Captured (Open!)

Stimulant hypos were lauded as one of the greatest medical marvels of all time. They somehow managed to increase the speed of regenerative growth, to the point where they could restructure broken bones in less than half an hour. Amazing, no? It was easy to accept an injection that could literally heal your wounds within minutes. Broken bones could be healed, bullets wounds would be closed up, stab wounds would be mere annoyances. It was all so amazing when put down as theory. Idealists everywhere praised it.

Jean was not an idealistic man. The very second that he heard of the release of such injections, before the world went to hell, he doubted it. And he was right to. The problem with stims was that their ingredients were not exactly common. Anyone that assumed that the people making them would release such marvels for free, so they would be available in literally every single medical kit ever, would be the words of a ludicrously naïve man. Every single injection went up to a price range of a minimum of a few thousand dollars, and that price just continuously went up further.

Instead of bringing together the world in harmony and rainbows and sunshine, the regenerative stims started wars and just brought even more suffering. Less people probably would have died if they were never invented. In the army, stims were only allowed to those of high ranking. They were just too expensive, and they cut into the money needed for other necessary resources. Nothing is ever that convenient, after all.

Not to mention the side effects. There was a test done on someone a long time ago, he would inject a stim once a day, and after a whole month of single injections, thirty overall, there was a considerable amount of adverse effects. The man’s natural regeneration considerably slowed down. He showed that a self-inflicted cut along the side of his arm just never healed on its own, it stayed open for three whole months, and only then did it show any signs of beginning to close. In the end it took over an entire year for it to actually heal on its own. While the man reported zero addictive qualities, he claimed a newfound sluggishness, becoming heavily anemic and reporting random bouts of nausea, along with having a much more difficult time with physical activities. He also died at the age of thirty-five, and was fully healthy before doing the experiment.

But that was not why Jean refused to use the single stim that his group had been given -- they were lucky to have gotten one at all. He was not averse to using them because of their effects -- the experiment only proved that using them one after the other in a short period of time was a terrible idea. Somebody using them once and then not touching them for a couple weeks proved to be completely fine, or at least with minimal side effects.

No, his reason was more practical -- there were two bullets in both his knees. Using the stim would just have it heal directly around it. Attempting to remove it himself was a possible option, as long as he did it quickly and injected himself instantly afterwards. But he was already in the worst pain imaginable. His legs felt like they were on fire, and even the slightest of movement made his entire body burn in searing hot agony. He didn't have the correct medical tools, and would probably pass out from trying to pull it out himself -- before he'd be able to inject himself. Meaning he'd probably die from bloodless while unconscious. So, the only real option was to wait. Wait and stare as his dead comrades roasted in the burning sun. He could already smell the stench of their rotting corpses, the incredible heat only amplifying it. He didn't like that he was used to the stench.

In his hue of pain, he was only vaguely aware that someone was running down the road. Focusing on the man, he almost jumped up from his spot, despite his injury. He was a fairly large raider. Standing at around 6 foot 8 with a medium build, he was completely bald with a shaggy beard that covered his neck. He wore metal clothing, all with quite a few dents on them -- obviously from being shot at. For a split second he wanted to know someone could wear such apparel in the blistering heat, but raiders were hardly predictable people.  There were the occasion spots of blood over his skin and clothing, and what skin he could see was quite scarred. Interestingly, the raider had a notebook attached to a piece of chain and hung around his neck. For someone who seemed to be shot at quite a bit, it hardly seemed like the smartest place to keep anything, much less a book. The raider slowed down as he neared to convenience store and pile of corpses, and as far as Jean could tell, he hadn’t noticed him yet. He slowly moved his hand to his pistol, which sat right next to him, empty from his encounter beforehand. As the raider knelt down to his dead comrades, Jean inconspicuously moved his hand to the pocket which contained an extra pistol magazine.

Apparently not inconspicuous enough, as the raiders head shot up before he could even do anything.

“Hello.”

What? The raider stared at him. His eyes were completely dead, and his voice sounded hollow. He may as well have been looking at a dead fish. But that meant there was zero malice or bloodlust. He just rummaged through the bags of his dead comrades, but tilted his head when Jean didn’t respond.

“Hello,” the raider repeated, as if thinking he didn’t hear him the first time. Thoroughly confused, Jean just decided to answer.

“Uh, hi?” Between witnessing a man survive 12 bullets, and this situation, he wasn’t sure which confused him more. The raider seemed satisfied, and gave a nod before finally looking down to look at what he was rummaging through. Using this moment, he slowly took out his spare magazine from his pocket, and laid it on his stomach, and tried to eject the empty magazine from his pistol. The raiders head shot up again, eyes instantly locking to his pistol. He lifted himself from the ground, and started to make his way to the fallen man. Jean hurried up, discarding the spent magazine and quickly loading in the new one, he aimed it out to the raider. But the raiders hand clasped over his gun before he could aim, and pointed it up to the sky. He kept Jean pinned down with his other hand, and ripped the gun from his hands. Standing back up, he holstered his new weapon.

The raider took a pen out from his trousers, opening the notebook hung around his neck, flipping through a considerable amount of pages. He wrote something down, and muttered incomprehensibly under his breath.

Jean only made out the word ‘why’.

The raider moved back over the corpses, and knelt back to the bag he was searching through, bringing out a canteen of water. He turned back to Jean, and brandished it slightly in the air.

“Do you mind if this one takes this?” he said, voice completely flat, or even polite. “It’s rather hot today.” Jean didn’t answer for a few seconds, and then shook his head. He didn’t bother questioning why the raider spoke in third person.

"Go ahead,” he finally muttered. The raider gave a small nod.

“Thank you very much. You’re very kind.”  The raider left down the road, taking the occasional sip of water. Jean was left wondering just what the fuck happened.

--------------------

Melodee slowly opened her eyes. Her chest was throbbing in pain, but it wasn’t that strange for her to wake up like that. Although, she admitted it hadn’t happened in quite a while. She sluggishly reached her hand to her chest, and stared down at the bloodstained bandages across her body. The bullets had healed up, through whatever medical magic, and she thought back to the fight.

Ah. That’s right. I lost. I lost.

She clicked her tongue in frustration, and slowly got up to her feet, ignoring the pain. Blatantly disregarding both Karl and Maria, she stumbled over to Karl’s pack, trying to find the canteen. Not finding it, she scanned around with an irritated expression, seeing Karl had it. Her mind always went back to the fight.

I lost? What?

Clicking her tongue again, she sluggishly walked over to him, and rudely grabbed it from his hands. As she was about to take a sip, something made her stop in her tracks. Her frown deepened.

I don’t lose. That doesn’t happen.

“Those are mine,” she said in a flat monotone. Normally, she wouldn’t care if Karl ate some of her cakes. He was Karl, after all. So why was that moment different? She didn’t know. Nor did she know why she taking it out on the people that she actually liked. Why? They just successfully massacred a large group of raiders. Certainly that was cause for celebration? Right? But she didn’t feel like celebrating. It still felt… incomplete.

I didn’t lose. I did not. Lose.

“Give them back.”

Maria watched as Karl eventually woke up. He woke up and thanked her, but Maria just glared at him. Don't go charging into battle and dying, her stare said. He approached Mel and started on a soliloquy about how she reminded him of himself or some other bullcrap that Maria couldn't be assed to listen to.

She stood up and walked away silently, going back into the tent with the stockpile of weapons. She figured she might as well do something useful with her time while Karl monologued at an unconscious Mel.

She checked through the guns, and ended up taking some ammo for her revolver: .357, instead of the crappier .38 Special. She also slung the scoped hunting rifle over her shoulder and took some 5.56, as well as an extra grenade that she found. Satisfied that she was now well-prepared enough to survive hopefully another day, she went back outside.

..."How old are you, girl?" she heard Karl ask, directed towards her. She was about to answer that she was only 17, but he stopped her. "Nevermind. I don't want to be too much of a prude," he said, in his southern accent. Maria giggled at his malapropism, and debated if she should explain what 'prude' meant, but decided against it.

Eventually, the other party member awoke. She stumbled drunkenly towards the two more awake members of the team, seeming rather frustrated. Was she annoyed that she was beaten? Maria assumed so.

Melodee approached Karl before just jacking the canteen from his grasp, like a spoiled two-year-old taking their toy from a classmate in day-care. She didn't take a sip, though, rather she just said in an eerie monotone "Those are mine," looking towards the cake things that Karl had opened. "Give them back."

Maria, mildly annoyed by Mel's rudeness, took one of the cakes straight out of Karl's hand (mimicking how Mel took the canteen: poor Karl was probably feeling pretty cheated), and nonchalantly turned and started walking away. "You're welcome, by the way," she said, as she took a bite. The cherry-flavored snack cake was delicious.

Tepid wind swept across the cracked and crusted road, sinuously dancing up into the sleek leathery cape of an occupant traveling the seemingly-endless pavement, sending the thick cloth boisterously 'wooshing' above a thick helmet-covered head that shimmered in its atramentous glory. Along the cloaked shoulders stretched an elongated sheath, two gloved-hands rested on either side of the pearly white tube, a tiny whittled cat was attached to the handle of the blade by a thin pink string, which shook violently as the gust beat it around every which-way. In either direction spanned the illimitable Sabaku Desert, which Seraphina Richter, The Black Warden, had trekked along from The Capitol to her current location along the dilapidated road.

  A mark, blurred and shimmering under the immense radiation and heat that rose off the ground, started to expand and grow larger in her vision. Richter hoped that her eye was not deceiving her, as the Warden had grown exorbitantly bored of treading along the fluctuating grain. Had the mission not been given to her by The Red Warden himself, the overwhelming mentally stultifying effects she was dealing with would have caused her to simply call off the mission and hear about it forever by Blue, her ultimate rival. However, as this mark slowly started to take form, Seraphina couldn't help but wonder if this is where she was supposed to carry out the extermination mission. The mark that had peaked her curiosity so profoundly turned out to be what appeared to be a convenient store; or what was left of one. The building was nearly in ruin, and sunlight cast down upon the plethora of dead bodies scattered haphazardly across the area insinuated that a fierce conflict had taken place, and judging by the state of the average corpse, it was a conflict that had transpired not too long ago.

  The site of such bloodshed would have brought the average person to vomiting; but the average person was not The Black Warden, a woman who had taken place and participated in enough carnage to drown the Sabaku in blood. The droning of hungry flies buzzed in Seraphina's ears as she stepped over blood-soaked wooden planks, entering the ruin with particular caution, her boots only producing minimal sound above the already-creaking foundation that threatened to collapse at any given moment upon the reinforced helmet of Richter.

  Nothing of interest caught Richter's attention, other than the discretion she gave to the myriad of fired-ammunition that littered the bloody floor she walked upon. As she made her way towards what was the back of the store, Seraphina observed the camp before her which, like the store, was littered with bodies. Having walked restlessly all day, Richter's fatigue caught up with her as she took a break, observing the handiwork of targets that were supposed to be hers. Seraphina rested her arm against a tall pike of sorts, trying to regulate her breathing pattern calmly as she appreciated being out of the pernicious sunlight. Before long, the pike jolted to the side, catching Richter off balance as it groaned, falling over and slamming onto the ground. Seraphina looked at the fallen column, only now realizing that a grimy and maggot-swarmed head adorned the top of the pike.

  Looking further in that direction, Richter's eye observed a group of three that seemed to be in conflict over something in their hands. Whether it were these people who were guilty of massmurdering Richter's targets or not was not on the Warden's priority list, albeit it should have been given maximum priority. Seraphina simply observed them, having intentions to only catch her breath before she set off once more. Using a trick that she taught herself using what mysterious force lay behind her leathery eyepatch, The Black Warden analyzed every body, both dead and living, within her peripheral vision, and she noticed something was erroneous; the raider leader was nowhere to be found. Richter chewed on one of her nails in deep thought, processing different scenarios of possible future predicaments as she shifted her eyes from the horde of dead bodies to the few living, whom she realized were in a pugnacious conflict over what seemed to be snacks of sorts.

Karl was JUST about to pop one of those sweet little bundles of deliciousness into his mouth when he was interrupted. Of course, when he wanted to just relax and restore some of the energy that he lost fighting like a mad bull, someone would step in to take away his well deserved food. What was even worse was the fact that they probably would take his GLORIOUS STEAK too. He wouldn't allow that. Suddenly, both his drink and his snack was taken away from him as Mel finally woke herself up. He let out a small glare at Maria, who was also acting rude as hell, who took his snack and took a bite. Son of a bitch.

The way Maria took a bite out of the snack, he knew Mel would be mad. He grinned a bit, giving her a look that meant, 'your doom is soon at hand.' He gave no pity. He let out an evil laugh and shook his head. "Its your funeral, Maria. I hope ye don't get banished to the pits of hell." He let out a laugh and got up from his seat, grimacing for a moment at the flare of pain that erupted through his body. He'd need to most definitely take it easy for a while. No charging into battle for at least a few days. He could tell from earlier that Maria thought the same thing. Doctor's Orders.  "If Ah were yourself, thank th' gods Ah ain't, I'd prepare for your most certain doom. Dooom! Dooooooooom!"

He laughed and walked away from the group. He had the urge to relieve himself of excess liquids. He had to take a piss.

"Ah'll be right back, try not t' murder each other while Ah'm gone, just gotta take a leak."

In a bit of honesty, he really just wanted to get away from the smell. It was starting to smell pretty fucking bad, and he didn't enjoy the smell of soon-to-be rotting corpses. Nobody liked that... well, most didn't enjoy the smell. Most didn't like necrophilia either, but that was the world that they lived in.

As he walked away slowly from the new sight of probable cat fight, he noticed something odd in one of the many shackle buildings that surrounded the center of the raider camp. Something too noticeable to forget. A flap of something... maybe a tarp... or perhaps a cape? He huddled up against a nearby building and went to reach for his shotgun... to realize he didn't have it. He cursed himself for forgetting the tools of his trade, and for not killing all of them before taking a rest. Thankfully, he had a .357 revolver clutched in one of his holsters, and he took it out, crouching low to the ground as he attempted to find the person.

He slowly made his way around, keeping himself to the shadows and making sure to make little noise. He was about twenty feet away before his foot rammed into a can, it clonking about as it rolled away, and he cursed and stood up, raising his revolver and glaring.

Who the hell was this person?!

It was a woman, clad in the most flamboyant wear he had ever seen. She wore a cape. A fucking cape? And red and black armor. He almost let out a laugh as stood his ground, can't helping but to chuckle a bit. He also noticed the symbol on her shoulder, which he thought was the symbol for the Warui, but he couldn't tell.

"Okay, Miss... eye patch? I don't want any trouble, if you're seeking it, but I can dish out some pain, if I want to."

Normally, the idea of actually hurting either of them for their horrendous transgressions against the universe, and more importantly her, would never have crossed her mind. Not even once. Normally, she would have just wanted to scream at them and throw small rocks at their stupid faces, but the idea of genuinely hurting them for it would normally be so horrendous that it would never even occur to her. She liked them, after all. It was never an option to hurt the people that she liked.

Yet the thought of swinging her shotgun up and blasting Maria directly in the back appeared. The thought of taking her axe and slowly hacking off her limbs. The thought of seeing just how much punishment the woman could take and still heal. Was there a limit? Could she grow back a limb? Could she tie her down, tear off her skin and make a massive pile of it as it regenerated? And tear it off again? Three times? Could she stab her in the gut and literally watch as it healed around it? Could she regrow eyes? Could she... could she...

Melodee blinked. She blinked again. Again. Disgust and horror flowed through her. Suddenly, the pain her body felt and wooziness from the stimpacks turned into extreme nausea.

"F-fine!" she yelled at Maria. "Be that way! See if I care! You dumb jerk iiiiidiot!" She childishly and rudely stuck her tongue out at her. "Hmph!" was all she left off with, as she stormed off towards some of the tents further away. She burst into a brown open six man tent, the occasional bullet hole peppered into the material from their previous fight. She collapsed to her knees and forced the vomit back, clutching at her mouth with both hands. Melodee could not believe that she even considered the possibility of even somewhat harming Maria, much less subjecting the woman to genuine torture. It conflicted with every principle and belief she held. She concluded that something seriously, seriously wrong had happened, but as to what went wrong, she had absolutely no clue. For a minute or so as she forced back her nausea, she managed to ignore what the tent actually contained. Breathing heavily as it passed, she wiped the sweat from her head, and finally decided to realize where exactly she had gone.

Oh. Bodies. She thought she had smelt something. Around her were three corpses, all of which were tied up, heavily bruised and gagged. Two men, one woman. One of the men's sides seemed to have been destroyed by a shotgun blast, as his guts had seeped out from the hole of a very large wound. Probably killed very quickly. The woman appeared to have only been shot in the shoulder from a small calibre weapon, like a pistol, but had bled to death since the end of the battle. The last man, however, she couldn't quite tell. She moved closer to the man, but realized that he was, in fact, still breathing. Just unconscious, or asleep.

Barely even thinking, she instinctively jammed her axe into his arm. The man awoke with a start, swinging his head around in confusion at the newfound pain. He tried to scream from behind the gag, but it only came out muffled.

"Shush now." She sliced the axe down his arm, a large wound opening and blood pouring out. Melodee just smiled. Hurting Maria in any way at all was crossing a line that she felt she would never return from.

Hurting this man was fair game, though.

Maria giggled at Melodee's tirade, being called a "dumb jerk idiot" was something she thought only preschoolers would do. Mel, oddly, looked only about a year younger than Maria, but acted roughly 8 years old.

Well, more like an 8 year-old sociopath with no moral compass to begin with, anyway. Maria, however, wasn't very concerned about that. Mel at least had some degree of loyalty, as far as she could tell, and since Maria was both "interesting" to her, and (she assumed) one of her "friends," she felt rather safe.

Still, taking her cake thing was still a bit of a dick move. Maria finished off the one she took a bite out of and looked at the other, briefly wondering why all these Tasty Cake like snacks always came in packs of 2 before deciding that she might as well return to Melodee what was hers.

That, and the rancid smell of decaying flesh was permeating the cake and making it taste like ass, anyway. The blood-colored cherry filling didn't help either.

Maria followed after Melodee, trying to keep her stomach from rejecting the snack cake, and followed her into the tent she stormed off into.

Inside, she saw 3 bound prisoners. Two appeared to have been killed by stray bullets from the fighting, the third, however...

Melodee stood over the third. The man cried out in pain through the gag, producing a distorted and sickening sound. "Shush, now..." Melodee cooed, as though she were singing a lullaby to a baby, before slicing the man down the arm with her axe.

The man gave more muffled shouts of pain as the blood poured down.

"Me- Mel! Stop it!" Maria shouted, her voice catching in her throat momentarily. She grabbed Mel's axe and pulled it back to attempt to prevent Mel from further torturing the man, hardly noticing that she had dropped the remaining snack cake on the ground - oddly enough, it landed on the wrapper, so it was probably still clean anyway.

Melodee did not like interruptions.

She had been looking forward to her promising and enlightening torture session with a captured innocent, and reacted almost instantly when her favourite weapon was grabbed from her hands by an evil abomination. No need to think, she whipped her shotgun out and shoved it into the face of the nefarious malefactor who dared disrupt her momentary peace, tackling the vicious culprit down and straddling their waist. Her free hand squeezed down on their throat, keeping the devious moustache-twirler pinned to the ground, while her other hand hovered over the trigger of the gun currently aimed point blank at the interrupter’s forehead.

She came very close to clutching down on the trigger and blowing the brains and skull out of this idiot’s stupid head, but fortunately, she came back to reality just in time.

"Wha-- Maria?" she said, blinking in confusion. She then realised who she was aiming at, panicked and diverted the barrel of the shotgun away from the woman's face, releasing her grip on her neck. She took a couple seconds to fully comprehend what just happened, and then frowned. "Jeeeze!" she fumed in genuine irritation, oblivious to the fact that she was still sitting on Maria's waist. "Don't do that! I almost blew yer' head off! Can ya' regenerate yer' brains after they explode?!" she barked, as if it wasn't actually her own fault that it almost came to that. She finally decided to stop straddling the woman, and got back up to her feet, taking a big breath of air to calm herself. Did she have some kind of stupid philosophy against torture? Did she go down the euthanasia route or something? 'No pain, just put them down softly'? Well, jeeze, she should've just said so.

"I mean, jeeze, what's yer damn problem?" she said irritably as hovered the shotgun over the man’s head. His eyes bulged in fear and desperation, and started futilely squirming around, as if to try and dodge a near point-blank shot. “If ya’ didn’t want him to suffer then say somethin’.” She pulled the trigger.