[IC] Arcadia: A world divided. (Kyelin and Vash)

[Vash]

The lights from the multiple torches and candles in the steam-powered vessel blinded Sebastian as the hood he was forced to wear was removed. His eyes soon adjusted and he heard the rustling of chains and shackles around him, dozens of people have been taken it seems. Sebastian shook his head of the pain that struck his right temple, though it bit at him slightly. One of the few places left on him that felt pain. Damn high-guard know where to strike. He was silent as the guards when by removing the hoods on everybody's head one by one. The steam vessel they were in, prison ship more like it, was a large one, able to hold hundreds easily. Most likely was the primary vessel to transport prisoners to Rook Island Maximum Security penitentiary, a place smack dab in the middle of the Dead Zone. The only place on the whole of Planet Arcadia where there is no such thing as magic or electronics. Used originally as an offering to the Tenau before war was declared. Now it's discreetly used by both to offload prisoners of war.

The whole ship was powered by steam and lit by torches and oil lanterns. Crude and inneffective, but it was one of the few technologies that could work in the dead zone. He tried to stretch a bit as his bones were starting to creak from the disuse, but his hands were bound. They were made of crude iron unfortunately and he would be able to break out of them very easily, but he'd have to wait until nobody was looking. Just to try a test, he bent them slightly to make sure his body still worked. Upon nearly breaking the chain, he affirmed it. There were screams of a woman down the line as she pleaded for an answer as to why she was taken captive. It was quickly turned into begging for her life as the guard pulled a gun on her then was silenced as a bang echoed throughout the ship. "Damn" he said to nobody in particular. "Next thing you know a child will yell out for her mother-and there it is. Poor kid." Just as a guard came to smack him to be quiet, the whole ship lurched as something giant hit them. All was frozen for a minute as everybody started to look around, as if thinking the previous hit was but a dream.

Something went off in the back of his mind, a warning, premonition...something. It forced him into action and Sebastian stood up then, breaking out of his iron shackles and grabbing the nearby guard, yelling "GET DOWN" in the process. Just as he dragged the guard to the ground, the ship lurched again, but this time broke through. A torpedo of some sort blew open the side of the hull, letting the dark blue ocean pour through. The water filled up the lower deck quickly, many of the prisoners were shackled to the wall and were drowned quickly. Sebastian would have too if he didn't have a resperator built into his damn lungs. The fact that he couldn't swim made it even worse for him. He tried to save as many as he could, focusing on the women and children that were here, but he didn't save many. The guards helped as best as they could, but they were only human. From the upper decks, guards in hydro suits joined in the rescue, with respirators as well, they didn't bother helping the remaining prisoners gasping for breath as the ship started to go down. One broke free and was trying to fight to take a guards' weapon to protect himself. Sebastian tried to make his way over to the remaining prisoners as they pulled against their chains, but another explosion against the hull sent him hurling upwards and into the ceiling. He hit his head on the ceiling and went black.

The next thing he knew, he felt the sun beating down onto his body and hot sand underneath his head and neck. Opening his eyes, he was once again blinded, but this time by the unrelenting sun. He lifted up his arm to shield his eyes from the ultra-violet rays of the sun and sat up. Before he could even try and figure out where he was, he heard screaming coming from his right. He stood up quickly, nearly falling over again from losing his balance, and saw two of the prisoners on the ground. One was trying to force himself on the woman underneath him. The man he recognized as one of the more dangerous prisoners, the one that was trying to fight a guard. The woman kicked and screamed, slapping the man and punching him. Sebastian started sprinting, faster than that of a normal human. He pumped his arms and took three big leaps before reaching them and slamming his foot into the man's sternum. The shattering of bone and stream of blood signaled the man's death as he flew down the coast line a little and impacted against a large rock.

He breathed steadily, the run having taken a little out of his still recovering body. He turned toward the woman he just rescued, she was frozen, waiting for him to do something. He held out his hand and spoke. "Sebastian. Pleasure"

[Kyelin]

Cold, hard steel was all Aleeis had felt for a long time. She was treated like a rabid animal for the past three years, though one they couldn't outright kill. Such an action would be unwise, during one of the bloodiest disputes the world of Arcadia had ever seen. In this day and age, inspiration and the winning move could come from anyone, at any place, at any time. And Aleeis, as impossible to believe from her frail appearance, certainly was an oddity, to those who wanted to dig deep enough into her history.

The two guards to her cell shuffled uneasily, as they hadn't been given the go ahead to change shifts in a long while. One was tall and had a cruel face that had most likely seen and enjoyed many horrible acts, while the other was slightly shorter and a lot stupider. Both wore the uniforms of prison guards, and conversed amongst themselves, paying the captive no mind at all.

"So, why are we guarding this one and locking 'er in solitary? She seems quiet enough, if a li'l crazy. I mean, if she's so bad of a criminal, why not just kill 'er? Let 'er hang, I say. Then, we could get some food..."

The tall guard humphed in slight amusement, and leaned down to his friend, "You idiot, they need her. Though I don't know why. All I know is two things: One, she's murdered quite a few people in her time. One of them a high ranking Councillor. The other thing, don't, under any circumstances, let her touch you. At all. Probably, they'll do their experiments, and the people will have their corpse... Now, keep an eye on her, I'm going to find out where our replacements are. I need some food." With that, he left the other guard to try (and fail) to ponder the weight of his words.

It was a little while after this exchange that the first explosion rocked through the ship, engines screaming and metal groaning from the impact. The guard panicked, first running a few steps one way, then the other, before turning to the girl and angrily yelling at her. "You did this, didn't you!?"
Aleeis spoke up softly, not moving her gaze from the ground. "How could I? I'm in a cage, remember?"
"True..."
Suddenly, she got up, and walked to the cage door, inspiration striking her. "You know, he was lying, right? Want to know why I'm here?"
The guard, curious, responded suspiciously. "Why?"
"I stole a vast amount of gold and jewels, and I was caught. They were going to question me, and try to find it. So I'll tell you what: Help me escape, and we can look for it together. Split it fifty fifty. What do you say?"
"I dunno, how do I know YOU aren't lying?"
Aleeis casually responded, as another boom could be heard, intermingled with screams and cries from the lower decks. "Well, I can bet you that we're being attacked by pirates right now. Why else would they attack a prison ship, if not to find me? Probably the ones who helped me steal the loot, you know."

The guard paused, and thought as best as he could. "That DOES make sense, I guess. Ok, I'll let you out." With that, the cage door was unlocked, and her bindings loosened. The guard walked ahead of her, and yelled out for his friend. "Hey, Mac, where are you? I worked it out, apparently the girl is-OOOOF!" With a loud thunk, the guard stood stunned for a moment, before he dropped to the ground unconscious. Aleeis standing over him with an iron pipe. "Heh, idiot...:" Without hesitation, she grabbed his pistol, and started to run through the decks, chaos everywhere as the ship was repeatedly hit with weapons fire. Crew tried to put out fires, and a very large and burly prisoner was beating a guard to death with a large shovel. The young girl ignored the cries of the dying, unsympathetic to their pain. Aleeis had her own problems.

Aleeis made it to the top decks, and could see the enemy ship, firing torpedoes and drawing closer. The whole top deck was alive with movement, and a guard spun around and brought his rifle to bear on Aleeis. She casually fired off a round at him, hitting him in the chest, and jumped of the side of the ship as others opened fire on her, far too many to take on in a fight. Though Aleeis had never actually trained to properly swim, she flailed as best as she could the very moment she hit the water, and swam away from the sinking wreck. After what seemed like hours, she lost all her strength, immediately regretting this decision, as an island loomed closer, and her vision faded to black.

When Aleeis came too, a horrid and ugly excuse of a man was on top of her, an unpleasant sight to wake up to. He was trying to take her clothes off, and had a foul and sinister grin on his face. Without evening questioning how she was still alive, she began to put up a fight, though weakened from her previous ordeal. It was while she decided to just let him have his way with her, that he suddenly flew off to the side, and was out cold. Another man was standing to her side, the one who had rescued Aleeis, and offering assistance. He went by the name of Sebastian, and held out his hand to help her up. Without taking it, she stood up by herself, dusted herself off and put on a cold demeanor towards him. "Thank you, for helping me. I guess you were a prisoner as well?"

[Vash]

"Sort of. They took me from my job without even giving me the courtesy of a first date...and you're welcome...whomever you are...." He was distracted, obviously. He knelt down and looked down the beach away from where she was being dragged. "Trail suggests that he had a specific destination. Camp maybe. From the way he immediately tried to plow you when you resisted it suggests that he is a prisoner. Considering that he was heading towards someplace, I would bet that many prisoners survived and have banded together for survival. Wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to do. The ship caused a lot of wreckage and plenty of it should have washed up with us...." As he knelt the girl got a good look at him, seeing that he was in mostly blacks and grays. Dark gray pleated pants, worn from more than just sand. They were old, like something out of an old cowboy flick. Frayed at the bottom, black belt, but no holes. Black combat boots as well. He had on a blackened shirt, loose but tucked in with a single pocket on his chest. Not nearly as worn, but was dusty. He had on a trench coat, something she recognized as popular among the Illuminavit. Almost entirely leather like a duster, but instead of brown like a duster, it was dark gray and faded from time. He was well built as well, toned, but with many scars. His muscles and slender build wasn't from a personal regimen or implant however. They were from something else.

He stood up and pushed back his right sleeve, revealing a large metal band with what looked like a holographic projector on the top. He tapped it a couple times with his index finger but it didn't respond. "Damn digi-net is down. Must still be in the dead zone. Could really use the help of DT. No better scout bot on Arcadia, but oh well. Get to do this the old way. " He started to walk down the beach a bit, leaving the girl to herself. He stopped and turned towards her, yelling. "Ma'am. I'm all for helping women and stopping them from being hurt, but I can't heal stupid. If you're just going to stand there to wait for the next serial rapist to come along and ruin your life, I'm not going to help."

He turned away and continued to walk down the beach for a small ways. She finally caught up and their pace slowed so she could recover a little. He didn't try to make conversation with her, he was more concerned with finding civilization of some sort. As they turned a bend, they froze and ran for the treeline. Hiding in the pines of the island they got a look at the camp they nearly walked into.

It seemed that they were out for longer than they thought as the camp was well under way. Small tents, a dozen or so prisoners with shreds of clothing ripped off for the sake of heat Many had stolen tactical vests that they converted to holding e-cigs and food. Some even had knives. Among the camp there was also a food storage, and what looked like a prison.

From what he could see, there were several men and women of both human and elvish races in a cage guarded by prisoners with pistols taken from guards. Lead-based and non-electronic, they would be a problem. The prisoners were varied. Men and women, mostly women. A few guards that had been beaten to a pulp and what looked like a couple prisoners that were better acting than the rest. From the state of the women, they were used as cattle, and the prisoner's private parts were the brand. It was sad that these innocent people had to suffer for no reason. His self-preservative side said to just walk away and let the prisoners die on their own. But he wasn't one to use his self-preservative side. He started to count them and mark their locations. There were fifteen of them in total, several of both races, a small count considering that the ship had three hundred. They were mostly doing chores, but many were squabbling over the women, apparently anxious to take them for a test drive. Seems that they had a leader of some sorts that kept them from braining the girls. This was a good thing to Sebastian as that meant that their innocence was still somewhat intact. Then he noticed that there were women coming out of a couple tents with more prisoners joining the count. They seemed content as they wiped their mouths and giggled. Guess innocence can't be attributed to all women.

They kept hidden from view for about an hour, making full count of the prisoners. When he was sure that he had seen all the prisoners, he had counted twenty-three. A bit much for him to handle. Damn he wish he had DT. Her minigun would be fantastic right about now. He started to look around their hiding spot a little more carefully now, looking for a place for the girl he had found earlier to hide, if she wanted to hide. She could probably fight...she might die in an attempt to help the others, but oh well. Her family would probably get over it...probably.

He turned to her, locking eyes with her. "Need you to follow me closely. Going to try and get a gun and wipe out the camp save for the captives. I really hope you're a good shot as I don't like to kill women...and a couple of them might try to either hump me or stab me...or both. Don't need to be a great shot either, just stay near me and shoot them in the face if they get too close. Okay? Okay. Glad you're going a long with this...you may die. Just saying."

He didn't waste time waiting for either her objection or her nod, he just turned and started to move through the woods again. He would try to circle the camp towards the prisoner's pen as best as he could. A bit difficult as when the two started to near it, the guards nearly saw them and they had to dive behind a couple tents. They waited for a few moments and got to the cell without being seen. Sebastian had the woman stay hidden while he waited until one of the guards walked away to take a piss. He moved up and wrapped his arm around the guard's neck and covered his mouth with his free hand. The guard tried to fight, but his neck was broken before he could do anything. Without creating any extra sound, he grabbed the pistol from the guard's hand and lifted his feet, bringing him behind the tent without leaving a trail in the sand.

He sat and waited for the other guard to come back to see his buddy was gone. He came behind the tent, looking for his friend, only to fall into Sebastian's trap. Now with two pistols in hand, he handed one to the girl and noticed that the guy had a K-Bar too. How nice for him to lend it to Sebastian for the time being. He would rip open the prison with it to help the captives to safety, but they'd just get shot. Plus, no clue how many might be to exhausted to run. He checked the magazine and found it to be full of 9mm rounds. Nineteen to be precise. More than enough.

He looked toward the woman he was with and feigned a smile. "Don't worry, if anything happens I'll try to make sure it happens to me so you can go on to die some place else. If we both make it out, maybe you can tell me your name." He stood up then and poked out, firing the pistol several times. The bangs not only alerted the whole camp to their presence but it also dropped six prisoners to the ground dead. The man was...casual about killing. He walked forward away from the prison as screams of both terror and anger sounded. The captives cheered them both on. Sebastian's destination was the center of camp. To draw them away from the prison in case a few of them had guns, which naturally they did.

Yanking them from their tactical vests and from personal tents, the prisoners started to fire in his general direction, but a simple dive behind a washed up metal table kept him alive. He wondered where the girl went, but the question quickly faded as he poked out and took out four more and wounded another with two rounds to the chest. Seven left. He leaped over the table and sprinted, keeping low to the ground. He took the knife in hand and stabbed a prisoner, ripping it through his stomach then taking aim and firing twice, downing two more. He took his knife out, flipped it, grabbed the tip of it, and threw it, impaling it into the shoulder of another man. A bullet quickly followed and he threw aside the gun, having expended all the bullets.

One of the prisoners came from out of a tent and slammed a balled up bunch of meat and bone into his face and threw him to the ground. Two of the female prisoners jumped onto him to hold him down and a third prisoner planted his foot onto Sebastian's chest. He was strong as hell, but they had him pinned down at his joints. He couldn't muster the power to move.

[Kyelin]

Without speaking, Aleeis inspected the man as he knelt, and watched as he tried to work his holo band. Without blinking, she noted the attire of her rescuer, but had difficulty discerning what exactly he was. Could be a merc, slaver... Though he didn't seem to be so, for he was at least morally sound enough to help those in need. Compared to her own attire, he dressed more for functionality than comfort or style, and his garbs lacked the finer detail her own clothes presented. Her soft features and slimming, smallish frame denoted her elven heritage, but Sebastian was most compelled by her eyes, which seemed too cold and calculating for someone like her. Combined with her fairer than normal skin and lack of coloration on any of her features, she appeared almost sickly.

Eventually, he gave up trying to work his projector, and she spoke softly, in that same, calculating tone: "People are too reliant on their trinkets anyway. It makes them slow and stupid. You'd probably be better off without it on this island." Eventually, he got up, making a comment about how it would be wise to follow him. As he walked off, she simply stared after him, before following suite and walking after him, following step just behind him. As they made their way towards this so called camp, she couldn't help but think about their current situation. This continued for the entirety of the stroll, as she wondered in silence.

---

Arriving at the camp, they were both quick to realize that this wasn't what they had anticipated. The prisoners numbered in the many, and seemed to be keeping others captive. Whatever was going on here, wasn't right. As he explained his plan to take them out, she nodded in silent agreement, and they split off to do their best. It was risky, but it seemed to be their only option, lest they were captured later. With unnatural silence, she crept throughout the camp, and swept a guard of his feet with a low spin kick, before dropping her booted foot on his head and knocking him out. Aleeis preferred to kill only when nessecary. As she continued to take out another two guards none lethally, she met up with Sebastian, and caught his pistol. Fully loaded, and ready for action.

Moving away from him, she was suddenly alarmed to hear gunshots ring out, and the guards approach them. While spotting her comrade, they failed to notice her as she hid behind a makeshift tent, and watched as the guards pinned him to the ground right next to her. And without thinking, she lunged, and grabbed the back of one of Sebastian's captor's heads, whirling out of cover. "Oh no..." was all she mouthed before it happened. Standing there dumbstruck for a split second, blood erupted with sudden force and severity from his ears, mouth, nose and eyes, as he let out a guttural shriek and twitched violently, before falling to the ground, dead. His female friends had watched it happened, and both moved off Sebastian, horrified at the sudden and brutal death of one of their friends. And a split second later, one of them cried out at the top of her lungs: "WITCH!!"

It wasn't long before Aleeis lost control, and suddenly, she was bleeding from her mouth and nose, growling and shaking furiously like a rabid animal. She jumped forward, and grabbed the others neck, ripping out her throat in a shower of blood that drenched the elven girl, only fueling Aleeis' enraged state. The remaining nearby guard shambled back, firing loudly and yelling for back up, before the butt of Aleeis' pistol was smashed into the unfortunate woman's face with an unearthly amount of strength, the blunt trauma fracturing her skull and killing her instantly. This was only starting, as Aleeis ran for the guards that remained, howling and raving madly. Her fury wasn't slowed, even when a shot ripped through her arm, knocking her back and making her dash to the side for cover, disappearing from sight. Now, no one was safe.