Luna 

There's a pinging and then clattering noise as the shard of a razor blade clatters onto the ground next to me, throwing up a spark when it hit the rock. Elemental stumbles backwards and collapses next to me, one hand over the left side of his face. He's on all fours, and blood is leaking through his fingers onto the ground, having just barely dodged the shard from impaling him in the forehead, but still being grazed. Artee has just finished splinting my leg and rushes to Elemental's side. He's panting heavily, and when he removes his hand I realize that it has slashed his eye. 

"Elemental!" Artee exclaims, glancing back and forth between us. "I… it's my turn to-" 

But Elemental grasps Artee's wrist.  

"Get out of here," he gasps, his voice gurgling slightly because of the blood in his throat. "Get Airo. Anyone. I'll protect Sword." 
"But your eye-" 

Elemental reaches backwards and clasps the shard of metal that just cut his eye out.  

"Go." 

Artee looks like he wanted to continue arguing, but then he decides against it and dashes off. 

"Are you still fighting?" Vedix demands.  

"Shut up and come at me, asshole," Elemental growls. 

Vedix rushes at Elemental, and the remaining cronies and Stroma follow his lead, but he flips the bloodied razor between his finger and somehow cuts Vedix's sword clean in half.  

"Wha-" 
Elemental hits him on the nose and he drops like a sack of potatoes, and stabs the next attacker in windpipe. The razor lodges there and refuses to move, but Elemental doesn’t care. He grabs the third's face and breaks it on his knee, and then sends the contents of a fourth's head across the ground. The last few enemies back up, but then a shadow falls over me and Chris leaps off the boulder I'm leaning against, armed with a sword he's taken off one of his enemies. He flies past Elemental and drives the hilt of his weapon onto Stroma's collarbone, laying him flat, and then quickly dispatches the other two remaining enemies with a series of quick strikes. Chris turns back to us, breathing heavily. He has blood running down one side of his face, a large gash on his cheek and a torn lip.  

"Elemental, you-" 
Somehow Stroma is back on his feet, wheezing and gasping for breath, and is trying to attack him, so Chris has to turn back and fight him. Elemental coughs, then splutters, and his breath catches as blood starts filling up his throat. He falls onto one knee, with one hand over his mouth, blood from his mouth and eye running over his fingers. Chris has Stroma in a headlock but lets him go and starts shouting. Elemental looks up, and then Vedix is there, blood pouring from his smushed nose like a waterfall, driving the razor that took out his eye into his stomach. Chris yells and rushes forwards, but Stroma recovers, lunges upwards, and stabs him in the side. Chris  bashes him in the face with his heel and yanks the knife out of himself before flinging it at Vedix, who rolls out of the way. The knife skitters to my feet.  

"You," Vedix pants, as he stands up, still wobbly on his feet. "You should have joined us when you had the chance." 
The fighting in the background is quieting down. We've kicked up massive clouds of dust over the area, and all I can make out is silhouettes grappling in the dark, and it's impossible to tell who's winning. Elemental is doubled over, kneeling on the ground blood slowly pooling around him and he struggles to breathe. Chris has collapsed from fatigue and blood loss, but he's glaring at Vedix and trying to stand, while Stroma crawls after him, desperate to finish him off. Vedix is looking down at Elemental, whom I already owe my life to several times. Several lifetimes won’t be able to pay back what this guy has done for me. So I need to move my useless body, and stop being dead weight.  

My arm and hand trembles as I reach for the knife in front of me, and pangs of pain echo in my head and leg.  

Is Artee still not back yet...? 

Vedix is still flapping his gums at Elemental like an idiot, instead of finishing him off. It hurts so bad that I'm about to pass out, like a thousand white-hot iron needles are being stuffed into my body, and my blood feels like liquid Chrona. My fingers close around the knife. Bingo. Vedix squats down in front of Elemental and grabs a hold of his hair, pulling his face up to his own. Elemental's already out cold, and the blood streaming down the side of his face isn’t stopping. 

"It's a pity, 002," Vedix says, like he's some kind of main character. 

"The main character is me," I manage to force through my teeth. 

It was meant to sound call, but it came out in a broken warble, and Vedix stopped and just stared at me. Then I lift my arm, and throw the knife. Right at his face. 

If he moved a split second later he'd be dead. But forces his neck to move and he flings his head to the side, just barely enough to prevent the weapon from making a new hole on his face, but that doesn’t mean he ends up unscathed. There's a spurt of blood from the side of his head, the knife keeps going and clatters onto the stone, and then a bloody, fleshy lump falls onto the ground next to him. Well. He's going to have a hard time hearing Chris's insults now. Which was probably a good thing. Vedix has both his hands on the side of his head, where his severed ear is, blood seeping from between his fingers and down his neck. 

"You – you fuckin-" 

That's all he manages. Because next thing I know someone's in front of him, and Vedix is having his nose crushed for the second time in five minutes, but this time by Airo's knee. He falls flat on his face, and doesn't get back up. Artee, meanwhile, slams his foot across Stroma's face, breaking his lower jaw with a crack. Zak was lucky, I guess. The world's going fuzzy again. All that effort to cut off Vedix's ear was too much for my body right now, and I know that I'm about to lose consciousness. But Airo's here now. And Artee. I fell several pairs of hands grab me and support me as a keel over, and I can hear Nyx and Ronin's voices, both saying my name.  

"Rest now, Sword," Neo whispers in my ear. "Have a good rest." 

I dream about my younger sister. Nothing special. It's just me and her, reliving the days where the sun still existed, where the sky was blue, and the air was fresh. Where you could go wherever you wanted whenever you wanted. Where you didn’t have to kill anyone to survive. 

The dream comes to an end as my eyes jerk open. I'm lying in my bunk, in the Pod, which is dark. I can hear the rasping breathing of a lot more than seven people, and my wounds have all been bandaged and treated. I slowly turn my head to the right, and blink a few times to quickly adjust to the light. The whole of Pod 50 is here. And for some reason Krim, Framed and Airo are as well, slumped against the front door. I can make out Elemental in the top bunk next to mind, with a bandage stained slightly red over his eye. He's alive. Thank god, he's ali-"You awake?" He whispers, making me jump so hard the bunk almost collapses on Dobo, who's sprawled on the bunk under me.  

"What the hell man?" I hiss back.  

There's a shuffling noise in the dark, and I realize that he's actually laughing quietly. I didn’t know Elemental could laugh.  

"I'm gonna have to wear an eye patch from now on," he chuckles. "Pirate King Elemental is here." 

I don’t know what to say. Up till now I only thought Elemental was an emotionless, expressionless, cold, quiet battle machine. I had forgotten that he too must've once lived the same carefree, happy life that I did. 

"I too have a family, waiting for me." 

We lie opposite each other, in silence for a few minutes. Then I break the silence.  

"Elemental," I say. "Before... this, where did you come from?" 

"Me?" 

"Who else is Elemental?" 

"I..." His voice trails off, and I hear him swallow. "I'm from the North." 

I perk up. 

"Really? Which city?" 

"...Arthenon." 

I smile to myself.  

"Me too," I tell him. "Me too, 002." 

"And here I thought Pod 50 would have some variety," Nyx suddenly says from the bunk in front of Elemental's, closest to the door. "To think all three of us come from the same place." 

"You too?" Elemental gasps.  

"It would be funny if we were all secretly from the same place," I say.  

"I would've seen you," he replies.  

"True." 
"I did see you," Nyx says. 

We shut up for a second. Then Elemental breaks the silence.  

"Who?" 

I can’t see, but I know that Nyx is smiling to herself in the dark. Because she knows that I know already. 

"You, Reid." 

Nyx had gone to the same university as me, and we had attended several lectures in the same room in the past. I had recognized her the moment we saw each other, and it was also why she had joined Pod 50 instead of going to any other pod. We talked a lot about the classes we took, the courses we stayed up all night for, with Elemental chipping in here and then. After half an hour, all three of us had exhausted our gums, and somehow none of the rest had woken up, except for Airo, who was pretending to be asleep but we could all see his small smile with the dim light shining through the tiny window.  

"Get some sleep," Elemental says, yawning. "Oh, and if you were curious, Sword, the fight against Woodsy. We won." 

"Course we did," I tell him. "But next time I'll pay you back." 

Nyx agrees that it was terrifying seeing Elemental collapsed face first in a puddle of his own blood, and made him promise to never do anything so rash again.  

"Me and Dobo got El Casio good," she continues. "He won’t be out of his bunk for a good few days." 

"Neither will we," me and Elemental mutter at the same time.  

She laughs, and I instantly want to hear it again. She has a beautiful laugh. 

"Nyx," I say.  

"Yeah?" 

"Nyx, tell me your name." 

She's quiet for a moment, but then she answers. 

"...Luna. My name is Luna." 

It's then that Airo pipes up from the doorway. 

"You know the Administrator can probably hear all this, right?" He says quietly.  

"Then let him," Elemental replies. "He can kill us if he wants. Can you hear us? What are you going to do after we finish all this?" 

We wait in silence for a few seconds, and then, unexpectedly, the Administrator answers. 

"Me, and you guys," The Administrator says in our heads, catching us completely off guard. "We are going to take over the world. So keep pressing on. I'm rooting for you, Pod 50."