Gaea [ON HOLD]

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

        Hack. Hack. Hack. Leo pushes me to my breaking point, until I can't do anything anymore. It's my break right now. I raise up my canteen to my lips and take a swig. "Ah. Water's never tasted so good before." I throw it back into my bag before standing back up, swords in my hands. I survey my surroundings: I stand on a luscious green hill, and a crystal blue lake is at the foot. More hills make the setting rough, but other than that, the ground is pretty flat. 

        "Hey, come on. Enough of a break. Let's get back to training. We have to run through the protocols first, and that means that you have to learn how to plant crops." Leo pulls a shovel out of the pile of equipment and shoves it into the ground. While he's working, I take out some corn seeds and drop it into the little hole he made. "You have to space them out 8 to 10 inches apart, okay?" I nod. Leo digs a few more holes with me placing the seeds in each of them. Next, we cover them with the dirt that he dug up. "Not too hard, right?"

        "Definitely." I mutter under my breath. My hand goes to my bracelet on my left wrist, and I feel it's surface. It's metal, with a thin width. Whatever. It doesn't matter. 

        "Come on, let's go." He turns away, and I start following him. Something catches my attention. It's three red letters: ZKP.

                                                                         .......

        I decide not to tell Leo about the insignia I saw. I know it's an insignia because it had a fancy design around it, and the font was atypical. That means it has to be part of a company or organization. And if an insignia of an organization is on our island, then that means....

        Leo and I walk to the walls, and there is a little holographic pad on a part of the walls where there is a long vertical indentation. Leo places his palm on the pad, and the walls start rumbling. The wall suddenly slides open, revealing a huge field. "Welcome home, me," I hear Leo mutter.

        More walls. The first thing that I see when I step past the walls I just left is walls. The wall slides back. I guess we're here for now. I realize that the island is rectangular, with walls like a box surrounding us. I'm guessing there are even more walls past the ones in front of me. I remember from the meeting that someone said the girls invaded. "Wait... Leo? Are girls past those walls?"

        "Yes. It's a symmetrical island, with two halves, the girls' half and our half. Anyway, this is our area for growing crops. Oh, and they share this fraction of the land with us, and that's why there are wars."

        "Oh, okay. When do we start farming, or crop gathering?"

        "Now."

        "Oh... okay."

        The wall slides over and a black clad figure sprints over. "Leo, one of our parties is being attacked! We need extra backup in there!"

        Leo looks at me. "Come on. Let's go." We run back into the Zone just as the figures descend.

                                                                                 .........

        "Don't mess with us, I've killed your men once, AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO AGAIN!" The girl's hysterical voice leads me to believe that she went a little mad. Outside, everything is in panic; houses are burning, windows broken, and most of all, people injured. 

        "What do you have against us, X-104?"

        "What the hell does that mean, you ass hole?!"

        "Mind your language, woman, or we'll have you executed." Brandon's voice rises. Oh yeah, he's our kind of judge.

        "We've got everything against you. What wouldn't we?"

        "If you're so kind, please explain what that means?"

        "I'll never help you." She gets hit with the pommel of a sword. "I still won't!" Another hit. "I will not!" She gets hit once more and blacks out. 

        "Well, that didn't go as planned. But at least we have three POW's." Leo says. "Come on boys, let's pack up."

        We walk back, in high hopes that we can start our work now. Outside, there are girls planting their crops. We stride over to our cluster of buildings, and we each go into one. I hear that there are more people joining the Crop Gatherers tomorrow because we need to be ready for the girls. I walk over to my mirror and see how much I have changed- my body's turned slim and fit, and my skin has tanned even more. 

        I walk over to my bed and fall asleep.

                                                                                ........

        "Rise and shine, Lance. Let's go." I'm pulled out of bed and am forced into a jog with a bunch of other guys. 

        "Are these the other people?"

        "Yeah." 

        We run over to the soil and start farming. It's repetitive, dig, place seeds, dig, place seeds, and repeat. Some of the girls steal glares at us like we've done something wrong. I think back to yesterday, when the girl said that she has all the reasons to be angry at us. What did we do to them? Was it before I was here? Dig, plant, dig plant. This goes on for the rest of the day, and when the sun is setting, Leo tells us something. "Guys. There is going to be a battle tomorrow. It's Gathering Day, so we'll fight for the crops and it provides food for us."

        "Us as in who?" Someone asks.

        "All of our boys, so this is our last chance to survive. If we don't win this, then we'll all starve to death. Keep your weapons with you overnight and stay strong. Okay?"

        "Okay. Let's do this!"

                                                                                ........

        "We don't got this!" I exclaim.

        "Just shut up for five minutes, okay?!" Leo looks horrible, with blood smearing his face, his clothes dirty, and his shirt ripped up. "We got this. Yeah. Come on guys, we'll pull through!"

        Turns out, we did. The girls tried to slip out of our sector, but we cornered them. A few tried to fight back, but we took them prisoner. One of them tried to actually run away. It was too bad that one of our bowman had to take her down. In result, we got about twenty-five POWs. Right now, we're gathering the wheat and corn and all of the crops that were planted. I hear that we're having a feast tonight, with Eddie cooking 'gourmet' stuff. That could only be good. 

        "Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!"

        "We did great out there, guys."

        "Come on, let's go back inside the walls. I'm hungry."

        So we go back inside. And we eat. Everything you could think of- sorry, everything we could think of. It was great. 

        I walk back to my shack when I hear someone saying something. It's one of the prisoners, so instinctively I walked over to our cells. "Why are we captured? We should be planning for the overthrow."

        "Yeah, we can't even get the message out to our friends."

        That's all I need to know before I take off sprinting to Leo.