Welcome to the Year 3213

Sierra: I rolled my eyes and put my hands on my hips. "Do you listen to anyone!?" Then I turned to Jason and said, "Are you coming?"

Jason: I was about to say "yeah", but before I could utter it Sierra had ahold of my hand and was dragging me toward the rowdy gathering.

Ray: I raise an eyebrow and shrug, doing my best to keep up with them.

Sierra: I drug Jason over to the gathering. I let him listen in for a minute. "See what I mean?" I grumbled.

Jason: "Yeah," I mumbled back. One man jumped up and said, "We need to fight! What happens if our position worsens? What will happen to the world?"

Adacia
"The numerous times you've stepped in to 'save' her? She fights really well, Hell, she even likes it, and you think she's like five or something. You're like, what, a year and a half older than her or something? If she's young, so are you." I retorted.

Ray: I slowly make my way to the walls of the room. If something happened, I didn't want to be in the middle of it.

Damien: I swallow. "Two years, actually."

Jason: I piped up. "You have a point! What will happen to us if we fight? What will happen if we don't? Here's your sign. There's 30 of us here. There's 17 lost. And 16 that have gone groveling back to the queen, just to be killed later. We will die if we try to fight! Don't do anything irrational!"

Sierra: I nodded. I was so glad I found Jason. He always made things better.

Ray: I swallow, leaning against the wall. Maybe if I just listened, I could figure something out.

Jason: The guy turned to me. "We won't die! We'll fight the Queen herself! Thirty of us against one!"
I screamed back at him over the roar of the crowd. "What about her guards? The security? It would be bad. You don't know how bad. I trained to be a guard and it was brutal. You wouldn't stand a chance!"

Ray: I swallow. Murder. Why did we need to kill anyone?

Adacia
I rolled my eyes. "Okay, two years. As in, you were both toddlers at the same time, and now you're both teenagers at the same time. But you don't see it like that. In you're mind, you're what, like thirty? And she's a child that needs to be protected from even the most minor things. Being with someone is good for her, she told me he makes her really happy. If you intervene, you'll make her unhappy; isn't that the opposite of what you want to do?"

Ethyl
I was just finishing my portion of the bread that Adacia and Jason had stolen earlier, when I realized they, as well as Damien and Raychelle, were nowhere to be found. Seymour had looked worried after Adacia left his side, more so than usual. That man was crazy, but somewhere in the midst of his...episodes...there was some sense in Mr Seymour, even if it was disguised by his paranoia. I slowly walked up to him and asked, "What was Adacia speaking to you about?"

Seymour
Seymour regarded the old woman sceptically. He couldn't tell her, could he? She wouldn't possibly believe him, what he heard the young girl say when her lips weren't moving. There were horrible things, she mentioned killing. Herself or someone else, he wasn't sure. The only words he could manage to utter were, "The girl is in danger, a danger, too much talking, can't make sense of it, it's so loud, everyone's speaking but only I hear it!" Ethyl just nodded, patted his shoulder and gave him a sad smile, and left. She didn't even try to find the girl, did she even care? Was she the danger the girl had told him about? "You can't hurt the girl, the girl is innocent!" Seymour screamed, alerting the entire group. People in the other tunnels could probably hear, but he didn't care. Seymour was always one to jump to conclusions, and didn't give them a second thought.

Damien: I swallow. "Look, Adacia. I know it seems weird, but all I want is that she's protected. If Jason can protect her, then I'll leave them be. But right now...I don't see anything stopping him from hurting her."

Adacia
I snorted. "Why, because he's a vamp? You are too, you know. And J and I have known each other for a long time; he's a good guy.

(Albert's one of the Guards, in case you forgot--haven't brought him out since page 3)
Albert
I heard the girl's muffled screams through the duct tape as I drove to the Queen's palace. Her name was...something with a P....Penelope, yes, that was it. Not that it mattered; she was just a torture victim for the Queen. When the Queen was angry with someone, it was a fast death. The ones who got the short end of the stick were the ones she killed for fun. She tortured them for hours, and they'd often die of internal bleeding, or a heart attack, sometimes pure fear would do it. I snickered at the thought of this beautiful young bitch getting beaten and choked and having her head dunked in water, then lifting her head up for a split second when she was just about out of breath....Ah, it was a wonderful thing; torture, fear, pain.

Damien: I roll my eyes. "No, there's a difference. I'm her brother. He's just a friend."

Jason: Everyone stopped talking for a moment to look at Seymour. What had he just said? I hated to admit it, but I thought Seymour had sense. I thought he knew things. Saw things that maybe the rest of us couldn't see.

Ethyl
I couldn't understand why Seymour was yelling at me, but then, a lot of the things he did didn't seem to make sense. Everyone was staring now, mostly at me, and I wasn't sure if they would listen to Mr Jakobben or not. "Seymour, what's wrong?" I asked sympathetically. He was having another episode, clearly; I just hoped it wouldn't be one of his violent fits.

Seymour
Tricky, tricky. The old bag seemed innocent to the others, but Seymour didn't buy it. She asked him a question, but he didn't hear it because at the same time, she was saying something else. Without moving her mouth. He couldn't understand how she did that, how all these people did that. Seymour didn't know how to do that. He heard her say he was crazy, and something about violence that he didn't quite hear. His eyes went wide and he began to flail about, trying to run towards her and attack, to save the pretty girl. But he wasn't that mobile, he couldn't run in his frail condition. "The monsters are coming for us and you just care about hurting the girl?!" Seymour shouted angrily, shocking the others.

Adacia
I heard Mr Jakobben shouting in the main tunnel, but didn't think much of it. Sure, I was worried about him, but there were other people with him, probably much more qualified to deal with him than I was. I shook it off and continued speaking to Damien. "Just a friend that she's completely in love with, and now you can share the self-appointed 'duty' to protect her. Not just between the two of you; between you, Jason, and Raychelle. She'll be a lot happier if you lay off a bit."

Damien: I clench my hands. "And was Jason there when her parents died?" I almost screamed. "Was he there when they lay at her feet and did he watch when their blood pooled on the floor? Were you too young to do a damn thing about it, but too shocked to take her away, to hide her?" I swallow, calming down. "This is how I make up for letting her see that. This is how I make up for not taking her away the minute they committed suicide. I don't want someone else repaying something I am in debt to. This is my job."

Jason: I watched Seymour move frantically about. Everyone had gone silent. I went over quietly and grabbed Ray's hand.

Ray: I frown, pulling him closer. "We're all insane. No one's thinking anything through."

Adacia
I was taken aback by his comment. Ray'd told me that her parents were dead, but she never mentioned they committed suicide. My tone softened as I spoke now. "I'm sorry that your parents are gone, mine are too. But their death was not your fault, or Ray's, you don't owe anything for something that was out of your control. Believe me, blaming yourself will get you nowhere." I could feel a tear stream down my face.

Albert
I threw the worthless girl on the cold, marble floor and bowed before the Queen's throne. "Your Highness, here is the victim you asked for."

"Perfect, I'm going to have fun with this one." she replied with a crude smile towards the young lady on the floor. She was crying and screaming, begging for her life, not that she had anything to live for. She wasn't worthy of her life, or perhaps she was, perhaps that's why the Queen took so much delight in the sport of killing.

Damien: I snort and turn away. "No, it's just my fault she saw it," I mutter bitterly.

Adacia
I wasn't sure if I was meant to hear Damien's comment, but Gloranti demons had keen hearing. I was only half Gloranti, but I inherited the gene. I gently touched his shoulder. "Hey, you can't blame yourself for what your parents did, or for the fact that your sister saw. If anything, it's your parents' fault, they killed themselves even though they had two young children. You couldn't have predicted that."

Damien: I raise an eyebrow. "Really? Are you so sure I just didn't pay attention?"

Dinner.

Adacia
"You're only human." I reconsidered my comment. "Er, you were only human."

Damien: "I became a vampire to protect her." I sigh. "That turned out great. I hate who I am and it was useless to try and protect her."