World of the Coinless was not a good setting for love stories... everyone who had managed to survive through the aftermath of Drakkon's ascent to the throne, found themselves surrounded by trauma, sadness, and disappointment.

And star crossed lovers in tragic love stories surrounded almost everyone, following the trend that if you decided to fall in love, you were going to lose your life, or live to tell the tale of how your lover lost theirs.

Amelia Jones hadn't expected to find herself in one. Definitely not with the way it had started. She hadn't expected to find herself sitting by the bed, and thinking about how it had all started; they felt more like Javi's memories than her own... either way, it was a tragedy, and a beautiful one at that.

...

"I feel sorry for you with all my heart... But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could." She looked younger than she probably was, her brown hair, somehow dyed blonde in places, loosely knit into a braid, her cape, magenta in color, torn in places, patched up with spare cloth in a lot more, a bloodstained knife held to the sentry's neck, restricting movement, because he knew she wouldn't hesitate to deliver the death blow. She had a knack for drama, he decided, when her fingers played around with the knife dangerously, while making cryptic statements.

"...Blame you? Blame you for what?" The sentry scoffed, probably underestimating her.

"For your death. Believe me, I am sorry for your death."

With one click, the Mastodon sentry watched his fellow one fall to the ground, bleeding out from where the wind supposedly travelled to the lungs. The weak neck armour, which was nothing more than hardened white polyester cloth, doing barely anything to protect him from the sharpness of her blade.

"Amelia catch!" A sound came from another direction, and Javi Garcia, the black sentry who had just witnessed 'Amelia' murder one of his ranks— frankly he didn't even know who had been under that helmet, he didn't care either— turned his head just in time to catch a figure in a worn down blue jumpsuit, with almost as many patches as Amelia's, looking a little less maniacal than her, tossed her a bow and arrow, and she leapt up, catching the apparatus in mid air, and strung the bow, loaded an arrow, and fired a shot in Javi's direction.

Javi, who knew how it would play out— Coinless were really good with arrows, somehow, and most of them resulted in explosions— ran for cover, and found himself tumbling behind a rock, the heat of the explosion following him.

"Niiice" he heard the guy in blue catch up, and turned around to peek at the two of them high-fiving. Now was his opening, Javi loaded his machine gun, and aimed it at the couple, and let loose.

The guy was hit in the leg, while she pushed him away to save him, and then loaded another arrow to fire in Javi's direction.

Javi realized he would be the bullseye, and ducked back behind the tree, and broke into a run as far away from the granary as he could. Javi knew his way around, though, having patrolled in this area for a few weeks back when he'd joined the sentry ranks for the first time. Taking cover in the woods, he made his way around, and over some trees, to latch onto one side of the granary's building, and onto one of the pipes that supplied coolants, and managing his weight on it, he crawled around, so he was now facing the pink girl's back, while she kneeled next to her blue friend, checking his injuries, and Javi loaded his gun, and with a solitary bullet, he struck her bow, cracking it into half. And she looked up at him, the expression in her eyes being one of anger, and moreso, fear, she stared up at him pleadingly, and Javi, with his gun already locked on the injured blue man's heart, found himself unable to press the trigger.

He couldn't take the life of an already injured man who wouldn't be able to defend himself. He wasn't like that. Most of the Coinless who had been involved in the raid had been killed, or had fleed anyway. He knew that if he spared two of their lives, it wouldn't have any implications on himself. If anything, maybe he could ask for a return favour one day... and if it was about "avenging" his own dead comrade who she had killed right in front of him, Javi didn't care.

Javi put his gun down, fingers still clutching the trigger in case he was attacked, but seeing the girl in pink still hunched over the boy in blue, and apparently not a threat anymore, he pulled his helmet down, as a sign of peace.

"Run" was the only word he said, and she looked back up at him, studying his face for an entire minute, trying to remember it, and she got up, did a weird gesture with three of her fingers, which he recalled, from days of early childhood, as a gesture of gratitude amongst the Coinless. Javi looked around for other sentries, or other Coinless rebels, keeping a watch, while the girl— Amelia, her name was, he thought he remembered— dragged the boy away.

Javi Garcia hadn't expected this little event, and maybe his tiniest try at decency, would prove to be a turning point in his life.

He continued working for Drakkon, in the days that followed. Nothing changed after the encounter. It most certainly would have, if knowledge that Javi had let a Coinless rebel escape, would have made it into the open, but no changes in the training regimen meant his secret was safe.

Javi almost forgot about his little run-in with the spirited Coinless girl, until he, and one of his friends, Aiyon from the Sabertooth ranks— one of the mere handful people Javi actually liked from the forces— found themselves walking into a trap set by the Coinless in the woods.

It had been quite a while since people of the civilisation had learnt to stay away from the woods— they were believed to be Coinless territories, providing a lot of foliage to camouflage oneself, something the rebels were masters at, and a number of lovely sites for guerrilla warfare. And then Drakkon had decided it was enough, and sent two sentries to scour the woods, and discern the amount of danger they could be put in, in case they decided to Send in the full army.

Javi and Aiyon found themselves to be the scapegoats, and trudged along the long forgotten dirt tracks, while the humidity made it impossible to not keep sweating in their suits. It got so intense, that Javi finally took his helmet off, and suggested his friend in the sabertooth uniform to do the same.

And that was when they were ambushed. A slight rustling of the leaves, followed by an arrow that nearly missed its mark when Javi pushed Aiyon to the side, and ducked for cover. This was followed by more arrows coming their way, and Javi and Aiyon hid for cover, when they heard the bushes behind them rustling, and they turned just in time to catch sight of a figure dressed in blue, cloaked, and hiding his identity behind a mask running towards them with a knife.

Javi blocked the attack with his gun, and shoved the man to the side, away from himself and Aiyon, but was distracted enough that a second arrow struck him in the shoulder. It made a loud clinking sound against his armor, and fell to the floor without injuring him. Aiyon stumbled to his feet, and opened fire in the direction of the arrows.

The man in blue was back on his feet, and his knife was now slinting with energy— it seemed like the coinless had finally managed to harness some sort of morphin energy without the Ranger Coins, and that meant that Drakkon would have to better his sentry ranks if they were to keep a fair match. The man in blue struck at Javi again, and Javi was taken a little by surprise, and his grip on his rifle loosened for a second, his eyes snapped shut as he swung forward hoping to strike something, and protect himself.

As his rotten luck would have it though, the blade struck his face, right where his left eye was, and Javi screamed in pain, a spray of blood painting the surroundings as he refused to open his eye, and lashed out blindly towards his assaulter, and finally the barrel of his gun made contact with the blue cloaked man's body, sending him screaming as well. His gun flew out of his hands, it's momentum keeping the blue man down, and Javi's hands reached for his eye, the heat simmering there, blood ebbing from the wounds, and hurting even more when Javi's gun and metal covered gloved hands touched the naked wound, making him scream in pain once more.

And that was when another loud scream echoed from one side, but it was more of a disgruntled grunt, a wild cry, than anything else, and Javi found himself being tackled to the ground by the likeliness of a beast, clawing at his chest, and trying to possibly devour him. He was scared, and he felt like he was going to die in these woods... he couldn't see, he couldn't process, and with much effort he forced one eye to open, to take in his attacker, and found himself staring into brown eyes that almost looked exactly like his own. The face was contorted in rage, and distrust, and hate, and Javi somehow felt it was all deserved, because he recognised who his newest attacker was.

She was dressed in green, cloth wound over her face like a mask, just like most of the other coinless, her curly hair tied in a bun, but those eyes were enough to give way to her identity. Javi had been five years old when his parents had brought the little girl home, " that's your little sister" they'd told him, and he had sworn to love and protect her with his life, even at that young age.

Realizing it was her, he gave up his fight. His limbs went limp, because no matter what, if there was one thing Javi Garcia would never do, it was attack his sister. He just laid there, in the dust, pain thrumming across the left side of his face where the wound was split open, waiting for his death at the hands of his little sister.

"Hey Iz..." he forced a smile through his pain, better to lose his life to his sister than to any other coinless, right?

"JAVI" she said through gritted teeth, and was about to stab him to death, with something in her hand, when a screech interrupted her, and she turned her head to see another person approaching them.

"IZZY NO!" she was yelling, and Javi's mind felt too heavy to process who it was, or why they wanted Izzy to not kill him, but Izzy tersed up, "AMELIA THIS ISN'T YOUR BATTLE, GO AWAY" Izzy shouted, still deranged with anger.

"I can't— This is the sentry who spared me and Ollie!" she yelled, and suddenly, the name hit Javi like a ton of bricks... the girl from the granary. She was here, she remembered him.

Izzy looked at Amelia, and then back at Javi, "what?"

Only one eye still functional and open, Javi scanned the area around him from that awkward angle he was in, and realized Aiyon was nowhere in sight— he'd run away. Not very knight like, for someone who claimed to be from the line of knights of Zandar, was it? The girl was still in her magenta cloak, only it was pulled down now, and he could clearly see her face, her brown hair pulled up in a ponytail, and the bow in her hand, the arrows in a quiver slung to her waist. She'd been the one firing from the bushes. She seemed untouched by Aiyon's bullets, and was now closely inching towards where Javi and Izzy were locked in place.

"This is the sentry who let me take Ollie away, to safety when he was injured... he could've fired and killed both of us but he didn't! He told me to run!" Amelia explained, "Ollie come on, don't you remember?"

"I was barely conscious" the guy in blue stepped from where he'd been lying, massaging his jaw, where Javi's rifle had struck him, "but there had been a black sentry."

"Izzy you can't kill him, I owe both mine and Ollie's life to him!" Amelia continued to protest, and leaned next to Javi's good eye, so she was directly in his line of sight, "do you remember me, Javi?"

"The girl from the granary" Javi choked out, and watched as her face lit up, "see! He knows where we were! That's proof!"

"I have a score to settle with him" Izzy said, in a low voice, "He's mine"

"NO IZZY. I'm older, I'm in charge, and I'm saying let him go." Amelia said in an authoritative voice, that felt a little out of place from the girl, especially seeing how bubbly her nature seemed to be before all of this.

"It's okay," Javi sighed, "you can let me die. Thanks for giving me a chance, Amelia" he smiled at her, his teeth bloody from the red fluid that had seeped down his face and into his mouth.

"You're not dying shut up " Amelia told him, and he wasn't sure if he sensed a touch of affection to it, "Izzy, you'll get many more chances to get even with him for whatever he's done. For now, let him go. I won't intervene again. You can have your way with him"

Izzy groaned, and got off of Javi, and Amelia helped the mastodon sentry on his feet, and Javi looked for his rifle, but 'Ollie', the guy in blue, shook his head, "Naw man, you're going to run now, as fast as you can. And don't come back" he said, a sarcastic smirk spreading over his face, "your time starts now" he pointed to a techy looking watch on his hand, and Javi squinted for a second to see what it was, but Amelia gestured him to get out of there, and he nodded. His luck had been with him so far, it wasn't rocket science to know he didn't need to push it any further.

"The woods are ours" Izzy screamed from behind, Ollie cackling in agreement, while Javi turned back once, eyeing Amelia as she watched him go, with a smile on her face, and even waved to him, when Izzy and Ollie turned away to inspect Javi's helmet and rifle, left behind.

This girl was really something... wasn't she?