The flooding shelter acted as a cellar for the Marauders, hosting a dark damp room, barren and empty. Well, all except one man tied to a chair, bag on his head in the center of the room. He had heard nothing, saw nothing, and done nothing for the past thirty hours. His thoughts plagued his sanity; doomed to a fate shrouded in darkness, he sulked in silence. Blending in so well Clint and Maraya did not notice him without their blinding natural light from the opening of the vault-like cellar door, representing the very first stimulus he had received in what felt like an eternity. The light seeped through the bag until it was recklessly torn off of him, blinding him to no end.

"Argh!" He grunted with disdain, shaking his head away from the light like a desperate vampire. Clint, angered by this action, grabbed his face to force him to view the light by his long, ginger hair. His eyes pierced the light, and the prisoner grimaced, holding back tears and screams of pain as his eyes failed to hide their bloodshot condition.

"Where are the crystals?!" Clint barked as he held his face to bare. "The unprocessed ones at your base?!"

"Wither in the Abyss!" He cursed in resentment and denial, spitting right in Clint's face. "Magistrate scum!"

Clint let go of his face, wiping the saliva from his chiseled brow. Throwing his hands on his head, walking around, the sickened Resistance leader near him stared at his own sanity down at the floor, motionless. The leader had nothing left to hide but that information, and he was never going to let it go.

"Whatever," Clint submitted as he and Maraya left the room, shaking their heads in desperation, and shut the door behind him, abandoning their shot. They certainly were not Magistrate enforcers, trained to pinch information from anyone; they had no background or experience poking at heads; it was not in their soul. Staring defeat outside of the shelter, Clint put a hand on his chin and checked his left naturally, and in his peripheral vision, the scalp of a pink haired knife-wielder stood at the bottom of his perception. Tilting his head down to meet her, his devious and impulsive head swam thoughts he failed to cancel, ghosting his future guilt-ridden skull.

"Maeve," Clint choked on his words at first, but before he continued, he bolded up, stouting his voice. "Can you give this man a couple of words? Maybe help us out?"

"With what?" Initially, Maeve was confused. She looked away from Clint keeping his body still, but her eyes scattered across the floor, searching the ground for meaning as Clint and Maraya perplexingly watched. Failing, she dramatically turned from the two, now staring down the small village the Marauders created below them and bit her lip; her eyes blanketing the huts, tents, and shelters. Eventually, she started biting her nails, awkwardly dismissing the presence of the two role models behind her. Hesitant, she turned back to face them, but the panic and fear from her face vanished, and Maeve stared Clint down with lowered eyebrows for a moment until finally, she slowly nodded her head once.

. . .

The quickest encounter with the Magistrate he's ever had; no doubt they lacked ambition to get what they want. One question, and they left him without a trace back in the cold, damp interrogation room. It almost felt amateur, especially with their strange clothing, but it was probably part of their scheme to make him relate to them as one of the people. No matter what, his knowledge would remain locked in his head, far from anyone but Valera's own beautiful Resistance! He spat once again at the floor and yelled through his weakness into the void-like cellar. "For the Resistance!" He started laughing, containing his lack of hope through needless, fake joy, until eventually the echoes of the room drifted once the man had exhausted, returning to the quiet and still abyss that was his prison, somberly clearing his now frail sanity.

The squeaks of the vault door now once again cackled his ears, blissfully fulfilling his quest for stimulus as the artificial light source beyond the door filled the room to his spot, casting a shadow out of his pitiful head staring down at the floor, not even bothering to look at the interrogator. Awaiting his imminent questions, however, the sounds of a voice never came, and the clarity of the man's situation greatly faded as he once again heard the squeaks of the door, but only its lock once the door was slammed shut, with no one apparent to him even coming in.

He looked up in suspicion. "Who's there?" He confidently babbled, playfully dismissing their futile attempt at making him feel alone in the room. "You will never win!" He jolted his head left and right, but nothing stirred in the pitch black.

Almost as soon as he gave up on intimidation an eerie whisper-like noise flowed behind him like a wisp revolving around his seat. He gnarled his face, refusing to fall for their petty tactics; even so, out of the corner of his eye a faint pink glow struck his attention with a mesmerized, awestruck look at its beauty - the first color since the base. His expression of elation was invisible to his face however, and his demeanor stood ill-surpassed.

"I can see you!" He taunted, laughing at their attempts at fear, nothing can break Dekah, the greatest merchant the Resistance ever had!

"So can I." A soft, pseudo-French voice drilled into Dekah's ears, and the source wasn't the light to his right, but his left. He moved his head back to the center, no longer searching frantically for the source of the voice, remaining cold, calm, stoic, and immovable, focusing his eyes straight forward. They emerged directly across from him: two feline, glowing blue eyes, isolated in the dark, intently staring back at the captive, who clenched his teeth hard in a mystical yet horrific, monstrous anomaly. His head planted against the headrest as the eyes, to his dismay, approached closer and closer in the trance-like and eerie manner, looming around him. Time seemed to crawl as his long awaited fate sealed, and his silent demeanor was the only force that resisted him from starting to beg for mercy.

The door slammed open, casting the once-haunting room and revealing all of Maeve's trickery of horror and disdain as Clint and Maraya busted into the room for unknown reasons, and Maeve's perception of time slowly led to a stand still, and the voice returned to relieve Maeve of choice once again.

"Darkest time of all, Maeve," Instead of looking and searching for the voice, Maeve simply listened, intent, staring at the Resistance leader who stood hysterical in front of her. "You bring the darkest time of all; wish them 'goodnight.'"

Time returned and the first words that popped from Maeve's mind forever distorted her humanity- forever distorted her mercy.

"Goodnight…"

Maraya, Clint, and Dekah all witnessed their vision faintly collapse into darkness; the pink particles showered their retinas, and their yells only burst into oblivion as Maeve quickly swam through their sea of darkness, fully invisible to the three victims.

"Maeve!" Maraya yelled, shutting her eyes to futilely escape the enchanted blindness. "Your crystal! We can't see!" While Clint and Maraya yelled it was pointless as the Resistance leader began screaming restlessly, chaotically like a hyena. Through his screams all noise drowned out as the crystal glowed a vibrant bright pink like never before. In the span of four seconds, Dekah did not move an inch when one of Maeve's shark-toothed daggers gently kissed his jugular, laying firm, millimeters from puncturing it, resting eagerly on his soft, squishy skin as the humans' vision cleared with Maeve standing wickedly behind Dekah's chair, knife trained with steadfast intensity.

Dekah's eyes widened, tilting his head back to evade and flinch as best he could as the knife touched his cheek. Through gritted teeth and wide, bulging eyes, he stared at the only thing he could have: Clint across the room.

"West side of the building! A vault! 6220! 6220! A sign that says 'PROVISIONS!'" Despite the answer the Marauders wanted, the knife remained against Dekah's skin, drenched in sweat and his own spit.

"Maeve," Clint softly spoke, slowly approaching the vigilant girl with his hands slowly raised to try to ease her. "Put the knife down. We have what we need."

Maeve's grip professed its firmness, cutting Dekah and coating the dagger in a little blood; Dekah failed to react given the adrenaline. Maeve's eyes were dilated, intense, and violent, even animalistic, accompanying her snarled primal jaw. But, despite this expression, she slowly lowered the weapon, and stood behind the prisoner. Clint showed minor relief through his sigh, but he retained his eased expression, still tense. Dekah spit.

"Control your pet, Magistrate dog."

Don't hesitate. The knife sliced his jugular, blood oozing down his throat as his bubbly voice failed to retort as Dekah lost abnormal amounts of blood, now staining his tan shirt, making a puddle on the ground. His eyes bulged as his hands, tied to the chair, struggled to break free, gargling his own blood in a messy, filthy, long, and agonizing death. Coated in a dark red, Dekah's hands eventually slowed, and the gargling stopped, his body limp and lifeless apart from the continued ooze of blood from his neck.

"MAEVE!" Clint screamed in disbelief, panicked as he stood with disgust and shock at the repulsive, heavily breathing, hand-staring, half-tigron girl on the back of the room, tears streaming endlessly down her face.

"By the Lunas," Maraya chimed in shock. "What have you done?"

Maeve surrendered herself to the floor, bawling in endless guilt, but inside, something twisted as Clint and Maraya hoisted her motionless, bawling body and exited the blood-filled flood shelter.