chiv-id: Hello all my readers and, yes! Another chapter of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, the Dragon Tears chronicle. I was sad to see so few people have read my story, especially since Enslaved had a great story line in the first place, but I continue onward! LOL, but seriously, there was one person who reviewed, whom I thank, and I have revised some of this story actually so that it's not one huge glob of text. Instead, the chapters will be split into parts, which means that one chapter in the game may be extended to fit my story and pace. I hope you guys enjoy the story and I'll see you after!

Chapter 2: The Old City, Part One

-Location: Grand Central Station-

There was sunlight…and grass…that much he was certain of. What he was lying on was hard, warm, and forgiving. Probably why his head hurt so much in the first place. The large man tried to get up and as soon as he at least propped himself up by his elbows, he saw the red-head clutching her knees and staring at him like some child, again thinking that she was more girl than woman. She looked at him like he was a strange alien, uncertain of him. He was pissed off at her, for sure, since their best interactions were slamming the door in his face, leaving him to die, and ejecting the escape pod while he was on the outside of it. Needless to say, seeing her again wasn't a welcome sight.

"You…" he managed to get out, despite all the pain that assaulted his senses, "Aarrgghhh…oh God! My…my head feels like it's ripped open." He sat up for second then fell on his back, groaning in pain.

"It's the headband," the girl finally opened her mouth to speak and surprisingly she didn't sound like a small weak child.

"What?" his face was contorted in pain and disorientation, trying to sit up again only finding that the pain increased tenfold.

"The slave headband…" her eyes were wide, watching his reaction, "The one I fit on you." Now, one can imagine the surprise and rage that the large man felt when he heard those words. He had just survived an exploding containment cell, fought several heavily armed mechs, and avoided a gruesome death by crash-landing by hopping on an escape pod. All of this so that he wouldn't get enslaved by Pyramid slavers and transported back to their base of operations. What's more, he's done this since he was a child, surviving on his own, fighting mechs, even people, and to be taken down by this…this…child? The face of pain was dropped and switched with one of serious disbelief. His hands came up to his head and he felt the cold, rigid steel that would keep him prisoner. He leaned forward, pain forgotten.

"You put this on me?" he asked quietly, yet the girl could feel the rage building in those words.

"Let me explain!" she began in a hurried breath, her eyes going even wider if that was possible. She knew the consequences, but she still seemed scared. He narrowed his eyes. If there was one that was ever going to be explained, it would be why he was not…and he meant, not fucked with…ever.

"Get this thing off, or I'm gonna rip your head off," he promised her. Not telling her, promising it. His eyes were serious and they flashed with barely contained anger, understanding that if she was the one who put it on, she was the only one within a 100-mile radius who could take it off immediately. If he had to scare her and threaten her into compliance, so be it. Law of the jungle, and he took that saying to heart.

"No," she replied determined and he looked up suddenly.

"No?" he questioned loudly, grimacing. Was she insane? She was half his size, probably couldn't even hold one of his gloves without dropping it in five seconds. A weakling. Someone who had to depend on others. And here she was, acting like King of the Hill when she had nothing on him except the power to take off the damn headband. And even so, he could just kill her and look around for other survivors to threaten into agreeing to do it for him instead. He began to get up.

"Do you think I'm screwin' with ya?" he yelled at her, pushing off the pillar and running at her like a maniac, the girl's eyes wider than ever. She gave a garbled and scared noise before she hid behind her own resting spot.

"Command: stop!" she yelled in defense and to his surprise, a sudden pain flared in his brain, causing him to actually halt. A bright red light pulsated from the headband, signaling that it had hacked into his pain receptors and was giving him a severe jolt. He screamed out in pain, his mouth open and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. It was excruciating. Again, her eyes went wide.

"Oh my God…it works," she said breathlessly, now confident in her power, "Command: move away from me!" And another flare of light came from the headband as it responded to her voice, the large man giving even louder screams of pain as his hands flew to his head and moved away from the girl. He fell back to his original place on the pillar, trying to lessen the pain. It worked, and the girl stood up from her hiding place to stare at him with her mouth wide open.

"What the hell are ya doing?" he demanded, pain written clearly on his face. The headband had stopped shocking his pain receptors and he was left with what felt like his head being split open by a rock. He continued to groan in pain.

"I hacked a slave headband," she explained, ducking behind her place again, in case the headband failed, "So it could be activated by my voice commands." The large man had fallen down and she gained courage once more as she came out to stare at him. Always watching him, making sure that the device was working. He felt like he was going to throw up, but he certainly didn't want her seeing that. His pride as a warrior, as a survivor, was already being wounded by having been enslaved by her.

"Activation triggers a systemic pain response," she took a few breaths, calming herself; "It's what controls the slaves." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye when he also began to feel the effects subside. Her eyes were just so freaking huge, like they were going to pop out of her head! And admittedly, that's what he wanted to do: pop her head like an overinflated balloon.

"I'm gonna kill you," he grunted at her, still struggling to gain control over his body. However, his brain suffered so much trauma from the headband that it was messing with his nerves.

"You can't…" she gave a smart-ass nod with her head, "If my heart stops beating for any reason, the headband will discharge a lethal dose." He stopped grimacing again, understanding her words, yet not believing a word of it. Just when things couldn't get worse!

"If I die, you die," she told him simply, her power over him absolute. The man groaned, closing his eyes in disbelief. Did she understand how much bullshit he had to go through today, half of it being her fault? Did she know how much crap he had to deal with before, just to avoid this kind of predicament? These questions continued to cycle through his mind, along with one just for her.

"Why?"

"I need your help. I come from a wind farming community," she nodded her head to the right, "It's about three hundred miles from here. I'll never make it on my own. If slavers don't get me, mechs will. That's the deal. Get me back to my home and you can go back to yours." He finally was able to get to a kneeling position since the pain completely dissipated. Breathing heavily, he stared at her with less ferocity and hate. He still couldn't believe that he had been enslaved to such a weakling, but as he learned in his travels, it was better to roll with the punches then to take them outright. Besides, he was a reasonable man, when the time called for it. However, when she took off his headband, and he would hold her to it, he promised never to get near human settlements ever again. Once he sorted out his thoughts, he glanced back to her again, his eyes having drifted away during his pondering.

"Looks like I don't have a choice," he responded heavily and somewhat defeated.

"Neither of us do," it surprised him that she was actually apologetic, "I'm sorry." She wasn't quite such the bad manipulative girl that he thought she would be. Admittedly, even he understood that nothing less than a strong warrior could navigate this place, and he was one of the very few who could do so alone. However, he wasn't letting down his guard around her. After all, it was her fault he was in the headband in the first place.

"Okay…" he was somewhat resigned in this and shrugged, "Let's go." He fully stood up and this caused her to back away a little, even sit on her ass. He looked around and tried to pull together the pieces of his mind that the headband had assaulted. When it looked like he wasn't going to throttle her anymore, she stood up as well and walked past him while he shook his head in an attempt to gather his thoughts.

"Command: stay with me!" he was about to tell her that she didn't have to command him, but he was tired and just followed, like a recently broken horse. He also hadn't noticed it before, but her words echoed in his mind. It was rather distracting and it certainly didn't make the transition from being free to enslaved any easier. Then, something even more bizarre happened: lights and readings appeared in front of his eyes, as if he were wearing a helmet, but he knew that all that adorned his head was the headband.

"Hey! What the hell is all this stuff I can see?" he asked, groaning a bit as it did tweak his headache here and there while fiddling with his optical nerves.

"I've hacked the headband to give you visual feedback," she responded, entering something into the digital readout on her arm, "It's patched into your shield system and my biometrics."

"And your voice," he finally approached that subject, gripping his head as the echoing became too much for him, "It's like it's…it's inside my God damn head."

"It is," she replied, continuing entering data into the readout, "We have a continuous audio link now." He was a reasonable man, but this was just too much.

"Great…" he grunted sarcastically, still holding his head. She went silent after that last comment, apparently not used to being talked to in that manner. The man smirked a little, having finally shut her up. Again, he was a reasonable man, but that didn't mean he wasn't below getting payback while he could.

"You got pretty beat up when you landed," she again spoke and he nearly groaned with the sound of her in his head. Well, what the hell was he supposed to do about it? She pointed to a health pack that was lying conveniently there, probably scattered around the entire city from the slave ship that crashed. He walked over to it and stepped on it, not really showing finesse with the delicate machinery, but it did the trick as he felt the healing energy course through his body, repairing any damage the landing and the headband had done. The ringing in his head was gone and the blurry vision went away with it, giving him at least an easier time controlling his body.

"Shall we keep going?" as if she really had to ask, he continued to patrol around the area, understanding that an open area was a dangerous area. Mechs enjoyed large open spaces, mainly because there weren't any obstructions such as stone or metal that would get in the way of their sensory range. This was also not a great place to stick around because it looked as though the earth had cracked and several fissures had raked the land here, making it easy for mechs to hide. They came across a stone monument that had the faces of many people displayed on them, old school paper style.

"Who are all these people?" the girl had asked, but the man just turned away.

"Who cares?" he replied, continuing to survey the area, but found that the posters were not only just on that stone but on others as well, covering nearly the entire vicinity. Ignoring them in favor of finding a way to get them to a safer place, he found a strange vertical platform that had a twin on the others side of the ravine.

"I think this must be a drawbridge," the girl had come up behind him, joining him in staring at it.

"Must be to keep mechs out," he surmised, glancing at a red and rusted sign.

"There are some controls here," she told him as she went to his left side, pulling down on a lever. It lowered their half of the vertical platform, now horizontal.

"The other side is blocked," she remarked, seeing as how the other side failed to move, "Can you get around and clear it?" He almost laughed at the casual exchange between them, a captor and her slave. To even be so unguarded towards him, her manner and tone said so, despite the professional air about them, it almost seemed like a joke. However, to focus back at the task at hand, he nodded and looked around for good footholds. She looked with him, although he didn't see any point to it. He was a master climber, so even dubious places were scalable for him. He grabbed onto a metal pipe on the side of one of the stone buildings and crossed some metal beams to the other side. However, a metallic groan echoed around them in the concrete jungle and he knew that they weren't alone.

"What was that?" she asked quickly, suddenly feeling insecure and scared. He could tell by the elevated heart beat that he was monitoring from the heads-up display.

"Mechs," he responded as loudly as he could without alerting the machines, "Keep your voice down. They could be close." As if to enforce what he said, a shadow of a mech passed by, another metallic groan sounding around them. He was almost to the other side, just a little more…

"What are we going to do?" she asked, again in a hurried tone, but it was a little louder and he cringed as he fell to the ground on the other side of the ravine. Both from the fact that it was loud in general and also because he could also hear her inside his head, so it rang for a while before his ears started working.

"Not make too much noise," he told her, and she replied with a bashful, 'oh'. He reached the lever that would lower the second half of the bridge, but the damn thing was rusted in place. As carefully as he could he jerked the lever into obeying, but it broke it and the bridge fell down with the loudest clang he had ever heard in his life, magnified by the fact that they were most likely surrounded by a large number of mechs.

"Oh shit!" he muttered under his breath, hearing the mechs screech in joy at having located their prey. The girl shouted out behind him, drawing unnecessary attention to herself.

"Keep out of the way," he told her from his side, "Let me deal with this." He stood directly in front of the drawbridge to keep them from passing him to attack her. There were three that vaulted over pillars of stone and vegetation and began their assault. With his trusty staff, he attacked the first with a strike straight through the head, the stupid thing actually flying towards him wide open. With one down, he turned his attention to the other two, dodging their flying metal blades and attacking their joints. When he struck through the last one in its middle section, he sighed.

"Okay, it's all clear. Get over here," he called and heard her voice.

"Coming," she replied quickly, the nervous little thing crossing and sticking to his side like glue. Already she had begun to depend on him. However, once she spotted a movable object, she pointed to it.

"We could get out from here. Can you move this?" she asked, and he looked at it, assessing it. He shrugged and moved forward, grabbing an edge and hoisting it up, displaying his full…or at least half of his full strength as he lifted it completely up, enough for her to get to the other side without having to crawl, but just bend a little. Needless to say, she was impressed, her eyes actually stuck to the muscles that rippled when he used them, probably too worried about him killing her to actually notice the man's physique. She glanced back at him when he got through without so much as a scratch. He actually had a good body, but she trained her mind to more important tasks at hand. Such as, why was the man actually leading now? Seriously, where the hell was he going? He was jogging, so she had to run to catch up with him.

"Do you think you could tell what the…plan…is…?" she trailed off when he stopped and noticed that he was staring at a gigantic black cloud that looked like a snake coiling in the sky. Her mouth dropped open and her green eyes became ridiculously wide again, but it wasn't just the smoke. The entire area looked like an old city with Mother Nature retaking it inch by grassy inch, covering it in a lush green and vibrant scenery. It was beautiful.

"To get you home as fast as possible, so that you can take this thing off my head and I can break your neck," he listed, the girl pausing in gawking at the breathtaking scenery to address him.

"I meant-"

"Yeah, I know what you meant," he retorted a bit irritated, having hoped that she would've gotten the humor of it, "See that smoke over there? That's where the slave ship came down. First thing we're gonna do is head for that, hoping my ride survived the crash."

"What's your ride?" she asked, still staring at the smoke and scenery.

"Ah, it's the only way I know how to cover three hundred miles," he turned to her again, "Two wheels and an engine." He proceeded on without her, but she caught up quick enough.

"Look at this place," she remarked, taking in the immense statues and tall buildings, "There must have been thousands living here."

"More," he corrected her, making her turn back to him.

"Tens of thousands?" she asked, intrigued by how he would know that.

"Maybe," he replied, "Someone once told me that this place…used to the heartbeat of a whole culture. This city used to be known for art, music, literature, and it was enough to give its people an identity that was unique." Her eyebrows rose up, surprised by his knowledge.

"And…who was that 'someone'?" she asked, but he waved it off.

"Forget about it," he told her, and she decided not to push him on the subject.

"It's so sad, though," she continued, hoping to at least generate more out of him, "I wonder what happened to them all." He didn't reply and she sighed, completely dropping the topic. However, they soon encountered another mech, this time a ranged mech who began shooting as soon as its laser located them. The man instantly dove to the side, but the girl just stood there, almost getting hit until he startled her by yelling at her.

"Get down!" she immediately did as he said and went for the nearest shelter, "When I give you the signal, you get back, okay?" He had figured she wasn't the fighting sort, so he was going to have to hold her hand like a child would and guide her through the more dangerous situations. He felt like he was going to die any second because she didn't even learn the basics, seeing as how she didn't move when the mech first ambushed them.

"No, no, no, no, no," she babbled and he looked back at her, "I can't! I can't!" God, of all the times-

"Hey!" he interrupted her self-confidence-shattering mumblings, "Do as I say!" She immediately replied with a 'no', only making him further irritated with the situation, seeing as how he couldn't protect her with her being stuck in a corner raving like a lunatic.

"I gotta find a way to take him out," the man grunted to himself, seeing as how the girl wouldn't do anything he said so he had to do it the hard way. Using the various objects around the mech as shields, he made his way over to the ranged mech and attacked swiftly, taking it out so it wasn't a threat anymore. However, it gave one last mechanized cry that alerted nearly six others, all of the melee mechs. He groaned and continued to fight, but he was fatigued, the amount of stress piled with the amount of injuries he had sustained before and running on health packs only was draining him. He received a small puncture wound on his right pectoral before slamming his staff into the mech's chest, making sure that it would be superficial instead of fatal. Then, as he was fighting the last mech, it sliced across his abdomen, the man not jumping back enough and a ribbon of blood streamed from it, staining his stomach. Finally, after it was done, the girl was there, staring at him with those almost abnormally big green eyes as usual, like he was some alien creature. He was pacing much like a wild animal, eyes somewhat wide and roaming, nostrils flaring, and his chest heaving.

"If we are gonna get through this," he yelled at her from across the way, "Then when I ask you to do something, you need to do it! Immediately!" She continued to watch him with those terrified child-like eyes and nodded.

"Okay…I understand," she responded shakily and softly. This made him start to calm down and he stopped his pacing, which also helped the girl to relax a little.

"Let's go," he tested and she answered with an 'okay', following him immediately. They continued through the city, reaching another blocked archway to which she looked at him expectantly. He rolled his eyes and again grasped the edge of the debris, lifting it up enough for her to get through, but once he glimpsed what was on the other side, he yelled at her.

"Watch out!" again she had been watching him instead and found herself face to face with a melee-type mech, screaming as she slid down to her butt in an effort to stop her momentum. The mech closed in on her, hovering over her and then grabbing her head with its foot, the sheer terror she exuded probably making the mech even more blood thirsty. However, just before it brought her face to its blade, she jammed a small device into its optics, releasing some sort of shockwave that stunned all the mechs in the vicinity.

"They're stunned, but it won't last!" she warned him, running away to the stair well. He understood and smashed them while they were completely vulnerable, taking only a few seconds or so. He looked at her cowering on the stairs, still in shock and her eyes wide with fear. The man picked her up and she nodded to him once she had recovered, showing him that she was alright.

"What the hell was that you did?" he asked, honestly curious but also wanting to help her ease back into a state of calm.

"It's an EMP pulse. My father gave it to me," she replied as she trembled slightly while climbing the stairs, "It knocks out small mechs for a few seconds, enough to give me a chance to get away." The tremor in her voice almost dissipated when she talked of her father, as if the thought of him soothed her. The man jogged up to her, easily catching up and watching her breath heavily. Then, she noticed the bright green electronic door in front of them.

"This security door is still functioning," she observed, almost in disbelief, "There must be live power cells around here!" She rushed to it, decrypting the locking mechanisms and trying to find a way to open it.

"Doesn't matter," the man immediately replied, "We shouldn't get sidetracked. We just need to get to the crash site." She glanced up at him as if his opinion was the one that didn't matter before getting the door open. Running through, she instantly dropped down on her ass again. The girl was doing that a lot lately…

"Mechs!" she explained in a loud whisper, but he slid over to her and covered her mouth.

"Shh…" he peered over the edge of the metal and concrete wall, "We can't sneak past them." They were several ranged mechs that could seriously ruin their chances of getting even near the ship. He looked to the other side.

"I'll get across and draw their attention. Then you make a run for it," he told her, the girl nodding and he pulled his hand off her mouth. The man glanced around then ran, letting his shields take the brunt of the damage before getting safely to the other side. He distracted the mechs and let her cross without being shot, sighing in relief. However, it was far from over as the man soon found out…

-Location: Slaver Ship-

"…Monkey?" Priority One looked to the horizon, distant echoes of battle slowly making its way to the ship. Priority had escaped their prison cell with little effort after resting for an hour, stretching after being cooped up for so long, and was now watching for any mechs that could be approaching the site. There were already several of them posted around, probably securing it, but none of them were climbing up yet.

"Waiting for more reinforcements, I see," Priority looked down at them before glancing back at the city, "There's little time to lose, my student. And you'll soon find that New York City has become an unforgiving place…"

chiv-id: Whoo! So, there wasn't as much romance in there, but trust me, next time will! Or at least base physical attraction, LULZ! Seriously, though, I am trying to keep to the storyline as much as possible so that people who haven't played the game know what happens and have a general back story, but there will be diversions, such as the ending part here when we go back to Priority One, which is going to be that person's name until Monkey and Trip meet up with them. And yes, when I mentioned the student part, you can take a guess at what Priority One's relationship with Monkey was before! There was also a small tidbit of information that wasn't apart of the original story line that I snuck in there that hints at Priority One, but people who haven't played the game may not spot it, but people who have...EASTER EGG HUNT TIME! If you guys can spot that small out of place information, I shall give prize to the first one who can! Maybe...artwork? I have been coming up with their design in my own style, which is kinda manga-ish, so keep an eye out on when I do that!

P.S. Have any of y'all noticed how Enslaved caters to both sexes visually? You have Trip, who's really hot. I mean, seriously, I haven't seen a girl who can run in a tube top and her boobs don't fly out, especially with Trip's size. And honestly, the girl has the skinniest waist with the biggest pair of boobs and that just ain't proportionally correct, but I'm pretty sure that the boys don't care about that. Then you have Monkey, who's also pretty hot. For the girls, he's appealing in the sense that he has a really nice body, tall, and his ass is just way too nice to be real. Seriously, that man's got a bodacious butt, you seen that thing? Sigh, but enough fangirling, please REVIEW, whether you wanna agree with me, disagree with me, or even just comment on the story! I'll be reading 'em, so please, drop 'em like it's hot! See you next time on Dragon Tears!