Another slipper flew at the group leader’s face before he could fully erect himself onto his knees. It elicited a yelp of pain as he hid his injured face in his hands, rolling away from the boy he had brutalised with his companions.

“What in the hell?” one of the boy's lackeys exclaimed as all four subordinates turned to see where the slipper had come from. To their surprise, they saw a young woman stomping towards them from the shore.

Anwen’s eyebrows were lowered, lips tightened and trembling fists tightened at her sides. She grabbed one of the minions by the collar of the shirt with the strength of someone twice her size. She dragged the flailing boy about 10 feet before dropping him and kicking him twice in the ribs, causing him to scream in agony. Of course, it didn’t break any bones, but the pain was immense.

“Should we… stop her?” Ivan asked as he and Stefan looked on.

“No, let her,” Stefan answered with a smirk. “It’s fun seeing her mad sometimes.”

She quickly returned to the other boys as one of the bullies attempted to run away. She wrapped her arms around his slightly smaller body like a cobra and slammed him to the ground, knocking the wind out of him as he begged the air to breath. The remaining boy was bold as he tried to approach the first boy Anwen assaulted, but she effortlessly kicked him in the groin with her powerful artificial leg before pushing him to the ground.

“What in the world?” Ivan gasped. “I know they’re stupid kids, but I didn’t think she could throw them around so easily.”

“That’s what happens when you have Gareth Koppel for a father.” Stefan shrugged.

Anwen approached the group leader once again as he blinked away the stinging in his eyes caused by the girl’s slippers. They were red and she figured he had bawling. She crouched next to him and forced him to face the boy he and his friends were harassing.

“Apologise to him.” she spoke sternly as she gripped one of his shoulders with the strength of an ox.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Ilias.” the boy bowed slightly, an action meant to show respect to a much older person according to customs in the south.

“That’s what I wanted to hear. Now, this will be the very last time you mess around with him. Otherwise…”

Anwen leaned into the boy’s ear so close her lips almost touched it.

“…I’ll kill you and your friends.”

Panting with genuine fear, he nodded vigorously, refusing to make eye contact with either Anwen or Ilias, the boy he would never approach again.

“Yes, Ma’am.” he conceded.

“Good,” Anwen said, slowly releasing her grip on his shoulder. “Now go get your stupid little friends and scram.”

The boy dashed as soon as Anwen’s hand left it, racing to meet with his friends who were all horrified. She got to her feet and dusted the sand off of her pyjama-like trousers. Relaxing her shoulders, she displayed a hand towards Ilias.

“You alright, pal?” she spoke with a genuine smile blooming with warmth and humility, a complete turnaround from the anger she’d just unleashed against four boys his own age. He grinned back as he took the hand given to him, being hauled onto his feet.

“I’m okay, miss. I can’t thank you enough for what you did. Those guys have been messing with me for more than a year now.”

“Rest assured, they’ll be scared to even look at you now. And please, don’t call me miss. I’m only a few years older than you. The name’s Amara.”

“G-Good to meet ya, Amara. I’m Ilias,” Ilias shook the girl’s hand, starstruck. In his eyes, she was already the strongest person he’d ever known. “And those are…?”

She turned to look at the two foreigners the boy pointed at as they jogged up to him.

“Those…” she said. “They’re travelling with me.”

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She refused to call them slaves even though she guessed that the title was all the boy could’ve known northerners like them in the south to be. They weren’t slaves and she wouldn’t call them such titles without necessity.

Ilias’ cheeks reddened with shyness as Stefan and Ilias approached him and Anwen.

“Stefan, Ivan, this is our new friend Ilias.” Anwen introduced the two young men to the boy. They introduced their names respectively without giving away their actual identities.

“W-Would y’all like to stay over at my home for a little bit? Please, it’s the least I could do.”

Anwen was astonished by the level of meekness and kindness the boy exhibited. She couldn’t refuse, so she accepted the boy’s offer. But still, she wondered how he got into the dilemma he’d found himself in from a year earlier.

“Oh, take these before we go.” Stefan said, before dropping Anwen’s slippers in front of her. She thanked him before putting them on. At the same time, Ilias retrieved a small net which could only be assumed was used for fishing.

Anwen strolled towards the car before Ilias tapped her on the shoulder.

“Oh, we don’t need to drive,” he said. “I only live a few minutes’ walk down that way. You can leave it here, no one will touch it.”

She trusted the boy’s assurances and followed him with Stefan and Ivan up a road that sloped upwards.

“So what brings you folks to our quiet town?” Ilias asked as he led the way.

“Some work assigned to me by my boss,” Anwen quickly made up a lie, much to her reluctance. She trusted the boy but could not let her words fall on the wrong ears. “You heard of Lord Astor?”

“I heard that guy keeps the slaves he buys instead of selling them to Mars or Titan,” Ilias parroted the sayings of the adults around him. “Now we know what he does with them, I think.”

“Yeah,” Anwen smiled. “I work for him, and Stefan and Ivan here are helping me.”

“You think he would welcome me if I went to him and asked for a job?” Ilias turned his head, having no need to keep staring at the cobblestone road as he’d memorised it like the back of his hand.

“P-Probably.” Anwen shrugged. “I don’t know him too well, to be honest.”

“Good. It’ll give me a reason to leave this rotten town when I’m older.”

The trio and their young host arrived in front of one out of many wooden houses on sturdy stilts in a humble neighbourhood. The homes were built in such a way that it protected them during the yearly cyclones that hit the area. The dwellers were not necessarily poor, but they couldn’t afford to rebuild an ordinary on-ground house year after year.

“Wait down here for a bit,” Ilias instructed his new guests politely at the bottom of the house. “I’ll have to talk with my ma first. She won’t bite, though. I just don’t want to surprise her.”

Ilias climbed the twelve-foot ladder and stood on the platform that surrounded the elevated home. He knocked twice and was quickly answered. The fairly young woman about the same age as Jay shared her son’s black, wavy hair and general face shape, but that was as far as their similarities went. Despite his young age, he was nearly taller than her, and she didn’t share his beige skin or emerald eyes. Her features were darker in every aspect. In fact, as Anwen snuck a peek at them from below, she realized that Ilias didn’t really look like a southerner. Not a full-blooded one, anyway.

“Did you get into another scuffle again?” the mother inspected her son’s form. “Let me see your face.”

She took his head in her hands, turning it slowly to check for any injuries. The boy did not object as he knew why she was inspecting him.

“I’m fine, Ma.” he tried to relieve her worries.

“You always say you’re fine, yet you leave the house without me almost every morning and you come back at dusk looking like a busted little coconut. What happened this time? Why are you suddenly fine today?”

“I ran into some great people, Ma. They saved me. Would you like to see them?”

Ilias’ mother raised a brow, intrigued as to who could’ve suddenly saved her son after he’d had to face a year of abuse from the day he was required by the Titanian colonial government to work. But she wasn’t suspicious, so she stepped to the edge of the platform and peered down to the ground.

“Well? Don’t just stand there!” she spoke enthusiastically with her fists on her hips. “Come on up!”

“It’s a real pleasure, ma’am,” Anwen, in her act as ‘Amara’, spoke in the thickest southerner accent she could fake. “I couldn’t bear to see Ilias get thrown around and—

The girl was yanked toward the woman with her strong arms, embracing her in a tight hug.

“You’re the only one in an entire year who’s done anything to keep my boy safe. You’re a hero, Amara.”

“I…” Anwen trailed off, unsure of how to respond to the unexpected gesture. “It means a lot, ma’am. I just did what I knew was right.”

She hugged Ilias’ mother back, before retracting. Ilias explained the trio’s purpose for being in Chitran that day, and their chance encounter with him. His mother listened attentively as he introduced everyone to her.

“Well, that explains why we have a couple of northerners all the way down here. Ya sure don’t see that everyday. I would love to hear more from y’all,” she said, turning around to open the front door. “Can’t have the neighbours listening to your amazing stories. Come inside--”

A thought came to her before she fully opened the door. She whipped her head to the side, locking eyes with Stefan. She stared daggers into his soul, but not in a menacing way. She had just realized something about the boy. Something that was now plainly obvious to her, but no one else. Not even Ilias. Her body turned around to face the same direction as her head.

“Honey, you said your name was Stefan, right?” Ilias’ mother looked lost in the boy’s eyes.

“Y-Yes, ma’am.” he nodded despite how suddenly awkward the situation had become.

“Gareth Koppel,” she muttered. “Stefan, who is Gareth Koppel to you?”