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Ambushed. They were being ambushed by a group of bandits. The guards were confused of the bandits' tactic. Why would they want to rescue the prisoners? They were aware there were local bandits in Learania, ambushing those who were weary travelers or important figures and demanding them to give up their treasures and values. However, to hear them shout about rescuing threw them off guard. Could it be that one of the prisoners was an acquaintance to these barbaric thugs? Or perhaps that said prisoner was their runaway slave and they wanted to get that person back? But the prisoners didn't look like the type to hang around with these bandits... Well maybe for the black-haired fellow. He surely looked like the fellow who would hang with them.

With two of the men being unconscious, there were four left. They had to act immediately. They had to transport the prisoners to the Grand Prison as soon as possible. It was their duty to transport them. They would not let these bandits delay their duty.

Wil and John:

"Men, arm yourself and stop them from letting the prisoners escape!" The head guard shouted as he drew out his sword. The others followed the same as him. The head guard held up his shield as the head bandit who gave the order shot the arrow. It made a thudded sound as the arrow pierced against his shield. He looked up to see the head bandit continued fire a volley of arrows at him and his men. Refusing to let measly arrows preventing them from their duty, the head gaurd charged at the head bandit. While he was charging, arrows flew passed him. Some nearly missed him while others glazed his legs, letting only light scratches as he ran. When he got in close range with the bandit, he lifted his shield up in a 45 degree arch to prevent the arrows shooting at him. With an small opening below his shield, the head guard swung his blade across the bandit's abdomen. If the bandit was quick enough to move back, he would be able to dodge the attack. In addition, the head soldier had accidentally left himself vulnerable for the other archer to attack him from behind.

Abel and Clara:

The rider fell flat on his face when he was being pulled down from his saddle. When he got up and turned around, he saw that the horses were unlatched to the caravan and ran frantically to escape the battlefield. No, they needed the horses to transport the prisoners. Usually, the first priority the rider would have to do was chase the horses and calmed the beasts down if they needed to transport the prisoners. However, they were under attacked by the bandits. The rider would have to deal with the frantic horses later.

While the bandit yelled his companion to open up the carriage, the rider pulled out his tome. Opening the tome, he quickly chanted the spell, creating a dark cloud over the head of the bandit that pulled him from his saddle. When he finished his chanting, he raised his arm at the bandit to Thunder him. A sudden flash of lightning burst from the cloud and headed toward the bandit. It was unknown if the lightning would strike the bandit, but it was a low level spell and was not strong enough to take down a bandit fully. To make sure that the bandit would stay put, the rider cast another spell. However, the rider did not know that there was a bandit on top of the carriage, leaving the rider vulnerable to be attacked from above.

Ziaram and Joshua:

Before the soldier could kill the bandit from behind, another bandit intervened his attack. The soldier jumped back in case the bandit decided to counterattack him. Once jumped back, the soldier charged forward, giving three upper swings at the bandit with his double-handed sword. The weapon may be long and heavy to slow the soldier's momentum, but it gave out powerful attacks to stop the opponent's attacks.

Seeing that his comrade was engaged with the bandit, the soldier decided to attack the other his partner had failed to stop. With the daggers in his hands, the soldier ran toward the bandit. If the bandit decided to attack him with his sword, he would use one of his dagger to block his sword attack and use his other dagger to slice his throat. But in other to slice his throat, the soldier would need to move in closer. He hoped that the bandit was not as fast as him.

Special class treatment? HA! A leathery-looking carriage that was far too cramped for them to even try moving without getting into someone's personal space was first class? If it was first class for prisoners, at least let them be royalty for the ride. Get a stretch carriage, load it with drinks, get some flashing lights in here...make the ride more comfortable. But alas...it couldn't be helped. The stretch prisoner carriage was currently being used to transfer the old goat's shoe collection. Damn b*****d.

While Roy kept to his thoughts, he could hear the sounds of combat outside their 'cage'. Seemed like bandits were attacking, but when he heard voices saying to 'rescue the prisoners', he couldn't help but mentally facepalm, as his hands were currently bound. You don't rescue prisoners. You make them your slaves. Dumbasses. Gonzales could do a much better job than this lot, and he was a legit brigand, the true bandits. He was always amused when Gonzales did his battle shriek before slaughtering the enemy before him. Not this shitty bunch. From the sounds of it, there was nothing appealing about this bunch, especially considering NONE of them were using axes. Yes, he had been in combat long enough to be able to tell weapon types apart by sound.

He didn't mind being rescued. Rather, it beat rotting away in jail until his sentence came. But...he had gone through quite a bit of effort to think up an escape plan, and he hated to see it go to waste. And hell...did any of them ask to be rescued? Not that he could think of.

It was then that he heard Lance singing. He remained quiet for a bit, learning the song, then joined in. Of course, it wasn't long until the song was rudely brought to a halt when Lance was nearly cut. He remained quiet as Lance cursed the s**t of out of the bandit that had attacked the carriage. From the sounds of it, a female. Again, Roy mentally facepalmed. Since when were there bandits that had female members? He could think of a few that had them as leaders, but never actual members.

What a sorry lot this group was. Honestly. They should be ashamed of calling themselves 'bandits'. They were a disgrace to actual bandits. And they were merely making his irritation with this group worse.

That would keep Joshua alive for the moment. That would be good, since things were going to get ugly sooner or later. Although the chance to counterattack was given, he had to hold back, since another guard chose to rush him.

A rush...really? This was one of the best things they could do? Oh well, as long as the soldier didn't recognize the weapon held in the hand of his opponent, then things would be over quickly.

Jumping back Ziaram raised his Light Brand to rain down some light magic upon the guard rushing him. The fool should have done some homework. Besides, if the magic missed, then he could easily switch his weapon off for his killing edge he had at his side. This would be a quick fight one way or another.

"What is that singing?" Wil lowered his bow for just a moment to look at the wagon. "Eh you, female. Don't hurt our prize. We need them prisoners for the arena. They will fight to earn us money or they rot in prison. Don't kill them now." Wil looked back down at the approaching head guard. "And you. Uh oh." He saw the pointlessness of attacking the guard further in his condition.

Wil looked behind him. He saw the approximate four foot drop form the top of his post to the bottom solid clearing. "I wouldn't do that. It's 'ard for someone with such heavy armor to stop while running you know." He saw the stampeding bull of a human ignore his words and take a swing at him. As he jumped back and fell quietly to floor he looked back up. "Have it your way then." Wil grabbed the hand the sword was held in. With the momentum still moving forward and the force of energy stored in the sword arm he would have to pull quite a bit to get his plan to work.

"Have a nice trip ya big lug." He pulled the head guard forward by his sword hand. With the weight of the armor and the force and speed of the cut. Combined with the center of gravity being more toward the front thanks to the guards shield it was relatively easy to force the guard to continue moving forward and do a front flip off the small rock and land on the rocky base. "I can only imagine the ringing in your head ya bear." Wil quickly grabbed a medium sized rock and slammed it against the helmet of the guard. "Night night boy." His hand hurt now and the ringing was rather intense. But he should live. With a minor head injury.

They were supposed to be bandits. That was easy enough. Marina was good at pretending to be a bandit. She'd done it for a while there when she first got to this place. Piers, they called her. Er, 'him'. It was a fun gig for a while there, but when people started to notice her, that's when things got interesting.

See, the Hawk King - well, apparently he was a king back where he came from, and he was pretty notable here too - he liked to enlist people to help. And when he asked people to help, they didn't say no. It wasn't a choice. Well, he'd come to her a while back, back before s**t got real. He was perceptive too. This was before Marina had stopped going full-time as a guy, so for him to see through her disguise - it wasn't that surprising, because he was way keener than most of the schmucks around, but it was still pretty surprising.

But in any case, that's a story for another time.

The only details relevant here was that s**t was getting real in the present tense. It was getting so real that she felt almost like she'd have to punch someone in the nose to establish superiority. And then pose as a team. See, Tibarn was working kind of incognito at the moment for reasons perfectly understandable. So he'd enlisted Marina to do some cool stuff. Contingency. Make sure stuff doesn't get too hot to handle.

Which it usually did.

And this guy jumping around acting like some kind of ninja or something was sending up all sorts of red flags. Killing people and stealing their stuff? No, Tibarn wouldn't like this at all. This guy was going to blow their cover! So Marina quickly leapt over in their direction, in all her masked up, chest-bound, nimble Halberdier glory, and smacked the guy upside the head with her lance handle, incapacitating him long enough so she could grab him by the scruff of his neck and drag him off into the shadows nearby.

"Come on, kid."

No one would notice. She was that good.

And in the shadows, a particular contact just happened to be waiting for her.

Marina smirked. "You are so a kid. You're messing up the whole plan, you're just being a total nuisance." She still had him by the arm, and as she shifted around she twisted it behind his back. "Now wait for the subjugation like a nice, quiet little boy, or I'm gonna start breaking fingers."

Gale waited patiently by a tree, awaiting the caravan that would surely be near soon. He was barely identifiable in the dark. The rider was clad entirely in black. He wore very unassuming slacks, and a loose shirt, tucked into his pants, slightly open at the top revealing his chest. A belt was tied around his waist, hanging down in the back. Atop his head rested a simple black buccaneer's cap, and around his eyes was a blackened mask, effectively concealing his identity. His hair, as well, was dyed a deep ebony, a simple job that could easily be washed out later, and it was tied in a bun behind his head. By Gale's side, an elaborate Killing Edge rested, waiting for its first victim.

Since the expected caravan seemed to be taking far too long to get to where he expected to meet it, Gale peeked around the tree to spy on his surroundings. He saw nothing, so he started walking down the road in the direction he had come. Sure enough, he heard the sounds of a scuffle, and he swore loudly as his pace quickened to a speedy gait. It took him a couple of minutes to reach the scene, but sure enough the caravan sat there while a bunch of morons attacked it.

"Blossom!" he hissed.

He ducked around the wagon, taking advantage of the chaos to reach the back without much resistance. There was a single guard guarding the rear that Gale rushed haphazardly at. The guard did not know what had hit him until Gale had him in a very tight sleeper hold.

"W-who are you?" the guard asked raspily.

"No one of consequence," Gale simply responded. He tightened his grip, and the man went limp, collapsing to the ground.

"Blossom!" he hissed once again, this time where the girl could hear her. He extended a hand towards the girl. "Come with me if you want to live."

"Them too." He gestured in the vague direction of the other prisoners. "They can come as well, though they can watch their own backs." His eyes wavered upon Roy, then back to Blossom as he gazed at her through eye slits no larger than they needed to be. In any case, he didn't want to stay here any longer than he had to. The sounds of commotion outside were growing too loud for personal comfort - not to mention that after this little stunt, despite his disguise he would probably end up a fugitive himself. Wouldn't have been the first time he opposed a country. The wagon, as well, smelled really bad. Gale suspected this wagon had once been a transport vessel for manure, repurposed for the cause. What better way to cause insult to injury?

"Hold out your wrists." After allowing the girl to do so, he swiftly drew his sword and sliced through the binds with little effort. "Let's go." He turned and quickly dove out of the wagon, elbowing a guard in the nose as he gained his footing once again. "Come on!" He sheathed his sword once again, took Blossom's hand, and took off in the direction of the mountains. "With the current state of affairs in town, I thought it might be best to stay far away." He leapt over a fallen log in the woodland, pausing for a moment. "I have a makeshift haven about half a day's pace from here. I doubt any of the guards will pursue us as long as they remain distracted. They're just doing their jobs. All we need to do is lose them." He glanced down briefly at his hand, still clutching Blossom's within. "Come on."