece of paper. That would’ve been stolen right off. A kidnapping, maybe? But who’d wanna kidnap a demon runt like him?
Risius huffed, straightened the hat on his head, and stepped out of the alleyway.
He rubbed his eyes a few times.
“Fiddlesticks…”

It was very clear that this was not Azeria. Nor Hell, in fact. It was a dark, grimy city set back in the A.D’s. Everything was familiar but twisted. Especially the sky… wait what was that?
Risius stared up at a strange light blazing into the sky. It looked like there was a shadow of a bat, there. A signal perhaps? Maybe a carnival… probably not in a place like this though.

Step Three (Should Step Two Fail): Head Towards Signs Of Life And/Or Alcohol
He tried to activate his power to head in that direction, but there was nothing there. He muttered to himself and tried for the second time, gritting his teeth. Ris could sense the Tenebris out there somewhere, but it was quite distant and certainly not connected to him.
He sighed, shrugging away the emptiness it left, and looked toward that signal.
“What trouble am I in this time…”

Tempest Briar was used to waking up in strange places. He'd lose consciousness for minutes at a time, waking up sprawled on the floor she swore she was standing on a minute before. But this was new.

Tempest Briar never moved during these spells. But this was a place she'd never been to before. The buildings were all wrong. They were too tall, towering above the street like some malicious beast. The sky was dark, but the city was bright. Too bright.

I can't see the stars, he realized with a sudden panic. I can't see the stars!

She scrambled to her feet, stumbling out of the alleyway. And there, emblazoned against the sky in an abrasive neon yellow, was a strange symbol, like someone tried to draw a bat but hadn't seen one in years.

Tempest Briar didn't know where he was, but he needed to get out. Now

She pulled her coat tighter around herself; suddenly extremely thankful, she decided to wear her satchel and stepped onto the smooth stone. Metal carriages zoomed past her, moving so fast she couldn't see what they were. Great, so someone was painting the sky and silver boxes were out to kill him. He took a deep breath and stayed far away from the end of the smooth stone.

"I don't know what's happening, but I'm killing whoever's responsible."

Vankous sprang to his feet in an instant, already looking around him. This was unacceptable. Where was he? How had he gotten here? Why had no one told him this would happen?

After mentally groaning about it, millenia of training kicked in as he surveyed the area. The first thing he detected was a powerful magical signature next to him. He did a double take at it, immediately reacting to it as he turned in the direction of the lifeform to come face to face with..a teenage girl. Huh. What was a...sixteen by the looks of the temporal signature girl doing walking around with the signature of one Harry... The realization nearly made him faint. This was Harry. No being in existence could ever hope to replicate that, but for some reason whatever force had pulled him into this horrifying dimension had also pulled in a far younger version of Harry with it. He racked his brain for any story Harry might have told to try and place this young girl and see if he could remember what Harry had called himself or was it herself at that point in time. He got nothing. Well that was going to be something else entirely.

Before he could subject himself to the horror of seeing what a teenage version of the immortal that already acted like a teenager was like he took a moment to check his surrounding. Well he'd be damned. It didn't take the bat signal for him to come to a very obvious conclusion. He'd somehow ended up in Gotham. What was it with comic book worlds and pulling people in randomly. Judging by the feel of the air, this was not the one they'd gone on holiday in either.

Well this was wonderful. He was trapped in a city that he was familiar with enough to know it would be dangerous but not enough to know what those dangers were. And because the cosmic forces..okay he worked daily with said cosmic forces, he should stop blaming them for things they weren't responsible for...had decided things weren't bad enough, he was going to have do it alongside a version of his friend that was likely going to give him a headache from the idea alone. This would be a terrific story to tell during their next fireside chat.

389 words

Mireya had wandered many alleyways in her life, but what made this one different was that she had not fallen asleep in this one, and she still managed to wake up there.

She let out a confused and tired noise as she sat up, leaning against a brick wall. She was the only one here, so if someone had moved her here, they were already gone. It wasn't likely that she'd be able to find them.

Mireya got to her feet and looked around anyway. This wasn't the cleanest of alleyways, which meant it could have been somewhere in Crystal City, but a glance up told her that wasn't likely at all. The buildings, apartment complexes just a half dozen floors tall, were too short for it. It definitely wasn't the Arcade. She was mostly sure that's where she'd been to begin with.

Maybe she should call for Cyrin.

She pressed a button on her wristband as she wandered towards the street ahead, raising it to her face so the microphone would be able to register her voice. "Cyrin, I got displaced somehow and I could use—"

Mireya paused as she heard the sound of static humming in her earpiece. She took it out, found it wasn't broken, then put it back as she examined her wristband with a frown. The small screen displayed a UNABLE TO CONNECT error message.

With a sigh, she released the button and checked her messages. There were a few from Cyrin, all from a few hours apart, which she must have been asleep for. He'd either noticed she was gone or had been trying to reach her for another reason. She'd have to listen to them.

Mireya was about to play the first one when she paused, just now noticing what was ahead of her. She'd reached the end of the alley and had a clear view of the city— or as clear as she could get, because it was cloudy or smoggy. No Aphiran city, to her knowledge, still looked like this. Maybe it was just that it was nighttime and she was used to Crystal City being all lit up and reflective, but there was no gleam to this place.

More confusing than the city feeling so out of place, however, was the symbol shining on a cloud above, a spotlight with a dark shape in the center.

Mireya squinted at it.

A... bat?

Dresden was in Gotham.

No matter how many times he thought that, it didn't feel anymore real. Maybe this really was a mod, but it was a weird mod that didn't make a whole lot of sense. He had been in the middle of the wilderness, far from any kind of major civilization. He wouldn't suddenly get physically brought from the inn to a place like this and not notice the journey.

He rubbed his forehead. It hurt, but that was probably the horns trying to break out again. Which he wasn't going to let happen, because this body was going to stay in perfect, working condition, thank you very mu-

Something suddenly bumped up against his leg.

Dresden glanced down to see a vine snaking through the alleyway. He glanced back up at the sky at the Batsignal. If the Batsignal was lit, then Gotham was in danger. And if there was a vine coming down the alleyway-

Just as Dresden realized that meant Poison Ivy was here, a barrage of vines and plants came rushing down the alleyway he was. In the nearby alleyways, the vines did the same. Some even reached the roof that Bobby, who Dresden didn't even know was there, was currently standing on.

Dresden darted out into the streets beyond. That was where all of the vines were congregating. They were meeting up all around a green-skinned figure with bright red hair, as well as woman with pigtails, a red and black outfit, and a comically big hammer.

Dresden jumped back as a vine nearly knocked him over.

It didn't seem like either Poison Ivy or Harley Quinn had noticed they weren't alone yet. They were watching as a car sped towards them from far down the street. That had to be Batman in the Batmobile.

If only you were here to see this, Pres, Dresden thought.

Bobby had been trying to get his bearings, breathing slow, trying to come up with a plan, when movement out of the corner of his eye made him jump. Vines.

For once, his glee outweighed his fear and he scampered to the edge of the roof, peeking down, still carefully, at Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. In the distance, the batmobile sped toward them.

Bobby should probably move, this fight could get messy. Even as he thought it, the vines advanced on him, overtaking the roof. His glee vanished in a flash, overtaken once more by panic, and he found himself clambering down the front of the building.

Something scraped across the stone, making Tempest Briar whirl around, his breath catching in his throat. Thick vines writhed on the floor and inched towards her. He approached them, poking them to see if they reacted.

"Vines? Are there-" She looked around, trying to see if there was anyone around. "-are there alis here?"

The vine snapped to life and wrapped around his ankle. Tempest Brirar screamed, jumping in shock and tumbling to the ground. "Nope, nope, nope. We're not doing this." She kicked the vine until it finally released. "Get off!"

He scrambled backwards, skinning his palms on the stone. She rose to her feet and sprinted down the sidewalk, cursing under her breath, until she ran into someone, knocking both of them to the floor.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" He offered a hand to help the person he knocked to their feet.

Vankous

Vankous was proud of himself for not screaming when the vines first appeared. Ever since the inexplicable attack of an entire candy forest on that one leisure planet he had been scarred for life. He was about to just yoink himself up and out to safety when he noticed two things, well more like four things.

For starters there was the incredibly good smelling but still hideous one he'd swore was called Prison Inky or something. He wasn't completely sure about that one. It didn't see like that name made sense. Maybe it was Ivy? That had a better connection to vines that Inky didn't it?

Then there was the other woman standing next to Inky...correction...Ivy. Vankous definitely recognized that one. He didn't think he could delete that one's laugh from his head if he had industrial strength mind bleach. Come to think of it, he did have that, but that had been a prank so it was definitely not going to work. Harley Quinn was one of a kind. DId he accidentally make a card related pun that vaguely connected to Harley Quinn. He decided this was not the place to think about it.

He moved to the third problem with his plan. The sound of an incredibly out of date motor charging down towards this horrifyingly unsafe alleyway. That sound had to with the person who paraded around in that bat costume looking like that one time he'd partnered up with Harry, Stean and James to infiltrate that horrifying bat costume party. ALthough said person did scare him enough that he'd never say that out loud.

He turned to his last problem. Harry...or rather this girl probably had no idea what any of this was. If she was a time so far back that Harry was actually still sixteen she didn't even want to imagine what was going through her head right now.

Katherine

Kate was confused. That was putting it mildly. Waking up in this random alley wasn't so bad. She'd done that well over a hundred times before she'd turned two. The problem was this was certainly not Hydrania, or Lightnia or even somewhere like Moxad. The gravity her felt so light it was like it wasn't even there. The air seemed to have very little Hydrogen for her to breath and her body was only managing to avoid a shutdown because the gravity and the air seemed so much..lighter.

Before she could fully process the implications or make sense of a world that seemed so different, there was clearly some sort of attack happening. Vines were not supposed to do that, at least not from the kind of concrete structures that she was on. Only the darker jungles had vines like this and that one room she'd been forced to stay in for a month when she'd lost her tenth fight in a row for her owner. She grimaced at the memories, fighting to stay away from them. Now was not the time for weakness and reminiscing about those memories was definitely a weakness.

Fighting them down, she tried to assess the situation. There was an alleyway not too far from here that would make a good escape from those vines. Except it seemed like it was a bottleneck of some sort. This was a planned trap, not some random wild vines. Her theory was confirmed seconds later by two figures at the center of this eruption of vines. Kate was maybe not the best people reader but she knew the two of them were behind this and their intentions weren't great.

She turned to look the other way to assess how that was looking and nearly jumped. Someone had been behind her the whole time and she'd been so lost in though she hadn't even seen them.

"Hello," said the man.

"This doesn't seem like the greatest time for pleasantries," said Kate.

The man seemed taken aback somehow like that wasn't the response he'd been expecting. He gulped.

"Yes, umm, can you get down?" he asked, the alley seems the safest option.

"Yes?" asked Kate, curiously. Was this man trying to help her? He did seem trustworthy if a little naive. "Why would I follow you?"

"Because I think I kind of know what's going on, and help is on the way to stop those two, the alley seems the obvious choice," said the man. That time he sounded like he had been expecting some resistance. It sounded like a pre rehearsed answer.

"The alley is clearly a bottleneck and some sort of trap," said Kate, matter of factly.

"Yes, but.." said the man who seemed to stop for a deep breath. "I'm Vankous, Vankous Frostification, please trust me?"

"Why..." she began, more curious than anything at the man's bold question. Some part of her told her that she could trust but she wasn't about to let the man know that.

"Xavaltenesa mortaka nivara," said the man, almost too quiet to be heard.

Katherine's eyes widened. How did the man know Hydranese when he clearly wasn't a Hydranian, and that phrase. 'Legends never die'. She decided to make a snap decision for the first time in a long time in her life. "Fine."

The two of them were standing in the alleyway ten seconds later.

Getting tackled was something that Risius was used to. There was a long list of people that wanted a thick slice of him, in one way or another. (Mostly murderous rage, but thats beside the point)
However, this one was different because…
No, nevermind it wasn’t different. Although a tackle is perhaps the wrong word for it, as they’d pretty much just run into him. Risius was too busy staring up at the weird sky and the strange city to pay attention.
“Umph!” he said as he hit the pavement.
He blinked up at the young human standing above him, looking abashed. She was holding out a hand, clearly trying to help him up. But she was also the person that knocked him down, so what if she was just trying to shank him as soon as he got back up? It’d happened before, why not again?
Risius jumped to his feet by himself and grabbed his hat to put back on his head, covering the small bumps where his horns should’ve been.
“Quite rude, that was! Watch where you’re going, kid. Could’ve lost my spleen if you weren’t careful!”
The assailant certainly seemed harmless, although his fashion was rather different than what Risius was used to. And too… bright. In Hell, everything was stained gray by the soot. Unless you were an Upper, o’ course.

So.

Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn were causing their usual havoc, and Batman was on his way in the Batmobile. Dresden wasn't super into the comics and only knew a bit about them from Pres's excited fanboying, but he did know that Batman had a no-metas rule. Dresden wasn't actually a meta, but he was pretty sure metas were just anything not human.

So if Batman theoretically saw a dark figure near two of his rogues using some weird magic, he would probably think he was a threat. Dresden wasn't going to let the caped crusader mess with his body on his watch.

Jumping over another vine that went his way, Dresden surveyed the area again. There were other people nearby, too, and none of them seemed to fit in with Gotham all that well. They could have either been people from other DC towns, or this was like the whole situation in Minecraft again. He probably wasn't the only one who was plucked from his latest world and chucked here.

His fingers itched at the thought of finding Cassius Jones here. He probably wasn't pulled along, but a man could hope, couldn't he?

Jumping over a few more vines, Dresden made his way over to a teenage girl and some guy wearing a lab coat. The guy seemed human enough, but the girl was...

Well, whatever she was, Dresden quickly decided he wasn't going to be looking at her form on the seventh plane anymore.

"Hi," he said, coming to a stop in front of them as Harley let out a cackle and lunged for the batmobile with her hammer in tow far behind him. "The name's Dresden. You're not from here, are you?"

Tempest Briar just stared. The man had grey skin like a subterra; the golden eyes made sense in that regard too.

But he only had two arms, and there was no place for two more.

She swallowed, casting her gaze to the floor. Whatever was going on in this world suddenly felt much more extensive. Not only was the prospect of finding other alis dwindling every moment, but he had a whole new slew of non-humans to adapt to.

Which was fine. Tempest Briar was non-human, and he had made friends with all sorts of non-humans as well. She could adapt to a new species. But he certainly wasn’t about to take any chances to have anyone adapt to him.

“I’m, uh, sorry about your spleen.” He had no idea what a spleen was, but he figured that wouldn’t be a good thing to add. “But are you alright?”