Young Writers Society

As I stated in the previous part, if your confused at what's happening at the begining, its because this piece wasn't meant to be split into four parts. Try going to the end of "Part II" to get an idea of what's happening.




Through the mask, filtered a new smell. Without thinking, he removed his mask, so to smell the strong scent better.

He was hit with a savoury wave of waxy-smell. It was overwhelmingly strong, vaguely familiar, and sweet. It had a warm, homey mien—a pleasant aura—and reminded him of honey and of home and of warm days as a child. It smelled like fresh cinnamon buns waiting to be eaten by eager children, but there was a small scent of flowers integrated into it. The intoxicating, comforting smell had his attention, surely.

He closed his eyes, as he breathed in the smell through his nose. The sweet scent filled him full of calm, full of peace. He felt his worries melt, like ice on a hot summer day.

He opened his eyes, he didn't know where the smell was coming from, but nothing could compare to sublimity of this smell. No one thing could be its true match, surely.

His eyes lingered over the tree and he remembered something. The tree was important. A vague memory nagged at him. What was it he had to do again? He had forgotten.

But the smell. He hadn't forgotten the smell.

What was on the ground? A silver cylinder. Was it his? He picked it up. He looked to the tree again. Back to the cylinder.

The smell. If only he could tell the direction of the smell. Dogs could sense the direction of smells. Humans couldn't. Why couldn't he? He wanted to find that smell.

The bats were acting strange, he thought. Looking up to them, he saw them shake their heads, then they both let out howls—it seemed something had caught their attention. The smell maybe? One of the two bats started covering what seemed to be its ears, while the other took to the air. He watched as the one-horned bat circle a couple times around the tree and finally swooped down close to the ground, as if looking for something.

It scanned on the far side of the tree, then, without warning, a tentacle—black as night itself—shot out of the ground and snatched the bat from the air. The tentacle whipped back into the ground with its prize.

The smell disappeared. While he felt sadness, he thought that it was probably for the best when he thought to what happened to the bat.

The howls of the second bat didn't stop when it finally let go of its ears. The space man thought he saw tears from the bat.

And that was life. A cycle. That was nature.

He approached the tree, sure of what he had to do next. He decided it best to leave his helmet on the ground, it would only get in the way.

Cylinder in hand, he dropped his pack to get out the proper gear. He got out a pair of climbing daggers—two small handles that strapped over his hand and that could extend strong, thin, and half-foot long daggers. They could support close to ten times his weight under his home planet's gravity. He had his jump pack on, so if he fell, he could slow his fall. Although his jump pack wasn't powerful enough to lift him from the ground, it would be enough.

He approached the tree, ready to make the journey to its top.


To his misfortune, he didn't notice the special radiation coming from the tree. Or the poison eating at his suit.


Taking his first thrusts at the tree, he began climbing. He had activated the friction option on the bottoms of his boots to help him climb.

In a continuous, seemingly endless repetition of climbing. He'd bring his hand up above his head and pierce into the tree with his thin climbing dagger. Countless times, he would reach up with an arm, then stab, then pull up a leg, and then lift. The process of scaling the tree flowed like a dance of molten, repetitive exertion. Time passed by in monotonous currents.

Halfway to the top, some forty feet from the ground, the last rhino-bat, perched on his branch, looked straight at him with a grin as wide as its face.

The space tried his hardest not to fall from the tree and quickly continued on.

With his breathing heavy and his whole body intensely sore, he dragged himself up onto a sturdy branch, not ten feet from the peak of the tree, right before it curved. As he stood on the branch, he tried not to think about how grotesquely high above the ground he was. Only thinking above it made his knees shake furiously.

He was so close to the top. Almost there. He held no illusion of the difficultly that the climb would be. And was. He was exhausted, but so relieved that the hard part was over. All that was left to do now was to climb the last ten feet and be on his way.

He started climbing again. The gruelling difficulty of the climb had toned down, he wasn't in a hurry either. He was now hanging from the top of the tree, about one-hundred feet in the air. The top of the tree was more narrow then the rest, and continued to narrow to a point at the very end of the arch. He should have been confident that he wasn't in danger, for his jet-charged pack would keep him from being injured in case of falling. That didn't stop the agonizing fear—didn't convince his gut.

He could feel every little sway in the tree, surprisingly though, the tree wasn't swaying all that much. The thin tree was so tall and so thin, so it would make sense if it was wobbling more. His feet hung below him and the strong gravity of the planet made it much harder the keep himself on the tree. And his arms were tired. And his hands were shaking. And his body was shaking.

The gut-wrenching, nauseating feeling ate away at his energy.

He felt his weak, tired grip threatening to let go of the thin branch above him. If he fell, then it would all be for nought. He would have to start up the tree again. He was careful not to make a mistake that would cost him his progress.

Why was he so afraid though? He told himself to suck it up. It was just heights, he could deal with heights.

His shaking hands disagreed.

He tried to remove his left hand from the tree, but his right hand shook too much—it wouldn't be able to support him. With as much resolve as he could muster, he clamped his right hand tight around the tree, stopping the shaking.

He took a deep breath, then let go with his left hand.

He was quick, and squirmed very little to keep his body from swaying. He reached to his belt, where he kept the cylinder. Feeling its round, tubular shape, he took a hold of it and pulled it upwards.

Pushing it to the peak of the tree's arch, he uncovered and flicked a switch under its silver skin.

His work done, he didn't even think. He knew thinking would get in the way here

“For America!” He let go of the tree and plummeted toward the ground.

As he fell and tried his best to keep himself from the cold hands of panic, he watched as the steel container underwent a transformation. The tube extended upwards, unfolding itself to stand seven feet tall on the tree's highest point for all to see from the ground. If the device worked right, it should have attached itself to the tree, to keep itself from falling off. A flag shot out of the side of the pole, near the top of it. The flag slowly rippled in the wind, waving its message far across the land. He had succeed in claiming the land in the name of his people.

As he was free-falling, the red and blue and white of the flag shone in his eyes along with his bright nationalism.

He turned on his jets to slow his decent. They roared to life and he started his safe journey to the ground.