“A Simple Mission”

Author’s Note: This is a Take Ten to Write story and has not been proofread for errors. If I feel inspired or if there’s interest in the story, I’ll post a revised, edited, and extended version at a later date. Happy reading!

Prompt: “There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. I can’t really see much.”

“Move over then, let me see.”

“Hey, you’re stepping on my foot!”

“Shh she’ll hear us!”

The girl stopped in her tracks, on high alert.

“Great, she heard us,” I mumble, pulling Henry down beside me before she sees where we are.

There’s silence. Then, a rustle. I glance at Henry, but he’s completely still. If the sound didn’t come from us, then it must’ve come from the girl. She’s on the move again.

Carefully, I raise a finger to my lips and point over the wall. Henry makes the smallest of nods before we both rise to peek over.

“Holy crap,” I whisper.

The girl isn’t a girl anymore. She’s ten girls, all completely identical, all moving in a different direction.

“Great, now what?” Henry mutters.

I scowl. This mission was supposed to be simple; find the girl and bring her back to base. Of course the boss didn’t tell us that the girl can make clones of herself, or whatever those copies are.

“What do we do?” Henry hisses. “She’s getting away!”

“Shush, I’m thinking.”

“You’re supposed to be the one with the plan.”

“I said shush!”

Once again the girl stops. Or rather, all of the girls stop. As one, they turn to look at us.

Immediately, a bright glow emits from all ten of them, blinding me. A strangled cry erupts from my throat as I stumble backward. My foot catches on a root and I fall hard on my butt.

“Ow!” Henry lands beside me in a similar ungraceful manner.

The glow finally seems to fade and I risk peeking over the wall again.

“Crap,” I sigh.

Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse.

“What happened?” Henry asks, standing up to join me. When he looks over the wall, all he says is, “Oh.”

Each of the ten girls has copied herself into ten more. Which makes one hundred.

“So what, do we have to catch them all or just one of them?” Henry asks.

“I don’t know. Maybe we should ask the boss.”

“You seriously want to call the boss? That would count as a failure! And I really don’t want to be one of his failures…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. But I don’t know what else to do here.”

“We could try catching one of them? We don’t even know what we’re dealing with; maybe they’re just projections and there’s only the one real girl left.”

“Fine, then how do you propose we try that?”

Henry reaches into his pack and brings out a lasso. “We rope her.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“Nope.”

I sigh. “Okay, fine, but you do it. I didn’t pass that part of training. Actually, I didn’t even know that lassos were an option for training.”

Henry smirks. “Just stand back and let the professional handle this.”

I roll my eyes. “I bet it feels good to call yourself a professional for once.”

He scowls at me, but I still step back and give him room. He gets into position and starts twirling his lasso.

Final Comments: I’ve been trying to get away from using ‘I’ at the beginning of each sentence, and I guess my way to fix that was to just put in tons of dialogue. I’m not sure if it worked, but the story was kind of fun to write like that.

Overall Rating: 🤨