A/N: I feel so slow…
Disclaimer: don't own anything.
Kevin blinked a couple of times. This couldn't be happening. He wasn't in a box. He wasn't being held against his will. There was no way that was the smell of a stainless steel knife pressed against his neck, the cool blade threatening to shear his skin.
"Who are you, why are you here, did you do this to my people?" came the questions in one long sentence, not even a pause between each word. A girl's voice. A confident and strong girl. One not afraid to take charge.
At his pause, the blade touched his skin a bit harder. "Tell me," came the vicious hiss again.
"Kevin Ethan Levin, seventeen years old, live in Bellwood. I'm here to free my people and why would I free them if I was the one who did this?" he replied, keeping his manner cool in even this horrible situation. The darkness was closing in on him. But his vision was slowly adjusting and he could see the fine edges of the box he had leapt into and he could make out the shadows of whatever lined the bottom of the box. "And you are?"
"An Osmosian. That's all you need to know." Her fingers released his ebony locks and his head whipped forward, nearly slamming against the box's wood sides. The knife pulled away from his throat, slowly and deliberately. "Now what compelled you to jump into a box?"
He shrugged, hoping the girl could see it. "People started yelling and getting louder. If Argit came, I'd be caught. And when I'm trying to help, I wouldn't want to get caught." Kevin saw faint moonlight filtering in through tiny cracks in the wood. "Now why are you in this box?"
"Trying to escape. To get help." He saw her face turn away from him, her distinctive features being washed in moonlight. Almost bleached white hair, but with a perfect blondish tint to it with the glowing of the moon's waning pale light. Slightly rounded cheeks and a soft complexion. Piercing golden yellow eyes that were almost shaded with bright bronze around the edges. She put on a tough face once more. "This box is shipped off in the morning to the outskirts of California. It's a long ride and we're all trying to get out of here as soon as we can. Before we end up dead."
Kevin sighed and leaned back against the box's side. "I can help you out with this."
"Why are you helping anyways?" she growled fiercely in a low voice. "This isn't your problem and you don't belong here. You're an outsider."
"I'm an Osmosian. Just like you. Don't start questioning me when you've already got my name. I should be questioning you." He looked at her, trying to study her in the darkness. "You're Princess Britania," Kevin noted. "Regal features, posture's as close to perfect as Hell is to the center of the earth and you need to help these people because it's your job, not because you want to." He smirked and leaned a little closer to her. "But I want to."
She stared at him, almost awestruck. "You can't accuse me of-"
"I read body language a little too often. You're not too hard." He started to get up, knowing that the victims had hushed up and Argit had never come around so he was safe once again. "And I can help more than you could imagine." He vaulted over the edge of the box, swinging his feet over the edge in one swift motion and landing on the ground as silent as a cat.
"How?" asked Britania, also getting up and staring at him before also vaulting over the edge of the box. She landed softly and silently on the cold stone floor.
He bent down and checked the box's shipping label. "Redirect this to my garage and I could set up Plumber connections to get you all sent back home in a matter of minutes. The shipping to my place would only take about half a day or more and these boxes are huge. Fits a bunch of people." Kevin got back to his feet, rising above her.
"You have Plumber connections?" she scoffed, a bit shocked by this scraggly little street scum knowing someone in a high rank such as the Plumbers.
"I am one." He pulled out his badge, watching it flash lightly in the dying light of the moon. Kevin saw her face light up in a stunned and surprised expression. "The rest of my team is hanging around back in Bellwood. They can help me take care of your people. No questions asked on how you got here or what was going on." He held up his hands. "And you can trust me. I know the guy who runs this torture camp because he tried to get me in on it."
Britania stared at him, smiling. "You backed out."
"I knew what was going on. I wouldn't watch my people die like this. No matter what." Kevin pulled out a pen from his pocket and started to sketch in the address of his garage on the label of the box. "You good with me helping?"
"No problem with it," she said, staring around at the people hanging in chains from the walls. "The sooner someone gets them out of here the better. Even if it's not me."
He chuckled under his breath. "Sorry for stealing your thunder, princess."
"Just Brittany," she corrected. The girl watched as some of her people twitched in their sleep. A few moaned in pain. Many were weeping in their sleep. How could this have happened? So quickly, so simply, like it was the easiest thing in the world. How had almost an entire world been taken like this? Into a camp. Into a torture chamber. To be mined like rocks in a excavation pit. To be treated unlike beings but as if they were animals.
"Okay, Just Brittany." Kevin looked to her and snickered under his breath before finishing off the address and rising to his feet again. "Now this should work. Argit told me he's shipping off the rocks in these things to be sold so that he can pay me off and all that. And with him selling rocks and paying me off, he won't notice that the addresses have been changed on every single one of these."
"But he will notice people disappearing." Britania stared at him for a few moments. "What are you planning to do about that?"
"Get them all strong enough to fight and then storm the place with an army of Osmosians. Get out the weakest people and leave the strongest here for as long as possible so that they're still here to break away."
"But won't they just get weaker?"
"Who do we want to save? Those on the brink of death or those who will fight to the death?" countered Kevin, eyeing her carefully. "You may be used to armies, but I'm more used to strategies." He looked around, seeing all the people just like him being mined for their powers. This wasn't fair. This wasn't close to fair. He'd rather be chained to that wall and hanging there than on the outside looking in, close to useless with helping them.
Britania was silent now, arms folded across her chest. Kevin was right. She wasn't about to argue with him now. "Fine."
Kevin reached towards the wall and let his powers drink in the touch of the cold gray stone. The armor stretched across his body, defining the muscles under his shirt and bringing him new strength. "Help me out." He went to the closest walls and started pulling people from the wall, ripping the chains that hung them there. They each fell to the ground, crumpling at the touch of solid ground with sobs and moans and groans and painful tears running from their eyes. He ushered them towards Brittany who helped them into the boxes, her body covered in a thin layer of the box's wood so that she could lift the weakest people in.
Finally, they had put at least five people in that box. Then they managed to fill three more boxes. About twenty-one people were getting away tonight. Twenty-one would be taken into the safety of the Plumbers and Ben and Gwen's open-armed help.
The front door unlocked.
Both of them heard it immediately. Brittany had already jumped into an empty box and Kevin was quick to join her. He pulled the lid over the top just in time as the lights flipped on overhead and the fluorescent brightness shone through the cracks in the wood.
Argit didn't even notice that twenty-two people were missing from the walls.
A/N: wow. Hahaha. Hope you like Britania. Her name was the only one I recalled from my dream. There was one other girl, but I can't remember. And this is pretty much how most of it went. Except I was Kevin… anyways, hope you liked it! keep reading cuz the next chapter will be weird… review please!
~Sky