Sorry this took so long, I had a lot of shit to do. Okay! Let's do this shit! Star bound... Awesome!
Chapter 2: Escape
Spiral awoke to a light shake on his shoulder. He flinched towards the wall when he saw that it was a Floran waking him up. After he hit the wall, it all came rushing back to him. He remembered Rose and how he had ended up in a Floran prison. As Spiral realized how tired he was, he yawned, "Why am I up so early?"
Rose spoke as he began to stretch, not showing that he was tired at all. "If the guards catch you asleep in the morning, they put a bullet in your shoulder to wake you." Spiral waited for Rose to say he was kidding, but he simply finished stretching and sat down. It looked like he was beginning to meditate. His breathing was deep and controlled.
"You're not serious!" Spiral yelled, earning many hisses and other sorts of threats from other cells. Rose continued to meditate and didn't seem to hear the scream. He simply continued to breath and focus. "Why would they do that?" Spiral asked much quieter.
Rose took another deep breath and responded with an answer that sounded like it was obvious. "They think it's fun." Spiral thought about this for a moment and thought it actually made sense. He just sat there as Rose meditated. The silence was broken by a few gun shots over the next hour. Rose finally spoke. "You probably want to know what will happen today. After we wait, they give us lunch. Then they kill off those that are problems to make room and we go to bed. This is where our plans differ."
"What do you mean?" Spiral asked as he stretched again. He was wondering what had been going through Rose's head as he sat there and why he picked now to talk.
"After that," Rose began, "we begin my plan to escape here." Spiral's face brightened. "If your wondering why now, it's because I need someone who can think and trust. For the next part, I'm gonna be some trouble and get taken to execution." Spiral's face fell as he had no idea where this was going. "The room is close to the control room. After I escape, I'll release all the prisoners. This is where you come in." Spiral adjusted himself as he waited to hear his part. "After I'm taken away, you have to steal a knife when I'm taken. The guards should be too happy or shocked to notice if your good enough. After that, start making a disturbance in the cell. When a patrol guard comes in, kill him and steal his keys."
Spiral looked unsure at killing the guard with a kitchen knife. "These are Florans were dealing with," Rose reasoned. "Don't forget that." Spiral nodded in understanding. "Now, this key will get you out of the cell and to sector B on the first floor while also giving you a head start. I'll be waiting there and the key will get us into the hanger. The chaos of the guards and prisoners fighting will allow you to slip away, but it will still be dangerous, for both of us." Spiral thought of something to say, but in the end just stared at the ground in disbelief of this insane plan. Escaping from a Floran prison was unheard of in all of the universe. Certain people had broken into them, but a prisoner had never broken out themselves. "I know this is a lot to take in at once, but I can't tell you later, so I thought I'd let you sort it out throughout the day. Can you do that?" Spiral pushed the idea from his mind long enough to nod and remained quiet.
"You've had a long time to plan this, haven't you?" Spiral asked. Rose nodded quietly. He'd been here for almost a year, with nothing to do but think.
After 5 minutes, the guards arrived at their cell. They were both angry that they didn't get to shoot them and were completely surprised to find Spiral still alive. The guards shoved them out and Spiral fell down only to be kicked in the stomach and hauled to his feet. Rose managed to keep his feet and the guards growled. Spiral could tell he had done this before and fallen. They hauled them down the halls and shackled them to other prisoners. As they trudged down the hall, Spiral looked into other cells and saw prisoners shackled to walls or just on the ground growling and groaning. Spiral saw a weird fountain like thing in one cell. "Hey?" Spiral whispered quietly.
Rose stopped him, knowing what he had seen. "It's a torture device," Rose whispered casually. "Don't ask how it works because trust me, you don't want to know." Spiral thought of as many ways it could and shuddered.
They were taken to a large room with a few tables. Not enough for all of them, but Spiral didn't think many Florans used tables. The room had a few scattered pools of lava and stacks of bones were everywhere. They un shackled them from each other and led them to a line where they were given some sort of meat. Spiral didn't trust it, but Rose nodded as Spiral sat down and just stared at his food. "I know it tastes horrid," Rose told him, "but you'll need the full stomach. Trust me." Spiral bit into it and discovered only one thing that was true that Rose said. It did taste terrible. As Spiral took forever to eat his food, Rose sat there and thought. Fights broke out and were stopped very frequently, but no one really tried to mess with Rose. Spiral still wasn't sure of his story, until a group of Florans came over.
Three Florans walked over to Rose as Spiral shuddered from another bite. The two on the side looked relatively similar, except for their skin color, which was red and blue. They had savage eyes and smiles, along with a purple mushroom on both of their heads. The leader had a black Mohawk of leaves and brown skin. He was huge and had a green loincloth. Rose took a glance at them before shutting his eyes again. "Florans want ape man," the leader said in his deep guttural speech. Rose stood up and they growled.
"Ape Floran's," Rose responded in the same speech. "Florans leave now." Spiral was amazed how when Rose spoke, it sounded so guttural, yet so smooth. The group walked up to Rose and growled. Rose sighed as if he didn't have time for this.
Spiral suddenly saw Rose's soft eyes turn savage. He grabbed the leader by the head and pulled it down. Rose used the momentum to swing over his head. As he rolled over the leader's back, Rose lashed out with a kick, catching a goon by the temple and sent him flying to the side. The other one managed to avoid both the goon and the kick. As Rose touched the ground, he grabbed the leader's head and smashed it into the table. As he crashed to the ground, Rose turned and hoisted the off balanced goon by the throat with one hand. No one really knew what had happened. Everyone froze because they had only heard tales about Rose Blood, the clan killer. The guards knew they couldn't lift their weapons fast enough. If Rose wanted this one dead, he was dead. Rose stood there for about 10 seconds as if he was thinking about killing him. Spiral was the only one who saw his other hand shaking. When it finally stopped shaking, he saw Rose smirk and drop the Floran. "Ape man belong to Floran." Spiral had just enough time to see Rose wink at him before guards rushed in and began to drag Rose away. No one knew what had just happened and Spiral was so shocked he almost forgot to take a knife. He slipped towards the guards slightly and when they knocked him to the ground, he wrapped his hand around the knife and slid it into his shirt. Rose went quietly, showing no emotion at all.
Everyone avoided Spiral for the rest of lunch because despite Rose being taken, they wouldn't move in until they were sure he was dead. Spiral had no choice but to finish his 'food' and head back to his cell. As he reached his cell, Spiral realized he didn't know how long to wait. He decided to wait until the same guard came around twice to show it was patrolling. He waited for hours and started to get worried about when the guard would come. He then saw a shadow come near the cage. Spiral started to bang and rattle the bars on his door as much as possible. The guard was less than pleased, to say the least. By that I mean, he was fucking pissed. He had really wanted to see the floran get executed, but here he was stuck on guard duty. Days like this made him really want to kill something, and this poor ape man was the unfortunate victim that set him off.
He burst into the room ready to shoot this prisoner with a full magazine of ammo. Luckily for Spiral, he was just as ready to get out. Spiral had slipped the knife out of his shirt and climbed onto Rose's bed when he heard the guard coming back. As soon as the door started to open, Spiral leaped and plunged the knife into the guard's neck. The guard began to flail about at his unexpected attacker. He shook off Spiral but dropped his gun as his hand instinctively went to his wounded thoat. As Spiral lept off the floor, he prepared for a fight. As he looked at the guard, he could tell he would get one. The guard pulled his hand away from his neck, light green with floran blood. The guard looked at the cell, noticing the ape man with the knife and his gun in a far off corner. The guard drew his own knife as he prepared to kill this annoying monkey.
Spiral's fear kept him on the defensive as the guard attacked. Spiral parried furiously with his knife, but it was only a kitchen knife. He had to dodge more than once and it nearly killed him. As a lightning fast thrust came at his face unexpectedly fast from the bleeding out Floran. Spiral ducked just in time to take an armored knee to the face. Spiral was lifted off his feet and flew backwards. Spiral could only roll with it and try to flip backwards onto his feet, but the Floran guard rushed in for the kill, so Spiral changed his plan. Being a monkey gave you some pretty good balance on your hands. Spiral landed on his hands and lashed out with a surprisingly hard kick to the Floran's head. He flew into the beds and hit his head on the bed. As the Guard sunk to the floor and Spiral flipped back onto his hands. His readied knife met no attack from the visious Floran though. As Spiral walked up to him carefully, he realized the guard was dead. Spiral couldn't possibly have forseen that the guard would snap his neck on the bed frame.
Spiral just sat there pondering how lucky he was until a alarm shocked him back to reality. Rose had started his escape and the cells shut down to maximum security. Spiral ripped the key card off the guard and slid it into the emergency overide. As the door slid open, Spiral went into an adreniline powered sprint.
-
Rose thought about Spiral as he stood in a hallway with the other trouble makers, but cast away the thoughts as he remembered how much he would need to focus to live. He would just have to trust in his new friend. He had no other choice and besides, not just anyone survived a Floran raid.
Rose did what he did every day as he waited. He breathed in meditation. Rose could only guess at the amount of time that went by, but it all felt the same to him. Then the guards came and pointed at him. Apperently Rose was the star of today's show. They dragged him, quite roughly I might add, to the execution room. Most were either shot or stabbed or even decapitated if they didn't feel like wasting time, but there was one execution made for the worst prisoners. Very simply put, they chained you to a pole and lowered you into lava very slowly. They love to hear your screams as your skin, muscles, and then bones, peel and melt off underneath you. This was what Rose had expected, but he didn't leave much to chance, so this didn't effect his plan.
Just before he entered the room, Rose began to struggle and rammed the guards into the wall. They let go, and Rose fell to the ground hard. As he tried to run, the guards yanked him up by his chained hands and dragged him inside. They began to laugh at his foolish excuse for an escape. Rose just smirked as he hung his head in fake defeat.
They hung him by his hands and quickly left the room. The last guard barely made it out before the floor began to open to lava and the pillar Rose was tied to began to lower. Rose realized he wouldn't have much time. He propped up his feet against the pillar with expert precision and pushed off with force. The slick blood that ran down Rose's wrists from struggling took affect. The blood allowed his hands to slip through the bindings, only cutting his hands a little. He pulled his hands down and went into a back flip and barely managed to catch the retracting floor.
Rose pulled himself up just as the guards hit the alarm button and the exit door started to close. Rose rushed forward with oustanding speed and somehow got under the door before it closed. As the two guards were prepared to face him, Rose pulled one of the other prisoners in front of him as a spray of gun fire came down the hall way. Nearly every prisoner died except for Rose and a few others. As the bullet storm ended, Rose pulled the dead weight over his shoulder and lauched him at the guards with incredible speed.
One guard was hit by the Floran missile and went to the ground while the other turned to watch in disbelief at how far the Floran had been thrown. When he turned back, there was a Floran in front of him and a deadly foot coming at the side of his face. The guard had no no time to react as the foot knocked him unconsious and shattered his jaw. The other guard was to stunned to notice the blur of green come over him as Rose ripped his throat out with his hand.
Spiral ran through the halls, casting aside any fears he had before he had escaped the cell. That was until he turned a corner and three guards, fully armed and running at him saw him. They stared at each other for a second before raising their guns against him. Spiral thought he was dead until suddenly the doors to the cells opened.
The guards stood their awestruck as Spiral realized this was his chance. He ran at the guards and jumped off one's head. As he sprinted down the hall and the guards raised their weapons, the prisoners swarmed over the guards. Being less armed and armored, it was an even battle of chaos. 'This is what Rose predicted,' Spiral reminded himself.
Spiral sprinted on, dodging Floran prisoners that came at him because they enjoyed killing or had lost their grip on sanity. He jumped over another guard that was being swarmed by prisoners and torn apart. Spiral couldn't stop running. Spiral heard the sound of charged energy and instinctivly dropped to the ground as a wave of energy bullets swarmed over him, killing all in the corridor except him. Spiral had a nasty burn on his shoulder where a shot had hit him. He glanced back down the hall to see that the security squads had been realeased. They killed everything, but had much more skill. Spiral sprinted down the hall and turned a corner as a hole was blasted in the wall beside where he had been standing.
The watchers that ran the facility and watched the computers and cameras heard the sirens and were watching the cameras for a Floran that had killed everyone in the hallway. As they watched the screens, a Floran guard came into the room and asked, "What happening?" The watchers had no idea what was going on and wouldn't have had had the chance to answer even if they did. The guard lifted his plasma shotgun and shot two of them in the back. He threw the gun away and drew his pistol. Two more watchers laid dead by the time they they turned around. The remaining three watchers had drawn their guns but the guard ducked behind a terminal as they fired, also letting off a shot of his own that hit one of them in the shoulder.
The guard rushed out with blinding speed and shot a different guard in the eye before tossing the pistol at the only one he hadn't shot. The watcher dodged out of reflex giving the Guard the second he needed to punch him in the stomach before turning him at his companion who had pulled up his plasma rifle. The motion was done so fast the guard who had been shot in the shoulder didn't have enough time to stop himself from pulling the trigger. The guard had a hole go straight through him, but the guard wasn't there any more.
The guard had lept over the watcher, using the final one's shock at shooting his comrade to give him time. He landed while launching a fist at the watcher's wounded shoulder, causing him to cry out in pain. The guard ripped the rifle from his injured arm and bashed him in the face with it, causing the watcher to fall back as the guard spun the rifle over and placed it on his shoulder. The watcher died before he regain his balance, a hole through his forehead. The guard removed his helmet and allowing his vines to fall around his face. Rose shook his hair back to normal and walked over to a console. The watchers had only one failsafe button in their room. Luckily for Rose, it was the one he wanted.
As he pressed the button, sirens began to go off in the room and lights began to flash red throughout the compound. Rose knew how much time he had left and was out of the room a second after he pressed the button.
Spiral rounded a corner and ran into a lone guard. He launched a fist as he tried to run by. The guard ducked under the punch and stuck out a foot as he flipped the Ape over and onto the ground. "You got the key?" Rose said as he offered the Apex his hand.
"Rose!" Spiral said as he was hoisted to his feet. "Yeah, I got it." He handed the key to Rose who then walked slightly down the hall to a door. "Whoa! Is that really the door? It was that close?" Rose nodded and opened the door. Spiral was walking slowly towards him. When Rose heard a single foot step. It was just one, but Rose knew that that could mean danger. Rose grabbed the surprised Apex by his shirt and dragged him into the hanger as 5 Florans ran around the corner and fired at them. Rose saved their life in that instant.
Rose pushed Spiral towards his ship and yelled, "Go!" Spiral was smart enough to start sprinting. Spiral looked back though as Rose was forced into close combat. One good shot or sword slice would kill him. Spiral changed course and ran for a box. As he opened it, he found that it was full of junk except for one weapon.
"Rose!" Spiral yelled as he tossed the giant blade at Rose. Rose flipped over a guards sword and head, catching the sword in mid air. It was a rusted great sword. It wasn't in good condition, but great swords were Rose's specialty.
Rose spun when he landed, sweeping the feet of the guard that had swung at him and then swinging the sword over his head, smashing the guard into the ground. The sword was dull, so neither slice cut much, but that guard wasn't getting up for a while. Rose spun again, barely deflecting the sword coming at his exposed back with his own. His extended blade however, smacked the guard in the face and sent him flying to the ground. A lance came at him then, heading for his stomach. Rose side stepped the spear and brought his dull sword down on the shaft, destroying the spear. His sword went into the ground and Rose used this as a pivot as he lept to the side. Spinning around his blade and kicking the unarmed guard in the face.
As he landed however, Rose felt a searing pain in his shoulder as a plasma rifle shot grazed his left shoulder. Rose broke into a sprint for the ship and Spiral did likewise as he saw the Floran running away. Luckily they did as 20 more guards entered the door way.
Rose slammed the door to the ship shut and held it shut as Spiral ran to the pilot's seat. "Hurry before they hit something vital!" Rose yelled.
"What planet?" Spiral asked as he hit buttons.
"Any planet!" Rose yelled and Spiral hit a random planet button (yes, that is an actual button in the game) and hit the go button. Spiral strapped himself in as Rose pressed himself against the door.
The guards could only watch as the ship left the hanger and zoomed off out of the atmosphere. Spiral breathed easy as they left the planet. Rose wasn't convinced though and stayed against the door. Spiral was surprised as the ship continued course and hit lightspeed suddenly. Rose was smashed against the wall as Spiral almost had his head torn off. After enduring the force for 5 minutes, it stopped.
They both let out a heavy breath and looked at each other. After a few seconds, they both burst into laughter. They continued to laugh as they climbed to their feet. "You're insane," Spiral said as he looked out a window.
Rose walked over and stood beside him. "You're not that much better," Rose laughed. Rose looked out at the hundreds of dots of lights. They were beautiful to him and he smiled. "I never thought I would see those beautiful stars again." Spiral nodded and looked away from the window.
"Let's take inventory and check out where we are," Spiral said as he walked over to the pilot's console again. Rose looked down at the planet below them and nodded. The planet was green and blue, luckily. At least it wasn't cold or a desert. Rose looked at Spiral and back at the stars.
'I'm bound to the stars again,' Rose thought. 'Better than being bound to the ground at least.' Rose smirked at the thought of his old life and the new one before him. He wasn't sure whether he would live or what would happen, but as he looked out at the stars, Rose didn't care.
Author notes: I'm sorry it took so long, but maybe I'm back. Maybe... Let's see how it goes.