Hunter's Woods Writing Prompts

   Berkeley's phone buzzes. It is 8:57pm.
   "So have any of you guys started on the paper yet or?" Beatrix's message to the group chat reads. "The Google Doc is empty, you guys have just been working on it in Word or something right?"
   "What paper?" Sophie replies.
   "We had a paper?" Virva asks.
   Beatrix responds, "Uhh, yeah, the one for English that's due in the morning."
   "We have a paper due when," Naomi's message reads, and is followed shortly thereafter by, "I was out of town, why didn't anyone tell me about this? What even is the topic?"
   "I was out sick," Virva sends.
   "I lost my planner on Tuesday," sends Sophie. "I don't know what any of my assignments are."
   "Oh my god, Sophie, you're such a mess." Noami bemoans.
   "Mitko was supposed to message everyone the details! @Mitko You did message everyone, didn't you?"
   Mitko doesn't respond, despite his online status indicator being as green as ever. Berkeley spends the next few minutes brewing a pot of coffee as their phone vibrates wildly while Beatrix attempts to get the group under control and dole out pieces of the assignment for them all to work on.
   It's going to be a long night.

   The clock on Berkeley's display reads 9:26pm. A message from Beatrix in the Google Doc's chat pops up on one of their monitors:
   "Did anyone else just get a notif that Mitko is playing DST?"
   Sophie responds shortly thereafter. "I sent him a message on Steam asking him why he's not in the doc and he blocked me."
   "Lol!" Virva says.
   "I'm gonna see if I can find his world," Beatrix says. "Maybe I can convince him to do the work?"
   "Oh, play as Willow," Sophie says. "See if you can set everything on fire and force him to abandon it if he won't come willingly."
   Naomi sends several links, which seemingly go ignored by the rest of the group. Berkeley opens them in new tabs on their second monitor as the chat continues.
   "He'll probably just make a new world if I burn everything down."
   "He's probably a Willow main himself," jokes Virva. "He seems like the sort of person who would jump into random people's worlds and start lighting everything on fire just to mess with them."
   "He definitely plays with cheat mods," Sophie chimes in.
   Naomi sends a few more links, which Berkeley again opens in new tabs before switching back to the one they were reading with their right head. Along with the links comes a pleading message: "Guys please focus on the paper." And then, "Sophie stop playing with the font and work on your paragraph I'm begging you."
   "Serif fonts are ugly, though."
   "We're supposed to be using Times New Roman, just leave it alone, please."
   "I HATE reading serif fonts tho," she says. "Can't we write it in Arial or something while we're working and then just change it after?"
   "Yeah, you know what, fine, sure, whatever, just Stop messing with it," Naomi pleads. "And please just write it with the double spacing, that's how the professor wants it formatted, I know it sucks to look at but we need to have it spaced like that to make sure we're going to make the page requirements."
   "It's so BAD though."
   Beatrix sends a message now. "Mitko's actually a Webber main."
   "Okay, cool?" Naomi says. "Did you convince him to come do his work?"
   "Uh, not yet, he says he wants to kill Dragonfly first?"
   "Oh my god. How long is that going to take?"
   "Um, I dunno, probably like ten minutes? I don't know if he's found it or is still looking for it, I'm gonna meet up and see if I can help take it down faster."
   "Fine. You better be back to finish your section before ten thirty, though."
   Unsurprisingly, Beatrix never returns.

   The clock reads 11:02pm. Berkeley's phone buzzes again.
   "Can someone please delete Virva's comment in the second paragraph?" Naomi asks in the group chat. "I tried to open the thing to see what she said and it crashed my iPad."
   "You're working on an iPad?" Sophie asks.
   "Not the point."
   "LMAO I THOUGHT THEY WERE JOKING WHEN THEY SAID THE BEE MOVIE SCRIPT BRICKED THEIR FRIEND'S PHONE THAT'S SO GOOD," Virva declares. "THAT'S SO FUNNY OH MY GODDDDD."
   "Virva if you bricked my iPad I'm sending you a PayPal invoice for a new one."
   Berkeley glances over at the monitor with Google Docs open. Sophie has taken the opportunity, while Naomi is away from the document, to change each of the paragraphs to a different font color, forming a rainbow gradient as one scrolls down the page. And... she's placed a moodboard on the left-hand side of the page at one point? That would explain why she hasn't written anything in the past half hour. It's not particularly productive, but Berkeley has to give her credit where credit is due - The images included are at least relevant to their paper's topic.

   It is now 12:16am. Berkeley's phone buzzes again.
   "So Melia just changed the WiFi password."
   "Oh my god," Naomi says.
   "Yeah, uh, she told me to go to bed twenty minutes ago because apparently she thinks I'm not CAPABLE OF MAKING MY OWN DECISIONS-" Berkeley gets the feeling that Virva was yelling that in real life as she typed it. "-so I'm stuck on cellular and I'm running out of data for the month so I'm gonna have to bounce."
   "You CANNOT be serious," Naomi says. "The only thing you've done tonight is write like three sentences, send a bunch of bad memes in the chat, and made me fear for my iPad's life."
   "That's not true!" Virva whines. "I ALSO sent you a lofi hip-hop beats to study and relax to playlist."
   "That's not helpful," Naomi snaps.
   Virva doesn't respond.

   The time is 1:28am. Berkeley is on their fourth cup of coffee. Possibly fifth. They're beginning to lose track.
   "Berkeley, please tell me you've been doing SOMETHING this whole time," Naomi begs. "I have to go to work after class tomorrow and I woke up at four today. Yesterday. Whatever. I really need to sleep or the customers are gonna be way too much and I'm gonna snap."
   "uh, yea, hold on," Berkeley types. A few moments later, several paragraphs appear in the doc. "is this anything?"
   "What," Sophie says.
   "Hello???" Naomi is seemingly dumbfounded. "Where did all of this come from???"
   "Is this Comic Sans? Gross lol."
   "uh, i was riting it in openoffice," Berkeley answers. "i get akward when ppl see my unfinished stuff, it makes it hard for me to focus, so i jyst had it open in my 2rd monitor while ive beeen working on it. also sophie i have 2 heads its good for ppl w/ reading issues let me live im doing my bwst." A pause. "is it good, shuld i change any of it, or?"
   There's no response for a few minutes, and then Naomi sends another message in the chat. "Berkeley you're actually my hero," she says. "Can you finish the conclusion paragraph while I fix up the typos and grammar? No offense but it's kind of riddled with issues there."
   "i mean i have 4 eyes so its hard to keep traxk." They say. "but sure, uh, can u do the bibluography 2? im bad at formating them & i can never remember which teachers want whoch style. ill senf the links i used in th chat?"
   "100%, done and done. You are literally the only reason we're going to pass this class, thank you so much," Naomi agrees. "Sophie, can you get it formatted to fit Google Docs? Like the indents and the text and everything?"
   "I will do ANYTHING to get rid of this Comic Sans lmao."
   "And don't change the font color or add any more pictures please."
   "Yeah yeah I'll be ~professional~ about it and all."
   "Thank you."

   It is 2:04am. Berkeley finally shuts down their computer and attempts to go to sleep. This is not easy, because their bloodstream is about seventy percent caffeine at this point. But at least their essay is finished now.
   It isn't until two days later when the group realizes that none of them ever actually submitted the paper, and they're going to lose marks for it either way.
   In that moment, Berkeley decides beyond any shadow of a doubt that they hate group projects more than anything else in the world. Their classmates agree wholeheartedly.