Disclaimer: I don't own anything related to the Host. Unfortunately. I'm just using the characters/ some other stuff. You'll see.
A/N: Just to make it really obvious and less confusing, this story is AU and set in about 37BC. Enjoy!
~~~~~Chapter One – Licentia Proeliator (Freedom Fighters)~~~~~
The Empire has grown so fast. It has only existed for seven years, since the first parasite made himself public. He called himself "Julius Caesar" the pompous git. But we did a good job ridding Rome of him. What we didn't expect was his adopted son, another parasite, taking up his father's position as dictator. That was the beginning of the end for us humans. Initially we just disappeared. But after a few years, we weren't just disappearing. People turned up in the most awful places: the gladiator rings, slavery and brothels. It was time to do something about it.
Jared lay down on his straw mattress, sweating and panting. He had spent the morning trying to train thirty new members of his resistance group in the art of combat. He hadn't gotten very far. Half of them were mere children, not yet strong enough to even hold a sword upright, let alone use it with any accuracy.
He would instead have to teach them how to run and hide, not fight. How unhelpful is that? He wondered. For the last eleven months his resistance group had trained hard, learning how to fight and, most importantly, how to go unnoticed by the converted. Running and hiding would not help him to attain his goal: infiltrate Rome and free as many human prisoners as possible from the parasite-infected Empire.
Humans, Jared thought. Not those parasites that blend with humans so well. What were they? No one knew. Not even Doc. He had spent countless hours observing, testing and trying to remove the parasites. So far, he hadn't learned much.
Jared had fled Rome two years ago. He had wandered the Roman countryside, thinking of the sudden change of behaviour the parasite-infected leaders of Rome had shown in recent months.
They had been peaceful monsters in the beginning. Altruistic to the very end. But, with all the power they had in leading the Empire, they became corrupt. Instead of just kidnapping humans and making them into monsters, they tortured humans.
Jared remembered overhearing a group of parasites talking candidly about a gladiator match they had been to. He heard them say that they used humans in the arena. But that wasn't the only place humans disappeared to. They ended up in brothels, or slaves to any of the richest parasites in the Empire as well.
Dwelling on the past won't change it, he reminded himself roughly. Action is the only thing that will stop this. That was what had motivated Jared to form a military-style resistance group. A group well trained in combat could free hundreds of the human playthings the parasites had collected.
So he started. He sought out some of his old friends in Rome, ones he knew would not have been turned. Doc had been the first. Then it he found Kyle and Ian O'Shea, brothers that had been raised in Rome, but were from a region in Britannia.
It had been these four men that started a resistance group they called "Licentia Proeliator", or Freedom Fighters.