WARNINGS: Cruelty/torture, sexual harassment and suggested rape, violence, language, and… erm… that's all I can think of at the moment. If something else pops up, I'll post it at the beginning of that chapter.

…

"Dammit, King, hold still!" Zeo snapped as King jerked his leg out of his grip again.

"It hurts, Zeo!"

"It needs to come out." Zeo tried to reason with him as he grabbed King's calf again and pulled it towards him, getting the remaining splinters of wood stuck on the outside of his leg and just above his knee back within reach.

"Can't we just leave them in there and bandage it? You got the big piece out!" The legendary blader pleaded.

"Bad idea," Zeo said, digging in his pocket for the forceps. "Masamune, help me."

The youngest, who had just returned from collecting anything edible he could find in the forest, set his bundled up sweatshirt down. "What do you need?"

"Hold his leg down so I can get this junk out of it!" Zeo snapped, voice rising as he shot an angry glare at the blader laying on the ground next to him.

Masamune nodded and kneeled in front of King, setting one hand on his thigh and one below his knee, holding it as firmly as he could.

"You got him?" Zeo asked as he tried to wipe the blood from the wound to let him see better, but he ended up just smearing it around. Masamune nodded, giving him the go ahead, and he dug the tip of the forceps into the bloody mess in pursuit of the splinter.

King's leg lurched, but Masamune held it still enough for Zeo to keep working, wincing at his sharp cry of pain. Zeo pulled out a bloody chunk of wood about the size of a paper clip, dropped it on the ground next to him, and dug the forceps back in.

King straight-out screamed this time and tried to curl into a ball, digging his fingers into the ground.

"Easy, buddy." Masamune tried to soothe as he fought to hold King's leg still. "It's gonna be alright."

It took Zeo what felt like forever to finally determine that there weren't any more splinters left in King's leg, who Masamune could feel trembling as he held him down. "You can let him go." Zeo told him as he went to dig around in his backpack.

Masamune did so and King pulled his leg away with a whimper. "Easy, pal." He said, laying his hand on King's shoulder. "You're almost done- just gotta wrap it up."

"Actually, it still needs to be disinfected, but pretty close." Zeo said, pouring some of the precious peroxide onto the injury. King stiffened and muttered something in Greek that he doubted was complimentary as he dabbed it off and started to wrap it in bandages.

...

Toby was always better at handling pressure. And stress. And guilt. And responsibility. Zeo didn't know how he did it. All he knew was that Toby wasn't around to help them anymore.

They, along with some other refugees, had been hiding with a doctor and his wife in northern Vermont when, one day, they rounded them all up and hurried them into their cars. It didn't take them long to figure out why when they saw the black vehicles of Ziggurat's forces following them. Dr. Anderson's- which had King, Masamune, and Zeo- lost them and made it to the less populated woods in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Mrs. Anderson's- which carried everyone else, including Toby- didn't. Dr. Anderson had given them each a backpack: one with first-aid supplies, one with a guidebook to edible plants and fishing/cooking supplies, and another with nonperishable food plus a few other odds and ends.

He had then gone back to look for his wife and the remaining refugees. He'd never come back, leaving them stranded in the forest in early September.

It was either late September or early October now… probably. The leaves had changed color and it was cooler, especially at night. When it had started raining yesterday, it had been terrible.

They stumbled on an old, run-down building. They hadn't been able to pull open the door to the basement and they were worried that, if they broke it down with their beys, the force would shake the whole thing to the ground, but they did manage to pry open the doors to the ground level.

The floor was, without a doubt, structurally unsound, but it had been dry, so they spent the night there. King had fallen through the floor on his way out the next morning. Luckily, when Striker attacked the basement's door with enough fury to make the entire structure rattle, it had managed to stay mostly intact.

Admittedly, it could have been far worse. Although King had wood stuck in his leg and bruises that probably were sore as hell, nothing was broken (as far as any of them could tell, anyway) and he didn't seem to be on the brink of death.

Zeo tried to force his tired mind to focus on that small positive and not on the fact that Toby was who-knows-where getting who-knows-what done to him and that, unless they miraculously figured something out soon, they were going to either starve or freeze to death.

A/N: Helloooooooo!

This disclaimer goes for the entire span of this fanfic: I don't own Metal Fight Beyblade.