Alright, time to rescue my summoner. I made a determined face, stepped out from Katrina’s room, and proceeded to wonder what to do next. ‘I need to find somewhere we can get to from the prisoner pit that is also somehow an exit. I wonder if such a place exists. Well, only one way to figure that out, looking!’

I walked in a totally casual and normal manner back through the gate between Katrina’s quarters and the pit where Tanya was. I started poking around the areas accessible from the pit’s entrance, just in a regular way, hopefully. ‘I’m just a guard doing guard things. Nothing so see here. Urgh, I sure wish I knew how military police usually act.’

The longer I took without finding anything useful, the more nervous I became. Down an overly-complicated route whose purpose was beyond my meager understanding, I finally noticed something good: bright natural light! I peered through a gate that decided to exist between me a window, which beckoned to me sweetly. ‘Okay, you got this Ali. I mean Katrina? Or both? Anyway, no one’s here. Just open the gate and go grab your Tanya human and you’ll be out of here.’

I took out my handful of keys and started trying to shove them into the gate’s lock one by one. I became increasingly upset as they would not make the lock open. My hands started shaking because I was frustrated, and I was making such a loud jingling and clanking noise too. ‘Only four keys left. Come on little ones I know you can help me out.’ One! I tried to turn it, but- no good. Two! Didn’t even fit in the hole. Three! A satisfying click sounded. I nearly shouted in relief, but I restrained myself. I quietly pushed the gate ajar.

“SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK,” the door screamed as if it was dying.

‘Oh no, maybe not quietly at all.’

I hoped no one was coming and slid through the gap and checked out the window up close. ‘Ah, Terra’s sun! It’s so small! But it sure looks bright and cheery.’

I didn’t notice any kind of barriers or dangerous spell formations. The window definitely looked like something we could climb through if the metal bars were broken. I bet Tanya could break through those; she did manage to tear her chains apart earlier, probably. As for breaking the gates? Maybe not so easy, they looked a lot tougher. ‘She is definitely a cultivator like me, probably focused on concentrating mana to increase her body’s strength and speed.’ Heading back toward Tanya’s pit, I got through the half-opened gate just in time to see a guard come round the corner.

I swallowed nervously, then tried to walk past him like I wasn’t just trying to set up a future prison escape. Just when we were about to pass, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.

‘Oh no’

“Stop right there Katrina,” he growled, looking down at me. I realized he was a lot taller than me.

“Y-yes?”

“You’ve got no business wandering around here. The warden wants to see you. For killing a guy, allegedly. I’m here to find you and bring you to him.”

“Um, I’m just- taking a walk to, uh, clear my nerves first.”

“Why are you being so weird?”

“Well I- just having a tough day, you know? Had a bad out of body experience. Something like that. Heh heh….”

He stared at me. I wished I could better read his expression to tell if I was convincing.

I tried something else, “Ah, now that you mention it.” I clutched at myself, “I think I’m bleeding inside my chest!” concentrating mana with my injured meridians again, I coughed blood onto the floor. It was so painful, but proved I’m dedicated to my role.

 “I ought to go. Need to heal up quickly. I’ll see the warden after!” I tried to walk away but his grip tightened and he held me back. I tried to control my face and not look scared. I don’t think it worked.

“Losing control of yourself with a prisoner, being all flighty. It’s not a good look. Did you forget to close that gate too? What’s going on here?”

I moved my hand to fiddle with the sharp metal tool in my pocket. I didn’t like where this was going at all.

“I’d almost think you were-” he stopped himself and asked something else, “if that were the case, just last week, what did we- Guh!”

I whipped around and thrust the tool into his stomach, interrupting his questions. I took it out and shoved it in again. And again, and again, or at least tried to. He pushed my arm away with his free hand while keeping a crushing grip on my shoulder, then threw me to the ground. Fortunately, I’m used to getting beaten by larger people, so I got out of my daze quickly. He reached for a short sword at his waist when I stabbed the side of his knee and kicked up at his groin. He doubled over, so I reached up to grab him while he was off balance, then I dragged him down with me and hit his head with the floor. He dropped his weapon on the way down; however, he seemed stronger than me, so I scrambled to do as much damage as I could before he recovered. While I got on top of him, I kept stabbing him as often as I could, trying to twist my makeshift weapon around inside his body. I ended up losing my grip on it because it got so slippery, so I left that tool embedded in his back, whatever it was actually for.

 ‘I wish I could concentrate my mana right now! Or use my claws! Fighting as a half-crippled human is super tough.’ He shook me off and tried to stand, but he was moving slow. I hoped he was dying or confused or something. I jumped up and tried using Katrina’s heavy boot to kick his flank. He grunted and fell back down.  Taking that opportunity, I kept kicking and stomping on his head until he finally stopped moving. I paused for a moment, breathing heavily, trying to recover.

“Damn it! Why am I so awkward?” I groaned to myself, “I’m lucky he wasn’t a cultivator.”

‘I don’t want to die on my first day in this world! Or at all, really. I want to survive.’

I knew there was no way our fight didn’t make a load of noise, and someone was bound to notice soon. I considered quickly whether I could feed on him and decided that I probably didn’t have time. I needed to rush back to Tanya before all these guards started hunting me down instead of treating me like one of them. I ran back to my human’s pit; I passed another guard but yelled that I was getting a doctor. Hopefully that explained why I was running around with a bloody uniform (again). Of course, I didn’t wait around to hear his response.

I sprinted out to the prisoners’ pit and immediately started unlocking its cage-cover. At least I could remember which key to use for this. I assumed everyone noticed me fiddling with the lock, but I made sure my summoner knew too, “pst, Tanya! we need to go right now! I might have made a huge mess and everyone gets angry and wants to catch me soon.”

She nodded, replied “open the cover fast,” and started taking tools out of her rags. She distributed them to the other prisoners while speaking to them in a low voice, so I didn’t catch what she was saying. ‘Oh, I forgot she even took those from the inter-gate! Good thing I’m not a real guard or I’d be in trouble for letting her take them with her.’

I felt the lock open and shoved at the cage-cover. The nearest guard noticed me and ran over, drawing a short sword and shouting, “What the hell are you doing? Stop!”

I gave the cage-cover a last big push before diving out of his way. He missed, then turned to me and raised his weapon before a piece of metal flew into the side of his face from inside the pit. From the ground, I swept his legs while he was occupied with screaming, and I kicked him into the pit. Meanwhile, some prisoners started to climb out. Tanya jumped up effortlessly and looked around quickly.

Shortly, a brawl broke out as the poorly armed prisoners engaged the guards who had quickly realized they were loose. I had just gotten back to my feet when a pair of filthy women together rushed me back to the ground and started beating me before I could even react. They were yelling at me too.

“Psycho bitch! You’ll not torture me again!”

“Ahhhhhhhh, die!”

While I was trying to block from getting pummeled, Tanya stabbed one and dragged the other off. I think she got to me before they could break any bones, at least. I had forgotten I was supposed to be Katrina, but still, I didn’t even do the stuff they were mad about! Tanya helped me to stand and shouted, “Get up! What to do next?”

The prisoners outnumbered the guards on site. They seemed to be overwhelming the guards when a gate opened and another group rushed in. These guards followed a big man who immediately began to freeze the air around him, creating a long weapon. ‘He must be their leader.’

He wasted little time and impaled the nearest prisoner on the spear of ice. Then he quickly turned to reach at another pair and trapped them to the ground with frost from at least five paces away. Some of the prisoners tried to rush him together, while others backed away. The cultivator guard created a swarm of frozen daggers and shot them into his assailants, disabling or killing the whole group. He looked around for new victims.

Tanya gasped, “That man’s a stage above me, a mage cultivator in his Foundation Building. We need to get out of here right now,” she glanced at me, “please tell me there’s a follow-up to opening the pit?”

“Yea, I unlocked a gate by a window. I can go first.”

Last thing I wanted to do was fight a cultivator while I was injured. Fortunately, now all that was left was letting Tanya break some window bars and running, which I knew I was amazing at doing. I grabbed her hand and started to retrace my steps toward the exit. The guard leader projected his aura toward us; I stumbled and spat blood again from the pressure, but managed to scramble back to my feet and keep moving.

He followed. I didn't know why he was targeting us: because Tanya was stronger than other prisoners or because I looked like a guard, but I very much wanted him to give up and let me go. While we ran, Tanya would throw the stuff she stowed on her person at our pursuer whenever he tried to focus on an intense technique. An ice dagger got past her and pierced my thigh. I shouted out as pain flared and the cold dagger both numbed the sensation but also made it worse somehow. An icy feeling began to spread through my blood in my thigh. I knew I needed to focus, to push myself through this suffering and escape. My vision became blurry and I realized I had begun crying without realizing it. This mage guard terrified me; our whole situation reminded me of when I couldn’t escape from the demon Seran. ‘I need to become stronger so no one can make me scared like this ever again!’

Finally we ran past the body of the guard I fought earlier, and we slipped through the gate. I slammed it shut behind us while Tanya rushed to the window. I put all my weight on the heavy door while frantically grabbing for the correct key. The gate started rapidly losing heat, becoming unpleasant to touch. I got the key into the lock and turned it just when the guard slammed into the gate and threw me back. The gate held! Tanya broke through the window and looked back, noticing the gate covered in frost and beginning to crack as the guard kept attacking it while it became brittle with cold.

“LET’S GO!” she shouted at me, snapping me out my observations. She climbed through the open window with me right behind her. I struggled to stay on my feet while Tanya practically dragged me across a courtyard, breaking straight through a thick wooden wall, and climbing over a ditch.

She took me through narrow paths between unfamiliar-styled buildings, forced me to climb up a roof while unable to really use one of my legs, then she let us take a break with cover inside a little shed on top of another building. 

Tanya closed a curtain behind us, “I think we got away. We should be able to rest here a second.”

I leaned on the wall catching my breath and spoke, “Hah, hah, hah, huff, good! I didn’t much like prison!”

She reached and brought me to face her and started stripping me, undoing my buttons.

“Wh-wh-what are you!?”

“Give me your top. I want to cover my fresh brand and these prison rags.”

“Stop it!” I protested, “You just start grabbing at me out of nowhere, and I can do it myself!”

I shook her off and threw the top at her, thankful that I had on Katrina’s chemise earlier and that Terra seemed such a warmer place than Abyss. Even still, I wasn't used to my arms being exposed. Tanya stuck her arms through the sleeves and pulled it up over her shoulders.
“Heheheh, now you’re Katrina!” I told her, reminding her of the label.

“Whatever.” she wasn’t laughing at my joke, “You helped me out of prison so your contract is complete, demon. Thanks for that.”

“What shall we do now?” I asked her, curious about our next move together.

“I need to clear things up with my client, since I failed and got caught. As for you, I don’t know. Do whatever you want, I guess.”

“Huh! What? But I don’t know hardly anything!” My previous excitement about exploring Terra had somewhat faded over the course of recent events.

“That’s not really my problem,” she informed me, as though we hadn’t just gone through life and death together mere moments earlier, “I don’t have time to babysit some clueless demon. I feel I already did more than enough by dragging you out here after you opened the gate. Here’s one more freebie though: hide or get out of Fort Breslow. If you get caught or noticed for anything at all, no matter how small, you’re probably going to end up dead, seeing as you’re now a traitor to the military police.”

I stared at her, then shouted out my anger, “You! You’re the worst. You are actual trash! Humans are trash! I don’t want to be running away all on my own again!”

“Blame yourself for answering the summons unprepared,” she told me.

‘We are a little clan of our own and she’s just leaving!?’

I could not believe this was happening. I knelt in despair, “today is aw-awful… The f-first thing is Seran steals my stuff and says he’ll eat me! Ahhh, and the humans in the prison wanted to beat me! N-now they’re gonna hunt me down and kill me… and the summoner I rescued abandons me! Urghhhh! I’m so- hahh, I’m so lost!”

Tanya looked down at me, “Keep crying, demon, maybe someone will notice you faster and come put you out of your misery.”

Then she left me there, dropping the curtain behind her.