Separated

The three make it safely out as they catch their breaths in an alleyway, away from everyone else. They clutched their knees from exhaustion as they ran away from the scene as quickly as they could. Luckily, none of the knights followed them during the skirmish. Once they have caught their breaths, Pyxis decides to check up on the other two as he lifts himself up. taking the initiative. "Is everyone doing okay?" Pyxis asks as Derrick responds with a nod. telling them they were okay, but Cherry decided to voice out unrelated matters from the question as she came up to him and started slamming her fists into his chest.

"You ratted us out, you bastard! I knew you were up to something! I knew it!" She voiced her frustrations out at him as she kept hitting him. The hits themselves weren't hurting him much, but the betrayal they definitely felt from him turning their backs on them and ratting them out, as she said, definitely did, as he just lets her keep going at it. "Cherry! its all good. its fine now." Derrick tried to reel her in as he held her wrists from behind and gently pulled her away from Pyxis. "But Derrick!" she tried to reason with him, saying that his actions today were beyond forgiveness. He had chosen the path already; the damage had already been dealt with, with Tetsuga now being the captor of the knights. "Look, I know I messed up. I really am sorry!" Pyxis would try to remedy her anger and irritation. The fact that she knew something was going on with him was fuel enough.

"I know I cannot make you forgive me, but I am willing to take charge of this, for whatever happens to you two or me," Pyxis would say as he earnestly looked at her with his fist placed atop his chest. swearing to her that he would be on their side from now on. "He's willing to change. I don't know about you, but that's merit enough for forgiveness, right?" Derrick would say to her, but Cherry was still not convinced by it as she got out of Derrick's clutches and started talking some sense into him. "Why? You can't just go up and forgive him! After he stepped into our party and essentially got one of us captured! How could you just go and forgive them after something like that!?" Cherry would exclaim to him. Pyxis would stay silent on this since he didn't have any right to deny what she said. Derrick, however, had a rebuttal to her statement.

"Cherry, if they're willing to change for the better despite what they have done, then you should be able to forgive them," he would say as he placed his hand on her shoulder. "And if you can't forgive, then at least give them a second chance at redemption. That's the least we could do," Derrick would then say as he gestures for her to look at Pyxis, who looks at her with determination. She took a second to cool off before she started to consider Derrick's words and finally faced Pyxis. "Alright, just this time, you better not mess this up," she would tell him, which made Pyxis smile as he finally got another shot to mend their relationship. "Right, and I just have the plan to get us back on track," he would tell them as he gestured for them to huddle up so he could disclosethe plan to them.

Meanwhile, Tetsuga wakes up from unconsciousness as his eyes open to see the bars of a jail cell. "Ugh," he clutches his head as it throbbed in pain. "This is slightly worse than the hangovers," he comments on it before finally shaking himself to be fully awake as he looks around the cell. "Where am I?" He asked nobody in particular, but someone answered him as he looked behind him to see someone sitting in the darkness of the room. making their presence known to him, as they had been awake since his arrival here. "You're in the cells. That's where they keep people like us when we have nothing to do yet," they tell the man as they come into the light to reveal their faces to them. It was ragged, tired, and quite frankly ghoulish. But Tetsuga was familiar with people like them—at least people who looked like them.

"Are you a prisoner too?" he would ask since they were wearing a pure white jumpsuit that was stained by mud and dirt that hadn't been washed for weeks. They would respond by moving one of their sleeves up to show them a mark that had been tattooed into their skin by the knights. The tattoo was of a set of numbers arranged to say '0121' before I clarified it to them. "Not a prisoner, a slave," they said, which clued Tetsuga in that things weren't as pristine as they had seemed from the outside. "And it looks to me that you're going to be one soon," they would say as they gestured to what he was wearing currently. Tetsuga looks down and yelps in surprise as he finds himself wearing the same thing as he was. He lifts both his sleeves and finds no tattoos yet, which relieves him. He wasn't going to get caught dead with numbers on his forearms, that's for sure.

"What's going to happen now? He would ask him since he had just gotten here. "Well, what happens now is that a knight will come around and take us outside for some yard work." They would say as their eyes would trail something that Tetsuga assumed was something behind him. "What's the yard work?"He would ask, but someone behind him would reply for the slave as he turns around and sees the knight that had arrested him from before, their grin most prominent as ever, but now they had bandages going around their heads, which was new to him. "Oh, you'll see," they would say, which was received with scornful glares from the two inmates. Then the biggest one from before comes into frame, which only gave Tetsuga quite the fright considering how he had handled him like he was nothing to him. "Now get out, the both of you. You both have a whole day's work to do," they would say as they opened the cell for them to leave.

"C'mon," 0121 would say as he leaves first since he is used to this routine of theirs. Tetsuga would follow behind him before being followed by the two knights, who kept a close eye on them. "Surprising that you haven't made a move to escape yet," the smaller of the knights would comment, as he found it interesting that Tetsuga hadn't tried running away to freedom considering they didn't have handcuffs on him and the other. "I'd rather not deal with him again," he would tell the knight as he glanced over at the goliath wearing the knight's armor, who gave him the gruffiest huff, which was enough to intimidate Tetsuga into looking back in front of them. "I hope those three got away after all that," Tetsuga would say to himself as they walked through the halls. This intrigued 0121, as he would then ask him about it.

"You were with three other people?" he asked as he looked over at him as they walked. "Yeah, I was. Then the big guy kind of knocked him out, and I woke up here, so I don't really know what happened after that," he would tell him as he sighed. The possibility of them getting hurt was daunting for him since it was his responsibility to at least keep them in one piece. at least, when the problem was centered around him at the moment. "No more talking, you two. You're here." The knight would then break the two up as he pointed out that they had reached their destination. It was a court yard with a minecart on some railroad tracks that led into the opening of a cliff face. The others that were gathered around the minecart had the same outfit as 0121, so Tetsuga would assume they were the other slaves being worked to death by the knights, who were looking over at them from afar with their weapons on their hands.

The knight would lead them to mingle with the others as they would tell them the usual speech that the slaves were all too familiar with, save for Tetsuga, who was hearing it for the first time. "Alright everyone, make sure to get a big haul for the kingdom now, so make sure to not slack off. You know how that went about last time," the knight would say, which only filled Tetsuga with more questions as he asked himself internally what had happened last time. "So I don't want to see anyone lazing about, especially you," he says, pointing directly at Tetsuga as everyone replies to him with an unenthusiastic 'yes'. "It looks like security is tight here," Tetsuga would whisper to himself as he looked around and saw the multiple knights stationed everywhere.

"You looking to get out of here?" 0121 would ask him since he had overheard his comment on the security, which made him more curious. "Nah, it'll be too troublesome to bust outta here. I'll definitely get overwhelmed before I even make it to the door," Tetsuga would assess, since a man like him would definitely find it hard to brute force his way out of the place. "Well, if it makes you feel better, you can get out of here; that is, if they like you enough," they would say as a melancholic expression washed over their face. "I just hope he's doing better than we are right now," they would say as he reminisced about them in their heads. "Well, considering they're out of here, I'm sure they're doing fine." Tetsuga would reassure him even if he didn't have a clue who it was he was talking about. Little did he know, he had met this fellow before. and they were about to see them again real soon.