Day 23: 42,608 Words and None of Them Make Sense

So, I had to circle back to the mini militia's presence in my novel. They have just been fiddlin' around, showing up from time to time, and no one has ever really known what they were doing or why. I decided to have Tanner Barrows (Cass's ex and loosely based on the character Dean Winchester), who up until yesterday was not even in my novel at all, explain everything. It was a strange choice, but hey, it's EsNoWriMo. Anything goes! Here is an excerpt of an extremely long winded conversation between Cass and Tanner :

“That was too easy, right?” she asked, and he nodded. “Was it a trap?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “But something bigger is going on.” He looked at her, and something inside of him loosened. He decided, for once, to trust her. “So look. Sam and I have been tracking appearances of what we have been calling a ‘mini militia’. It’s a loose collection of toddlers, sometimes older children. They are often wearing yellow raincoats and carrying wooden long guns. Some of them know how to carry them, as though they’ve been trained. Others… don’t know what the hell they’re doing.”

“Wait, yellow rain coats- I’ve seen them!” she said, and Tanner nodded as though this confirmed an inner suspicion. “What about pink leggings?” she asked.

“Pink leggings? Laying face down, seemingly playing dead?” he asked, alarm in his voice.

“Yes,” Cass almost whispered, the memory of the pink-legginged child playing dead in the halls of Barnaby Secondary School sending a chill up her spine.

“This is more serious than I thought.” Tanner said, then tried to explain. “Their last known location, as far as we can tell, was Colon, Michigan- the magical capital of the world. Sounds great right?” he asked, but it must have been a rhetorical question, because before she could answer he yelled “WRONG!”

“Well, that’s disappointing,” she said, mentally scratching Colon, Michigan off her list of places she wanted to visit.

“Tell me about it.” Tanner replied. “A few months ago, we caught wind of something big going down there. Seems like some of the magicians got it in their heads that they were being exploited and starting agitating about forming a union. They were getting organized, making some noise. Other magical folks started joining in. It was spreading.”

“Ideas are like that,” Cass said.

“Right. Well, you can guess how that was received by the powers that be.” Tanner said and they shared a meaningful look. They both knew how it was received, and it wasn’t good. Not good at all.

“By the time Sam and I got there, it was all over, but it was strange. Despite incredible counter-pressure, the magicians got their union. From the stories we heard, it hadn’t looked like it was going that way, but somehow, they pulled it off. And not only that, they got conscious. Started connecting with other movements.”

“All of this sounds great,” Cass said, mentally adding Colon, Michigan back onto her list of places to visit.

“Sure,” Tanner said. “But then we started hearing stories about these children wearing yellow raincoats and rubber boots, ‘re-enacting’ battles using wooden guns. Now Sam and I have heard it all, but we had never heard of anything like this. So we started tracking them. Turns out, before Colon, Michigan they were in London, Ontario- where a series of fires rocked the community. And trust me, the London Police Service doesn’t know what the hell they’re dealing with. This mini militia, or at least some version of it has been popping up all over North America. We even tracked a sighting this past spring in LA- which, as you will recall, was not only devastated by wildfires but also the location of a celebrity hockey game and is home to one of the most significant resistance movements by immigrants rights organizations that we’ve seen in recent years. Turns out, everywhere the mini militia cropped up, something big was going down.” He looked at her, seriously. “And now we’ve tracked them here.”

And a preview of things to come:

To: All Staff and Students at Barnaby Secondary School

From: Chadwick Penneyworth, Principal

Date: October 24, 2025

Subject: Saturday Detention

The following will report to the library on the morning of Saturday, October 25 at 8am for full day detention. Please note that some suggestions for cool, playful nicknames have been included in parentheses following your given names. All of these have been enthusiastically cleared by Chad from Legal.

Riley Montgomery (The Princess)

Luna Fischer (The Basket Case)

Jagger Allen (The Athlete)

Kye Adamson (The Thief)

Benji McGuire (The Brain).

GOVERN YOURSELVES ACCORDINGLY,

-Chadwick “McDreamy” Penneyworth, Principal.

P.S. Has anyone seen Chuck from HR lately?