Young Writers Society

In stories, comic books, and movies, it’s always the underestimated one who is the hero. The person that everyone believes to be the normal person. However, they’re always rich, and famous, and have tools at hand and a backstory that makes them want to be a superhero. Usually, it’s a dead father, or a kidnapping, or a dead uncle, but there was only one superhero that really, truly spoke to me. She was the only one that I felt like had a backstory that wasn’t the usual cliche that superhero comic makers strive to have in Iron Man, Batman, and Spiderman. She was like me, and I was like her.

Catwoman. She started from the bottom. A fashion designer in the fast-paced industry who died overhearing of a horrible plan from some of her bosses. After being literally thrown out of a building, some cats saved her and turned her into the supervillain (and eventually superhero) that she was in the comic books that Ronald loved so much.

Yes, I was like Catwoman, even if I didn’t dress in the way that she did in the movie. But I was Catwoman with stereotypes mixed in—stereotypes I hated.

Garnet Clifford—first genderfluid cover girl for the famous modeling and fashion enterprise Tikki-Nikki. In the magazine edition that starred me, I am portrayed as a natural model with all of the latest skills, like being able to grow and maintain a six-inch bubble from bubble-gum without popping or deflating it. The story about how I started from the bottom—"Garnet was persecuted by their brothers for being like who [s]he is, but [s]he has moved past that and is now a successful model to share fashions and inspire transgender, genderfluid, intersex, and generally genderqueer people all over the world!” and “‘Clifford is the best person that we [could] ask for right now,” claims her boss, Martin Valentine. ‘[S]he provides a healthy atmosphere to the workplace and is very confident in everything that [s]he does. Truly, we appreciate [her] him. It’s especially amazing how [s]he got over an abusive boyfriend and abusive brothers to get here.’”—and worked my way up, just like Catwoman (even if one of the articles said "their" even though they were careful to use at least two pronouns at once). I kind of felt bad for lying to all the humans that I knew, but I had to do it. I couldn’t get caught, not if I didn’t want to go back to my brothers and be forced to their rules.

Yet, I was in a cheap, rental Buick with the old outfit that I used to wear before I was shoved into the labor camp. A fluffed up white blouse with two black bands on my sleeves and a red-and-white striped ribbon around my upturned collar. A brown suit vest with a black lining around the V-neck. Black suit pants slightly wider at the ankles, bordering my black-and-red boots that pressed against the old pedal of the Buick. I even had found my old glasses; rectangular-shaped, with a string beaded with jewel skulls and glass beads. The only difference to my appearance was my hair—it was mostly white now, with only a little bit of my red remaining—braided in the back and held together by a single black jewel rose.

As I turned the corner towards the site, the sky appeared to rip open to my right. Farmers, working the fields in the opposite side of me, didn’t even look up. I tsked. Of course I had to save some pesky humans that weren’t open-minded enough to see portals. I guess that they couldn’t help it. Humans were terrible creatures.

That’s why I killed myself, after all.

The portal, with swirling shades of blue inside, grew bigger to accommodate the space that the Menos Grande needed to use to get through the portal. A large black mass—it’s foot—out of the portal, just brushing the top of it. The portal suddenly ripped straight up, revealing a looming white skull mask staring right at a grove of trees to my left, where a symbol had formed—many circles overlapping each other, surrounded by an even larger circle enclosing them in. I recognized the insignia as Ronald’s right before the symbol fell away, six people tumbling out of them.

The one on top of the pile, dressed in black rags and a white bob cut, rolled off the pile. She stood up and saw the Menos Grande and her mouth dropped open, mouthing the words: “Holy shit” to herself. The rest of the people got off of the pile, and when two of them stood up, my breath caught in my throat.

One of them had long, black strands of hair framing his face that shone in the sunlight. His face was blank; expressionless would be a better word. He stared at the Menos Grande as if it was just a slight nuisance, like a fly in his soup. I groaned to myself. Sebastian Michaelis, my love interest 180 years ago. Oh, he was pretty alright, but had the personality of a sewer hole. I don’t mean that he was a dick. I mean that he was so nice and so perfect that he irked me and almost everyone that came across them.

The other was dark-skinned and bright yellow, curled hair. She had a shocked look on her face, much like the one that was on black-rag-girl. Jillian Miller took a step back towards where the portal, her face looking a bit under-the-weather. I didn’t blame her. Seeing a Menos Grande for the first time tends to do things to your shock system.

Still, I was surprised that the others decided to bring an amatuer such as Jill to an obviously large fight against a Menos Grande, of all things.

I drove a little ways out, not wanting to alert them that I saw the Grande. As soon as I was around a hill bend, however, I parked the car and stepped out. I tied my braids up into a bun and made my way towards where the group had fallen out of the portal, keeping myself well hidden.

“What the hell is that?” I heard Jill’s voice squeak. “The devil?” I froze. It took me a little bit to realize that they were not, in fact, talking about me, and were instead talking about the Menos Grande. I debated to let myself be able to be seen by them. If they can’t see me, I can’t see them, I decided, and kept myself behind the hill.

“Nah, the devil is scarier,” Adrien, the woman in the black rags, laughed. “To fight, anyway. Right now, he’s banished and working in a fast food chain. But enough about Satan. This is a Menos Grande. The biggest and baddest of hollows, except for maybe the Hollow King himself.” Knowing Adrien, she was making wild hand gestures towards the Grande, which was still staring at them.

“But we don’t know who that is and what his powers consist of,” Ronald butt in. “We just know that ‘he’ is a ‘he’.”

“Thanks for the obvious info, genius, but I was talking,” Adrien snapped playfully. “Anyway, a Menos Grande is like, 100 hollows at once. Super hard to kill, especially with one shot. Hence, me being here.”

I stifled a groan. Even in the midst of serious danger, even when there’s a scary ass monster slowly making its way towards you, Adrien had to have an ego complex. I turned my attention towards the Menos Grande, its skull-like face and long, pointy nose pointed towards the people that I used to associate myself with. It stomped forwards, just missing a farmer. The vibrations that occurred scared the human, however, which caused him to scramble his way out of the area.

Good, I thought. One less human to deal with while fighting the goddamn thing. I shook my head. When was the last time that I thought like that? That thought wasn’t a good thing.

I heard a retch from Jill and a faint splattering noise. The siblings continued to chatter, William chastising Adrian for acting so nonchalant and Ronald’s voice raising octaves over Jill’s vomit in the doctor way that he did. As far as I could tell, the short one and Sebastian were speechless.

Suddenly, there was silence. I took a peek around the bend and saw Jill pointing at the Menos Grande, finger shaking. It had leaned closer until its Pinocchio nose was about a meter from her face. The siblings lept into action while Jill, Sebastian, and a small figure watched. Adrien, summoning her death scythe, aimed it at the Grande’s eye socket. Ronald’s skin split open in his arm and a green, metal-like substance sprouted out. He kicked his shoes together, two wheels springing out of the bottoms. Ronald, rolling backwards as on rollerblades—though I didn’t understand how, since he was standing on grass and mud; magic, I guessed—to protect Jill. William flipped open an object, resembling a pole, with two pinchers at the end. The metal stick elongated and aimed for the other eye socket.

But before the siblings could get there, the Grande was gone.

It had vanished into thin air, so it seemed. Adrian tumbled to the ground and rolled onto her feet, spewing a few colorful insults aimed at the Grande. William simply retreated his pruner and knelt beside Jill, who was looking quite pale.

“Are you okay,” he asked simply. It wasn’t formed as a question. Just a bland statement out of courtesy.

Jill nodded and looked around nervously. “But where did he go?”

“Oh, no, that was a it,’” Adrien corrected, being the smartass that she was. “But Grandes like to jump when they’re in danger.” Jill gave Adrien a look filled with fear and an underlying ‘you could have told me that earlier’. Adrien, ignoring the look, continued: “It takes quite a while for them to-”

There was a boom in the distance as the Grande touched ground. A mini dust storm erupted where it had landed, temporarily blinding the group and myself. The poor farmers, having to deal with this strange weather. The Grande faced the group, staring us down with two eye sockets that very much resembled a void. I could feel myself being drawn towards it, sinking deeper and deeper into a madness that only a hundred hollows could know...

I shook my head, clearing my head of a trance. That was one thing hollows could use against you; reapers called them Madness Eyes, even though they’re more like eye sockets and since most reapers go mad after looking at them for a long period of time. I stared at its large nose, it poking into the air with a passive-aggressive air as it stared us down. Then the Grande began to lean forward, a move that even I had never seen before.

Grandes didn’t have arms, but they tended to try to smash things with their feet and use their size to get the souls they needed. However, it look like it wanted our souls directly into the mouth, it bending where a waist would be. It ended up about 5 meters from where the group’s positions—and, to an extent, mine—and opened it’s large, mess-of-a-tooth bleached jaw and made a screeching noise. Everyone was enveloped in the stink of death within seconds and got a fairly good view of the second and third sets of teeth inside that were arranged in a spiral-like pattern and sharpened to the point where I doubted that Ronald could touch them without getting touched. I found myself getting drawn to them, wondering how teeth could be that sharp and almost never be used. In the back of my mind, the logical part of me scolded me about how it was not just teeth, but teeth designed to hypnotise you in the same way the Madness Eyes were designed to do.

Jill’s screaming knocked me out of the second trance that hour. Jesus Christ, I needed to stop doing that. Of course the teeth were sharp, they were almost never used; using things wears things down and the Grande didn’t have arms to use to sharpen its teeth at all. I should know this! I work in the fashion industry!

Focus, Grell. If you shit like this is going to distract you, you’ll never defeat it.

Why are you just sitting there, anyway?

I closed my eyes, focusing. The others were in the same trancelike state that I was in, this time not being able to resist the strong pull of the hypnosis. Everyone except for Jill.

Jill’s screaming died away and she glanced around at everyone that had fallen underneath the Grande’s spell. She began to shake them, with little avail. Even Sebastian was affected, his eyes drifting into space more than they usually did. Jill tried to shout again, but no sound came out except for a high pitched squeak. The Grande somehow leaned even closer, closing the distance by a meter or so. Jill took a shaking step back, her legs nearly quaking.

When Jill tripped over herself and fell on her head, she looked at the Grande with as much fear as a human could possibly muster. The Grande made a chortling noise from its skull mask and rolled out its black tongue, pierced with bones and crawling with small, trying to escape souls. It was disgustingly wet, the spit that had coated it flying everywhere and splattering Sebastian, Adrien, William, Ronald, Jill, and the small figure in the face (actually, the small figure was covered in a cloak, so I couldn’t tell if it did or not. Later, he would claim that he was not sprayed with the ‘disgusting liquid’, but I digress). Jill’s arms were shaking too much for her to wipe away the spit with her coral-colored cardigan.

The Grande’s tongue then stretched forward until it poked Jill in the face, the large tip of the tongue squishing her entire face as he licked her. She ended up with a large cowlick, her blond-dyed hair sticking almost straight up in the air. It would have been almost funny—in fact, the scene reminded me of a dumbass hero from Japan that I met in a work trip three years ago. He had blonde hair that stuck behind and upwards from him, and, even if he was white, the resemblance was uncanny—if the situation hadn’t been so dire.

The last straw was when the Grande licked his skull mask (not having lips; its face was literally made of bleached bone) and made a rumbling noise like a hum. It grinned its eternal smile at Jill, and I realized that he meant to eat her soul first.

I could handle him trying to eat the other’s souls first: I didn’t know who the figure was, I didn’t care about Sebastian, and my death siblings were tough. But Jill? A new reaper, unable to defend herself, unknowing about reaperdom at all yet? Hell no.

I didn’t care about revealing my hiding spot anymore. Filled with rage, I summoned Envy’s knives and jumped at the hollow’s mask, aiming for the eye socket.