The Stormfather

"What else is there that we can do?" Mark? Where are you? The voice of his Spren projected into his mind. "C- Captured. There were more of those Marksmen, or whatever they call themselves. G- Go get Adris, or something." They can't see me. "Damn it." He looked at Marewill. "It's my Spren. No one else is able to see, him, so he can't warn the others about these scumbags or get them to help us." If I can find someone with Life Sense from Breath, or a Mafah'liki, maybe. "A Ma-what?" Those Horneaters who can see spren. "Oh. Well, try. Maybe go to the police station. They might have someone." I'll try. "Is there any way we can get word out of here to get help?" He asks Marewill

"Guess I didn't get all of them." He lifted one hand. "Crap. I can't summon my Blade through the aluminum." He groaned. "Thought I'd get a break, after the rebellion. Nope. Straight into another bloody fight."

Eventually, Mark woke up. ”Wh- oh, rusts.”

He wasn’t injured, though his hands were encased in aluminum gloves.

Eventually, she was shoved foreword and heard a door close behind her. Someone grabbed the bag from her head, showing her that she was in a dimly lit building, with walls that were wooden and had little gaps in them, as if they had been slowly broken over time. A sort of cell had been built in a corner of this building, which is where she was. On the ground beside her was an unconscious Mark.

They walked for around twenty minutes, eventually getting back to streets. After that, there was the sound of a door opening. There was a long moment of precise walking instructions from the people to navigate Marewill through whatever building she had just walked up to.

"I don't need to answer you, you-" He was cut off. "Perr. Calm. Down. Follow the plan." "Oh. Yeah." He turned Marewill in a different direction. She could tell that she wasn't walking on a street anymore, but grass and dirt.

"Aw, you wanted to save your family? How cute. Turns out this isn't a children's story. Tributes die. Tributes are supposed to die. Your group killed dozens of Peacekeepers. Maybe this part wasn't you, but it was certainly the Edgedancer. It left a huge hole in the Peacekeeper system. Government workers were killed without guards. Crime infested streets were left without officers to keep watch over. Maybe we got rid of a few bad people, but at what cost? It cost the world a lot, because of what your group did." A different voice spoke. "Calm down, Perr. We're not here to pick a fight."

"You shouldn't have been leaving the arena in the first place. Tributes are meant to die. That's why they exist. Why did you volunteer to go into the games if you weren't willing to accept that?"

“So the way to stop death was to kill a bunch of people? The way to stop tragedy was homicide?”

“Then you know how you made it worse.” The group kept walking, and Marewill could hear some whispered instructions from the leader to the others.

“Worse. Maybe it made some thing better, but people died during that rebellion. People who were never cared for, never given a proper funeral. They were thrown in the river. Everything is worse. You should know how bad it is to lose a father.”

"It's not only you. It's all of your little group. You tributes just couldn't do what they were supposed to. They just had to make everything worse with a revolution."

"Vengeance."

"Anyone have a bag?" "Yeah, one sec. Can someone take my lunch in their pack?" One of them lifted a few containers out of a bag. The leader sighed heavily. "Alright. Put the bag over her head." He lifted a walkie-talkie from his belt. "Make sure there isn't anyone in this part of the forest. We're going to cut through the park." There was a response that sounded affirmative, but the sound quality was so bad, it was hard to tell. One of them plopped a brown sac on Mare's head. They began poking her and speaking to get her to not crash into stuff as they started walking.

"Wh-" He groaned. "Seriously?" The rest of them closed in slowly, tightening a vaguely circle shaped area around Marewill.

The people stepped towards her. "Do you have any weapons on you?" One of them asked, glancing around nervously. "Where are the other tributes?" One of them grabbed his shoulder from behind. "We already got the Dancer. You don't need to keep checking over your shoulder for him." "My Da thought he had him when it was only Mark and the tributes against over fifty of them. I'm not letting him kill another of my family." A few of the people around chuckled at him, though the one at his side nodded. They raised their voice to speak to the group. "Someone make sure that the kid has really left! Another person, stay here and watch for what the tributes do next. Radio back any info." Two people quickly got to work. "Someone else, go up ahead and find us a clear route back to base. I don't want to get spotted in the street." One of them nodded and launched into the sky, clearly a coinshot. The apparent leader of the group, or at least the one of them smart enough to give commands to the others, lifted a metal water bottle from a small pack on his back, feigning to take a drink. He swung it hard at Marewill's head in an attempt to knock her unconscious.

I hope not! TPBM Doesn't know what their science class entails yet

The sticks didn’t like it.

YES tpbm likes to obsessively make dnd campaigns

It's the morning right before I go to school. So... No. TPBM Should be at school already.

"Damn. Maybe we should've been whispering." From around Marewill, several people emerged from hiding places, behind houses and bushes, some climbing off of nearby roofs. A few of them had guns, but they were mostly holding knives and small weapons. "Either you can come with us, or I'll send them after the kid."

"We have eyes on her." "What about the child?" "We keep to the plan." "Fine. But I'm not the one who has to deal with the kid." "Fine. Is Ardal's group in?" "Yes. The coinshot was able to pop the window lock open. They climbed in." "And we've taken Mattise?" "Yes. Although, he did kill eleve-" "I don't want to hear about losses." "Yes. We captured Mattise." "You lead them for now. I'm going to call the boss." "Yes, Sir."

Mark made his way over to the Steele base, returning to his regular breathing rhythm. Slowly. He paused before entering the door, knowing that there would probably be several dozen guns aimed at it, and instead rapped his knuckles on the window. "It's Mark!" He shouted. There was some muffled movement from inside, and the door swung open. Adris nodded to him. "Everything's fine." Mark said. "I got them out on the road. They were headed for the Tribute's House." Adris nodded. "Good. Are you hurt?" his speech was still slightly slurred from the alchohol. "No. I'm out of light, though." Mark grimaced. "And brass." "Damn. We can get you some more brass fairly easily, though." Adris stepped inside. "Come in. I don't like the look of us standing outside without any cover." Mark stepped inside, carefully avoiding the spikes that had been set at knee height just through the door. He also noticed multiple knives on strings in various places, hooked on the cieling in a way that they could all be dropped simultaneously. "We may have gone overboard." "I was gone for like 10 minutes!" Mark exclaimed. "Them was a long ten minutes, Matt." One of the Steeles said from behind an overturned table. "The name's Mark, Jirrahei." "I'm pretty durned sure that yer' parents named you Mattise, lad." "My name. Is. Mark." "Okay, okay." Adris pulled Mark to the side and up the stairs. "Is there anything else?" He asked. "No. I just wanted to make sure you didn't spend hours pointing guns at those doors. I mean, there's no one else who's coming to attack us." Adris grimaced. "You better be right. How many of em' did you fight?" "Eleven." Mark responded. "There're many more than eleven that we've seen, son." Adris said. "More than a score of the rusting cremlings, from what I've seen." "We've seen the financial records. The only hired the Marksmen to fight, only payed for weapons for them." Mark said. "Ah. Good." Adris nodded. "Want a drink?" "No. And you are not having any more." Mark said sternly. "You've had far too much today, Adris." "So, where're you off to next?" "I'm gonna clean the blood off my shirt and-" Mark looked down and groaned. "I think I need a new shirt." "Yeah. You definitely do." "Then I'm going to head back to my house, and try to figure out what in hell is going on with these people." ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ A few hours later, Mark, having cleaned up and grabbed a new set of clothes from his house, was wandering his way through the streets near his house. Why was the alleyway marked on their map as well? Why not my own house, where I live? None of this makes any sense! He paused to kick a pebble. It kinda hurt his toe. "Do they not even pay the people who were harassing the Steeles before?" He muttered. There was nothing on the financial records about that, unless the construction workers are doing that instead of actual construction. But the company is fairly reputable, and they get things done. Maybe they're getting payed extra? But they're not! They are making slightly livable salaries. It doesn't make any sense. Somehow, they are paying these people outside of their overall budget, getting the money from nonexistence, and using it to annoy but not kill or arrest us. What is there goal? To confuse me? Why did they put so much money into equiping the Marksmen, when the weapons they had didn't account for that cost? Do they spend that much on ammunition? Or... "Oh, damn it." Was what they had found even real? You need to get bac- "I know!" Mark turned and dashed back towards the Steele base. He stumbled over something, an outstreched gun barrel that he hadn't seen, and tumbled to the ground. "Uh oh." Something hit the back of his head, and everything went black.