X'lian had gone back to studying Kazimir as the table delved into conversation once again. She hated it, how familiar he was and how she couldn't seem to place it.

She knew it wasn't from the prison, she'd seen him around a few times but hadn't cared enough to look close. Her fingers continued to skate along the surface of the table idly, brow crinkling in thought.

Outside of the prison perhaps? She had only interacted with her crew and conceited upper class members. He wasn't part of the former and hardly seemed like the latter.

There were eyes boring into her back and she cocked her head to the side quickly, staring. A human? She frowned, noting the distinct not human traits but not being able to place the secondary race quite yet. She knew of a few with those features. She smiled, a small thing really. It was not an inviting smile. It was vaguely a threat, vaguely a challenge.

X'lian turned back around, gaze flitting across Kazimir's features. Oh. Oh. Recognition flared up, followed by fury and a bitter sorrow for her deceased crew.

"Timony Gales, human. Age 33. He had two twins, about three years old and a wife. Have you ever had to tell children that their father had been murdered?" The name was rattled off quickly with all the practice of someone who said it often. It was said like a prayer, maybe it was one. "Rubith Kiln, Monir. She was thirteen, had been on the run for four years from a bad home life. I took her in with the promise of keeping her safe. You killed her." Her voice dropped into a venomous whisper and stood up abruptly, slamming a palm on the table.

"You killed them. Hu'ra Balit. Whispers of Cypress Groves, Cory James, you killed them."

Rhea's eyes widened and she swallowed her slop nervously, readjusting her grip on the spoon. "Guess the calm metal-folding session I had planned will have to be postponed, then?" She joked weakly.

When no one was foolish enough to laugh, Rhea slid her fingers up X'lian's wrist and rubbed soothing circles, knowing that it made her feel better when she had nightmares. She whispered, "You might want to calm down, X," despite her own number one moral being to never hurt or kill children.

There were fellow criminals now watching their table like vultures, eyes gleaming with excitement for a fight. "Let's not give the masses what they want. I'm sure there's a way we can be diplomatic with this," Rhea said to her cellmate in a hushed, steady voice.

As all of the levity was sucked out of the air and Kazimir returned X'Lian's gaze, he had to admit: he still didn't recognize her.

Not truly. Because if he had killed her family, he would've remembered her face, and the faces of those he'd killed. Their names would've been long forgotten because he was awful at remembering those, but he never forgot a face.

No. He knew her vaguely. In passing. Enough that it finally came back to him: she was part of the Crimson Hand - the thorn in the side of the mob. Years ago, he'd been tasked with "cutting off their fingers" and taking out important operatives, but that was almost eight or ten years ago. X'lian wasn't here when he arrived.

He had a fuzzy grid for the passing of years, but...

He always remembered a face. He would've remembered a 13-year-old girl, and he didn't.

This had to have been the work of his father. They looked similar enough, much to his chagrin. His father had more Amari in him than human, so he didn't age as quickly.

Kazimir stared. Intently.

In truth, Kazimir used to get into petty fights all the time. These days, he was trying to be more careful for Marius's sake - as a friend, and a cellmate. They'd previously discussed how Kazimir's actions reflected back on Marius for better or worse.

This, however, wasn't something petty, and it wasn't the first time someone singled him out personally because of his connection to the mob: whether something was his fault, or he was just an extension of it.

On the chance that his memory had failed him (and it wouldn't be the first time), he decided to risk it.

"How many years ago was this?" he asked.

Ace didn't know if they wanted to sit at this table anymore. They swallowed thickly, their eyes darting between X'lian and Kazimir. The air was already stale and dusty, but now it was laced with tension. Now, Ace was never against killing people by any means, but they didn't want any more trouble than they were already in. Being a part of any kind of fight wouldn't look good for Ace.

But they sure couldn't miss out on this! There was, of course, some intrigue to what their fellow inmates were talking about, and Ace was too curious to walk away now.

So they sat quietly, trying to stay as inconspicuous as possible while going to scoop up another spoonful of-

Great. Ace had bit off the end of their spoon again. So much for sharp teeth. Who needed those when they didn't even have to chew their food? Ace didn't bother mentioning it. They didn't want to spark more tension at the table.

edited

X'lian felt the calming fingers on her wrist and by the time Kazimir had spoke again, she had backed down slightly, still scowling.

"How long ago? You-" She snarled, a purely animalistic sound. Her form flickered, bones popping and cracking ominously from the sheer force she put into trying to change into her Void form. The dimmer held it back though, IGG had learnt their lesson from last time. X'lian had managed to gut two before they got her under control again.

Fury welled up in her, bubbling lava in her stomach and sharp poison in the back of her throat. "You killed them six years ago. You and that damn mob. I was stuck-" She rocked back on her heels, hands shaking as she sandwiched Rhea's hand in between them, as gently as she could even in her anger, "-for two years, granting you monsters wishes. I finally got out and now I'm stuck in this hellhole."

X'lian returned Rhea's hand to her, pressing fingers to her temple with a wince. Trying to shift left her dizzy and unstable, swaying lightly from side to side. Her fingers had transformed though, heavy talons resting against her forehead. Her eyes stung with unshed tears, free hand carving gouges into the table.

Rhea noticed her friend start to sway, and she stood, gently taking X'lian by the shoulders and pulling her to sit down. Worry was making it hard for her to think, but she rubbed soothing circles into X'lian's back until her talons relaxed on the table.

Rhea's gaze flicked to the other people at the table, noticing Ace staring exasperatedly at their now broken spoon. Rhea pulled out two new spoons and gave them to Ace, smiling slightly despite herself. Maybe there could be peace at this table once Kazimir and X'lian sorted out whatever this scary misunderstanding between them was. "Use them together," she suggested to the Kavi quietly, dipping the two spoons into the slop as one and offering it to Ace.

Kazimir hummed.

He had no dog in this fight.

"If so, I was here while that happened," he said lowly. "But I'm sure the mob did what you said."

He could imagine it: his father's hands crushing a man's skull, or electrocuting a young girl, just to get her out of the way. He'd done similar dirty work in his day, and he took no pride in it, now.

It was one of his greatest regrets: that his loyalty had been to the wrong thing, and he'd made it his everything. The mob had done nothing for him after he was caught, and it wasn't until it was too late that he'd realized none of them really cared for him. Not enough to get him out. Not enough to even try.

The whole "family" spin had been a lie, even when it was his actual family.

He sighed and poked at the remaining slop in his bowl. Maybe a spoonful was left. He scooped it up and swirled it in his spoon, looking down into it.

"I was their pet since I was born. I'm sorry they chained you too, and that, like me, you couldn't get free," he said. "Or... stay free."

X'lian settled back once again, anger diminishing as swiftly as it had risen up. It still simmered low in her gut, a bubbling raw wound that festered and blistered, but it was manageable. The Voidborn studied Kazimir with dull eyes.

"Then we are not too dissimilar, no?" She noted the hungry, eager stares from many of the inmates. They were hungry for action, for a fight and she now refused to give them the satisfaction. "I apologize, for my baseless accusations. I have ruined a perfectly fine meal."

Rhea gave her friend a sympathetic look. "The meal itself is terrible, but the conversation can be saved. You were right to worry he was the man who killed your family, and it's okay that you lashed out to see if that was the case." Her eyes flicked to examine Kazimir. "I think he understands," she continued softly.

Kazimir nodded as he finished off the lasr of his slop, emptying his bowl.

Eclipse frowned to herself in disappointment. She had greatly been looking forward to watching a fight just to see what everyone was capable of. She only vaguely knew what a few were capable of in terms of physical means and nearly nothing in mental means. However, she liked fights as long as they didn’t involve her as often times, both brains, physical strength, and skill shone through.

Oh well. She had a feeling that since a couple had noticed her watching, they would have dragged her into the fight some way or another. Particularly Helrock.

The claws though, Eclipse had noticed, were a very interesting part of the girl. She could shift to a creature with those claws so easily, it seemed as if her dimmer only just held back a full transformation. She was powerful, chalked full of promise to the brim. It made Eclipse quietly grin to herself just imagining the creature she could become with a full transformation.

With that noted, it nearly made Eclipse want to just give the girl a little nudge, something to push her over the edge. With a power like that, it would satisfy not only one, but potentially two of her own desires. She would see what the girl was capable of and prove her theory that somehow the dimmers could be overcome.

Somehow, some way, she would figure out a way to defeat the blasted dimmers that limited all she could do. Without them, she would know the deepest desires of every single person in the room. Their every whim and will would be hers to control and warp to her own means without them even knowing.

Her glory days were not gone though. As long as she breathed, her old glory grew farther away and her eclipse grew closer. The thing that men feared and trembled before. The one thing that was powerful enough to stop wars in an instant in its terror.

That would be Eclipse. She would strike the deepest, most animalistic sense of fear into the hearts of her enemies before rising to her new era of glory.

Her next step to that though would be finding a way to bend this girl to her will. She just had to figure out what she held the closest in this god forsaken compound.

And this, no brawls occurred in the cafeteria, much to the dismay of some and the relief of others. Prisoners were then dismissed to their cells, some to old cellmates, and some to new.

Helrock entered his new, but still boring, cell. He and his former cellmate fought a little too much, so they had decided to move him somewhere else. Not his fault she was a neak freak. Unfortunately, someone else was already in the cell, perched on the end of their metal bed.

Sitting in a squat, a blue-green skinned man peered up at Helrock with black eyes, and his mouth parted into a curious grin with sharp teeth.

"Helrock, I presume," he said.

Hell just grunted and laid on his bunk.

"They warned me you had trouble with your former cellmate," the man went on. "But I'm not worried about trouble. I'm Sy."

What was it with people being friendly? Disgusting. "Good for you, don't care, won't remember."

"Oh, it is quite good," Sy murmured, lithely twisting into a new position: bending backwards, so he was looking at Helrock upside-down. "What a shame, to have such a poor memory. Do all Xulian devote so little brainpower to remembrance?"

"Don't fish men have anything better to do?" Hell continued not to look at Sy, and just stared at the ceiling.

"Fish men," Sy repeated. "Perhaps."

As he'd stopped giving Sy attention, he did not see his next movements: but he heard the strange, faint smack of something like suction-cups moving up the wall.

And then Sy appeared overhead, amphibian-like hands and feet secured to the ceiling as he twisted his head around to stare down at Helrock with a neutral indifference.

"How badly do you itch to bleed?" Sy asked.

"How would you like your bones broken?" Hell scowled.

"Perhaps another time," Sy said, crawling across the ceiling. He popped his feet off and hung from the ceiling with both arms. "But I am curious: someone of your might would've killed many a man before ending up in here. How did someone like you get subdued?"

"How did a coward like you end up here? I'd think you'd have been a mile away from trouble once cops show up."

"Mistakes were made," Sy said. "Ones I will never repeat."

Sy's eyes landed on Helrock's broken carapace. He dropped to the floor.

"I'll admit I'm not a fighter by breed or by nature," Sy said. "But I've been here a long time. I can hold my own."

Hell just snorted.

"I take it you've been fighting all your life, then," Sy said. "You certainly look it."

"What does it take to shut a fish up?"

Sy was quiet for a moment as he crouched low to the floor.

"Enlighten me," Sy baited.

Hell turned his head enough to eye Sy. "With?"

Sy's eyes crinkled in a way that was sardonic. "Is that the punchline?"

Hell continued to watch him, deciding whether it would be worth it or not to move his entire body. "Get to it."

"I've been in solitary for twenty years," Sy confessed darkly. "I'm dying to feel something."

"Then punch a wall."

"That's what I've been doing," Sy answered.

"Then kick it."

Sy's dark eyes stared at Hell blankly for a moment with a dead-set focus. A few seconds of silence passed as the white uniformed guard passed their cell, walking at their usual, measured pace.

When the guard left their view, Sy launched into the air with the springy leap of a frog, spun in the air, and brought his heel down to Hell's face.

Hell grabbed his foot and pushed it upwards and away from his face. Sy's momentum took him to the wall beside him, and he latched onto it with three limbs, then leaped to the ceiling. From there, he dropped down. Hell shifted to more of a sitting position to smack him to the other side of the room.

Sy did, in fact, go flying, but instead of smacking like a wet towel on the hard wall, he sprung right back, with more power this time. Hell intended to swat him away like last time, but Sy somehow ducked his swipe mid-air.

Both of Sy's feet hit Hell's abdomen with a loud crack. Hell's back and head hit the wall, but the crack was from his mostly healed carapace being cracked again. Bastard.

Sy did a flip as he launched himself across the room and landed on all fours on his bed.

"Good idea," Sy said.

Hell was in action already, moving to punch him in the chest. Sy flew out of the way, and in the ensuing seconds, Sy bounced around the room like a projectile as Hell tried to land a hit. So, Hell changed his tactics from just trying to hit Sy, to maneuvering him to a corner.

After a few more leaps from the frog, he was finally trapped, up against the left corner of the back walls. Hell moved to throw a punch, his mechanical wings posed threateningly. He struck him in the abdomen, an eye for an eye, and again in his face.

As Sy curled over, the guards were finally spurred to action. The all-too familiar electric current radiated from his activated cuffs, causing his body to go rigid. The pain was enough to make him stumble backwards, and Sy collapsed to the floor.

"Cut it out!" the guard shouted behind the force-field barrier, wielding the remote to their cuffs.

Hell hit the side of his bed awkwardly, the edge jabbing into his side.

"Of course he fought his cellmate not even ten minutes after reassignment," a guard murmured behind them. Hell could hear the buzz of the force-field's interruption: the guards were entering.

"Stand down," one of the guards ordered. "We're taking you both to the medbay."

"You're not taking me anywhere." Hell hissed.

"Then we're taking him," the guard said, passing Hell to pick up Sy by the arms. The frog-man was still twitching from the electric current, and his body looked like it was seizing. "Stay here if you insist."

Hell was fine with that, and dragged himself onto his bed.

Sy was taken unceremoniously from the cell. The frog-man was in the pain he deserved... but also smirking? Psycho. He was as fishy as a person could possibly be.

The walk back to their cells was as stale and silent as always. Kazimir was led down the hall first, and Marius noticed that, at the end of their block, new faces were being led to the furthest two cells. A Xulian was being escorted into a cell where a Shah was already waiting, while Ace was already with a part-Wyver Marius had seen around before, but didn't know. He felt relieved that the kid hadn't been put with any of the inmates they were wary of. That could've been a disaster.

Kazimir was pushed in the moment the force-field wall dropped. Marius, however, was merely nudged in the shoulder. He was used to the difference in treatment-- an easy-to-notice trend that had been going on for years now-- and yet, it lit a spark of frustration in him each time. After he stepped forward, the force-field hummed back to life behind him, filling the space between them and the guard with a sheer, luminous shimmer.

Kazimir flopped back quickly onto his bed with a sigh.

"Been a while since I've seen someone that scared in here," he thought aloud.

Marius hummed in agreement, sitting down on his own bare-bones mattress and facing him. He crossed his legs as the back of his head found the wall.

"That was me once," he said. "Although I don't think I was as young as them. Or as skittish."

"You were a little skittish," Kazimir said. "When I first met you."

Marius chuckled. "Definitely a little. I remember being freaked out by the cameras everywhere. The lack of windows, too." He pointed up at the security camera sitting in the center of the ceiling, its circular lens protruding out. "Now that's just a third cellmate keeping us old, jaded inmates company."

Kazimir huffed in amusement. "Three's a crowd, old fucker."

"Never says anything back, though," Marius continued, shaking his head at the camera. "Kind of a boring cellmate, if you ask me."

"They're a creep, 's what they are," Kazimir said. "Don't care if they're getting paid to watch people. They still do it."

"Well, before long, it might not be a creep of a person. It'll be a creep of an algorithm." Marius rolled his eyes. "Which is not better."

Kazimir glanced over at Marius. "You really think they'll fire all these people and replace them with robots?"

It'd been a recurring subject of discussion all week as the rumor had been spreading amongst the inmates: which meant the prison staff had known far longer. Kazimir had blown Marius off several times with "it's just a rumor," but this was his first time sharing in any of the skepticism or worry. On one hand, Marius was glad not to have his concerns brushed off again; on the other, it made the threat seem far more... real, if it was finally on his friend's radar.

"It's just like them," Marius said, before sighing. "They think they can finally get rid of all the cheat codes, the already-narrow gaps in their security, by just committing a sweeping overhaul of their current methods and replacing it with some brute force of artifical intelligence. It's exactly the kind of thing they'd think was smart without realizing it's going to be a lose-lose for everyone involved. For us, and for them."

Kazimir tilted his head, watching one of the humanoid guards pass by in their consistent, slow-march past their cell.

Sound was somewhat muted by the force-field, but it still carried through.

"You think they're worried?" Kazimir murmured lowly.

"I think they're barely trying to hide it."

"What's got 'em so scared to get people out, you think? Can't just be a money problem," Kazimir thought.

"Could be a lot of things. Hard to say without knowing the state of the galaxy, though." Marius hummed. "Maybe we're about to become the guinea pigs in some science experiment to see if the idea even works. Maybe they're under scrutiny and need to come up with something that makes them look more effective. Or maybe they've been meaning to do this for years and it's just that the technology is finally at the sufficient level for this to be rolled out."

A beat passed.

"Rather, they think it's there," Marius murmured. "I think it never will be-- or should be."

"You think it'll break on us?" Kazimir asked.

"I think it'll fail, for sure," Marius said. "Just not in the way that helps us."

He knew how this game played out-- he'd seen it many times at his former workplace. In his second year there, a new AI model had been implemented for recruiters, earning applause from the corporate world. The model was capable of scanning through resumes automatically, ranking them either positively or negatively based on their content, and then either offering the candidates an interview or throwing out their application. But the backlash-- and the discrimination lawsuit-- when it was discovered that the model was treating any traditionally non-human names as a "negative" keyword and therefore auto-rejecting their job applications had been awful. The model hadn't even been told to do that. But when the dataset it was trained on had bias in it, as a result of the preferencial treatment given to humans in Ceya's hiring practices-- well, your super-smart and supposedly neutral model was suddenly perpetuating prejudice better than a human could, without even its own developers realizing.

Kazimir sighed. "So, we're screwed," he concluded after the ensuing heavy silence.

"We were always screwed, to be fair." Marius huffed. "It's not like we stand a chance anyways."

"Pretty grim, coming from you," Kazimir murmured.

Marius blinked. "Sorry. Should I lighten up? It's just-- I could have a word with them. I would love to have a word with them about dangerous cybersecurity practices."

Kazimir slowly sat up to face Marius.

"They wouldn't listen to you," Kazimir said.

"I know." Marius shook his head, glancing away for a second. It was a nice fantasy, to imagine storming into the head of security's office with a presentation at the ready, yelling about how this was a mistake that would soon be a thorn in both of their sides. But only a fantasy.

He should get over it. But that wasn't like him. Marius couldn't condition himself into not caring about the dangers of people who wanted to push tech too far too fast, even when he was painfully aware of his own powerlessness in the matter.

A lull passed with soft thuds as another guard marched by.

"Ace," Kazimir said. "The grey one. I like them."

Marius hummed quietly, nodding in agreement. "They seem strangely sweet," he said. "Too sweet for here."

"They ended up here," Kazimir said flatly. "But so did you."

A beat. Marius didn't need to say he'd done nothing to end up here-- Kaz knew, and no one else besides the two of them cared.

"If that group tries to hurt them..." Kazimir said, looking down at his fists and flexing his hands. "Seems the right thing to do."

He glanced up at Marius.

"But they seemed to stay away without it," he said. "I don't want to be locked up again. You're the only damn friend I have here."

Marius swallowed, nodding slightly. Four months. That's how long the last time had been-- at least, that's how long he'd been told it was. To Marius, it had been a bleakness so eternal it had felt longer than the rest of his time here combined. He couldn't imagine how much longer it had felt for Kazimir. And while it had been nearly half a year since Kaz had finally returned, this was one of the few times the subject had come up in any form.

"You're my only friend here too," he agreed, quieter than before. "And I don't want that happening to you again. I know it's not so simple to stay out of trouble entirely, but..."

Marius trailed off, dropping his gaze to the ground.

"Please be careful," he said. "Not just with Ace and whoever their enemies are. But with anyone who doesn't know better than to blame you for something."

Kazimir stared at the floor between his feet.

"I can't help it if someone blames me for something," he said.

"I know, believe me," Marius murmured.

Kazimir huffed, but it wasn't quite a laugh.

"I'm not saying you should turn the other cheek if it does happen," Marius said. "Definitely don't. But, uh..."

He made a fist with his hand. It was not a great fist. Not one he'd feel threatened by if someone was raising it at him.

"Maybe limit this to a backup option," he suggested.

"Okay," Kazimir nodded.

Appeased, at least for now, Marius let his head fall back against the wall again with a soft sigh.

"I wasn't expecting that to come up," Marius said. "But you handled it really well."

Kazimir glanced up at him. "What do you mean?"

"What X'lian said in the mess hall," Marius clarified. "It could've easily escalated to a fight, but you didn't let it happen. That was well done on your part."

"Sounded like she's suffered enough," Kazimir said, rubbing his thumb over his knuckled. "Why tear open a gaping wound and make it worse?"

"No point in it," Marius agreed.

He still felt relief over it, though-- and pride for Kazimir. Marius had been completely blindsided by the tension, and part of him had feared that things were about to turn very ugly, very fast. It wouldn't have been the first time there had been a sudden spectacle over a meal. Kazimir no doubt hadn't anticipated it either, and Marius was glad he'd managed to keep his cool despite the accusation thrown in his face.

"I'm sorry she said that, though," Marius said after a moment. "That was... a very serious charge to bring against you out of nowhere."

"Not really," Kazimir said with a small shrug. "It could've been true if it'd happened before I was here."

Marius tilted his head. "Really?"

There was a heavy silence as Kazimir stared at his hands.

"I've killed a lot of people," he said quietly, lifting his wrists where the cuffs clung tightly. "I'm not a good person."

This was something Marius had had an idea of for quite a while. He'd already known why Kazimir was here, in vague terms-- murder charges-- and he had the feeling his criminal past hadn't started there. The details still weren't all out, despite their years of friendship, but that was out of respect for each other, not secrecy. And so hearing it now didn't surprise him.

"You don't deserve to be here," Kazimir continued, turning his hand over in front of him, palm upward. "But I do."

Marius frowned softly in disagreement, worried where this was going.

"I'm glad you don't know what it's like to take a life," Kazimir went on. "You were made to create, and learn. To think. I was only made for one thing. It's the only thing I know."

Kazimir's hand formed a fist, and he dropped it in his lap. Many words went unsaid in his clenched hand, where his focus still remained.

"Kazimir, that isn't true," Marius said, softly, but firmly. "You're so much more than that-- for one, you're a good friend. You won't be a good person in everyone's eyes-- just like I'm not-- but you are to me. And I don't care what anyone else would think."

A beat of silence passed.

"We're both here," Marius said. "That's the reality, fair or not, although that doesn't matter to me. If there's one good thing to come out of this-- and I think there is-- it's that I got the chance to know you."

Kazimir looked up to Marius with a soft, but defeated look in his eyes.

"Do you miss anyone on the outside?" he asked.

Marius gave a half-shrug, lifting one shoulder as something sad and not quite like a smile flickered over his face.

"Sure," he said. "I've got family. Parents, siblings. But I doubt they really miss me."

"Why not?" Kazimir asked.

"Believe it or not, I'm the annoying one back home," Marius said, with a slight chuckle. "I'm just not very close to any of them, and it's been five years. But mostly, they still think I betrayed them and their work. That tends to put a damper on most relationships."

Kazimir stared at Marius hard for a moment, but then let out a laugh as he rubbed his face with his hands.

"Annoying?" he asked in disbelief. "You? Annoying?"

"Annoying," Marius repeated, with a little huff of amusement. "I think it's the younger-sibling-no-one-asked-for effect."

Kazimir huffed as he dragged his hands down his face and let them drop into his lap.

"You're the least annoying person I've met," he said.

"Then I haven't talked about serial peripheral interfaces with you enough yet," Marius replied.

"That's not annoying," Kazimir said. "Annoying was what people called me when they were being nice. Your family... they're wrong for not missing you."

Marius smiled faintly for a second, but he sobered soon afterwards. "From their point of view, they're right not to," he said. "You just happen to believe me."

He wasn't sure whether or not that detail mattered, though. They probably wouldn't miss him regardless.

"No partner? No kids?" Kazimir asked.

"I'm an engineer," Marius said, by way of answering. "A hardware engineer at that."

Kazimir stared at Marius blankly, clearly not picking up on any subtext.

"Is that an innuendo?" Kazimir asked with sincerity.

"I--" Marius barked a laugh, then cleared his throat. "No. No to all questions."

"So all that's outside this hellhole is a family that doesn't like you and a company that will never take you back," Kazimir finished.

"Bingo."

"I bet you someone out there misses you and you just don't know it," Kazimir said with an accusatory point.

"While that's nice thinking," Marius said, "probably not."

"I know because if you weren't here I'd notice," Kazimir said.

And at that, Kazimir seemed content enough to lay back down again. He flopped back, kicked up one leg over his propped knee, and folded his arms behind his head.

"People like you always think you're invisible," he said. "But you're not. Quiet people miss quiet people. That's why nobody knows."

Marius was silent for a few moments, folding a leg up to his chest as he reflected. Quiet. Was anyone from home quiet? Quiet when it came to him, maybe. He didn't know, and he was going to get stuck going through lists of people he'd known once, checking each condition like some kind of logic gate, if he didn't snap out of it.

The needed distraction came in the form of more muffled bootsteps and the surprising sight of the Shah he'd seen earlier being carried away on a stretcher.

"...That cell assignment went well," Marius said.

"Hmph," Kazimir huffed. "Looks like it."

"Guess not everyone can be as lucky as I was," Marius said.

That made Kazimir laugh faintly, and he rolled over with a fading smile.

The cuffs practically crushing Smokey's arms looked like giant mittens - only they were made of metal. For a device made of something usually so robust, he could've sworn they jerked at the slightest twitch, threatening to crush his forearms into oblivion.

"Son of a bitch," he cursed under his breath, eyes darting back and forth between the guards; the two in front. He didn't know what the other two behind him were doing, but he could almost feel their breathing scraping his neck. The driver on the other hand looked like a complete ignoramus, just some scrawny kid with glasses. Everyone always felt smart when they wore glasses, but Smokey scoffed at the idea.

He wondered how the kid would fare under some real pressure - another idea for him to scoff at, but he was bored and there wasn't much else to do. "Hey, you look pretty tense." Smokey gave the driver a nod. The man was hunched over the control panel, but he knew he could see his crooked smile in the window's reflection. He was utterly clueless.

"Just keep your mouth shut," the driver breathed through his nose; he sounded like he had something stuck up his throat, or maybe a stick up his ass, Smokey couldn't tell.

"You got it boss," Smokey muttered dryly.

So far, the ride was a total snooze fest. Was the ship even moving? Everything felt stationary. The shipped zipped past a dozen stars at once, and Smokey was beginning to wonder if he was just looking at moving pictures every time he stared out the window. I need a light, he sighed to himself, his eyes fluttering shut. Now all he could think about was getting high out of his mind. It was better than listening to four-eyes mumble to himself like an insane asylum patient.

"We're here."

Smokey opened his eyes, and smiled sardonically. "Well it's about damn ti-" the words died before they could squeeze their way out of his throat, but his jaw was still slack.

The driver's chest deflated after a job well done and slumped in his chair. "Welcome to hell... Well, sort of - we're not quite there yet," he snorted, lifting his chin up to peer at Smokey through the glass reflection.

Smokey couldn't have said it better himself. Up ahead was the closest thing to hell he could possibly imagine: a raging hurricane that stretched for infinity - and caught in the crossfire of those winds were unrecognizable chunks of civilization lost to time, asteroids and meteors the size of football fields, maybe even larger. How the ship was still flying in a straight line was a miracle.

"You've gotta be kiddin' me," Smokey groaned. His face clenched into a scowl, but more than anything, he was afraid - not of the storm itself - that was the least of his concerns. It was the realization that escape would be nigh impossible because if it. In his own words, he was freaking screwed.

The pilot let out one last chuckle before their ship plunged into the thick of the storm. Then, the crew fell quiet. Smokey couldn't even hear their breathing.

C'mon, Smokey, say somethin'.

In a feeble attempt to save face, Smokey broadened his features. His brows furrowed, trying to betray something akin to amusement, but his eyes nearly burst from their sockets, and his mouth twitched nervously. "What's the matter?" He looked all around him. No one uttered a sound. "Don't tell me you guys are getting cold feet. Your boss would be pretty mad if we didn't get here on time."

"We'll get there," the driver answered curtly, almost bored.

Smokey couldn't believe what he was hearing. The driver seemed so tense, his eyes were practically glued to whatever makeshift path his eyes were tracing in his head, yet this man had the gall to act like he wasn't as freaked out as him? Most importantly, was he just brushed aside? "You-"

The driver yanked the yoke as hard as his scrawny arms could, pulling the ship into a spiral. A meteor the size of a mountain loomed over them. It was as if the universe itself was mocking Smokey. Now he was bouncing off the walls as the ship barreled straight toward the meteor, though it wasn't like he could do much give his circumstances, and that only infuriated him even more.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!?" Smokey managed to spit in between grunts. Each time he heaved his chest to breathe, he slammed into the walls of the ship again.

"Hang on tight!" The driver barked. The guards moved in toward Smokey on command, grabbing either side of him while the driver caught a tight space through his four-eyed lenses. He smiled triumphantly as he pressed a button that signalled the wings to move inward, toward the ship's body.

Before Smokey could even process what was going on, the entire ship was encapsulated in total pitch darkness. He stared straight ahead at nothing in particular - except maybe for the idiot driver in front of him - faintly making out the sound of the wind thwacking and howling. Good, so they were still moving at least.

The instant the ship popped out the other end of the meteor, was the instant they entered a whole new dimension; just a couple thousand feet away was hell, but the time it took to get there felt unbearably sluggish. If this wasn't the universe mocking Smokey, then he guessed he should've considered himself blessed - but that clearly wasn't the case here.

A large garage-like gate opens for the ship to dock, a safe haven from the storm - for the hardworking employees, at least. The obnoxious sound of the gate creaking open drilled into Smokey's ears, and he couldn't help but wrinkle his nose. He hadn't even been here for thirty seconds and he already hated it here.

Smokey squinted through the window. From where he stood, all he could make out were a bunch of buff dudes in armor - and only one man that could be distinguished from the rest. He had some kind of uniform on.

Smokey was led out of the ship on a ramp down steel steps. Two guards walked in front of him, and two behind.

When they stopped at the bottom, the uniformed man moved to the front of the collection of guards. As Smokey was brought within a few feet of him, Smokey saw that he wasn't human: he was a Crath -- a large, titan-like humanoid with skin of stone. Lava glowed beneath the cracks that lined his skin, and his beady eyes stared down at Smokey with cold indifference as he towered over him.

"So, you think you're tough shit?" the warden asked as smoke blew from his nostrils. "Well. Now's your chance to prove it."

The ramp to the ship sealed shut behind Smokey with a mechanical sigh and the click of a heavy lock. The guards tensed, with their hands on the guns at their sides.

"I gotta say, you all really know how to piss a guy off," Smokey exaggerated his intrigue with sideways glances and a crooked smile as he scanned the docks, but in actuality, he was furious.

His head snapped in the wardens direction with a sneer. "Thanks for the invitation."

Smokey's body flickered into thin air on the spot, the sound of his cuffs snapping to pieces being the only noise that was left in his wake. In the next instant, he appeared next to a guard. The man practically jumped out of his arm before turning to aim with his gun, only to find that he was aiming at empty space.

Smokey appeared with only a few inches between him and the guard. The palm of his hand launched upward and struck the guard square in his jaw. The man froze in place, and for a while, it seemed he was merely dazed. It only took another glance for everyone else to realize the man's head was flying skyward as a thin steak of blood sprinkled on the ground.

The armored corpse teetered back and forth, eventually hitting the floor with a dull thud. All the guards trembled in their places, but none dared to move until the warden raised his hand.

"Move it!" He barked.

Smokey's eyes narrowed into slits. He widened his stance eagerly, his smile mirroring the excitement as he licked his lips.

The guards rushed into the fray one after another like zombies, starving and untamed - but so was Smokey. He vanished again, this time leaping into the air. "Get ready to eat shit, you punks!"

But where Smokey expected his heel to hit the face of a goonie, it was instead snatched mid-air. The warden appeared beneath him like a rocky phantom, and the man's massive hands wrapped around Ronin's ankle like a cuff of their own.

Smokey went flying, but not through the air. The warden threw him to the ground like a ragdoll with a strength Ronin couldn't match, and his body slammed against the floor.

Smokey's skull took the full impact, and for a moment, everything spun.

He heard the electrical whirring of something heavy. The familiar weight of new cuffs was brought around his limbs, but these ones were smaller -- like the former were just for show.

These took up less space, but the moment they locked his hands and feet together, he felt a sting shoot through his whole body. In that moment, it was like all of his physical enhancements were stilled, and so was his whole body.

The warden jerked Smokey to his feet.

"You've had your fun," the warden said coldly, wrapping his giant, earthen fingers around Smokey's throat. "Now I'll have mine. You're used to getting whatever you want, but remember this: the guards inside these walls beyond this hanger and the prisoners you're kept with are all carved from the same dung you were pulled from. Everyone knows how to fight. You're not special, and you never will be. Welcome to the rest of your life: stuck, just like the rest of us. Now sleep."

A sharp stabbing pain cut into Smokey's skin through the cuffs. Before he knew it, his consciousness was slipping, and he was out cold.