Sashi Kirana - Short Story Writing - Preliminary Round NEO 2020

Forest Fight

I watched as my two friends, Robin and Lilian, sparred with each other while Rafael dug through the cooler full of drinks to fetch my sweaty self a bottle of soda. "Hey, Kyler! Catch!" he said, tossing the frosty bottle right at me. It was a Wednesday afternoon just like any other, at least for us. At that time of day, you would think that 11th graders would be doing homework, playing games, or stopping by a friend's house; however, we like spending our Wednesday afternoons sparring with each other in an acorn forest.

Robin, Lilian, Rafael, and I met 8 years ago when we were just 4th graders in a somewhat unlikely setting: a small rundown Taekwondo building. As we grew, our friendship and strength grew as well, and now we hang out at this acorn forest 3 times a week just to spar with each other.

We had just about wrapped up sparring session one when Lilian mentioned a news article about a creepy man who people named the 'Forest Dweller' (which the others and I thought was quite the fancy name for a forest creep) spotted at a forest and proceeded to hand us her phone, which we passed around. "Do you think that by chance, this creep is in this forest?" Lilian asked us with a worried expression. "Grow up! There are numerous forests in this area, and even if he was here, we would be prepared. What do you think we've been doing these past 8 years?" Rafael replied. Frankly speaking, his words were quite convincing and reassured us just a bit; therefore, we stopped the conversation about this 'Forest Dweller'.

Training session two began with quite the elbow strike from Robin. She was certainly one fierce fighter, but I happen to have my own strategies that will surely end this battle in just 2-3 minutes. It was only a matter of time for me to successfully corner her against a tree, leaving her with nowhere to run, hide, or time to plot an attack. I shifted my gaze at her utility belt and I was bewildered to see her right-hand hovering just over her jump rope as if she was about to slide it out of her belt. 'I should've anticipated this.' I thought to myself as all I could do was prepare myself for an absolutely dreadful whack on the face. However, before she could even get them close enough to me, we were promptly swept off the ground and squashed together in some netting hanging over a sturdy tree branch, our shrill screams filled with both surprise and fear echoing through the woods.

"Both of you are lucky I brought my swiss army knife today." Rafael said, proceeding to cut out the bottom of the netting with one swift motion. "I wonder what this net trap is for. Maybe some sort of old hunting trap that some hunter forgot to put away?" Lilian asked us. "That's quite a spot-on assumption you got there. However, instead of hunting for various animals like a real hunter would do, I find that human-beings like you four are my preferred prey." a gruff voice coming from just right behind us stated. 'Who was that?' I asked myself. It couldn't have been Lilian or Robin because that voice sounded too deep to belong to a girl, and I know for a fact that Rafael's voice isn't that gruff. We, as a group, turned our heads around and were filled with both shock and terror at the sight of a fairly old man dressed in a dark olive-green turtleneck with a light olive-green vest layered on top. In his right hand was a machete, which he then held with both hands and swung at us.

"Run!" I shouted at the rest while dashing off into the forest like there was no tomorrow. Gasping for air, we sat behind a bush in order to hide from the 'Forest Dweller' and huddled up to form a plan. "What should we do? Do we just confront him, set up an elaborate plan to trap him, or run and hide?" Lilian whispered, her voice full of worry and fear. "I don't know." I reply, sounding just as worried as her. "Oh, come on guys let's just fight him upfront." Rafael somewhat aggressively suggested. "What?! Alright, I know that you like getting things straight to the point and what not, but we're up against a creep armed with a machete here!" Robin reprimanded. "Don't sweat it. I'm going to be fine." Rafael replied.

We witnessed as the battle between him and the 'Forest Dweller' ended in just a matter of seconds, as the creep was able to dodge all of Rafael's attacks and take him down with a simple kick in the gut. I was baffled that Rafael was easily defeated by this creep considering that he's physically the strongest out of us all. We realized that all we could do was to run like our lives depended on it. We stopped running once we reached a cliff with a river just below it. "Jump off the cliff! The water below will break the impact of the fall!" I shouted.

Jumping off a cliff and possibly drowning in water was a surreal experience that I personally don't want to experience ever again. Fortunately for us we were good swimmers, so we were able to swim safely back to dry land where we continued our sprint through the forest, but alas we fell into another one of this psycho's traps: a mat with leaf patterns similar to that of the forest floor that once stepped on would lead victims to fall into a deep underground pit, our screams bouncing off of the walls of the pit. "Time to meet your demise!" the 'Forest Dweller' said, menacingly. "What do you want from us, you psychopath?!" Lilian shouted. Lilian's not much of a person who likes to raise their voice, so hearing her shout like this was a good indicator that she was furious.

"Oh, is that the question? Well, I think it's about time to tell you about my true motives. You see, I've been living in these woods for 25 years now. Why would I live in a forest, you might ask? When I was just 12 years old, city folk decided to burn down the little house I lived in, which happened to be built in this forest. I lost 3 things that day: my mother, father, and home, all because of some selfish city folk. Ever since then I've sworn vengeance to city folks." the 'Forest Dweller' said. "I've noticed over these past 8 years that you kids come to this forest quite often, and of course I was thinking of ways to capture you all, but I decided to wait a little longer to finally execute these plans." he went on. "Now that everything is going according to plan, it's time to end this once and for- AHH!" The 'Forest Dweller' abruptly shrieked as Rafael simultaneously took him down with an elbow-strike on the neck and a triple-knee strike in the gut (as a form of retaliation).

The 'Forest Dweller' made a quick recovery and was at a steady stance, prepared to go on hand-to-hand combat or channel his fighting spirit in his machete; yet, Robin was able to get to him much quicker, taking him down with a reverse side kick, followed by me and Lilian swinging our pocket knives around, which the creep successfully dodged. "You shouldn't have been giving us a lecture back there. That little backstory of yours gave us ample time to plan out this attack, as a group this time!" I remarked mid-battle. Before the man could say anything else, we took him out with an axe kick on the head, leaving him unconscious.

The four of us climbed up the rocky, earthy walls of the pit, dragging the unconscious man with us. Robin tied him up against a tree to keep him from escaping our grass and proceeded to call the police. "Remind me why we didn't call the police before this was all over?" Robin asked. "It's so that the police will be able to track us down easily. If we keep moving from place to place, they won't know our exact location." Lilian replied. The police came shortly after and arrested him for numerous murders in this forest.

Ever since then we decided to use these powers of ours to protect this forest, we've grown so fond of. At first, we never actually knew what we would use these powers of ours for; we just thought it'd be good to use when we were in danger, but now we've found a purpose for it: to defend this forest.