Monster // Peter Pan (Robbie Kay) (OUAT)

Chapter Eleven

This sucks. I'm truly sorry. It started out okay and kinda faded out in the end. Very sorryy.

Chapter Eleven

Days In Neverland: 10

Pan was livid.

After I had heedlessly tossed a matchstick from my fingers onto the base of the training targets, I had taken cover on the edge of the clearing, where the trees were unrestrained and rampant, where they grew so close and heavy I could hardly find my hands beneath the leaves that grew squat and stubbier. I felt a little timorous standing so close to the training center, where, the flames began to engulf the targets like a ruthless snake swallowing a pig: savagely.

By sunset, not long after I had set the fire, half the targets were gone, brought down in a searing display of blackened wood and white ash collapsing in the crackles of the inferno, and after, black and bittersweet sizzling its own remains.

From there, the smoke twisted and rolled and stretched from the glowing embers smoldering in browned sod. The grass had been burned to a wilting sepia like a folded Polaroid you'd find bent and red in a back closet scrapbook. Less beautiful, of course. Less vintage and more detrimental, certainly.

The remaining targets were threatened, jeopardized by gathering flames sweeping through the clearing, fueled by oxygen and only scared of water, but here there was only stimulation, only motivation to burn.

I began coughing once the smoke hit, as the targets closest had finally crumpled from its frail staff and feeble stability, crumbling with tarnished wood and smeared paint, flopping with the flames still attached like wind-blown hair. And the smoke came fast as the breeze dived in like broken jets, blasting reek from the fire into my hair and through the brush. I squeezed my wet eyes closed and dipped my head behind the leaves, hoping they'd work as lashes for me, but the smoke only stuck around and clung to the .

I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the paltriest amount of guilt for choosing this as the way to get back at Pan. Demolishing his most beloved training center?

Isn't that a bit much?

But, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't smiling to myself as I watched. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't trembling in excitement, silently chuckling in the back of my throat when the cracking wood swung pockets of fire into the grass and burned patches there, too.

And, I wouldn't be deceitful if I said I didn't get a sick, thrilling high when the sound of howling boys cut through the smog.

I followed the edge of the clearing, stepping over jutted sticks and tree trunks slitting through the soil, until, I was in unhindered view of swaying arms and jabbing legs tearing down the path.

I couldn't fight the dubious smile that crept in then, watching their faces turn in horror at their training center drowning in flames. I was finally in charge, I was the one getting vengeance, I wasn't weak...I was in control.

Oliver, nimble legs driving him in persistence, eyes widened in dread. He slowed to a halt near the edge I stood at, in front of the patches of drier grass already beginning to light up like candles. He reached behind his, tearing off his cloak and slapping the black burlap atop the wicks hastily clawing at the next grass. "Fire!" he shouted, bending his knees with the lapping motions of the fabric, smothering the flames out. "Fire, quick!"

Chester came next, with Tyrell and Gale hot on his tail. In synchronization, they slid their cloaks off their shoulders and used them as extinguishers to quickly bat out the heat spitting across the clearing.

Mason bustled in last, rocking back and forth with a wait of a jittering tin pail sloshing with creek water.

"Guys!" he called, visibly struggling as he hobbled over to the rest of the boys, "it's okay! I have water!"