SnowdropSugar

“No!” Snowy yelled as she rushed out of the Script Theatron. The once-pristine marble walls had crumbled with the force of Pirate Gurtle’s — no, the Balrog’s — giant mangos, shot at a high speed from a mango-shooting cannon. She looked around the smoking theater in dismay, watching her many dreams of a beautiful play turn to ashes and dust right before her eyes.

Gurtle…How could all this damage, all this destruction be from him? He was just a turtle, wasn’t he? Just the kind SWC mascot. Right?

But Gurtle had turned on them, and as he did, he took away every last possibility of having a normal session of Scratch Writing Camp.

Snowy rushed back along the path to the main cabin, turning to see her sibling cabin, Dystopian Ruins, ironically, even more ruined than they were before. Every last bit of the place had been obliterated, and the few remaining pieces were aflame. So much destruction. So much despair. Everywhere that Snowy looked, she saw SWCers shouting, wondering what had happened to their friendly Gurtle.

All Snowy had ever hoped for this session was to have a good first March session, but this was turning out to be so much worse than even the nightmares she had about forgetting all her lines in front of everyone.

Even the path back to the main cabin was cracked in many places, as if Gurtle had wanted to make as much mischief as he possibly could. But this wasn’t mischief, or at least it didn’t look like it. This was revenge.

Snowy saw exactly what she had feared as she approached the Main Cabin. All the piles of words and motivation mangoes had been destroyed. The Warrior Wharf and the docks near it lay in pieces, just driftwood floating in the ocean, carried by the waves this whole time. She couldn’t believe it. How could it have turned out so horribly?

There was no hint of the place that it used to be. The Main Cabin no longer looked like the natural haven that it used to be. The scoreboards, where Script used to be in fourth, third, where they had fought to find their way up to first place, hang down limply, almost like a rag doll, or even just flimsy fabric. Wires strung from it buzzed and crackled with a slight bit of leftover electricity before the currents from it finally disappeared and the whole thing became useless. All the standings became meaningless, because now, they weren’t trying to win SWC. They were just trying to find a way to stop Gurtle and outlast his many attacks.

“What do we do?” Snowy heard one SWC leader whisper in a hushed voice to another. “He’s taken all our mangoes, all our words, and now we don’t even have a place to hide anymore. How are we supposed to keep going from here?”

There were murmurs of assent, all agreeing with the comment, but none of them actually offering any solutions. Snowy herself felt like she was at a loss for words. How could she say anything or write anything after Gurtle’s betrayal?

She remembered fondly all those times they had had together, all a part of SWC. She reminisced about those random musings about what a hungry turtle he must have been to eat so many links from the dailies, the times that she thought were all in good fun and nothing else. Maybe that whole time, the entire reason that Gurtle was eating them wasn’t because he was hungry, but rather because he wanted to make SWC miserable. It would make sense, at least, based on what she knew now. It was the only explanation. He had never betrayed them. He’d just always been out on a quest for vengeance. But for what? She didn’t know the answer.

Snowy thought long and hard about their ongoing battle with Gurtle. Right now, they shouldn’t be looking to just save themselves. They should be looking to eliminate the threat.

The realization came to her with a pang, as Snowy didn’t want to be so cruel as to hurt Gurtle in return, but as he turned the Main Cabin into more and more of a fiery wasteland, she knew that something had to be done.

But what weapons did they have? How could they defend themselves against them? Like that leader had said, Gurtle had already taken all of their mangoes, and any last hopes they might have had in their own cabins had been annihilated without any hope of being rebuilt.

Just then it hit her. The fanfiction, the one she had been working on with all those other SWCers a while ago.

“GUYS!” Snowy shouted, enthusiastic for the first time after learning of Gurtle’s betrayal of SWC. “WHAT ABOUT THE FRYING PANS?”

Word count: 800 words
Total words written: 2,902/15,000 words