Drabble War February 2012

Here is some information on the participating authors and story summaries:

While last month we had twelve authors participate, we have cut it down to a more manageable size and we have 8 AUTHORS!

If you are interested in participating in a future "War of the Words" then come on over to the Drabble War Forum group on Facebook. In the docs there are sign ups available for every month this year. "Wars" will take place on the middle weekend of each month. It is first come, first serve so come on over and claim your spot. We hope to see new "faces" each month!

The Drabble War Forum is not for authors only…it's also for the readers who want to follow along with the wars. It is a central place to meet and discuss the stories as they are posted. With each round, banners and summaries will be posted in the group as well as links to author profiles.

We also have a fanfiction . net community set up with all the 2012 Drabble War stories. fanfiction . net /community/ DRABBLE_WARS / 97678/14/0/1/

While we are labeling this a war, please be aware that no official winner will be determined. This is all in good fun…just friendly competition. The real winners are the readers who get 12 new stories each month!

Allow me to introduce the February participants:

CaraNo - .net/u/2712792/

Title: I Tell Myself

Summary: Bella comes to New York when she finds out that her grandmother only has three weeks left to live. While waiting for the nasty old hag to kick the bucket, she kills time in her mom's apartment building. Welcome to the Wisteria Lane of Manhattan. It's only three weeks, I tell myself.

Romance with a little humor and drama. Rated M for the usual.

JA Mash .net/u/2888001/JA_Mash

Title: Without A Hitch

Summary: When she tries to help a friend, Bella finds herself as an unofficial advice guru, with Edward as her latest project. Things get complicated when she falls for him instead. Romance/Humor Rated M

Fates-Love-Queen: .net/u/2022521/

Title: Speak To Me

Summary: Life on the streets is tough. Even tougher when you have to look after more than yourself. To protect her, Bella ran away from home with her little sister. When Tanya gets sick, Bella breaks into a posh house to steal essentials. Edward's house. And he's got a gun. How can she prove herself to him if she can't speak?

Drama/Angst with a HEA, I promise. Rated M for the usual.

Welcome2myworldxoxo: .net/~welcome2myworldxoxo

Title: Sea of Black

Summary: Summary: She knew him before she met him, but he would always disappear in a sea of black before she could see him. A story about taking control and finding your place in life. AH ExB. Mature

BellaEdwardlover1991: .net/u/1550347/

Title: Chances

Summary: After tragedy strikes, Bella gets a unique chance. A story told in 50 drabbles. Angst/Hurt/Comfort. Rated M

Judas Manifesto .net/u/2004334/

Til the World Ends by Judas Manifesto

Summary: The world has ended. Edward has been separated from his wife. When he comes to after an earthquake almost ending mankind, he goes in search for her to find she has joined a dangerous Vampire clan bent on world domination. AU, Post-Apocalyptic, Lemons.

Twiddler83: .net/~twiddler83

Title: Southern Honey

Summary: Moving from Chicago to a small town is a hard pill for Edward to swallow when he's always had a silver spoon in his mouth. His family wanted a change of pace and all he wanted was a plane ticket out of there, until a snarky southern honey becomes the color to his otherwise black and white life.

Humor/Romance/HEA, AH, Rated M, ExB

lenidrabbles: .net/~lenidrabbles Title:

Summary: Part of the Courting Sin series (.:%20courting%20sin), BtVS4/AtS1 rewrite. As Buffy and Angelus make their relationship known and move to L.A., they will find out who is now their enemy and who is friend. The rules have changed, but the game stays the same. Or does it?

Warnings for language, violence, and possible character death. Rated R.

A/N : Hello Readers!

I want to thank my team of pre-readers and Betas for all the help. You know who you are and I am beyond thankful for what you do for me.

Anyway, enough gobbling. I present to you, Til The World Ends! Inbox explosion coming to you Febuary 10th, 2012.

No one ever knew it would happen. No one even saw this coming.

It was completely unpredictable and it was abrupt, causing life as we knew it on Earth to shift back into the days of the beginning. Nature would soon be taking over once more.

The world had burst into angry flames, the heat melting buildings and deteriorating forests into dust. The human population had taken a severe toll, dropping over sixty percent in its numbers from the destruction caused by an Earth-shattering earthquake along with the intense heat that the sun had cast onto the land from the lack of ozone layer.

The beginning of the end came with the constant uprising of global warming and finally pushed us over the edge – ending our world. The combination of the warming tied with the collapse of governments and security slinging the world into the apocalypse.

Humanity had ruined their world.

However, this led to an unexpected uprising of the inhabitants of the supernatural world who had fled deep into the underground. They found solace in caves, ancient cities and even the sewers to escape the scalding sun during the day as well as avoiding the humans that had rebuilt a small city in the heart of an old town called Surrey in North America. It was a pitiful excuse for a city since it was just a cluster of wooden cottages that housed way too many people for its size.

Vampires and Lycans took control of the post-apocalyptic world, leading to a feud between the species as well as smaller, less powerful species that became caught in the middle and had to choose sides. The witches and warlocks had taken the side of the Lycans that wanted the Vampire species to go extinct due to ancient massacres and battles. But the Vampires still had numbers as well as powerful Shapeshifters that did assignments for them during the day since the sun seemed to have no effect on them due to their regeneration powers.

After the world had been shook and devastated by an earthquake that tore every building down, cracked all the streets and knocked out every type of communication known to mankind, there was an hour of complete silence as those who had survived slowly emerged from the wreckage - Vampire, Human and Lycan alike.

The world was quiet. Not a sound coming from anything or anywhere. It held a dreary silence that gripped the secrets of death and destruction with bony and unforgiving hands. What remained of the buildings were mere shadows of their former glory, the majority of their facades now lying in crumbles around their base. The roads were littered with debris, garbage and even fallen trees. The devastation was heart breaking.

I walked through the destruction with a heavy heart and a single, translucent tear dropped from my eyelid down over my cheek.

My name is Edward Cullen; I'm a Vampire that survived the 2012 apocalypse that had completely changed the world.

However, the only thing that I could think about as I shoved pieces of drywall and shattered wood from on top of me was where my wife was.

Bella Swan had been my beautiful Vampire bride for almost a century before this natural disaster tore us apart. She had beautiful chocolate brown eyes with long, wavy black hair that came down to the bottom of her ribcage. She was the only thing in this life of lonesome immortality that made it worth living. Our love was perfect in every way.

Bella was stubborn and short tempered. She was also an expert fighter because of her adoptive big brother, Emmett; a member in our coven which had a total of eight members, including Bella and I. Carlisle and Esme, who had grown to become the mother and father figures for the coven in addition to being our leaders, which was weird in the Vampire world. My 'siblings' included Alice and her mate, Jasper, along with Emmett and his mate, Rosalie.

Over the years, we had gone from a mutual respect of each other to loving one another and finally to becoming a family. It was uncommon and frowned upon by other Vampires but it was just the way it was with us.

As I crawled over the wreckage of what was left of my home, I thought about the family. I didn't know if they were alive or not. I desperately hoped that they were because I couldn't live on without my family.

I stood up, brushing off the drywall dust from my plain grey shirt and spotted my leather jacket under what used to be my front door. I stared down at it, wishing Bella was inside it like she always used to be because she loved wearing my scent on her. But she wasn't. She was gone and I was going to go find her.

I bent over to grab the jacket, yanking it free of the broken wood splinters and dusted it off so it once more looked black instead of white. I slipped it on quickly, noticing a hint of Bella's strawberry and vanilla smell along the collar. I tightened the collar around my face, inhaling the mixture of my scent and hers before I bent down to tighten my boots. That done, I allowed myself to look up and around at the wreckage of what use to be my neighborhood.

Everything was now a massive pile of rubble of what used to be there. Even in the pale light afforded by the moon in the almost pitch black night, it was saddening to look at.

Looking up at the moon, I whispered to myself that somehow, some way, I would find my family and my wife. I knew one way or another…I would find them…I had to.

My boots made faint clicks on the street as I walked through a clear path to the main street, my heart weighing a thousand pounds knowing that my family could be dead.

The streets were quiet and tousled, papers and building debris littering the cracked roads between what used to be busy street corners with shop fronts that were once filled with merchandise and people. Now they were empty with shattered windows and the top halves missing.

I kept my hands in my pockets as I wandered the darkened street, kicking at a small rock the size of a chestnut along the way. My throat burned with a miserable ache whenever I saw tattered billboards with humans on them, showing off their flawless skin that hid the veins that held the crimson life essence that Vampire's lived for. My fangs lengthened, digging into my bottom lip as I stared at a woman's neck on one such board. I could almost see her pulse.

I shook my head, a hand leaving my jean pocket to clutch at my jugular which felt as if it was going to explode from my neck at any second. I could feel the strength quickly fading from my body. I needed to feed as soon as possible.

But as I looked out across the empty streets, I knew it would be a one in a million chance that I would be able to find a human with a pulse.

I wished more than ever that Bella was with me, but just before the world had ended, we had gotten into a fight which had ended with her darting off through the forest and running far, far away from me. I missed her so much and hoped to any God out there that she was alive and well.

I could almost feel her hand clutching mine inside my pocket but was disappointed when I realized it was just the fabric.

I looked up at the cloudless black sky, only illuminated by the strong pale glow the moon was casting on our destroyed planet. I silently prayed, to no one in particular really, to give me back my family.

There was a loud crash of shattered glass and I whipped around to see a shadow hiding behind a bus that was lying on its side in a four way intersection.

"Who's there?" I barked into the night, my vision sharpening and focusing on the darkness, making it clearer. My fangs enlarged and I instinctively crouched into a feral stance, ready to fight what I sensed to be a Lycan.

The hairs on the back of my neck and forearms stood high and alert as my skin erupted with goose bumps. My instincts and intuition told me that I was not alone and that I was in danger. I could smell the foul, musky odor that could only belong to a Lycan.

I took careful steps towards the fallen bus, knowing that something was going to jump out to attack me. I looked around the area and glanced behind me out of paranoia and decided to get over the anticipation by jumping onto the side of the bus, a growl ripping through my mouth as my eyes narrowed in on the darkness that was hiding danger.

As I predicted, just as my boot hit the crunching metal, a large Lycan the color of ash leapt up from the other side, towering over me as it snarled.

It looked like all Lycans…reminiscent of its wolf cousin except that it was twice as big with bigger jowls and stood taller than a human. The beast's breath was foul with the scent of rotting flesh and it was covered in dirt and dust.

I ducked as he swung a meaty and hairy arm for my head and slipped through one of the empty bus windows to escape him. He snarled furiously and dropped down to his four legs to reach an arm in to grab me. I crawled swiftly through the sideways seats and focused on the emergency exit door at the back.

There was another crash as the beast dug its way into the vehicle and I quickly glanced back to see the imbecile struggling to get between the seats. I grinned back at him, flashing my fangs before crashing through the exit door.

I let a growl rip through my throat as I hopped back onto the side of the bus and found the wolf still struggling and snarling in a rage. I lowered myself down behind him, quickly wrapping my arms around the Lycanthrope's neck and swiftly twisting. A squeak and a groan left the beast after the snapping of his neck.

I stared down at the limp form of the wolf, making sure I could hear no heartbeat and that the heat of his body was decreasing.

When I was sure the beast was dead, I lifted myself out of the bus once again and lay back against the cracked glass of the windshield. I closed my eyes and urged my body to come down from the adrenaline and bloodlust so my head would stop spinning.

I imagined holding Bella in my arms once again, laughing as she giggled and blushed while I peppered her neck in kisses. I couldn't help smiling to myself at the very memory, desperately wishing she was beside me.

I took a deep breath before reluctantly opening my eyes to find someone standing there that I had not expected to see ever again.

"Alice?" I gasped as I rolled over and looked at her with my eyes bulging in disbelief.

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