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The last school day of the week had come to an end and all of the students were going to their respective places. Those that weren’t in any after school activities were either getting on their bus, bike, or proceeding to walk home. Meanwhile those in clubs and other activities were staying behind in the building for a couple more hours, some practically living in the school until 6 such as the drama kids. Something a certain friend group would very much like to do, but they could never find the time. Since most of it was spent dealing with demons and ghosts around the town. You know, completely normal activities. Today this group or part of it, was waiting outside the school building for the rest to arrive. Gabi was the one to always arrive first since her classroom was the closest to the exit they grouped up at. She was a girl with dark skin and wavy chocolate brown hair that went past her shoulders. She had a rough exterior but was actually very friendly and joking with her friends. Carlos was waiting with her, nearly always the second to arrive since his last teacher let his class off early. He was a boy with puffy sandy blonde hair that didn’t go much past his ears, which had earrings that his friends basically forced him to get some months ago. He acted quite differently with everyone, but was normally kind to everyone he met. They were doing their best talking to each other as they waited for their two other friends to arrive. They didn’t get along as well as they did with the rest of the group and without it, they most certainly wouldn’t even be friends at all. Before long a shorter girl with curly light blonde hair quickly came over to them. She was usually pretty quiet and only talked comfortably with those she knew well or had the same interests with. Her name was Allie, and her two friends were surprised to see her since she usually arrived last. Something must be keeping their last friend. They continued to wait and talk while Gabi and Allie stood close to each other. They had gotten together during the second half of school last year. The rest of the friend group and even those not in it had seen it coming for a while. So they weren’t too surprised when they announced that they’d gotten together, but they were still very happy for them. Suddenly, a girl ran up to Carlos and gave him a giant hug, almost making him fall over. The rest of the group instantly recognize this girl as their last member, Nikki. She was a girl with orange hair that was dyed black on both sides at the front. She was pretty much like this with everyone she met, except for the running up to someone and almost making them fall over with a hug. That was reserved only for her closest friends. Which ended up being mostly Carlos.
“And where were you?” Carlos asked as he recovered from Nikki’s hug.
“Yeah what happened?” Asked Gabi.
“Ms. Fleming held me back,” Nikki answered, Ms. Fleming being her chemistry teacher.Again?” said Gabi, surprised while also sounding slightly annoyed. “What was it for this time?”
“I ended up getting a bad grade on the test” Nikki said, downcast.
Gabi got a mix of sorrow and disappointment on her face from this news. “I thought you were good with it though. We went over it and you said you understood it.”
“I kinda did that so we could stop studying” Nikki said as a guilty smile appeared on her face.
“You are impossible” Gabi looked at Nikki with disappointment as she said this, Nikki knew she wasn’t really that serious about it though.
“How can you not understand chemistry from a person with chemistry as their favorite subject?” Carlos asked bewildered at how Nikki failed yet another chemistry test.
“Cause when she talks you can’t understand a word she says!” Nikki exclaimed.
“Cause you never listen!” Said Gabi as the group started their walk to Carlos’ house.
Almost every weekend they all meet up at someone’s house to watch a show or play a game. When someone finds a show or a game that they really like, the rest of the group will watch the show or play the game with them. Recently Allie had found a show that she has become obsessed with over the last few weeks, so it was only right to get the rest of the group involved and have them all become obsessed with the show as well. Allie tends to let the others do the talking, but when she finds something she likes, they can go on and on about it. Same goes for Nikki. This usually leads to Nikki and Allie talking for hours about what they like while Gabi and Carlos will chime in from time to time to give their opinions. The group kept talking about the show and all their favorite characters, hoping nothing bad would happen to them in this episode. Other students walked with them or by them as they continued to talk. School buses would drive by them every so often which made it hard for them to hear each other. Luckily as they got farther away from the school the buses stopped coming by as often.
“Hey, you guys wanna take the shortcut through the woods?” Nikki pointed towards a familiar spot of the woods to her and her friends.
Woods surrounded their entire town, and since the group had lived here since they were kids, they ended up finding some shortcuts to places through the woods. The rest of the group agreed in unison.
“Sure, anything to get out of this cold sooner” Gabi said.
“It’s not cold!” Nikki said in response to her friend's remark.
“Yes it is!” Gabi said.
Carlos and Allie silently agreed that they were going to let Nikki and Gabi get this out of their systems, since they had already had this argument hundreds of times before. With Nikki and Gabi starting to once again argue if fall is cold or not, they started off into the woods.
There wasn’t a visible trail that they followed. They just walked through the woods without directions as they had many times before. They continued to talk as they walked on the crunchy leaf covered floor of the forest. Nikki was kicking up leaves as she walked and Allie was looking around silently hoping to see some wildlife.
“Honestly, who do you guys think will be the next to go?” Nikki asked, still on the subject of their show.
"Jeremy. I just can’t see the guy living much longer. Besides, he’s been a weak link in the team since day one” Gabi said with a careless face.
“Nah” Carlos interjected. “If someone’s gonna go it’s gonna be Katline. I’m surprised she’s even lived this long.”
“Right” Nikki agreed with Carlos. “And Jeremy is becoming like a little brother to Charlie, they wouldn’t kill him off now.”
“That makes it the perfect time to kill him off!” Gabi said.
Meanwhile, Allie was watching the small river they were passing by. A river that the group knew well. The river runs through and out of town so they use it as a sort of landmark. It was about eight feet wide and got pretty deep at some parts, which made it quite a nice spot for fishing and sometimes swimming when the weather was hot. And as Allie was watching the river, she saw something that caught her eye. It was a lizard, about the size of a bearded dragon, at least that’s what it looked like at first. The more they looked at it, the less they recognized it. It looked less like a lizard and more like a cross between a fish and a lizard. After realizing what it looked like, Allie believed that what she was looking at was a demon. You see, demons aren’t all just red creatures with horns and yellow slitted eyes. A lot of them look nothing like that at all. Some like what Allie was seeing, are a cross between a species that you know here on Earth. While others are completely unrecognizable.
“Um, guys” Allie said, making sure to keep her eyes on the demon.
All of them answered back and looked at her.
“Look,” Allie said, pointing to the demon.
They all looked over to where she was pointing and understood what she was talking about.
“Well that one’s new” Nikki said, showing that she had never seen anything like this before either. “Hold on '' She took off her backpack and rummaged through it until she pulled out an old looking book. Its cover was made of leather, and its pages were all yellowed and brittle. And seemingly carved into it were several symbols all along the outside of the book. Before Nikki had found this book hidden on a shelf in the town library, all the group ever dealt with were different kinds of ghosts. Like banshees and vengeful spirits. But when Nikki showed it to them, they expanded their studies to creatures not from our world. The book held everything they knew about demons. They didn’t know who made the book, but they knew they weren’t the first ones to use it. There were notes and sections that were in a completely different handwriting and languages than the others. They had no idea who these people were, but they gave them the information they needed about demons, and they were grateful for that. With the information they were given, they were able to make portals so they could catch the demons they found and send them back to their home. They knew doing anything to keep these demons here would do more harm than good. And it wasn’t like it was the demons’ fault that they were here, at least they didn’t think so. Nevertheless, the demons didn’t belong here, so they sent them back to where they belonged so there would be no harm done to anyone. It’s what they agreed upon as a group when they first started hunting demons, and they had no intention of changing it.
“Do you know what it is?” Gabi asked as she along with the others kept watch on the creature.
“Hold on,” Nikki said, focusing on the book. She was still flipping through the old pages trying to find something about the demon they were looking at. It had been months since they first found the book, but they still hadn’t read all of it. There were some things they needed to figure out more before they went further into the book. Some of the things later in the book needed the knowledge from earlier things in order to understand them.
“Aha! Got it!” Nikki exclaimed quietly so she wouldn’t scare away whatever they were looking at. She had found a drawing of the exact thing they were looking at, and luckily it was by one of the people who were good drawers. Unluckily though, the writing was written by the German writer, who wrote entirely in German.
“Well? What is it?” Carlos asked looking back at Nikki.
“It’s by the German writer,” Nikki said.
“Well just say it’s name then” Gabi said, making sure to not take her sight of the creature.
Nikki looked at the big word above the picture which was most likely the creature’s name.
“Flossenechse?” Nikki knew she had completely butchered the pronunciation of what she’d just read. She was silently saying sorry to the German writer.
Gabi went over to Nikki to see what she was reading so he could try to understand what she had just heard. “Yeah, I’m not going to remember that.” Gabi said, the rest of the group including Nikki seemed to agree.
“Why don’t we call it a Flossen?” Carlos proposed.
“Oh! I like that” Allie said, the others agreed.
“Alright then, let’s catch a Flossen!” Gabi said encouragingly.
Nikki looked at the writing in the book again. Usually this is where she would read out what the demon is capable of and they would make a plan based on it. But German was probably one of the most confusing languages to ever exist, at least to Nikki.
“Alright, I’m gonna use google translate” Nikki said as she started to pull her phone out of her pocket.
“No don’t, it looks easy enough to catch. I could just sneak up and grab it” Gabi said.
“I think it’d be a good idea to at least know something about it. What if it’s poisonous?” Carlos said, trying to get a better look at the creature from where they were hiding.
“Look, it’s barely moved since we saw it,” Gabi gestured to the creature, which seemed to be looking around for bugs as it stayed still perched on a rock peeking above the river . “I’ll just sneak up and grab it so we can get going to Carlos’ house.”
With that she got up and proceeded to creep towards the strange lizard which was looking away from them at the moment. The others gave up on trying to stop her and instead got ready to move if she ended up needing their help. The crunch of the leaves on the forest floor weren’t helping Gabi but luckily the creature still hadn’t noticed her. She continued forward until she was close enough to grab it. Seeing her moment she lunged for the creature, making everything below her knees become drenched in river water. She was able to catch it, but the fact that it was half fish became abundantly clear as it easily slipped out of Gabi’s arms and into the river below.
“Sh!t!” Gabi cursed as the creature splashed into the river, making her even more wet, and quickly started to swim away. The rest of the group saw this and quickly ran over to her. She was looking very uncomfortable with all the cold river water that had just been splashed on her.
“C’mon, we gotta chase after it before it gets to deeper water!” Nikki said as she started to run after the creature. It was still very visible since it was a fair size and it was still in a shallow part of the river.
“Wait, how are we going to catch it!?” Carlos asked as the rest of the group started to follow Nikki.
“I don’t know, but we have to stop it from getting to deeper water!” Nikki exclaimed, still chasing after the creature.
Once the group caught up to the creature they tried to grab it from the water again, but that didn’t work and it ended up escaping them again. The next time they caught up with it they blocked its path in the river, but that just made the creature get out of the river and start running away on land.
“Mother f*cker!” Gabi cursed, she was really starting to get annoyed with this demon.
“C’mon, maybe we can corner it on land!” Nikki said as she quickly got out of the river. “You don’t think it can climb right?”
“I hope not.” Carlos said, shaking off the water from his shoes. They were all soaked below the knees now.
“God, I am going to kill this thing!” Gabi said, obviously very frustrated at how wet she had gotten because of this.
“Wait guys, I have an idea! I’ll be right back!” Allie said quickly before she ran off back in the direction they came.
The group watched her run off, curious about what she was thinking of doing.
“Guys c’mon! We’ll focus on trapping it until she comes back!” Nikki said waving for them to follow her as she was getting fairly far away now.
With that they continued to run after the creature, each of them would try their best to catch it but they would either miss it or it would slip out of their hands. The creature was quick in the water, and also quick on land. But it did seem like it was becoming slower as they continued to chase it. They ended up cornering it against a tree and quickly surrounded it. Before anyone could make a move though, the creature quickly ran between them and off into the forest. But before it could get too far, Allie ran up to it and leaped onto it with her backpack open wide. They were able to catch it in their backpack and quickly zip it up before holding it tight as the creature tried to escape. The others ran over to her and congratulated her over what she had just done.
“Good job Allie!” Nikki said.
“Nice job!” said Carlos.
“Great job! Getting it in our backpacks. Why didn’t I think of that? My brain really isn’t working right today” Gabi said as she knelt down beside Allie.
“I didn’t think I was gonna be able to do that!” Allie said, excited but still nervous as she clutched her backpack tightly while the creature still tried to escape from inside it. They started to hear ripping as the creature tried clawing its way out of the backpack.
“We should probably get going with the ritual,” Carlos said, obviously worried.
“I’ll get started with that” Nikki said as she got up and started to flip through the pages of the book again.
“I’m gonna need a new backpack” Allie said, looking worriedly at her now soon to be ruined backpack.
Rituals aren’t usually that complicated. All you need is the right martials and the right symbols. Which is pretty easy since all the instructions are in the book. Sometimes you have to translate it since the directions are in a different language, but other than that it’s pretty straightforward. The real trouble comes with learning how to say the chants, if you can’t say them correctly you can’t complete the ritual. Luckily the entire group has learned how to say most of the chants in the book. This time around Nikki and Carlos sat up the ritual while Gabi stayed close to Allie to make sure she had a hold of the demon. It was still trying to escape but it had calmed down now. Nikki and Carlos drew the symbols into the forest floor that they had learned corresponded with the demon they’re doing the ritual for. Most of the symbols represent the usual elements, earth, water, air, and fire. Though there are some that represent other types of elements or states of being. They then got the correct marterials, many you could easily find in nature, and placed them in the correct spots. They then got ready to let the demon loose onto the symbol. If done correctly, every demon that is placed on their symbol will get stuck to the symbol for a couple of minutes. This could help you get away from it or kill it but the group uses this to say the chant and send it back to its world. The group surrounded the symbol and got ready to catch the demon again if it somehow escaped without touching its symbol.
“Alright let it go” Nikki said to Allie.
Allie unzipped their backpack and the creature instantly ran out and right onto the symbol which seemed to glue it down right on top of it. It couldn’t move its legs but it could still move the rest of its body, so the group made sure to get a safe distance away from it. Once there was a close distance between them and it, Nikki opened the book and both her and Carlos joined hands and began to chant. After they were about two lines into the chant, their eyes began to glow a light blue, which showed they were locked into it. This always happens whenever you start a chant, it still takes some effort to say the words correctly, but other than that you don’t have to think much when in this state. It wouldn’t be a good idea to disrupt someone when they’re in this state since it would mess up the ritual which would release the demon in the process.
After saying the same chant for a bit, the demon became see-through, and the next second it was gone. Nikki and Carlos blinked and their eyes became normal again, they had completed the ritual.
“Thank god that’s over,” Gabi said. “Can we go to Carlos’ house now? I’m cold.”
“Oh my god it’s not cold!” Nikki said as Carlos gave a non-amused look, realizing what they were doing again.
While Gabi and Nikki began to argue again, Allie looked into her backpack, it was about what she had expected. The inside was very torn up and the creature had ripped right through it into another section. “Yep, definitely gonna need a new backpack” she said.
Gabi stopped arguing with Nikki for a second at this remark and looked into Allie’s backpack. “Oh yeah you definitely are,” she said, wearing a worried expression.
Nikki proceeded to go over to them along with Carlos. “Don’t worry!” Nikki said, “I’m sure your mom will get you another one!”
“Yeah but what will I tell her?” Allie said, continuing to look at the damage done to her backpack.
They all thought for a second at this remark.
“I’m sure we can think of something” Carlos said, “Now let’s clean this up and get our stuff. Gabi’s right, it is cold out here” he smirked.
“You too!?” Nikki exclaimed, frustrated.
“Wait” Allie said, having just realized something, “Where am I gonna put my stuff?”