New World Order (TNE) [Original]

Chapter 11 - Fight For Normality

"The Botanist's Club Official Diary Day 3:

"This diary started as a simple account of the daily life of somebody living day after day in a secluded bunker underground, it seems that things have changed. Everything started seeming a little off when I woke up today, the makeshift pillow that we were provided with wasn't really anything special but it worked well enough. What really woke me up though was the sound of the alarm buzzer that we were provided with. We all thought that it was counting down to when we could come above ground. But, all of a sudden it changed from its earlier 3 years countdown to a simple 1 hour. Before we were dropped here we were told that we would hear a loud beeping an hour before being let out of the safe. The safe was filled with a mix of a few reactions. Half of the club thought that this was amazing news; we would be let out early! But, the other half was more concerned about the implications. Was there not enough air for the next years or was it-"

It was a bad habit for Plum to read whenever she knew that she was about to enter a stressful situation. She had done it earlier with the big worm creature and now she had fallen back into the habit. Speaking of worm creatures, the creatures who came out of the elevator were incredibly worm-like, except unlike the worm creature from earlier these worms stood up as if they were still regular humans. They were also far more intelligent being able to communicate with each other in what sounded like a garbled mix between latin and portuguese. Although more accurately it was the closest they could get to English and french with their new worm mouths. The worms split up into 2 groups to look around the town and find those who didn't have powers.

"Welcome to Forestville a great place to stay during the apocalyp-" The gatekeeper cheerfully welcomed the worms coming through the elevator before being attacked by their leader. It wasn't their goal to attack the whole town but with their increased sensitivity to noise; the immediate talking alerted them. The leader pounced on the gatekeeper only for the gatekeeper to counterattack with a blue scythe. The other half of the worms had already gone deeper into the town looking for people like Plum and Timothy. Geoffrey came to help out with the gatekeeper and pulled the black elevator out once again to push the worm towards him, only to stop his magnetic attraction, sidestep and let momentum do the rest. "Who do you think just fixed that elevator!"

"Sorry," Geoffrey replied, clearly non apologetically just doing it out of habit.

Plum was feeling stressed, she knew deep down that this wasn't all her fault but she was clearly one of the only people who were actually listening to the 'private' government conversation. She could have told Geoffrey or Timothy about this whole situation and prepared; if only she'd had more time. She looked off down the dirt road at the fight with eyes of pain and slowly stood up. She had to do something. If she stopped the worms it would write the wrong and fix the problem entirely. That is, if step 2 was really the final step that the group was ready to take. A 2nd, blue elevator opened up at the opposite end of town with dragons inside of it, they were small young dragon creatures but frightening nonetheless.

"You go stop those dragons, I'll try to rally up these worms," The gatekeeper shouted to Geoffrey who was already running towards the blue elevator. Timothy came out of the hut and looked around only to see the fighting going on. He tossed on his hiking bag and took out a grappling hook/swiss army knife combo device. One of the worms burrowed underground and popped out in the hut behind Timothy and he had to shoot it with the grappling hook part of the device. Geoffrey tried to crush the elevator on the dragons, but once they noticed it was him doing it they rushed at him and tried to tackle him over. One of the dragons had blue scales and shot a stream of scalding hot water at the kid.

"Ow, Could somebody help me with these beasts!" Geoffrey shouted feeling the hot water hit one of the metallic implants on his body. With his monster transformation the metal parts ended up growing more sensitive than the human skin as they get used for the magnetic attraction. Timothy ran over to Geoffrey once he was done with the worm in his hut and used the knife part of his combo device, clipping some of the scales off of the blue dragon. Over the next few minutes town members came out of their houses to try and stop the beasts dropping from the elevators. Once Geoffrey had got the elevators out of the side grips they couldn't go back up and the people sending them down started making makeshift platforms for the elevator shaft to send the creatures down on. A stray dog wandered out of one of the clay huts only to rush back in seeing the dragons.

Plum amongst the chaos tried to use what her dad had taught her about gardening and make holes with the trowels around time. At first the town members helping in the fight thought she was crazy but eventually the worm creatures fell into holes. Plum's dad never got very far in teaching his daughter how to garden, he gave up while reading the magazine he bought about it, so honestly it was remarkable Plum even remembered step 1. That's when a scream shuddered throughout the town. The grey dragon whose skin looked as shiny as titanium yet as dense as diamond was carrying a girl by her hair and flying off in the center of town. For most people that would be impossible if not downright insane as a notion but with Marissa's hair it was magically imbued to be just solid enough.

The town slowly fought back the creatures and tossed the rest in Plum's holes that she had made throughout town. Even the dragons were unable to escape the holes as whenever they flapped their wings it would send dirt flying into their eyes and they eventually decided to just be content with the whole situation. As the town became to calm down, everyone tried to forget anything had ever happened. That was all except for Martin who wasn't sure what to do without Marissa.

"Geoffrey!"

"Oh my gosh is that you Martin? Long time no see!"

"It sure is, me and Marissa just got brought to town but you see..."

"What are the chances we both ended up here after having last period together, that is absolutely crazy! Marissa too,"

"What I was trying to say is that Marissa got captured," Martin told the words with anger but deep down all he was feeling was empty. A hole had began to gather in his insides, a hole of emotion and spirit, half of him almost wanted to laugh. What he wasn't expecting was how calm Geoffrey was with the whole situation.

"That's awful, but Marissa was always the toughest one in that class I feel like if we just send out a search team she'll find them before we find her," Martin thought the response sounded incredibly mature but it was truly just that Geoffrey never really knew Marissa more than the name and angst so he had her own inner idea of who she was. Martin gave Geoffrey a hug and a small whisper in his ear thanking him for the idea. The day closed on Forestville and everyone returned to their huts, well that is all except Marissa and somebody else who was captured but nobody seemed to notice. Well, that's because they weren't truly captured but I'm getting ahead of myself. Plum went back to reading in the dead of night just before bed.