“You have a lot of fucking nerve to attack my men jackass.” The ache-faced idiot that I guess is the leader of the four other nerdowells sneers at me. Unlike the others he looks like he’s never gotten rough with another kid down in here like the rest of us. Even his clothes are better looking than the other kids. As if they could have been relatively new while the others look like they had patched theirs back together after every rip and tear over the years.
If I had to guess I’d say he was either a kid to a blade or knew enough to trick a couple of idiots to follow him around.
“Are you going the say something or are you going to keep looking at me like a fucking retard!”
“What do you have to gain?” At this his eyes squint in confusion and pulls his head back an inch and sputters a “What?” So it’s safe to say that he’s an idiot, and if he’s an idiot then the rest of his lackies have to be too.
“I said, ‘What do you have to gain?’ I mean it’s a simple question. Though I guess some snot nosed brat wouldn't know jack considering that your all dumb enough to come after me on my own turf.” Hopefully he falls for my bluff. Though considering he was dumb enough to even enter this dump, he either knows of the danger and choose to ignore it or is ignorant of it.
At this he starts grinning like a fool.
“You’re calling me a kid tinkertot? Now, I’ll have you know I'm 15 and I take that personally.” He examines me and I start to feel a shiver crawl down my spine.
“Besides we already know you don’t have a piece on you considering that you just came back from the watch cells, that there’s five of us and only one of you and unlike you we actually have the strength to take you on. So ya, I’d say it’s a safe bet that we can take care of you.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I am. My dad made sure of that.”
Shit I guess I was wrong and he is the kid to some blade. I need to get away as quickly as possible!
I try to make a break for it running toward the biggest of the kids whose nose appears to be broken. As I duck under his arms reaching out to grab me something strikes me in the back of my head making me see stars for a moment and I tumble.
When the big kid grabs my leg and pulls me back and I start to recover from my haze I realize that the leader shot me with a sling. He gives me a dirty look as if I was a jester and he, the king.
I’m fucked now. Gotta figure out how to get out of their encirclement. Once I’m past that and can get a running start I can easily lose these boneheads here.
“First we'll break your feet, then your legs, after that your hands and so on and so forth.” He says that as if he's done this before which I highly doubt but is entirely possible. Either way that only encourages me to get away more.
One of the boys next to him starts to say something
“Hey why don’t we have her.. ACK!”
He was immediately backhanded into silence.
“SHUT UP! I’M NOT DONE TALKING!!!”
He resumes as if nothing happened turning back toward me with a smile and a predatory look in his eyes. One that I am familiar with.
“Or we can all walk away happy. All you have to do is spread your legs for me and my boys as repayment for all the trouble you put us through. What with tracking you into this filth pile it’s the least you could do, don’t ya think?”
Uh oh, I don’t like this. I don’t like this one bit. In fact I dislike it so much I’m contemplating option one, but if he’s already going out and giving me a way out then It’s probably safe to say that no matter what I choose their going to rape me.
“I’m eight.” Hopefully he buys it. I mean i'm certainly the height of an eight year old and if you're far enough away it would be easy enough to confuse me with an eight year old.
“Nice try short stack, I’m not falling for that. Everyone knows you’re a dwarfling and that you’ve been kicking it for some time. Now get on your knees.”
“I think we got off on the wrong..”
“I said, 'Get. On. Your. Knees.’” He responds with a dark undertone in his voice promising violence should I ignore his warning.
Alright, that failed now time for plan B. I hate myself for even thinking about it already. As I get on my knees with only a slight tremble the others close the distance so that they can watch the show from a better angle. Already I feel disgusted with myself.
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“Hey back the fuck off idiots! You can have your turn AFTER I'm done with her.” He then gives me the biggest fucking sneer I’ve ever seen and never in my life have I hated someone more than him.
As I start to unbuckle his belt he decides to grab the back of my head and curl his fingers through my hair and that’s when I lose it. I look up directly into his eyes and give him the best, most sincere smile I possibly can at this moment. That's when I give in the most unforgiving uppercut of his life directly into the center of his legs and hear a wet pop noise as a reward.
“...aaaAAH FUCK!!’ While he’s paralized in pain and his grip on me loosens I start to book it past him as he begins to vomit leaving behind the creeps who up until this point were watching in amusement now watch on in shock. “FUCKING GET HER YOU IDIOTS!!!” That kicks them out of their stupor and unfortunately only one of them decides to check on their boss while the other three begin to make for me and since they have longer legs they slowly begin to gain ground.
Fortunately for me I know this place better than they ever will. As I pass a suspicious patch of orange garbage I lean forward, grab a fist sized rock (for me anyway) and turn around to see the biggest kid who looks to be at most 14 and the others behind can’t be far behind in age either. They’re unnaturally skinny which is all too common for kids growing up in the slums. Without hesitating I throw the rock as fast and as hard as I can at the garbage pile next to the kids who followed me. It hits something fragile in there (my guess would be glass) and proply explodes blinding us in a world of sound and sending metal shrapnel in all directions.
One of the boys dies instantly with a large piece going right into his eye, a few in what I guess are his lungs and a small piece into the side of his neck. The other boy who was closest to the blast probably wishes he was dead right now. “...Oh…oh gods, that hurts, IT HURTS, IT HURTS, IT HURRRTTTS…” His leg is mangled looking like a bloody rose bush with the shrapnel sticking out like thorns.
The last boy looks to be in shock seeing as he’s reaching for his face and finding that his cheek on one side of his face has been sliced clean though from lip all the way to ear with only to find out that the upper half of his hand is gone. His eyes then roll back up into his head and proceeds to lean back, landing skull first onto a rock to begin a very violent seizure.
Still shell shocked I barely realize that I have shards of metal sticking out of my arm. As I raise my arm to try and pull them out I notice the boss and his goons looking at me with horror which then morphs into disgust and settles onto hate. Instead of coming for me they make a beeline for an exit to this hell hole, turning down a path I lose sight of and wonder what I should do now.
Only now do I realize that my ears are ringing and I figure out that the leader of the boys was trying to say something but I couldn’t hear it. Walking forward toward the boy with the seizure I watch with fascination and dawning horror at what I did. I would call the guard but I fear if I do they’d believe that I killed them in cold blood. I already know the boy will die, he’s lost too much blood and his movements are slowing. ‘Or is he simply locking up?’ Not sure what to do, I check on the other boy with the shredded leg. “Oh” It appears he passed out. ‘No, he’s not breathing.’ Continuing onward I head toward the third and final boy and look into his unmoving glassy eye gazing into the sky.
I don’t know how long I stood there, I only know that I only start moving when I can feel the pain in my arm and remember that I was caught in the blast too. I know that you aren’t supposed to pull things out when they pierce into you, but the urge to do so is unbearable. The foreignness of it drives me back into the present and I remember why I did it.
I wanted to get rid of them. Make them go away by any means necessary. I got what I wanted in the worst way possible. Unable to stomach it, I'm reunited with today’s breakfast and whenever I look back on the carnage I’m hit with a wave of nausea that forces me to void the contents of my stomach even long after I had to have thrown up everything I possibly could have eaten that week.
I don’t know how long this continued but when the pain in my arm became known to me I remembered that I was in the blast radius as well. I probably needed medical attention but I just didn’t care at the moment. After a while I decided I needed to get home and treat my wounds before I lose the strength to even get home anymore.
Traveling the maze, dodging the traps and avoiding the wildlife turned out to be extra difficult with a few extra pounds of metal embedded in your arm though that might be the blood lost making me feel ten times heavier than I normally would feel like.. At this point everything starts to get hazy and I can’t recall how I got to my hideaway in the heap. At one of the bigger trash mounds there’s a tunnel covered over with a few sheets of broken plywood and sheet metal. I begin to crawl into a small opening hidden behind a few trash bags filled with nothing but paper and a heavy rock.
As I navigate the tunnel leading deeper underground I begin to notice the air getting staler but also noticeably better at the same time. That means I need to be even more careful now. When I reach a slight bend in the path that any normal human would find to be cramped I begin to hug the right wall until I’m sure that I passed the first danger. Unfortunately that only means it’s only going to get harder from here. As I delve deeper into the bowels of my home I hop across what appears to be a normal scrap of metal no bigger than my hand unlike the many other pieces that are littered around the entirety of the tunnel.
While avoiding several other traps, my head starts to feel at this point it’s going to implode and that’s when I see it. The door. My door. Not so dissimilar to a vault door. As I near I begin to slow my pace only to jump about a foot forward as I’m within arms reach of it. Then I begin to turn the combination, doing my best not to get it wrong on my first try, which is extra hard with my shaking hands and how I suddenly start to feel so cold. After that I apply my mana signature into the rune on the door frame next to the handle. That’s when I begin to start losing strength to my whole body and lean on the door to avoid falling onto the ground. When I regain enough strength to spin the safe handle exactly four times to the left and twice to the right does it finally unlock and allow me to enter. And as I take my first step into my home the world fades to black.