My mom left today for a 3-day convention. Esentially this means that your humble author will not be seen in school until she returns heheh.

Watched Scream and Scream 2 last night. Sooo good. But the girl really has bad taste, one boyfriend is sexy but a serial killer, and the other isn't but he's not at all sexy either. hmm…I'd take the first one.

Omg I realized I forgot to put a disclaimer on the first one!! I hope they don't sue me..

Double Disclaimer: I do not own Broken Sky x2

Do you think this makes it better???

Chapter Two

Estrella barely heard what he said. She wasn't even looking at him. She shoved his hand off and covered her mouth herself, choking on water and coughing; albeit trying to do it quietly.

"Where..am..I?" she gasped out. She appeared to be in some sort of cave, and she was sure that there were none by the place the boat had tipped. So where was she?

"Os Dakar," he said. "But you should know that, if you're in it. I mean, it's not like people just land in it by accident. Do you mean the cave? It's a place I found where there's pretty good water and not too many Snappers around to bother you. Blink found it for me. How'd you get in? I tried swimming through the pool you came from before but I ran out of air and had to surface. Do your stones allow you to breathe underwater?" he asked.

His tone was friendly and curious, but she still felt wary. What the hell was going on? She knew that he wasn't speaking either english, spanish, french or japanese; and she knew no other languages but she understood him perfectly.

However, for all that she was understanding the context of his words he may as well have been speaking German. Snappers? What was a snapper and why would they bother her? Os Dakar? She never heard of such a place. Who was Blink and what kind of name was that anyway? And why would stones allow her to breathe underwater?

She was finally finished coughing and held out her hand: stop. She took a good look at him: he looked about 16 with a handsome face and a hard body, covered sparcly by a ragged pair of trousers and boots that looked as though they had seen better days. He wore a belt with sharp-looking disks, and a thick glove on one hand, a wooden bead necklace around his neck. He was covered in intricate tattoos and his longish hair was wonderfully multi-coloured in a way Estrella has never seen before.

"Who are you?" she asked. She noticed that he had taken her bag without her noticing and was absently looking through it. "Hey that's mine!"

"I'm Whist," he said, giving her a grin that nearly melted her, and might have if he wasn't blatently looking through her things. He picked up a tiny, black see-through thong with a little bow on it as though wondering what it was.

"Hey!" she said, grabbing it back, "private things in there, don't touch." She heard a dog growl and suddenly noticed the huge beast. "Oh shit," she said.

"Don't mind him," he said. "He just doesn't like people yelling at me is all. And it's not exactly a good thing to yell in here, echos and all. What do you say to getting out? You definitely don't belong to a tribe, no colours at all."

Tribe? Why were there tribes? Did he mean gangs?

"Ok," she said. "But first: what's a snapper?"

"Haven't met one yet?" he asked. At her bewildered look he scratched his head lazily. "Kind of like big lizards that eat people. You gotta kill 'em fast and then get the hell out of there before its friends show up. That's about all you gotta know about Snappers."

They started walking, he led, the big dog matching his pace perfectly. She noticed how very tall he was, towering over her. He must have been about 5"8 or 9. She saw three silver stones aligned down his back, the same as the hot violet and black ones that went down hers and cried out in shock.

He scowled and covered her mouth quickly. "Sorry," she whispered. He took his hand away. "I just noticed…you have them too. The stone things in your back."

He gave her a look. "Yeah," he said, at a length. "What about them?"

"Well, I have some too…" she said. "Only I have six."

"Well, most people have at least one," he said. "Never met someone with six before though."

"What?" she asked. "What do you mean, most people have them? Apart from you I've never seen anyone with—" she stopped suddenly as they got out. The land was barren, riddled with a few plants and what looked suspicously like corpses further on. She looked up, the sky was a velvety-black colour, the sun dark with a ring around it. It was much warmer than it had been before, with torches burning in what looked like alleys.

"Where am I?" she whispered.

"I told you, Os Dakar. You should know that." He gave her a weird look. "Do you really not know where you are?"

"I…I was doing a..job…and the boat I was on tipped over and I fell. And then I was in the cave and everything was different. It was winter there, for one thing."

He thought this over. "That's strange. Because most people don't come here for no reason, and no one by accident." She noticed nervously that he has a habit of running his hand down his disks when he was thinking.

"Why…don't people come here?" she asked.

"Os Dakar is a prison pleateau," he said, as though she were crazy. "You wouldn't live very long even without all the tribes killing each other."

She started shaking. "How did I get here?" she whispered. A tear fell, and then another. "How did you…?"

"The same way everyone else did, guards pushed me down some sort of chute and that was that."

"Guards?" she asked.

"Well, it's no good to have us here if we can just get out again, right?" Whist said. She nodded, she supposed that made sense.

"You said something about the stones, what did you mean? What's speacil about them?" she asked him. She sat down and opened her bag, finding a large sub wrapped in tinfoil. It wasn't wet, so she took a half and offered it to him.

He smiled at her, friendly again, and took it. She didn't like ham or salami so she took a little part off and nervously put it in front of the dog, Blink. He ate it up quickly and went to ask for more, so she gave him the rest of it and got an approving look from Whist for her efforts.

"The stones give you a power, right? Mine let me communicate with Blink here, mind to mind sort of. It gives us a connection. I don't know too much about other stones though. I know gold is for healing, and it mostly ends there. What colour are yours?"

"Um…a sort of hot violet with flecks of black," she said. "I don't know what they do. They've never done anything…"

"Where are you from?" he asked her. "Never seen anyone with skin colour like yours," He'd already finished his sub and with a glance at her, taken her bag to look for more food. He picked up the tinfoil wrapped fajitas she'd put in there to eat on her way home. The sub she'd planned to give to Hector. He sniffed them, and then took a bite.

"I live in the states," she said. "My father is Mexican and my mother is Japanese."

Now he looked confused. "States? Mexican? Japanese?" he took another bite thoughtfully. "What are those?"

"Countries," she said. She was feeling really confused now. "What are you thinking Whist?"

"I'm thinking that if there's another way to get into Os Dakar, there must be a way out. Maybe that's what you're stones can do. I think we should see." He thought of something suddenly. "Can you fight?"

She had learned street fighting from her older brothers, and taken tae kwon do since she was 11. At school, she'd been in the archery club and was actually quite good. "Yeah," she said.

"What's your weapon?" he asked, getting up and walking again, checking to make sure she was following. She was.

"Um…bow and arrows," she said. Why were they heading towards the corpses?

"Whist…" she began, and he bent down and plucked a bow from a dead body. The person was covered in red and blue paint, and she couldn't see much else besides the blood. He started picking for arrows, and gave them to her, along with a blood-stained quiver.

"Around here, you gotta just take stuff," he said. "Because there's no place to buy them at."

She nodded, a little fearful, and started putting them in. Swallowing bile, she began to pick through them too, looking for weapons.

"What's your name, anyway?" he asked her. "I meant to ask you earlier but I forgot."

"Estrella," she said. Ew…she was not going to look at that again. "It meants Star in Spanish."

"Star?" he said. "I'm calling you that, then, ok?"

"Ok."

Blink barked and Whist looked up. "Shit, they're here already," he said. She looked up.

"What is it?" she asked.

"You wanted to know what a Snapper is, right?" he asked. Then he pointed. Four vaguely lizard-like shapes with hunched backs and blood-stained muzzles were on the hill, looking down at them, and began to run down. "Good thing there's only four."

"What do we do?" she asked, fear making her voice weak.

"Now we see how well you can fight," he said.

End of chapter 2!! Did you like it?? Hope so!!

I'll update soon again but review for me please..