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Allen knew from his childhood in slums that Nny ws right. "Based on what you just said I'd guess either you've spent time as a slum dog, or you're very smart. And I'm guessing the slums would be better off if you were on our side. But before I tell you anything, I want your word that you're not going to give the information I give you to anyone, or use it against the slum dogs."

Allen was unperturbed by Nny's mockery, he knew he could fight for himself he needed to. "I wanted to know why you want to know about places where slum dogs might meet. After all, you don't really seem like the type to hang out with slum dogs." He handed Nny back his sword, and signaled for the slum dogs to stand down. He didn't expect Nny would try anything again.

Suddenly an arrow struck Nny's sword arm.The slum dogs had snuck up on Nny with the kind of stealth that could only be learned by a lifetime of using stealth to survive. Now there were several of them standing in the alley or on the roof tops around it with makeshift, but still very effective, weapons at the ready. Many were armed with bows, and many were completely hidden. A good number of them had similar builds to Allen's, and all were experts with their chosen weapons; they had to be to survive. Allen smirked. "I wouldn't tell you where to find a meeting place because slum dogs look out for each other. Now I'd be happy to call them off if you're willing to be civil. That was a warning shot by the way."

Allen then realized where he had recognized the other boy from; he had seen him around the academy, his name was Nny, he had a reputation for being an exceptional student and a bit of a jerk. "I was there too y'know. I saw the same horrible things you did." Allen was unphased by Nny's threats, in fact, he was even more confident now than he usually was, because he knew this place well. He knew the slum goers always had someone watching from some hiding place or another. He knew that even though no one could be seen around them at the moment, there were there slum dogs watching them right now. He knew that they would be moving into position to save him if they needed to. He had lived in these slums longer than anywhere except the academy. The slum dogs knew each other well, the other slum dogs would recognize him. And of course, the slum dogs looked out for each other. "Now think for a minute before you start making threats. I lived here a long time. I know my way around here, and the people around here know me. This is my home turf, and I have a significant home court advantage. If I were you, I'd stop threatening me, and answer my question."

Of course Allen did know several places where the slum-goers of Cassenova would congregate, but around here, the slum dogs looked out for each other. Giving away one of their meeting places to the wrong person could be like betraying them. As kind and caring as the city's poor were, they were also innately distrustful of the upper classes; they knew that nobody cared about the slums or the people who lived in them, but if any of the upper classes learned what the slum dogs knew or had access to via there old, run-down, and ignored secret passages and places, they would care.

A large part of the slums consisted of an abandoned and forgotten industrial district and through forgotten tunnels and unused pipelines the slum goers had access to the city's entire infrastructure. They could tap into the city's water and power grids, the had access to sensitive political information, they could even effect the city's waste disposal systems. If they wanted to, the slum dogs could cripple the city, and with it, all of Janina. If the ruling classes knew this, who knew what they would do. All the slum dogs knew for certain was that they would definitely lose their access to these things.

That would be a catastrophe. They used their access to the city's infrastructure to keep the slums hydrated, and sanitary, they used the tunnels out into the forest to hunt to keep themselves and each other fed. Taking away their access to inner workings of the city could very well be just like taking away their chances at survival. And so could giving away their secrets.

"Why do you care?" He did his best not to give away that he knew anything. If this other boy didn't know any of the meeting places used by the slum goers, then he clearly wasn't a native to these slums. He could still be an immigrant from another slum though, or a refugee of some sort, or some other person who the slum dogs' secrets would be safe with.

"There are a lot of places and passages in a slum that only the slum dogs know about." Allen recognized Nny immediately, but he didn't know from where.

Allen climbed down into a tunnel a short ways outside Cassenova's walls. He had lived in the slums of Janina's capitol city for about a year when he was younger and he often used this tunnel to sneak out of the city so he could play in the forest. Normally to enter of leave the city someone would have to go past guards at one of the many gates and the guards wouldn't let a young child outside the city without his parents. For whatever reason though this tunnel was never guarded. As best as Allen could tell it used to be a service tunnel of some kind long before he was born, but when that part of the city became a slum people stopped using the tunnel, it got run down and people just stopped paying attention to it. Nobody really cares what's broken or unguarded in a slum.

He would've gone through the gate except that his traveling pass had been in his room when the school was taken over by monsters, and he didn't think he had enough money to bribe the guards. He guessed Phisoxa would be going to the city--he remembered her saying she wanted to go to the capitol in Legion's library, and that was the direction she had run off in--and he hoped he'd be able to find her. He knew for sure that he'd spent enough time in slums and lived in the slums of Cassenova long enough to know how to find her if she'd been anywhere near them recently. If she hadn't been near the slums though, he would just have to hope he bumped into her.

Allen rubbed his face where she had slapped him and thought about what she had said. He hadn't attacked an Eclipscion ship, he had damaged the ship's engine enough that it wouldn't work so he could escape. He paused as he realized how that could be misinterpreted to seem like an attack. Still he was only seventeen; the dark empire couldn't be stupid enough to think that Janina would have a seventeen year old boy attack one of their ships alone. At least, he hoped they weren't that stupid. He reassured himself that he wasn't like Mixt, when he was given the chance to kill someone for his own benefit he hadn't done it, Mixt had.

He started after her. He didn't like that he had made her cry, and he would've jut let her run away, but they had a job to do and he was fairly certain they would need each other to do it. As he thought about what she had said and how she had run away he had a realization. If she thought he was no better than Mixt, why had she healed him? Why would she be so concerned with his well-being if she never wanted to see him again? He thought more and wondered how she had known he'd damaged the ship; she wasn't around when he'd done it and he had damaged it from the inside, so she couldn't have seen him do it from the forest. He found himself growing suspicious as he thought about her sudden mood change when she'd brought up the idea of war. When they had confronted Mixt she had immediately shown that she was upset, unlike just now.

He was beginning to feel uneasy. And suddenly he was very suspicious about the strange feeling he'd had while Phisoxa was healing him. He stopped for a second, and then ran after her.

Allen turned to look at her. "How would I have started a war? Actually, how would you know if I had?" Allen didn't have many open wounds--mostly he had small cuts, broken bones, and what would be bruises in a few hours--so she couldn't pour in too much darkness. Still he felt the darkness entering his body, he didn't know what it was though. "Hey, what are you doing back there?" He shifted his whole body around towards her, slightly alarmed. "That doesn't feel like any healing I've ever had done before."

Allen zipped up his vest to hide the torn shirt until he could get a new one. As usual, Allen tried to play it cool. "My life was in danger and I did what I could to save myself. By the way, what have I started, exactly?"

Allen looked at Phisoxa and did his best to give a cocky smile as he walked up to her. "You kidding? I'm fine. I just need a little--" He cringed in pain, "healing." He looked down at his ripped shirt. "And a new shirt."

Allen neared the ground and crash landed. Now that the adrenaline had worn off he could actually feel the pain from everything he hit while he was falling through the ship; several of his bones were broken and he was going to be bruised all over. On top of that, he had been moving fast when he crashed his light board and had broken at least one more bone doing that, as well as cutting open one of his arms. Thankfully the cut didn't seem to be bleeding too badly. He tore off a piece of his shirt and tied it around the wound.

After everything that had happened just now, and everything that had happened in the past few days, Allen just couldn't deal for a moment. He slammed his fist on the ground and cried out. Then he just broke down and cried for a while, partly from the pain. Mostly though, because hiding his emotions was beginning to take a toll on him. He wanted to see Jen.

After crying for a few minutes he stood up (a painful and difficult effort), dried his tears and began walking. He hoped to find Phisoxa, although, he now realized, he had no idea where she was or even if she had actually gotten off the ship. He had a job to do though, and he knew from Legion that, whatever it was, she was a part of it.

The damaged ship reminded Allen of what had happened on that other world, suddenly his mind filled with flashbacks of Black Comet destroying Raxtion's home world. And his heart filled up with terror and rage. "FINE! YOU WANT TO FIGHT THAT BADLY? THEN I'LL FIGHT YOU!" He summoned his sword. "I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHY ONE KID IS WORTH SO MUCH TROUBLE TO YOU! BUT WHO AM I TO SAY NO IF YOU WANT TO DIE THAT BADLY!" He loosed a light from his body that filled the room and made it impossible for the soldiers to see. "BUT HAVE FUN SHOOTING BLIND!" He rushed one of the soldiers and cut across his knees with his sword. After the soldier fell he was ready to take his head off, but he hesitated, thinking of his conversation with Mixt over the murdered student. He lost his nerve and ran to the opening where the engine's power source had been. He climbed inside and ran to the engine's opening. He leaped out and summoned a board of light to ride on. Heading down toward the forest. His mind full of thoughts of the dead world, and his heart full of guilt.

"That's all you've got? 'Just break stuff?' I'm running for my-you know what fine." Allen didn't like Legion's advice, but it wasn't like he had any other ideas. He took a minute to charge up light magic, then unleashed it all in a large force field. It ripped apart the vent and the area around it, and the effort was slightly draining on Allen. He fell down and hit himself on all kinds of different parts of the ships infrastructure. Ironically as battered and bruised as he was by the repeated impacts during the fall, he was actually spared much worse injury because of this, as he was unable to build enough downward momentum to get seriously hurt when he did reach something resembling ground.

He landed relatively near one of the ship's engines, in what was probably a maintenance area. He made sure to get a ways away from the engine, then he launched an explosive ball of light at it. Then another, then another, eventually he destroyed the engine's power source with one and rendered the engine useless. The whole ship lurched as a large part of its propulsion system was suddenly ineffective.

Allen crawled through the air vent he was in. He had seen it as the corridor was being closed off and, needing speed rather than stealth now, quickly blasted the cover off with light energy and gotten in. Unfortunately he now had no idea how to get where he was trying to go. He figured as soon as the guards realized he was in the vent system they would activate another security feature to stop him and that he didn't have much time. "Legion, which way to Phisoxa and Shero? And any advice to help me get out of this alive would be appreciated."

Allen fell to the ground and rubbed the back of his head. "Alright, you asked for it." He flashed a bright light above his head to blind the guards. He swept one's legs out from under him and took his rifle. He ran off in the direction he had heard Phisoxa and Shero's voices go. As he ran he studied the rifle. He found the trigger and started shooting at the walls, floor, and ceiling, around him as he ran--hoping to hit something that would cause the guards to be unable to catch him--and setting off flashes of light every few seconds so they couldn't target him with their weapons. His only goals being to find Phisoxa and Shero, and then to hide.

Allen stood up and raised his hands over his head. "Now, now guys there's no need for violence." He spoke as calmly as he could while planning an escape. "After all, these odds hardly seem fair. Let's see there's," he stopped talking to count the guards, "there's ten of you and one of me." He shook his head. On the inside he was jut short of panicking, but he didn't show it. "Not fair at all. You'd need at least a hundred more guys to take me down." He heard Legion shouting in his mind, and suddenly thought of the words "fission mailed" for some reason. "But I'm sure there's a perfectly logical explanation as to why you're threatening me with military grade firearms. And rest assured, I forgive you. That said I'm in kind of a hurry so, now that we've got this little mess sorted out, I really need to go. 'Kay?"

Allen woke to the sound of Phisoxa and Shero's voices. He realized then that he had fallen asleep under the cardboard box he was hiding in.

Before he had fallen asleep he had discovered that he was on some kind of military transport ship, from Eclipscion, and that it was headed towards Janina. He didn't know for sure why troops from the dark empire were headed towards Janina, but he feared they might be an invasion force. He didn't know anything for sure though, and wanted to ask Phisoxa because he assumed she would know what was going on better than him.

Now that he had finally found her he moved his box as quickly and stealthily as he could towards her. Within less than a minute he bumped into one of the Eclipscion soldiers helping direct the students. He immediately dropped the box and did his best to hide, despite having obviously just alerted the soldier to his presence. He hoped the soldier would be stupid enough to fall for the trick anyway though. But just in case he began planning what he would do if the soldier did check under the box.

Allen walked through another door-into what looked like a women's restroom. He backed out of the door he had come in through almost immediately. "Okay, who doesn't label a public bathroom?" He said this out loud out of annoyance. He walked into another door nearby and found himself in the men's room. "Better, but I'm still not getting anywhere."

He was about to head back out into the hall when he heard someone outside. He was unsure of the circumstances surrounding the others and whether he was aloud to be...wherever he was -he really didn't know-so he hid in a stall. While he was hiding he noticed an air duct and decided it might be safer to get around from inside it. After the other man left he climbed on top of the toilet so that he could reach the duct.

With a little bit of time and effort, he removed the vent cover. He pulled himself into the air duct and started crawling, hoping he might find Phisoxa and Shero. Or, at the very least, that he might learn what kind of situation he had teleported into.