Sage could almost see something animalistic in her in this second as she threw herself to the ground with her victim and started punching him into the face with all raw violence that her fists and the hilt of her truncheon could offer. A savage battle-cry escaped her mouth as the fanatically painted her knuckles red in the nose-bleed of her victim. She seemed like a completely different person, changing from cute and shy into battle-frenzy fury that wouldn't even stop tormenting her opponent when it was long unconscious.

“Inu, stop it!”, Sage called at her and indeed, for a moment her furiously glittering, yellow eyes met with his stitching blue and she at least stopped pummelling his face. Yet, she still would not stand up from him chest.

Sage wasn't going to make her either. Instead he raised his eyes and looked around if someone else needed help. Surprised he realized that they were actually winning this fight.

Mercy seemed to be a foreign word to Kyu, as she pulled her weapon back and then struck it across the face of the bent-over human in front of her, most likely scarring his face and definitely knocking him out. Only two humans were standing at this point. One of them was the guy that had stood by the street and harassed people when Kyu and her group attacked. The other guy was still back at the campfire, too overwhelmed by the charge of the Elves to react. This was his demise, as Kyu, Titania and Laniel now jumped into the camp and professionally surrounded the man like a pack of wolves on the hunt. It was Laniel who managed to get to his backside and leaned forward to strike his poplit. The man screamed in pain and surprise and was sent to his knees. Titania landed the first blow to his face. At this opportunity Sage noticed that Elves might be physically weaker, lighter and smaller than Humans, but moved with superior speed and reflexes which allowed for this frequent and dangerous attack-pattern even as untrained rioters. Another thing that he learned in a very uncomfortable way right now was that his newfound friends would not stop when they merely had defeated the enemy. They were furious and kept beating people who had been downed a long time ago until blood was flowing all over their faces.

Whether this was rightful fury or just mindless rage, it didn't matter. It felt simply wrong for Sage to attack people that had already lost the fight. Even Inu, the cutest of the bunch seemed to have problems standing up and just leaving her unconscious opponent be. Meanwhile Kyu and her sisters ganged up on a single guy who had not even made the attempt to fight back, beating him with their truncheons, even when he was loudly begging for mercy.

“Enough!” he called and walked over to Kyu, grabbing her shoulder. “Enough”

Kyu turned to him and for a second he was legitimately scared that she might attack him. Her brown eyes had turned into narrow, mad slits in her eye-sockets and her fists where covered in her victim’s blood and maybe even a bit of her own.

But then she seemed to come back to her senses. Her pupils expanded and she looked below herself, examining the human she had just beaten into the hospital. She stood up as if to avoid getting grabbed, even though he wasn't really conscious at this point anyway.

She looked at him, with no remorse in her eyes, at least for a second, then they displayed panic.

“Sage, watch out!” Inu called from behind suddenly and stole the words from Kyu's lips basicly. Sage could barely look over his shoulders to see what was going on there, but he quickly realized, that the guy which he had only tackled down to save Curel had stood up and attempted to attack him from behind now. But before he could do that, a l large, blood-smeard fist that hit him from the side stopped him in his tracks. Inu had come to their aid and she was not messing around to protect Sage and Kyu. While the man was still stumbling and trying to recover from Inu's punch, she followed up and lunged her second fist into his belly. He was thrown back by the pure force that his body had to endure and vomited onto the ground, before collapsing onto the grass next to the camp.

“That’s enough!” Kyu called, while facing the guy on the bridge, holding his phone to his ear. It was pretty obvious he was calling reinforcements of some kind, be it the police or more thugs of his biker gang. “Let’s get the fuck 'outta here!”

She threw her smoke-bomb into one of the tents and ran towards Sage to grab him be the arm. Inu, Laniel and Titania all took different directions, with each of them avoiding the road. Sage hastily reached into his pocket and opened the bottle-cap before unprofessionally throwing it into the camp. He was just too happy to get rid of active, breakable explosives in his pockets. Four more explosions he could hear behind him, each one more quiet, until Kyu dragged him around a corner so he couldn't hear the camp anymore.

For a second it looked like Kyu was better at running than Sage, despite his overall bigger body and longer legs which allowed her to take over the lead, but after just a short sprint towards the end of the alley, Kyu proved to be the one with the smaller stamina.

The slim body's of Elves was just more attuned to sprinting short distances with extreme speed and bad at running for prolonged distances. Yet, Kyu looked like she was pretty in shape and having less than half his body mass probably helped in maintaining a decently high speed, even when Sage had to slow down his steps to let Kyu have the lead.

“Where are we going?” he called after her,

“Shut up and run!”, she called back over her shoulder. “They are still up our ass!”

As if the police had waited for the signal, sirens could be heard in the background, issuing Kyu to take a turn into an even smaller alley. Somewhere behind, someone called: “Two went down that alley! Get them!”

“Fuck!” Kyu cursed, quickly taking another turn and leading Sage straight onto the backside of one of these fancy waterfront-houses “We’re taking a secret route.”

She picked her phone up and changed course to escape the claustrophobic backyard lawn. It was weird how the Humans here insisted on maintaining four square meters of grass behind their house, even though there was no sunlight shining down on it ever. Kyu didnt leave him any time to consider this paradox and pulled him on, through another passage back into the poorer districts with their unique concrete-appeal. The police seemed to anticipate though that the fugitives were heading for this part of the city, as squads of police cars were entering this part of the city just now.

This woke the district and not in a pleasant way.

Elves stepped on the street to stare at the Police cars with open hostility, while Humans retreated off the side-walks and into houses and alleys. Tension was building fast, but Sage didn't see much of it as Kyu pulled him across the street and into another gap between two concrete-monsters. This time, it seemed like a dead end though as the sirens were behind them and the alley ended in front of a high concrete wall.

Kyu had the phone now on her ear, which she had pulled out before they even had entered this district.

“Uyka?” she asked. “Please, help us getting out of the secret alley, were in a bit of trouble here.”

She hung up. Just seconds later, a window about ten metres above the ground opened and a rope ladder was dropped down the wall.

“Hurry up!” a voice from above called. “If the police see you climbing up here, it's my clan that's in trouble.”

Kyu rushed to the ladder, but then stepped aside to let him go first.

“I dragged you into this.” she said. “So I'm gonna go after you.”

Sage nodded and began to climb up. Only halfway up the ladder he realized Kyu was probably just trying to avoid him looking under the short Dyun-skirt of hers. For a second he internally mourned the lost opportunity, and then he had to begin focusing his thoughts and strength on lifting himself through that narrow window above.

A young elf with purple-dyed hair and tribal tattoos all over her body stood in the room and scrutinized him mistrustfully.

As Kyu lifted herself after him, she asked: “Kyu, why have you brought a Gakhro into our clan? And why is he wearing a Do-Karrh?”

“The Do-Karrh he is wearing was a gift from our clan.” Kyu responded while catching her breath. “And he is an ally. He speaks our tongue and helped us demolish these national-party fuckers at the bridge, so loyalty must not be doubted.”

“Oh, A'rom'tse?” the purple-haired Elf asked in a sharp, ancient dialect of the Woodelves.

“Gyi. A'yom'ty, Yke A'zma'ty” Sage replied between his exhausted huffs in the same dialect, with just a pinch of sarcasm in his tone. This legitimately surprised the purple-haired Woodelf.

“Kirma.” she kept talking in her people’s dialect. “A'yahe'ty Gakhro A'lyma Ga Dhen'ty Kilor. Ga A'dha'ty'til Gakhro A'dhe Haroun.”

“Eh, Ji'Yrayru'tse A'rom Ji'Yrayru'tse.” Sage responded, proving his fluidity in the girl’s language. “Tisyatse'ty La'darreuma,”

The girl shrugged, seeming much less hostile to him now: “Da'ty Mauma Lae'a'darreuma L'bekh.”

Kyu intervened into their formal chat: “Can't we please go back to normal Elfish? I can barely understand a word you two say.”

“Of course...” the tribal girl said and added with a pinch of smugness. “Though, you might consider learning the Haroun dialect one day. It's the language of your ancestors and the Elfish that you're speaking is a butchered version to fit into the clumsy throats of clumsy Gakhro.”

Kyu rolled her eyes, but spread her arms to embrace the Elf into a hug: “Thanks for your help, Uyka... we might've been caught if it wasn't for you.”

Uyka nodded with a grin on her face: “Yeah, you owe me one. On the other hand, you stand up for our people, something which our clan’s leader is not brave enough to do. So, at the end of the day it's probably me who owes you one.”

Kyu was still holding her arms wrapped around the back of her friend, but now let go and looked deep into Uyka’s eyes.

“The day were the clans rise up will come, Uyka.” she said with the charismatic determination of a leader. “And as long as you are among them, your clan will be present the day the Human oppression over us goes down in flames.”

“I will be there.” she said and offered Kyu a fist-bump which she happily accepted.

“Good.” Kyu responded to her and made a gesture to Sage to follow her. “We're no longer required here.”

“I'll guide your way out.” Uyka said and lead the duo out of her room and through a long floor towards a staircase. This building looked a lot like the Clan building which Kyu lived in, but it seemed smaller and more compact. The entrance hall on the other hand was wider and contained a massive statue of a winged Elf with sharp facial features, facing the entrance of the building.

“Hello, Lady Jamira.”, Uyka said when passing by the statue.

“Hello, Lady Jamira.”, Kyu repeated when crossing the edge of the statues shadow with her feet.

Sage just watched the statue fascinated as he passed by... and almost bumped into Uyka, who had stopped and placed herself in his way.

“For someone who knows our language so well, you know surprisingly little about our customs.” she said clearly displeased. “You greet the Lady Jamira, when you see her. Everything else will bring dead girls and ugly sons.”

Sage raised his eyebrow confused, but a small push of Kyu convinced him it was smarter to not offend the woman who had saved them.

“Hello, Lady Jamira.”; he said with a slight bow.

“Apologize too.” Uyka demanded, with a tone that sounded a lot like an order.

Sage sighed and bent over to apologize in the ancient tongue: “Kirma Atuz'ty Lae'A'Gaaimro'ty Dah'tse”

This seemed to satisfy Uyka and she stepped aside so Kyu and Sage could walk out of the building.

When they finally went back onto the street Sage looked over to Kyu questioning.

Kyu sighed: “Lady Jamira is a figure from Elfish religion. And a pretty powerful one too. She is the Symbol of Lust, Fertility and Love. Uyka’s Clan worships her as protectorate of their clan. Seriously, if you ever happen to think our clan is weird in their traditionalist beliefs, just spent a day or two with these religious fanatics and you'll quickly notice that we're actually pretty progressive.”

“I see...” Sage just responded. Yeah, a Clan as strict as Uyka’s probably wouldn't have taken him in, so the Ptaha clan was indeed much less hostile in that specific regard.

Luckily for both of them the streets on this side of the building were much calmer and he police was still patrolling on the other side of the building and in the border-area of the districts.Their chances of getting caught had been massively reduced by the trip through the building. Still, Kyu hushed him onwards to hurry and get back to their Clan-building.

Sage already wanted to go through the front door, but Kyu pulled him back again and led him around the building until they found another rope ladder. It seemed like Kyu's gang had actually created a system of such “rope-ladder”-spots which they could easily use to escape sticky situations, once they found themselves in trouble again. Sage climbed up ahead again, as his company waited next to the ladder for him to take the first steps and just a few seconds later he pulled himself back into gangs base as if nothing had ever happened.