The Talented Glade

A/N:) It's been years since I wrote this, and boy, have I changed. I'm updating this to add new notes. Younger me dedicated this to thegirlofthestars "for the encouragement", and I'm keeping it that way. Whoever you are, I hope you're doing great in life! If fellow fans had been negative instead of so kind to me back when I wrote this, I don't think I'd have grown, changed, and improved the way I have over the years by sticking with writing. Love you all!

I woke up in the box to darkness roughly two years ago. More than anything, I had been shocked by my surroundings. It was a grid work metal room filled with crates of all sizes, as I later discovered, of basic survival supplies. The kind of things you would need to build a house or lean-to. That's weird, I remember thinking, I don't remember….my house. About half an hour after I woke up the grinding of the box moving stopped and I was flung forward with a jerk. There was a loud squeal of metal against metal then a resounding BOOM! Two opaque doors slid out of the way but another pair of doors, mesh just like the room, still lay on top and the ceiling was just a little more than twice my height. I felt energy, adrenaline, fill me like I could just leap up easily and touch the ceiling but I also, at the same time, didn't want to cut my hand by accident on the edges of the metal.

Then a brilliant idea (well maybe not that brilliant) came to my mind and I began to stack the smaller crates on top of each other. That was the time I used my energy to leap up to the top of the third crate and shoved the doors with all my might. They swung open and hit the ground with a loud BANG! Didn't know that I was so strong…. I had thought then leapt up and out of the box roughly, almost tripping as I landed. It took a moment for my eyes to fully adjust to all of the light, and when they did I looked in complete shock at the world around me.

I was in what seemed to be a vast courtyard with a young, but fruitful, grove of trees in one corner and a squat, metal building near the Box. But the most stunning of all… were the walls…. They surrounded all four sides of the large glade, extending too high for me to see them anymore. In the center of each wall was a crack that seemed to go all the way to the top. I remembered seeing skyscrapers but not when, where, or with who. My odd memory loss had been, and still is, extremely vexing and frustrating.

Immediately I had gotten to work, hauling all the crates out of the large box, in the exact center of the field. Then I opened them, all 15, and examined their contents, sorting them into small piles as I went from crate to crate. The first crate I opened had bows, arrows, throwing knives, three long spears, and a couple of daggers. Another two had revealed metal dishes, silverware, fry pans, and portable toaster ovens as well as many other portable pieces of technology. The next five crates were rather small and contained brown packages that felt like they were filled with seeds. Next, I found varied sizes of ropes and cables made of different materials along with a few building and designing supplies. The tenth crate was relatively small, but bigger than the seed-crates, and contained T-shirts, shorts, socks, shoes and a long, thin, blue jacket flecked with black as well as black lining. More crates had revealed cooked food wrapped in tin-foil and ready for me to eat, a couple of flash lights, and 10 small wrist-watches.

What I just came out of will be called…. The Pit and I'll call this place… the Field. I remember thinking as they were understandable and simple names. All the things in the Field were familiar but I couldn't place from where. No names would come up to match images of faces or specific places. I remembered a kitchen, and what was in it: a counter, stools, a fridge, cupboards and a small pantry/closet. But not what building it might have been a part of, Home? I had thought and something stirred in the back of my mind but my murky memory once more cut me off from having an actual whole and solid picture. No matter how hard I tried, nothing would come back except for the memory of how cold and dark it had been in the box, even when the doors opened and sunlight had filtered in.

Yet strangely, I knew that it was cold in the box but at the same time, hadn't really noticed it at all. Weird I had thought and even more odd was my impressive demonstrations of strength and agility (despite coming close to falling on my face upon emerging from the box). The world seemed to get darker and I realized that, lost in my thoughts and in a daze, I had walked over to the grove of trees.

"I think this is going to be my favorite spot." I had said to nothing but the empty air and trees and surprised myself with the scratchy and hoarse sound of my voice. I had frowned slightly, it sounded like I had been screaming and shouting for hours, but that was the first thing I could remember saying. I looked down at the leaves by the base of the tree I was leaning on, upon kicking them mindlessly, I noticed white socks and glimmering silver shoes. Strange...it's like they're made of metal...a strange one at that.

My skin was slightly tan and I wore light brown shorts with a deep green T-shirt. I had guessed that I was a bit over five feet tall, and later found out with the help of measuring tape from the box of building supplies, that I was about 5'2". I hadn't known my own age, and still don't, but I was probably about 15 when I had first arrived and 17 now. A few moment later, I began to panic, fretting pointlessly over the fact that I couldn't remember what I looked like, or my own name. Thinking back on it, I should have had that reaction long before, beacuse...oh I don't know...MAYBE THE FACT THAT I DIDN'T KNOW WHO OR WHERE I WAS?! Needless to say, I was feeling a flood of emotions, mainly fear, anger, frustration, sadness, and...loneliness? Two days later I had felt great triumph upon finally managing to remember my name. Alex.

Over the course of the next week I discovered that the cracks in the walls really were doors, and that they closed at night and re-opened in the morning. Beyond the walls was a maze. A maze. A maze that seemed to stretch on and on forever. In the maze was a cliff that ended in all directions, in darkness, seeming to be as endless as the maze itself and the cliff was the closest thing to an exit to be found so far. Falling down forever or falling then becoming a splotch on the definite floor of the cliff both didn't sound like nice choices. Terrifying shrieks and cries echoed around the Field at night, originating from the maze, and I never dared to stay out there at night.

After about a week I was already settled down pretty well when the box came back up again containing more cooked food and long planks of wood as well as a utility belt filled with tools, a tool box filled with screw drivers, hammers, and nails, and a smaller box that had a long silver sword with a neatly curved blade. WICKED was written in blocky letters across the hilt, something I had pondered over for several minutes before deducing that there was nothing decipherable about it (and we still haven't cracked that code yet). That week I finished planting all of the seeds that were in the crates and had even put up wooden markers so I knew where the vegetable fields began and ended. Also that week, I erected a small lean-to against a part of the East wall that didn't move and carried or dragged most of the supplies over to it.

The next week came more hammers, batteries, more nails, wooden planks, and food as well as large canisters of water and more moisture-absorbing machines. However, there were 16 trunks stacked in one corner and 8 of them were filled with pens, pencils, and paper. Some of those trunks we use for storing regular items around the Field, and eight of them are used to hold maps, one sector per trunk and one map per day of that sector. After I had gotten the papers, I had immediately started to map the maze, but could only fit in two or three of the sectors each day. The month passed quickly, with me learning more about the Field and the Maze every day, getting a hold on self-sustaining with my limited supplies, and all the while slowly becoming even more lonely in the tranquil glade.

One day, the box came up with something more than the usual supply… A boy. He looked to be about 15 and had blue eyes and dirty-blond hair with a thin braid tucked behind his right ear. He was about my exact height and surprisingly went very quickly from confused to cocky after clearing the box in one graceful leap as soon as I opened one of the doors. He immediately rounded on me,

"Who are you? Where am I?" he demanded and for some reason, despite the situation and his tone, I smiled, glad to have somebody in the glade with me. I'm not alone anymore. My grin quickly faded though when I realized that I didn't quite know how to answer his second question. We were presented with the same problem every month, how do you tell a kid that they're in such a terrible place? How do I explain all of this to them?

"Well...I'm Alex, and a month ago I was in a similar situation to you. Except, I didn't have anyone to help me. I'm glad to have someone else here with me, it's been awfully lonely here. Not that I'd want to subject anyone to this fate." I replied softly, trying to make him understand that I wasn't the enemy. I succeeded, because his gaze softened a bit as he took in his surroundings.

"How much do you know about this place?" he had asked and we went on like that for a while- him asking most of the questions and me trying to answer as many as I could.

After him came Jake, a boy with light skin, brown hair and eyes and looked to be about 12 or 13. He eventually became our first, and the head, of the Builders. He wasn't that talented at building but he was the best out of all of them and was a good decision-maker so he had to be the keeper of something. After him came Cassie, a sweet, gentle girl who looked to be the same age as him. She was shorter than all of us, even today she remains so, with chocolate eyes, dark brown skin, and black hair. She loved animals and probably had dealt with them in her past life, one that none of us could remember. She somehow managed to figure out the medical supplies and medicine so she became, eventually, the head of the Doctors. More kids, or rather teens, kept coming and each had their own skills, and most of the time, impressive abilities or access to power.

My powers are another thing we haven't managed to figure out quite yet. I share a bit of the power of the new arrivals, but more people with the same power doesn't make it stronger. Since I was the first to arrive, and the one with the most extensive (not quite most powerful) abilities. And teens, that was one of the many mysteries of the Field. The youngest of the gladers now are probably 13 or 14, the oldest being 19 or 20, that would be Jack since he arrived looking to be about 18 but he hasn't changed a bit. Either me, Anakin, or one of the few older ones, were next in line, being only about 17. Jack can fly, control ice, snow, and all kinds of wintry elements and so now I had his awesome powers as well (albeit much weaker abilities). He has silver-white hair and light, baby-blue eyes, he's strong, not only with his powers, and has extremely pale skin.

Now nick-named "Animorphs", courtesy of a Fielder (that's what Anikan had branded us all) named Marco, a small group of gladers, including me and Marco, had the power to morph into various animals and insects. In the past, bird morphs and Jack had attempted to fly out of the maze but Marco and Jack had raced up ahead of the group, even though you told them not to. Jack had hit the metal dome first, fracturing his left shoulder and wrist and Marco had broken his right wing and smashed his beak. The rest of the Animorphs had guided Marco safely to the ground while I de-morphed and used Jack's own flight abilities to stay up, getting him to the ground. Fortunately, when Marco de-morphed, his injuries disappeared, one of their great discoveries about morphing. Meanwhile Jack couldn't morph and hadn't been able to do much around the glade for a couple of weeks, which clearly disappointed him, and everyone else because he used his spare time to play pranks on, and just generally annoy, everyone. And just when we thought that we had discovered everything about morphing (although there's always a fresh mystery somewhere in the Field), was "thought-speech". How we could communicate when in-morph since animal vocal-cords were obviously not built for English, was talk to each other in our heads. One word: WEIRD.

A summary of the dome and Field, the sun had always looked a bit too orange and now it was official: the sun, moon, and stars, were artificial. Somehow though, the plants still grew under the rays of a fake sun. Outside the walls was a maze that stretched on for miles and miles with all routes eventually leading back to the glade, the never- ending cliff, and, you discovered, monsters that always came out at night. The encounter with the monsters had been scary, reminding me of giant spiders with their multiple arms, tools, and large, beady, orb-like eyes. These monsters were about fifteen feet in diameter and had blubbery skin that was slimy and pulsed with small metal instruments and needles.

The Animorphs had volunteered to go out in the maze and stay there over-night, I had gone with them. The un-mistakable whirrs and clicks of the monsters were forever bouncing off the inside of my ears, pounding my head every time I thought of the terrifying beasts. I had been there when the creature had started to move towards your friends and had distracted it while they morphed into the smallest possible insects unwillingly, but I had refused to let them all die. Running away from the creature, I had tripped over an invisible crack in the darkness but had rolled over directly into a large split in the wall. The alcove was concealed by ivy and I was able to morph a into a small monarch just in time for the griever to scan the alcove and then stalk away into the darkness. That was the night the first Fielder died, we couldn't stay in morph forever, as discovered by a Mapper, Tobias, who had tried to fly the Maze all day in the form of a red-tailed hawk. I had already de-morphed and re-morphed when it came spinning around the corner, wasting no time in stabbing the half-shifted Marco.

We had a makeshift funeral for him, and I think it hit me the hardest of all. What did I do wrong, that his life was wasted? Where did I go wrong? He shouldn't have died that night, and so it became an official rule of the Field that nobody was ever allowed to stay outside the Field at night unless under dire circumstances. Should it come to it, for whatever reason, that the Maze was safer than the Field itself.

Tobias, through thought-speech, had pointed out interesting details about the maze; the cracks in the stone didn't have smaller ones branching off of them which meant that they had been built in on purpose to make the stone look weathered and old, the ivy was to young, judging by the size of the leaves, to have grown so long and thick. The maze was supposed to look old and on purpose but for what reason? What did our captors have in mind? What had they been thinking, sending children up a cold, dark, lift, into a big glade in the middle of a giant, un-solvable, maze? Adding to the mystery, Tobias had found a giant plaque on one of the maze walls. It had read;

W.I.C.K.E.D

WORLD IN CATASTROPHE: KILLZONE EXPERIMENT DEPARTMENT

Then, in tiny but bold letters beneath that it said;

F.T.T.

FOR THE TALENTED

W.I.C.K.E.D. IS GOOD.

One plaque in the very back wall of every sector we had figured out. That was before Marco died.

A/N:) Oh god, rereading this was an experience. I first wrote this story when I was 10, and the last time I rewrote it was probably around age 12-13? Obviously, I'm much older now lol. I wanted to keep this up out of sentimentality, and to be able to look back to where I was when I first started writing. Fandom communities were so incredibly nice to me even when my writing was. . .like this. So if you've made it to this note, you're just like those people who helped me so much when I was younger. Thank you for everything!