[Winter - Dew Fall City]

With a slight shove and fiercer words, Anette was accosted by some guards.

"Keep it moving," said the first with a scowl.

With not much room on the modified passenger locomotive, Anette shuffled forward instinctually to abide by the order. Accidentally making eye contact with the second guard, she returned her head downward, remembering that she was attached to others by ankle chains.

“Ohhh, we got a curious one.”

Both guards appeared as opposites. The bumpy ride caused the first guard with baggy clothing and glasses to stumble. In an uncoordinated fashion, the man corrected his posture and looked around as if to confirm there were no onlookers for his own ego. Short stature, with a balding hairline, he pushed back his spectacles and patted his partner on the back. His hand reached the midpoint of his spine, displaying simply their difference in height. The taller guard had a sharply pressed uniform, no spectacles and a forming, dense beard that had been recently trimmed, with a definitively blonde tint. Anette was prepared to verbally stand up for herself. She wasn’t in a proper mood to enable personal harassment, but she was mistaken.

“Look at all that Moon hair, lookin’ like a damn Eastern Halfland model. You plan on growing it until you trip?”

It was then obvious that Anette wasn’t the target of harassment. Instead, it seemed like the femanine, petite, yet stout man in front of her was receiving the new attention. The chain gang approached the end of their passenger cart and was being funneled further towards the front. Anette got lost in the lack of possibilities for this to play out in her favor.

The stream of thoughts caused her to bump into the back of the person attached to her front.

“Sorry.”

No response. The short man’s thin black hair was almost as long as the D.o.M. employees had claimed. Lengthy enough to sway from side-to-side as they began to walk forward again in an orderly manner. He was shorter than her and carried a gloomy slouch as he walked.

The door to the exit was opened by the front guard. High-speed wind burst through the slivers of the opening door, letting an intertwining chill pass them all. Ushered forward in single-file formation, they stepped onto the rickety dividing pathway. Rusted metal and stains from unknown sources littered the outside of the train. If the speed hadn’t eliminated the chance to smell, she imagined the stink burning her nostril hairs.

Reverting her attention back downward, she noticed she had stepped in a puddle. She added it to her current list of internal annoyances. What had she gotten herself into?

Finally, the last of the prisoners marched into the latest cart. The stout guard attempted to swing the backdoor closed after entering though it himself. The passing wind contested, tilting the man. With a grimace now fully formed, the man neglected his monitoring duty to turn sharply and hunker down, lowering his center of gravity in front of the door he held. Extending his second arm to accompany his first with further force, the door finally slammed shut with one last thrust backward.

An audible, yet effeminate grunt was discharged from his chest. Once again, the guard darted his head to find any witnesses to his ordeal.

Only Anette and the gentleman with the black hair had taken notice of the blundering movements. A mutual gaze of judgement fueled his words.

“That’s what I like to see, baby. We’re in the hands of true grace; almost like God himself.”

Through thin lips, he awaited a response. The comment seemed to warrant a chuckle, but Anette was too awkward to muster it. So instead, the man fulfilled his own wish then proceeded to turn around. His eyebrows thick, he had shown a brief expressive smirk behind the actionless body-language and dark black beard.

In this new area they had no privacy. Four wide-barred square cells had been built in the cart, all awaiting them with open doors. A couple of prisoners protested the enclosure, but Anette looked forward to the stagnation. Yet, she knew that as time went on, she was being taken further and further from actual safety.

The holding cells were completely empty apart from a tin bucket in each. Anette was hoping she wasn’t correct as to its purpose there. She dipped herself to the ground of her designated cubicle once detached from the chains, her handcuffs were still present.

The initial guard was about to close the front of her cell when she decided to be brave and request some comfort.

“Uh- sir.”

His thin face scrunched up in perplexity and he looked over his ducking shoulder.

“May you be a dear and take this metal of our tiny wrists? I promise you, I’m no threat.”

The man contemplated little, possibly wanting to reach his good-deed quota, he obliged. Walking around the train car, while the second guard stood near the exit, he advanced forward and unlocked all the handcuffs. The jailbirds warbled support in a melodic tone. They

appreciated Anette standing up for their convenience. They may still be trapped in the cells, but at least they had dexterous freedom, for now.

Just as the guards regrouped and arranged to depart through the final door, that same black-haired man raised his voice and stole everyone’s scrutiny in the moment.

“Hey buckos-”

Offended, their captors scoffed and turned toward the man halfway into the conversation. They wanted to leave already and the short detainee knew it.

"Gentleman, change my bucket. It's already full."

The guards derided, snapping back,

“Shut the hell up, ain’t no way-”

Not skipping a beat, and with slick precision, the tin bucket was presented at the end of a short, extended pair of forearms. Faded scars littered his defined arms. Sure enough, the pail was spilling over the brim with an unknown liquid.

“Ugh!”

The guards spit in unison, almost on each other’s pants’ legs.

“You should be honored, That there piss is worth money if ya’ tell em’ its from Good Ole’ Lou Cooper.”

The tall, confused guard grabbed the bucket in understandable apprehensiveness.

Accelerating his movements, at a trained efficiency, the guards failed to react timely. Dropping himself, Lou had used his freed hands to clasp at the guards ankles and drop him parallel.

The smaller D.o.M. officer wasn’t primed for what he saw next. Within a hesitant step toward the scuffle, Lou had submerged the guard’s head in the bucket of water he filled secretly with Agi. Combining his skill-set in a similar fashion that we’d expect from a John Jennings, he drills his lightning-engulfed fist into the bucket with him. The current instantly fries the contents of the guard’s skull. The dark-haired Agist flipped his hair from obscuring his vision and aimed for the reversing guard at another angle. Even if the man was better prepared with his pistol, Cooper may have well still dodged it with the quickness on display.

The pudgy man yelled. Fellow prisoners, excluding Anette, remained at the edge of their respective boundaries. Enthralled with the violence.

Now staggering into the same door he struggled with earlier, he begrudgingly looked back to see how close Lou was to unlocking his cell, he knew his taller companion had the keys on him.

Lou in a full squat was fumbling through the pockets with his left fingertips, while simultaneously pointing menacingly at his target with his right.

“Gonna get ya’. Better think fast cowboy.”

Pupils dilated, sweating a hurricane, the panic stricken man shot the door open full force. Thrusting himself forward, imagining safety only seconds away, he showed a final face of utter stupefaction as he launched off the train and under to the gravel and railroad tracks below. Ragdolling out of vision for the amused Lou.

“Woah- that was clean. Nature took his ass back.”

With the key ring looted properly, the keyhole was an easy twist away. The open door accompanied by the wailing winds drowned out any possible jeers or words of encouragement from the audience. Anette felt more in danger than the moment she began this journey, petrified to knock at Jennings’ door. Regret seeped into her mind.

Walking out his cell, Cooper didn’t talk much after that. He left with uncomplicated final words to expedite his farewell.

“Well… bye.”