(This is the first chapter that I ever wrote for Beats For a Family. I'm leaving it up as a momentum to how far I've come in my writing and my characters and in the weaving of this story.

Original date published: June 15th 2020)
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    Wasn’t life wonderful? I thought so at least, and anyone who thinks otherwise can fight me! That totally cool fight is besides the point, for today is just for me and Vector, or should I say Kin. 

“Hey Kin! Are we heading to the usual tree?”

One thing about Kin is he hates my ‘stupid’ nicknames, so when he replied as sour as he did, I can say I utterly called it. “It’s not Kin! How many times do I have to tell you to stick to Vector!”

I continue to tease him “Well I could call you Geno instead. Fun fact about the greek prefix ‘Geno’! It means family or race, so geno and kin are equal and, ‘Genocide’ mean to kill an entire race!” I can’t believe I managed to say that with a straight ‘:D’ face.

“W-what!? Zora! What the hell!” He says while shoving me off the sidewalk. I guess I deserved that…

“Well first of all, you need to call me ‘Beats’ as you promised. Second of all, that is a perfectly reasonable fun fact to know, so mleh.” I say, sticking my tongue out at the end.

“No. I sai- tch fine, I’ll call you by your stupid nickname.” Kin starts but quickly resolves as he sees my puppy eyes.

“Great! Now I’ll ca-” I began but was quickly interrupted by a rude suggestion “How ‘bout we just get the food so you can listen to your insufferable music” 

“Oh so you can use big words, personally I thought your head was denser than osmium”

“Ok, I can tell that was an insult but I won’t be offended because I don’t know what that, uh, liquid is!”

“You dummy, it's a metal! My expectations weren’t high yet you still lowballed!”

“Whatever, just get in line before people start staring, and do not talk to me.”

“Ok, but I’ll meet you at the tall birch, right?” I say while my voice fills with doubt.

“Hey, Beats. Don’t be like that, of course I‘ll meet you in the forbidden forest. This is just for our parents, remember?” Kin amends, seeing the sun fade out of me.

“Yeah, I remember, I’ll see you at half past.” 

With that, I walked up to the line and waited, G in hand, for my curry. I walk around the park with my food to kill time, not completely relaxed though. I notice a strange hooded figure wearing a bird mask. The red eyes peer at me and bore into my back as I quickly turn on my heels and leave. The path to the forbidden forest is a familiar one to me, although I have to watch my step and cover my tracks, just so no one follows me and Kin. As I’m walking down the secret path, I don’t have to think about where the signs Kin left are, maybe that’s why I didn’t notice the masked stranger until they dropped down from the tree in front of me and asked, 

“Can you see me now?”

When I jumped and ran, they shouted “Hey, wait! I need your help!” 

When they caught up to me, I used my secret distraction of knocking their mask off their face, and found a young girl’s face staring back in horror. 

“N-no! I c-can’t! W-wait!” She cried out and began sobbing.

That’s what stopped me and after a moment's hesitation, I gave her the mask back.

“Wa- I-…T-thank you. Please I need your help, I’ll do anything, just help me please.” She pleaded.

“I don’t know what you want, but I can’t help. Please let me go without following me.” I tried to tell her off.

“No! You don’t understand! I nee-” The girl had started but was cut off by Kin’s claws closing around her throat.

“You have thirty seconds to explain why you followed Beats into the forest, starting now.” He said menacingly. “Thirty, twenty-nine…” He started counting down, tightening his grip on her

“I-I just n-need your g-guys’ h-help. M-my name i-is Rook, and p-please d-don’t kill m-me.” Rook gushed before Kin reached twenty. 

Kin was so focused on Rook that I managed to fasten my headphones on and sneak up behind him. I poked him and whispered “Wait, we should hear her out, but somewhere private.” He paused, slowly nodded, and let Rook go. She backed away by a few feet and started to talk but was promptly silenced when Kin grabbed her and me and jumped into the tree leaves. He dropped me off in the tree cover while continuing to jump to a secluded area. I followed his frequency and jumped from branch to branch in the hazy green light.

After a couple minutes of hopping between branches, I heard Kin drop down and followed  “Ah the bee field, I figured you’d pick here.” I commented once I caught up with Kin.

“Not right now Beats…” Kin warned “Anyway now that we are alone, Beats and I can decide whether or not to help you.”

“That’s the plan!” I say, giving her my positive nod of approval. After a second of silence I gesture towards her to start talking.

Rook starts with a whisper but slowly gained volume as she got more confident, "T-the thing i-is I have been experimented on and it's gotten so bad that I can't take it anymore… So I escaped and I tried to survive until I could find an excuse to sneak through the shield and make a home in the Brittle Bramble. I didn't make it very far and was captured again. However, before I was sealed away again I heard a rumour that two powerful families had sons that would often visit each other and planned to escape so I could ask for your help. After that it was simple to ask around until I found you at the market and followed you here." After she finished her story all we could do was think,

I spoke up first with a question "Wait you were going to go live in the Brittle Bramble?!?"

"Yes, I don't know where else I was supposed to go that's outside of their control…", Rook stoically replied.

Then, surprisingly, Kin spoke up, "What do you mean by experimented?".

"I-I," Rook started shakily then sighed and continued "just, let me show you." She took off the mask and proceeded to glow a sickly gold. When the glow finally faded away, the result was downright terrifying. Rook had two sets of wings, one angelic and one demonic in nature, a scaly face with gills on her neck, crooked horns, melted ears that looked burned and inflamed, and lastly a tail that looked like someone had broken in several spots and healed it incorrectly.

Nobody spoke for a long time, and Rook slowly started to fade back to normal with the same repulsive glow. 

"I-I'm so s-", Kin started but I quickly jolted and caught everyone's attention before Kin rushed over saying, "Whose there Kin?" 

I quickly respond with, "No one good." And I take to the trees carrying Rook.

A/N

Hello and welcome to the world of Wilds! I'm back and writing because my brother told me I could write from my phone if I downloaded docs and tbh I feel so much better even though I'm not used to this yet, but it's so much easier to hide from my mom (she doesn't want me to write stories for whatever reason, idk). Special thanks to @carelesscreativity, you may not know this but their story Ghost Stories is really good and I highly recommend it for anyone in the UT fandom. An example showing how good it is, I didn't like Crossmare or Dustberry, hell even Kream (I prefer Cream myself), but when I read your story I absolutely loved the bois and I'm dying to see what's next. It's so good it motivated me to write the other half of this chapter, so thank you! Ok enough gushing. I am certainly not going to let this inspiration go to waste, I might even manage another chapter today!

Love you guys

-Flaff

(Ps the A/N in the description is talking about how motivated I am, I'm not any more.)