In the year 2020, Vampires took control of society, and ordered all humans placed in vampire custody. The people who were not captured formed a Resistance movement, headed by the Human Council, who began to plan the Insurgence.

I am, of course, indebted to Stephanie Meyer for this world we all play in, and these characters we all adore. Additionally, I am indebted to hitntr01, who has graciously allowed me to use certain concepts from her wonderful story "In Need of Rescue", which constitute much of the background of my own story. These include: the language Vampiri, the Rules, the machines used to draw blood from humans, and the plot theme of Edward working as a guard at a facility holding humans. Thank you, hitntr01.

Chapter 22 – Manners Training, and the young lady from Florida

(Bella's POV)

This chapter continues, and will conclude, Bella's memories of Manners Training with Crazy

The question was, why would anyone offer a $100K reward for a human like me?

Turns out, that when Crazy bit Mr. Pompous's shoe, she bit off his big toe and spat it out. She did that at the exact moment I pulled the foam alarm, so the toe was lost in the foam. Since a vampire's sense of smell is blocked by the foam particles, ole Pompous couldn't locate his toe by himself. He had to ask for help. And until they found that toe, they couldn't begin to clean up the foam. Usually big vacuums were brought in to suck up the foam and dispose of it, but a vacuum couldn't be employed with a toe in the mess.

Mr. Pompous got mad, went back to this office, and did what he did best. He decided to pay someone to find me for him. He liked paying people to do things for him.

Unfortunately for him, there had been this young lady in Florida.

Now apparently, she had gotten just really fed up with the drapes in the house she was being kept in, or for whatever other reason she might have had for wanting to leave. Maybe it was because some vampire was keeping her there and sucking the blood out of her on a regular basis? Whatever, humans get so wound up about such things. You would think we would just learn that our blood no longer belongs to us; it belongs to whatever vampire is standing around.

So maybe it was the drapes. For whatever reason, she decided to make a run for it.

Usually, when a human manages to get out of a vampire house, one of several things happens.

First, their vampire owner might come home, notice the person is missing, and think "Ah-ha. I get to play the mighty hunter." He goes outside, tracks down the human and drags him or her back to the house.

Now that's assuming that no other vampire noticed the human when they were outside unescorted. If so, the other vampire may just think "free food", grab them, and for the human it's all over. Not necessarily a bad thing, you could always go thinking "OK, I'm done here – I'm going home, going to see Mom and Dad and Uncle Ned in heaven – this place really stunk, glad I'm leaving."

Or the human might get picked up by the cops, and end up in a pound until the vampire owner retrieves them. All "pets", blood slaves as we humans call the life, are micro chipped before purchased by a vampire. A runaway can be returned to their owner if they are actually turned in, instead of being turned into a nifty snack.

But this young lady had a plan. She had noticed a mail truck that had a regular route. The neighbor's house at the end of the block was the last stop, and then the truck headed out for the freeway.

When she managed to get out of the house she was held in, she grabbed on to the back of the truck. Since it was leaving town, no one saw her right away. She held on tight, and managed to stay on despite the high speed for about 30 miles, and then fell off onto the grass by the road.

But, it isn't the vampires who found her. It was the Seminoles. They took her back into the forest, where she was safe, as long as she stayed with them. She rested a few days, and then told them where she wanted to go.

I don't know where she planned to go, but apparently she needed to get there by boat. The Seminoles left the forest with her, and she went to the docks, accompanied by three Seminoles as hawks, flying in a triangular formation over her. When she got to the boat, one changed back, and took the boat down around the coast, guiding her to her chosen destination.

Meanwhile, her vampire owner posted his Ferrari for her return. This got a lot of attention from both the regular trackers and the guys who went out to chase the occasional big reward. Depending on how the Ferrari was valued, it was worth $70,000 to $90,000. This meant that when Mr. Pompous decided to post a reward for me, he had to outpost the Ferrari guy. So he made his reward an even $100,000. And that's why there was a reward of $100,000 out there for me, after the Boston Manners Training fiasco.

When I finally go to bed, Crazy and the trackers are still talking as I'm drifting off. The owner of Disneyland put on a fireworks display for us, that was a nice touch.

The next morning, the trackers have decided they are going to fly back to the east coast. They were making their final arrangements, and checking their emails, when they gave one another puzzled looks.

Apparently the reward has been withdrawn. This is an interesting development. Did someone else get turned in, and Pompous just accepted her? We weren't getting details, so we contacted the mind-reader.

He came back with an interesting tale. Two of my trackers came to Disneyland to find me. A third tracker didn't bother. He went straight to Boston. He asked to meet with Mr. Pompous, telling his secretary that he was a tracker. He told her that he thought he might have information on the girl's whereabouts, but wanted to make sure of a few details of the physical description.

And apparently, Mr. Pompous was no better at picking bodyguards then he was at fighting. The tracker was allowed to walk right up to his desk. The tracker simply leaned over, removed a highly valued body part, and then jumped out of the window behind the desk, advising Pompous that he would get the body part back when the reward got pulled. And if it was ever posted again, the body part would be removed again, and burned.

So the reward got pulled. I was back to being a pound puppy.

After all of the excitement died down, I got curious about my unknown friend in Florida, so I took a trip south.

I went about 30 miles north of the city the girl had managed to escape from, and started poking around. After a few hours, I notice a rabbit that was letting me get very close to it. Suddenly, the rabbit vanished, and in its place was a man. A very naked man.

"Are you ok, Miss?" he asked.

"Um, I'm ok, but do you think you can pull some clothes out of wherever it was you just came from?" I reply, trying to keep my eyes on the sky, his eyes, the trees…anywhere but his private areas.

We worked something out, clothing wise, and went back to his camp. He was a Seminole, he told me, and his people had the power to shift into the shape of other animals. Unlike the Quilettes, they were able to shift into a variety of animals, he said.

"Has anybody ever gotten stuck, you know, in animal form?" I wanted to know.

"There's a story about a young warrior, two generations ago, who was supposed to have eaten some food while in rabbit form. At least, he never came back to camp, not in human form. But a rabbit did, and the rabbit followed his sister around like a little cat. She claimed it was her brother, and kept the rabbit with her at all times. She insisted her older brother take the rabbit to council meetings. At first, most of the younger tribe members thought she had gone crazy in her grief, but the older ones thought she might be right. He did nod and shake his rabbit head, for yes and no, and he could indicate numbers by scratches on the ground.

After the rabbit had lived for ten years, they began to accept that he probably was the missing human. The rabbit lived another fifty years, and attended all council meetings. He died shortly after his sister."

I shook my head at this story, and then we made it to his camp. I met with the rest of his people, and also got the story on the young woman, whose name had been Gail. I gave them the latest news from the resistance and the other colonies, and then started traveling west.

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