The Prisoners: Fight the Tarrasque

[Sage]

She didn’t know how long she was asleep when Ander woke her and asked about Vegeta-Sei. It could have been a few minutes - she hoped, at least, that it was only a few minutes - or it could have been hours. All she knew what that she still felt like shit.

“When... did you want to go?” she managed, still not really sure what to make of the question. She stretched her back and let out a muffled moan, trying desperately to wake up. “I’m not sure I would make much of a tour guide, though... I... I didn’t really leave the palace much after...”

“I understand,” Ander interjected, filling the awkward silence. “That’s fine. You’d still be more familiar than I would,” the thief explained. “Come on,” he insisted after Sage stayed silent a while. “You said yourself that things were really complicated here. Maybe a trip home would help you to clear your head.”

“Okay, okay...” Sage conceded, and seemed to strain mightily to look up into Ander’s eyes for a moment, with something besides the typical exhaustion and pain etched into her vibrant corals. “A-And you said I was a terrible liar.”

“What?” Ander replied almost immediately, a big, goofy grin plastered on his face to cover up the raging mental torrent whirling just beyond his facade. Had she found him out? Maybe she really was toying with him this whole time!

“You just don’t want to go alone,” Sage declared, a look of triumph on her otherwise tired-looking countenance.

Or, maybe she really was that naive. Maybe.

“Uh... yeah, you found me out,” the nomad lamely pretended to admit. “So, how about it? We’re going to Vegeta-Sei?”

“Okay, but, I have to do some stuff before-”

“That’s fine,” Ander interrupted. “And, if you need help, you know, finding Sol...”

“Yeah...” Sage wiggled away from him at the thought, and hugged herself tightly, her eyes suddenly alight with her usual pained expression. But her face suddenly switched to a look of confusion, and then a look of shock, as an idea suddenly crossed her mind. “Hey,” she abruptly said to Ander, turning to face him.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve told you all this stuff, and- wait,” she suddenly shook her head and closed her eyes to gather her thoughts. After a moment, her eyes opened and fixated on Ander’s icy blues. “You know so much about me, now, and I don’t know anything about you. I...” the girl looked away for a moment, in hesitation. “I honestly don’t know why I feel like I can trust you. I-I don’t... mean that... I mean- I don’t really trust anybody. I don’t like talking about me. I can’t figure out why I told you these things- why am I even saying this?” Sage shook her head again and huffed in frustration. Why was she saying this? “I... would feel better, I think, if I knew something about you. Where are you from? What’s it like growing up on Earth? How come you became a thief? Why do you have so much against Kaden? Are you-”

“Okaaay, someone’s waking up,” Ander joked. Sage made to protest but cut herself off when she realized what he had said. The desert dweller thought he might have heard the girl mutter for him to shut up, but he couldn’t be certain as she curled up on the ice beneath her, as though it were no big deal. “Anyway, those are a lot of questions. How about I start where I grew up?” he offered. Sage simply nodded, her eyes no longer open. Ander smirked. It’d make controlling the direction of the conversation easier - not that it had been particularly hard yet.

“Okay,” he began. “I grew up in a little village in the desert, in a... secluded group called the Anati.”

“...Is that like a tribe?” the question was innocent but Ander could still feel the barbs.

“Uh... yeah... it’s... like a tribe,” he breathed. “Anyway, I grew up in a place called Tyrl, a little village. That’s where I started training my metal binding. See, my family owned a metalworking business, and I trained with the scrap metal. I picked it up as a kid, you know. I could easily build you a bicycle with tools, but when I was a kid, I figured it was more fun to just will the metal into that shape,” he explained, his eyes roving over the vast, monochrome landscape. He wondered if he felt the need to one-up Sage’s innate talents, or if he was just changing the story so she wouldn’t actually have a lead if she ever turned on him. He decided it must have been the latter.

“Y-You worked with metal?” Sage murmured. “I thought you said you lived in a tribe.”

“We...” Ander blinked, and then rubbed his eyes. “We weren’t savages,” he said with more than a hint of annoyance, but the girl was simply too tired to pick up on it. “We were more like... a civilization in antiquity. We had established rules of law and commerce, trade routes, entertainment, education. We weren’t living in mud huts.”

“Oh... sorry...”

“Yeah, well. Anyway, I moved. I wanted to become a warrior, so I moved to Dürren. The best combat schools were in Dürren,” Ander explained, weaving a little truth into the lie he carefully constructed. “So, I studied. Got a job. Actually, I was an athlete. We played a game called breakball, ever heard of it?”

“Mm... no,” Sage admitted.

“Well, I joined Sandstorm, the most prestigious team in the league,” Ander explained. “Anyway, breakball is like... what’s that called- football. Kind of. Except that in breakball, you can use ki and elemental powers, and the ball and the field are weapons. It’s way more intense,” Ander explained. That part was true. “I started out a little slow but once I got the hang of it, it was awesome,” he grinned, not that Sage could see it. “I became the team captain in six months, and MVP of the league the same season I became captain. That year, we were undefeated,” he boasted, having switched gears from the ‘truth’ portion of his story. “Well, I got so wrapped up in breakball, that I almost didn’t have time for my training. You know, parties, girls, that sort of thing. Breakball was a really big thing in Dürren. Actually, all over the Anati region.”

“Oh,” Sage mumbled. “So then what happened?”

“Well, I managed to finish my training, and became a full-fledged warrior. But, then some stuff started happening. A rebellion broke out. I left Dürren to stop them. After I was finished, I went after the dragonballs,” Ander declared, idly scratching his arm. He coughed sharply, and then leaned back against the wall behind him.

“But... why didn’t you go back?”

“Huh?”

“When you stopped the rebels,” Sage muttered. “Why didn’t you go back to Dürren?”

“Because I wanted to go after the dragonballs,” Ander matter-of-factly replied.

“But...” the girl paused. She wanted to know what had made him so bitter. He seemed so... angry... all the time. Quietly angry. A star athlete and a war hero shouldn’t be so bitter, should he? What had he seen during that rebellion. What had changed him? She gazed up at the man sitting next to her. “What happened when-” Sage cut herself off as she caught Ander’s eyes. Something seemed... amiss. “Never mind,” she decided, not wanting to hurt the dark haired boy.

“So, yeah...” he sighed. “So, the owner of this mansion, what do you think about him?”

“Him? Do... you mean Yuffith? She’s alright, I think,” the girl shifted her weight to more easily look up at Ander. “Why, did she do something-”

“No. Just thinking, maybe she’s got a spare bed you could sleep on, or something,” Ander got up with a slight groan. “Come on,” he added, reaching a had out to Sage, who reluctantly took it. The metal binder hauled the girl to her feet, and already moved a hand to her shoulder before she stumbled to steady her predictably poor balance. “Let’s go find you a better place to crash.”

“That sounds-” despite Ander’s help, Sage found herself falling to the ground with him in tow, as a thunderous crash seemingly erupted from all around them, shaking the mansion and splitting the frozen earth. A blood-curdling roar thundered so loud, the ice witch could feel it in her chest. Despite her exhaustion, she forced herself to her feet in time with Ander, and the bandit took her by the wrist and led her around the building, in search of what that horrible sound belonged to.

As they made their way to the front of the mansion, however, neither could be prepared for what waited for them in the shanty town in the distance. Sage gasped, Ander said nothing. Both of them stood side-by-side, frozen by shock.

An enormous, monstrous creature with spines and horns, teeth and claws roared and thrashed about, shattering entire blocks as though they were simply card houses. Almost immediately, fluffy, white snow flakes began to swirl about. “I- I’ve never... it’s... what is that?”

Fear and adrenaline erased her feelings of exhaustion, though she could still feel throughout her entire body. She was not fit to fight - especially not when the thing she was fighting was the size of an apartment building.

“I don’t know...” Ander mumbled, before he suddenly went rigid at the sight of something Sage couldn’t make out. Finally, Sage followed his gaze, and she gasped a second time.

“There’s... there’s people down there!” Sage exclaimed. The girl broke her wrist free of Ander’s grip, and bolted toward the two or three people who seemed to be... to be... Sage wasn’t sure. Panicking, maybe. What was she doing?! This thing was a monstrosity; clearly the girl would be powerless to stop it, and yet she was rushing in after a group of people who might even be hostile to her to help them.

Sage’s chest began to burn as she furiously pumped her legs across the desert, under the harsh sun. Sweat poured from her, but she forced herself ahead, despite her brain constantly screaming at her to turn and flee. The monster was big and huge and obviously pissed off, and it was busy smashing the shanty town. Too busy to notice her if she left now.

She didn’t know if Ander was behind her, and was too scared to steal a glance over her shoulder, for fear that the gigantic, Godzilla-like creature might belch a ball of fire at her when she wasn’t looking. Another, thunderous roar rang out, so loud and heavy in the air that it caused Sage to stumble. For an instant, she took a knee, but forced herself ahead, back into a wild sprint, cursing the searing pain flaring across her chest as each breath became more and more difficult to take than the last.

Finally, she could make out the figures in the distance. Yuffith, and the elf-man- Sage had forgotten his name - and... a woman. Sage wasn’t sure who.

“Mixie! Take Yuffith and get out of here, now!” shouted the elf. “Get out of here! Run!!”

The two women suddenly bolted. The one called ‘Mixie’ seemed to be escorting Yuffith away. Sage hoped she would be safe, but the girl seemed to trust the elf-man, so Mixie must have been a sound choice. But Sage was still now almost immediately in front of a monster.

“Wh-” the comical looking man stammered as Sage ran up to the enormous pile of weapons he had spawned. The girl stumbled and leaned heavily against them, trying to catch her breath. “Where- where is everyone else?!” he all but shrieked.