Chapter 10 - Defend our home, at all costs!

Before the green fog could reach them, Bellamy, Charlotte, and Atom start running away hoping to find a cave where to hide. Sadly, Atom tripped over a broken branch falling down on the ground while Bellamy and Charlotte continue running, not even hearing the poor boy yelling for help.

When the fog covers his whole body, Atom's skin burned as if he was being slowly cooked on a fire. He tried one last time to yell for help but to no avail as his vocal cords were burned eliminating his only chance of surviving this acidic fog.

Meanwhile back at the dropship, I managed to move all of my people inside the dropship, alongside our food and water supplies, as a precaution since we didn't know what the fog was and how long it would last.

"Faster! Don't stay outside or you'll burn!"

If dealing with the kids wasn't hard enough, I even had to force Octavia inside, since she tried to run out into the fog to search for her brother. Thankfully Miller and Harper were near me when Octavia almost run past me, if not for them stopping Octavia, I wouldn't have been able to forgive myself if something would have happened to her, especially now that we had kind of remained as friends. The only thing I could do was to order them, if only I would have been healed…

Thankfully no one got seriously injured, and while some of the sentries got a few minor burns over their bodies, it wasn't anything untreatable. Being the only one that actually knows what to do in a situation like this, I was left to deal with all of the delinquents on my own and at the same ensure their survival. I quickly took a look around the dropship to see that most of them were scared of what could happen and since we, as humans tend to do stupid things due to our fear, I had to gain control over this situation otherwise we will tear each other apart.

"Murphy! Come here."

Being one of the goons that followed Bellamy from day one, Murphy was one of the few people known to all of the kids, which made my job easier.

"What do you want?"

"What do you see, in the ship?"

"Chaos and scared people."

"Exactly, I need your help to keep the situation under control."

"What do you need?"

"Take all of the goons that follow you and Bellamy and secure all openings with wet cloths. Even though the fog won't get inside, it's better to be prepared just in case and keep the weapons away from all the people."

"At least you don't order us like Bellamy."

"I don't want to be like him, but believe me, I can be way harsher than he is."

After Murphy left to gather the goons, I turned towards Miller, who could barely rest thanks to how busy he and Harper were. I still felt bad for him, putting him in the same team as the workaholic Harper, but until now, he didn't complain at all.

I still don't know if all of them realized how bad our situation is without any proper weapons and defenses, but I'll do everything I can to keep as many of them alive for as long as I live.

Thanks to Murphy and the other goons and especially thanks to the medical team, we quickly managed to regain control over the people, reassuring them that nothing was going to happen to them as long as we stay inside this ship. After all, the fog was going to disappear sooner or later and thanks to me and our hunters we had more than enough smoke meat, and water to last us a weak or two if ration properly.

While I was busy keeping everyone safe, Clarke, Finn, and Wells managed to hide in the car that they have found a while back. If not for Finn and his dumb luck, all three of them would have died before they could have found a place to hide.

"It's getting inside. We have to *cough*do something!"

"Seal any openings."

Even though he was coughing, Finn still did everything he could to seal the openings, using a piece of cloth, followed by Wells who did the same to the other door. Only when all of the openings were properly sealed did all three of them relax.

"Can you guys see anything?"

"Let me clean the window a little."

Wiping just a little the window, Wells managed to see through the dirty window, but just barely.

"It's still out there, right Wells?"

"Unfortunately, it seems that we would have to spend the day here with nothing but this bottle may make our stay just a little bit better."

"Is that …"

"Booze, courtesy of Finn. He found it first before passing it to me."

"We should keep it, for a better occasion with all of our friends."

"Clarke, let's drink now, it's now used to keep it locked away for when we may be dead."

Wells tried to intervene, but Clarke didn't give him even a chance to start talking before she drank a mouthful of whiskey. Soon Clarke and Finn start drinking the whiskey while Wells just shook his head, seeing that the girl he was in love with was slowly falling for the other guy.

A few hours passed only for the situation inside the car to become worse than it was when they entered. Not only was Clarke drunk, but above all the other bad things out there, she had snapped at the poor Wells for killing her father. If not for Finn, she would have most likely ripped his head off thanks to how angry and sad she was.

Luckily for all of us, the fog disappeared in the morning returning the whole forest to its normal activity, without the fog, the grounders would undoubtedly approach our camp sooner or later to either scout or harass us. The whole day, I had to order the delinquents around, keeping them busy and preparing ourselves for the next day and while some were worried about their loved ones, I still didn't change my decision of keeping the gate closed. Thankfully they returned at night, but not all of them seemed to have made it out alive. Looking at the badly burned body of Atom, I could shake my head in regret seeing a good guy dying out here.

After a while, I decided to ask Bellamy what happened out there with both Atom and the little girl that he brought back since I don't recall seeing her anywhere around the camp.

"Glad to see you alive."

"Tell me about that. I heard you took the lead when no one wanted to."

"Someone had to keep us safe and I was the only dumb enough to do that. Thanks to Murphy, Monty, Miller, and Harper, we managed to keep everything under control. By the way…what happened to Atom? Did the fog get him or was it a grounder?"

"The fog burned him, but Clarke killed him so that he wouldn't suffer. It was the least we could do for him."

"As much as I would love to say that it was the best thing, I… never mind, it was better than prolonging his suffering."

"Yeah."

"What the deal with that little girl? I don't remember seeing her around."

"She's the youngest one amongst us. I don't know what Jaha thought when he sent a twelve years old kid down here to die."

"What we thought about all of us, they see us as criminals, after all, they don't need us up there anyways, and rather than wasting more resources on us, they decided to just float us all. More recycled air for them."

"The harsh truth, huh? You know why I'm even here?"

"For Octavia, she's your only family after all."

"Yeah, and thanks to me our mother got killed and my sister got caught. I did something horrible up there to be sent here, you know? If they manage to come down, I'll be the first one to be executed for what have I do."

"We all do desperate things when our loved ones are in danger, and since you were a guard, I believe you know the truth about my case."

Before he could say anything else, we heard the shout of one of the night sentries. Almost all of the people that weren't sleeping rushed over to the gate to see what happened if we were under attack.

"There's movement up ahead! Something is lurking in the forest!"

In the face of a possible attack, no one took the coward route and hide, instead, almost all of the kids run to pick a weapon ready to defend their new home with their lives. Even though we had more than ninety people, more than half of us weren't fighters by any means and would only serve as meat shields in a proper fight. Even though I told Bellamy that I will not fight over the leadership of this camp, I wasn't going to let so many of us die. So I did the only thing that I could think of. I grabbed a spear and walked on top of the wall turning my back to the enemies, exposing myself just so that could make myself better seen by both sides. Looking at the scared yet determined faces of those kids, I couldn't think of anything better to say than encouraging them, anything else was pointless if the grounders get past our walls.

"I won't lie, we are probably under attack! The grounders had finally decided to get rid of us, but what they don't know is that we are some tough bastards that won't back down when our home is being threatened by a bunch of savages! I don't know about you all, but I'm willing to die for my home and for those who I call a family!"

Murmurs were heard all around me, but almost all of the delinquents agreed with me. We were given a second chance down here and only a fool would believe that these grounders would let us live if we surrender to them.

I don't know who started, but one by one, the delinquents were hitting their spears on the ground showing their resolve to fight whatever was behind those walls. But amongst the group of determined kids stood Wells together with Clarke, Finn, Bellamy, and Octavia looking at me, how I managed to raise the morale of all of our fellow inmates.

"You have to admit that for an introvert like him to be able to keep everyone together and even prepare them mentally for a fight is pretty impressive. "

"Do you know Leon for a long time, Finn?"

"I wouldn't say that we know each other for a long time, but we had our cells next to each other when he was kept in the normal area. Other than me and Raven, no one had ever visited or talked to him."

Right when Clarke was about to say something, one of the boys that were on the wall was hit by some liquid right on his face. At first, nothing happened, but a few seconds later, he fell down on the parapet, seemly unmoving, as if he was dead. Since I was the closest one to him, I quickly made my way to check if he was indeed dead. Fortunately, even before I checked his pulse, I saw his eye moving, clearly in a panic.

"He's alive! He's just paralyzed!"

Soon after I said those words, two people from the medical team hurriedly made their way to the parapet, putting the guy on a stretcher and taking him as far away from the wall as fast they could. Just as I turned to look at the forest, my eyes widen in shock and worry when I saw what was rushing out of it: A group of fourteen creatures that were at least two meters tall and four meters long rushed out of the forest right towards our gate. Before anyone could react or say something, I threw my spear right into the chest of one of the creatures, impaling it on the ground.

When the rest of the people saw that these creatures could be injured and even killed, all of them aimed their spears and waited for the creatures to arrive closer to their position before throwing their spears.

Sadly not all spears hit their target, but still, just the sheer amount of them took down more than half of the creatures before they could even reach the walls. With only five of them left alive, these seemly dumb creatures soon found themselves at a disadvantage, and rather than dying their animalistic instincts made them turn around, fleeing the death zone that we had just created, but before the smallest one could flee, I and Miller throw, the newest invention of our inventor Sergey, a makeshift net for catching smaller animals. It was just a simple net binding at its two sides by two spears, nothing too sophisticated, but it was practical in the right circumstance. We both throw our spears, right in front of the creature catching it in our net.

The whole fight took only a couple of minutes and thankfully no one was gravely injured other than three people that got paralyzed from the venom of those creatures. For me, this was a huge success since not only did we manage to repel an attack without any casualties, but we also caught a creature for further studies.

But one thing I didn't expect was that as soon as I walked down from the parapet, my name would be chanted by the people that followed me in this defense. I was by no means a hero or even someone that had done something worth praising for, but somehow these delinquents saw it otherwise.

"LEON!

"LEON!"

Meanwhile, my friends were looking at me as I was in a dilemma, not knowing what to do as the kids were yelling my name as if I was some sort of hero. They even had to force themselves to not laugh at my misfortune, all but Bellamy, who was conflicted about what was happening. Even though he fought side by side with us, I was the one being unanimously recognized as our leader.

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