SCP x Male Reader - The deadly show

Chapter 10 - Writing a story to please SCP-035's inner artist

Your POV

The two teams shambled into the room, each looking tired and annoyed. We were all wondering why we needed to be woken up so early in the morning; it was nearly 5 am. My team looked amongst ourselves and shrugged. The SCPs were standing in front of us, Abel fumbling with the camera for a moment, and as soon as he gave the thumbs up indicating that the camera was rolling, the show began. 035 spoke up with a wide smile on his porcelain face.

"Ah, so you're all here. Good! Now, I'm sure you're all wondering why you're up so early," 035 pointed out, his voice having an eternal mocking quality to it no matter what he said. "I've been very generous in giving you enough daylight to work on today's challenge." Oh boy.

Natas sneezed, making the theatre mask's expression change. He looked at Natas with the dirtiest, most appalled and disgusted sneer ever possibly expressed in ceramic form.

"Anyway," 035 looked back to the two teams as a whole, his expression once again becoming jovial. "Your challenge for today is to write a short novella for us to read within the next 24 hours. Considering there are so many of you, I don't think that's going to be a problem for neither of the teams. You will all be provided with your own separate rooms with a drawing board so that you can properly plan out your story, and you will also have a nice place to privately write your masterpieces. Well... As private as you could get when the whole world is watching!"

035 waved dramatically towards the camera with a wide smile, while viewers were spamming the chat once again, this time for some reason with a word "zesty". At the same time 682 piped up with a roar:

"And make it good! I swear to God if I have to read some illiterate piece of-"

"Thank you! 682..." 035 interrupted. "He is right. You will be graded, so to speak, on length, creativity, and grammar. Do not make it seem as though a child wrote your piece."

The room fell into an awkward silence. 035 frowned as an invisible eye looked over us.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Go on! I haven't got the entire day! Oh wait... I actually do! See you in four and twenty hours!"

Both teams rushed to get to their assigned rooms. Our room was rather small, but not cramped. There was a drawing board and a small table with sticky notes, index cards, three stacks of college rule paper, and more than enough pencils for the team. We all looked at each other and began wondering how to get through this challenge. What in the world could we possibly write about? I was sure that these questions were in all of our heads as we sat there in painful silence. My head was in my hands, staring at the table while I heard the conversation around me.

"What about a children's book? Simple, easy, and quick," one voice offered tentatively.

"Give me a creative children's book idea about the length of a novella," another snapped back sarcastically.

That idea was shut down.

"What about high fantasy?" Leif asked, causing me and a couple others to lift their heads. "It's just a thought, really, but y'know... dragons and elves and fae and whatnot."

"Do we have enough time for that?" Amanda countered.

Leif was about to fall into a sheepish silence as well, but some of us began mumbling about the idea itself, which actually had a chance to work..

"No, no. I like that idea," I muttered approvingly. "Frankly, I don't think the D-Class team even stands a chance to build a paracosm like that, even a small one."

And so we got to work. Each of us split the novella up amongst ourselves by chapters. We wrote an outline of the general story and what we wanted from each chapter, taking about 2 hours of careful planning and brainstorming. After that, we took a small break to think about our own chapters. And that took 30 minutes.