[spooky yet strangely funky tunes à la Ghostbusters begin to play from an ambiguous source as a cool teen who vaguely resembles an anime skeleton rises from her grave. that teen is me.]
What's up kids
I wrote this months ago and never got around to posting it, oops!! This was a story for school that had to be written with vocab words, so that's why it reads a little funny. I also went overboard? I just really like cool ladies and knights and dragons. Sorry I haven't been posting, school is busy as heck. Final exams are coming up but final projects are already HERE and READY TO PARTY!!! And by party I mean destroy me.
But yeah, this is the most I've written in several months and I WISH it weren't so but alas!!! When school is out maybe I'll get back in the game. I've wanted to for a while, I just have had no time, so this is all you're getting from me for now. Been tossing around a few poem drafts but nothing's flowing too well. Maybe because I also haven't had time to read as much.
Hope you all have been doing well!! <3
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Lancelot was
still cowering in the second to last crater, twenty feet back.
Percival hadn't yet left the first one. Annie couldn't see Gawain,
but two minutes ago he had been using her as a human shield, so her
hopes for him weren't very high. Absolutely unsavory behavior,
really. She made eye contact with Arthur, six yards away behind
another boulder, and jerked her head to the side in the universal
“let's-go-kill-this-monster-so-we-can-go-home-and-sleep” motion.
Instead of nodding back in the usual “heck-yeah” response, he
grinned sheepishly and shook his head very quickly.
“No thanks,”
their leader mouthed, and Annie's eyes rolled so hard they flung
themselves straight out of orbit and into frozen clutches of deep
space. So much for the valiance of knights.
A tap on her arm
and Iris was beside her. She was panting hard, breath misting on the
front of her helmet. Percival had been holding her back to “protect
him” (literally, he had wrapped his arms around Iris and refused to
let her go, despite the fact that she abhorred him and would have not
hesitated to throw him to the dogs), so how Iris had gotten up here
in a discreet manner was
simply another unsolved mystery of the universe. Annie patted her on
the shoulder and grinned. Iris winked back, exhaustion gone,
charming disposition back in an instant, and pointed in Arthur's
direction. Holly was now crouching next to him, both thumbs up.
Her crew all set
to go, Annie peeked out from behind the boulder at their adversary.
Originally it had taken the form of a bear-sized donkey with the head
of a whale, but now the thing had augmented itself to the size of a
small house and was starting to look like a pastel pink dragon, with
teal and yellow accents. Against the backdrop of swirling galaxies
and shining stars, it really didn't look as pernicious as its
official profile made it out to be. But then a space bird flew
overhead on its way to blow up another dying star and the dragon
torched it with a blast of purple fire and caught the burning carcass
in its jaws. Blood and feathers flew everywhere.
Okay, that was
pretty vile.
Rolling her
shoulders, Annie took a deep breath of the recycled air flowing
through her spacesuit, and then gave the signal. She and Holly
darted out into the open, while Iris opted to take advantage of the
lower gravity of the small moon and leap dramatically over the
boulder. In the slight reflection of her transparent bubble helmet,
Annie saw Arthur scramble to his feet and stare after them. She
waved back at him, and he slowly sank back down, his face sullen.
Not good. He's going to make this out to look like mutiny in the
official report, isn't he? Annie mused. What a loser.
For the mission
to turn out favorably they had to rely on the cowardice of the
Knights of Camelot, which wasn't exactly something any of them were
comfortable with, but it was constant. Even though the Knights were
renowned throughout space as being the bravest there were in terms of
monster hunting, during her time on their squad, Annie had found that
when faced with anything larger than a dog, the boys would adhere to
their doctrine of unnecessary
terror, hide together in a small huddle, and draw straws to see who
would have to go kill it. And then they would stall as long as
possible, while Annie and Iris placed bets on who would do something
useful first. And then usually it was Holly who got fed up and went
to go finish the job.
But was it Holly
on all the posters and merchandise that decked the rooms of every
child this side of Andromeda? No, it was the cowering bunch of
idiots behind them. The boys looked good on paper, but in actuality,
they weren't a very good example for posterity. They belonged in a
TV drama, not actual deep space. Holly, Iris, and Annie did try to
respect their teammates, but for the most part they just feigned
obedience in front of higher-ups and did what they wanted the rest of
the time. And if anyone with a higher rank did notice their
transgressions against Arthur's command, they didn't say anything.
The ladies got the job done and that was really all that mattered.
Arthur seemed to
realize this, and the longer the three girls were on his squad, the
more his dislike of them festered. While the predominant
monster-related course of action for the Knights seemed to be cower,
avoid, and then capture as quickly as possible (usually while
screaming or crying), the girls had very little trouble skipping the
first two steps. It also wasn't very difficult for them to capture
the monster – and only if beguiling it into stopping its rampage
didn't work – without the added hysterics.
Which was, in
fact, what they were doing right now, while Arthur tried to burn
holes in their helmets with his eyes.
Annie lift an
arm and waved at the pink dragon. “Hi.”
The dragon
stopped crushing the fancy moon rovers t that surrounded it and
looked at her, unblinking.
“I'm Iris,”
Iris offered cheerfully. The pink space dragon swooped its head
around to her and she smiled wider. “These are my friends Holly
and Annie. What's your name? The file said your classification was
NNN888 but that's boring and hard to say.”
The dragon made
a gurgling noise and misty blue smoke began to rise from its
nostrils.
Iris nodded
sagely. “That's okay, buddy. Take your time.”
The dragon
unhinged its jaw and Annie tackled Iris out of the way of another
stream of purple fire. Apparently their dragon friend was going to
be unwieldy.
“Hey, dragon,
can you not torch those two?” Holly frowned and crossed her arms.
“Also, the whole crushing thing? With the moon rovers? Cut it
out.”
“It would be
much appreciated,” Annie wheezed as Iris pushed her off and she
rolled across the moon's dusty surface.
The dragon
looked like it was unsure of who to snarl at. “Why?”
“So you can
talk!” Iris cheered in delight and then lightly sprung way from the
fire shot at her. Holly leveled the tranquilizer gun at the dragon
and looked at Annie for permission. She shook her head and Holly
nodded in recognition, but didn't lower the gun.
Annie heaved
herself back to her feet and stared at the dragon. It hadn't been
crushing the rovers with much enthusiasm. Usually the beasts they
faced took great joy in causing calamities, but their dragon friend
was only halfheartedly destroying the precious science. It was also
shapeshifter, obviously, but they weren't native to this star system.
So that meant...
“Dude.”
Annie waved her arms to get the dragon's attention again. Before she
was turned into crispy dragon snack food, she tapped a button on her
arm and a small hologram star chart popped up. “Do you need a ride
home?”
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Note down here because I didn't want to put it up top but I'm getting published in a cool thing SHH DON'T TELL it's nothing that big but I'm excited because it's my first time getting anything published!!! yeehaw
