[A gambit is when a player sacrifices a pawn in order to get some kind of compensation, such as a better move. It's a chess term. I think the meaning of the title will be self explanatory with that in mind.]
Royal was groggy for a while after being hit by the Aura-zapper, but he came back to alertness very suddenly when he realized the light had changed.
They must have been in yet another part of the cave.
There was the sound of voices, a lot of them, so many bandits were gathered here.
There were large stone platforms in the middle of the floor of this part of the cavern. It had a higher ceiling than some of the other alcoves, though not as much as the main entrance.
The floor was flatter and wider also, aside from the places which had stakes in them.
Tied to these stakes with both chains and Grimm claws were Emerald, Mercury, Hazel, Esmeralda, Cinder, and some other girl he didn't know. He himself was also.
No one was tied together. There were at least 8 of these platforms.
The ground below them had blood streaks in it and other stains that were less recognizable.
The voices were the bandits talking. They were sitting around the edge of this ring, mostly on the floors or on blankets or stools they must have brought themselves.
The only one sitting apart from the rest, on a sort of throne made of rocks and pillow to cushion it, was Mala herself, holding her knife and regarding them all like the cruel, sadistic monster she was.
["Bad Romance"--Lady Gaga. I swear, if you take the lyrics literally, this song is Mala's theme song.]
They were too far from each other to really talk, but they were exchanging glances, save for Mercury, who was still blinded by the Grimm goo... Royal had no idea what it was, but he hoped it wasn't permanent.
Finally, Mala held up her hand and one of the bandits blew a loud horn.
The talking died down.
Mala spoke loudly, and in the empty space her voice echoed off the walls.
"As you all can see, we have here some of the famed heroes of the world," she said, mockingly. "And their frequent flyer."
Royal winced.
"As well as...our slave." Mala frowned at Esmeralda, who was still shaking from the beatdown she'd gotten earlier.
The other girl was staring at Mala in terror also.
Mala didn't even acknowledge that one.
"It seems one of them has been daring to mess with our heads," she said. "Striker, care to elaborate?"
Striker, appearing from the edge of the area, came up to Emerald and pushed a long rod into her face.
The tribe booed at her angrily.
"Yes, there was never any spirit," Mala said. "It was all her. I think such an offense should be punished, don't you?"
They cheered in agreement.
"But wait, there's more." Mala pointed. "This wretch has also killed our prized Doctor Lovecraft and his assistant. Dead where they stood."
More angry cries.
Why did the tribe even care? They had seemed indifferent before...
But there was something in Mala's voice that seemed to stir them up.
"Do they always act like such fools?" Cinder asked Esmeralda, the only one she was close enough to to even hear.
She could still barely hear her.
"It's her Semblance," Esmeralda whimpered. "Fatal Attraction, that's what she calls it. On certain people it works better than others. Most of them are pretty weak to it."
"Fatal... What does that mean?" Cinder asked.
"Hey," Striker spoke, "shut up, both of you. The leader is talking."
"Bite me," Cinder muttered.
But he looked all too willing to take her up on that, and she went silent after another threatening gesture.
Mala had seen them talking and was glaring, but since they'd already stopped, she went on.
"And we have also here--the mighty Grimm Slayer." She gestured at Mercury. "Who I vanquished easily."
Only with the help of her right-hand man, but no one cared to fact check her.
"And someone...who were you again?" she addressed Hazel.
He said nothing.
Striker prodded him, and he still said nothing, didn't even acknowledge it.
Mala ignored it. "Unimportant, obviously. But even he was nothing before our strength. I can't believe all of you are such useless cowards that you let a little girl scare you--and my worthless slave also."
The bandits bristled at that.
"We weren't scared," they hastened to declare.
"Well, then prove it," Mala sat back. "Who wants to take the first shot? Don't be shy."
Esmeralda cringed.
"Anything goes?" one bandit asked.
"As long as it's not lethal. I still want to have some fun with them myself," Mala said. "But I recognize, of course, that these are the very people who destroyed some of your lives. The terrorists who felled Atlas and Mantle both in one day, the witch who turned Beacon against itself, the Atlas elite who look down on everyone else, and the useless, worthless among us who only serve as a stain and drag on our power. Nothing more than fodder for our weapons, in the end." She meant Kate, though Royal had only just realized that had to be who the other girl was.
"They're going to hurt us..." Emerald commented. "I...I don't know how well I'll hold up."
No one heard her except Hazel.
"They want us to fear them," he said. "Don't. It will only make it worse... I wish I could take it for all of you."
"Just because you can't hurt doesn't mean you can't take damage..." Emerald said in a small voice.
The bandits were getting up to surround them.
Esmeralda was cowering at her post.
Mercury strained to break free.
However, the beating didn't start as fast as they expected... The tribe actually was acting wary of them.
Royal couldn't figure out why they weren't hitting them. What did they think they could do? Their Aura was already gone.
Cinder was not sure either, till it occurred to her that, based on the reputation the heroes had, according to Kate and Esmeralda...maybe the bandits were scared of them.
Mala had worked them into a frenzy, but no one wanted to land the first hit.
Kate and Esmeralda were the only ones they weren't afraid of, and some of the more cowardly bandits began to lay into them so as to look like they were doing something.
They were using sticks and small whips or just their fists mostly.
Neither girl seemed in the frame of mind to be strong--they were just crying.
It was making Emerald feel sick to her stomach already.
Yet no one was hitting her yet.
"What are the rest of you waiting for?" Mala's tone got a sharp edge.
"You think we're scared?" Mercury hurled at the bandits, tiring of waiting. "Take your best shot, a--h---s. I've killed worse than you lunatics before. I've seen stuff you can't imagine. We whupped the butts of the same gods you get your power from, so come at me, see what happens."
No one did anything.
"He can't do anything to you," Mala said. "He's all talk... Are all of you such sniveling cowards? Striker, teach them."
Striker nodded, and, walking up to Mercury, he hit him right in the stomach.
Mercury gasped.
"It's lies," Mala added. "You never defeated the gods. They just left--we all know it. You didn't overpower them. You're not the only one who can read, assassin's son. You're the same as us--you just pretend you're different. Higher and mightier, that's what you think. But you've been beaten the same as anyone else."
She was starting to get the tribe more revved up.
"Hey, yeah, he's not doing anything," they began to say. "Mala is right, as always. He just talks a big game."
Someone else took a shot at him. "Why don't you stop us, eh? You POS!"
"So much for the mighty Grimm Slayer." Someone else kicked him.
Mercury was used to getting beaten and didn't make any sound other than grunting from the impact, but that didn't discourage them.
"Mercury..." Emerald mumbled.
Some of the others drew nearer to her. "Well, she doesn't look so tough," they said.
There was Shep and the other two she'd scared.
"It was you the whole time," they said.
Emerald's mind was blank.
As she had no ideas, perhaps there was room for other things to come in, because some verses started going around her head:
"The pangs of death surrounded me, and the floods of ungodliness made me afraid... He delivered me from my strong enemy, from those who hated me, for they were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the LORD was my support. He brought me out into a broad place; He delivered me because He delighted in me." [Psalm 18: 4, 17-19]
Emerald always had a hard time with the passages that spoke of God delighting in people; she didn't have a clear idea what that meant. God was not as personal feeling to her as He seemed to be to Shine.
Yet what good did a far away idea do now? she realized. She was always so afraid of evil people because she always felt so alone when she faced them. Or, no...not only alone--like the other people around her couldn't do anything to protect her either.
She'd been terrified by Salem, until Shine and Wally had taught her not to be by acting as if Salem was like anyone else.
They were not here now...but if they were, they would do the same with the tribe.
After all...really, the tribe was just a bunch of people who were hopelessly off base, twisted by their own desires and by Mala's influence over their minds... Should she not pity them?
Pitying your enemies had the magic effect of making you no longer fear them, she realized.
But you could only pity someone if you thought you had it better... Didn't she still?
This flashed in her mind in an instant.
She wasn't exactly alone... She knew inside her there was the same power as in the DJs, and in all of their kind--the power of the Divine Gift given to them just for their faith and their trust to serve the true God and not the false ones like these bandits were serving.
If you could even call it serving when they were so engrossed in them it was more like being mindless tools.
Even as they were moving toward her, Emerald's fear suddenly fell off her like a heavy weight, at least for the moment, and through no decision of her own, it was just as if something else had forced the fear out.
No, perhaps the fear was still there--she just was aware of another feeling with it...
She closed her eyes. Shine would be singing right now. Shine would never have let these people get to her. No matter what they did to her.
It was hard to think of any music at a time like this, but a song popped into her head from the shared playlist Shine had made for them ages ago, and she started to mumble it to herself so low no one else could have heard her over the din:
"You are my strength when I am weak, You are the treasure that I seek, You are my all in all. I'm seeking You as a precious jewel, for to give up I'd be a fool, You are my All in All."
As she went, she felt bolder doing it.
She opened her eyes again as one of them took a swing at her.
She barely acknowledged the strike, because she was so focused on something else. Just like people will shake off a hit in a sports fight because the adrenaline rushes through their body.
"When I fall down you pick me up, when I am dy you fill my cup, you ar emy all ina ll..." she was getting louder. "Taking my sin, my cross, my shame, rising again , I bless Your Name, you are my all inall..."
["You Are My All In All"--Nichole Nordeman]
It took a few seconds for the bandits to realize what she was doing.
"Are you...singing?" one of them said oddly.
Emerald didn't answer. She just launched into a different tune.
["Everlasting God"--Lincoln Brewster]
"Hey, stop that!" One of the women grabbed her face, trying to cover her mouth--her hand was none too clean.
Emerald struggled to pull free.
Suddenly, the female bandit's eyes seemed to get bigger and yet also as if she was staring at something behind Emerald.
She suddenly let go of her and yelped, clutching her hand.
"Whatever is your problem, Softpaw?" one of the others asked her. It must have been her code name.
"There... a dark thing was...my hand..." she sputtered.
Suddenly there was a thud, and she fell to the ground, bleeding.
Mala had thrown a knife into her back.
"Anyone else want to start up with that s--t again?" she asked, menacingly.
For the others, who didn't quite understand what had happened, it seemed strange that it was almost as if Mala was forcing the bandits to hurt them now.
Not that the tribe didn't want to do it, but Mala's stunt had only served to make them more afraid of the heroes, but also of her herself.
They did continue beating on the heroes, but it was pretty halfhearted for them. They were afraid to do too much damage and get a repeat of before... In fact, it was as if they were faking hitting them hard to appease Mala.
It still hurt, but all of the heroes except Royal had been knocked around enough to know that the lasting damage caused by it would be pretty minimal. They'd be sore later, but nothing was broken.
And no one dared grab Emerald's face again, though she couldn't keep singing with them knocking the wind out of her.
But as painful as that was, it wasn't deep damage.
After several minutes of this going on, Mala finally signaled them all to stop.
"Save some energy for later," she said.
Somehow, she hadn't noticed that they weren't inflicting that much damage.
To help with this illusion, Emerald had acted like it hurt her more than it really did, and so did Cinder. No one else caught on, but the bandits expected them to act more stoic anyway, save for Kate and Esmeralda.
"It's about time for our meal," Mala noted, checking a watch--the most normal thing they'd seen her do. "I suppose all of you can have a break. Make sure they're well guarded this time," she addressed Striker. "I have to collect the scout's report."
She got up and left the area.
"Doesn't she ever eat?" Cinder said, leaning her head back.
"She doesn't eat very often," one of the bandits surprisingly answered her. "It's part of her power."
"Shut up." One of the others hit them in the back of the head. "Don't talk to the witch. She'll put a spell on you."
"Maybe I already did," Cinder said savagely.
They quickened their pace, and most of them cleared the area.
Striker held some back.
"If they escape again, your heads will all roll," he said. "If they start moving, stun them. You will get your rations after the others come to relieve you."
Then he left too.
It was oddly quiet after all the hubbub.
"So..." Royal said over the silence, "that's what we have to look forward to?"
They thought the guards would stop them from talking--but instead the guards were just taking out some dice and seemed to get set to start gambling with each other.
They didn't even look at the heroes.
"I still can't see a d--- thing," Mercury said. "The b-----ds didn't want to risk knocking this gooey crap loose."
"Are the rest of you damaged badly?" Hazel asked.
"I've had worse," Mercury replied.
"It's not too bad," Emerald replied.
"Compared to before, those were love taps," Cinder spoke flatly. "I think they're afraid of us."
"I thought it was bad," Royal said. "Are they just going to do that until we all die?"
"Probably," Esmeralda finally spoke in a small voice. "They've beaten people to death before. Or they'll feed us to the Grimm."
"The Grimm would spit us back out," Mercury declared. "But if they want to try it, I'm game."
"I don't want to die," Kate whimpered. "I thought I might actually get to see my family again..."
No one could tell her that help might still be on the way.
But, by now, Emerald, Mercury, Hazel, and Royal were beginning to wonder where the others were. They might still be planning, but...
"Esmeralda," Cinder spoke, "is she going to do anything else to us?"
"Oh, yes," Esmeralda said. "The entire beat down is just the start. That's so the tribe feels included, is all. But they usually get bored after a while, more and more these days. They want new victims... The last time they did this, the people were changed after just one day. It happened to the man they inducted."
"Ali," Royal realized. "They beat him?"
"The beatings are just part of it," Esmeralda said. "I don't know all. Some things only the top dogs know. They think they need to break people's bodies down to break their spirits. They won't feed us or give us water for hours. After that I'm parched... But after this, I'm sure more mind tricks are coming. And if that doesn't work, the Grimm will eat us. Possibly where we stand. Alive..." She shuddered. "Not me, I suppose. I don't know how long she'll leave me here... but now that I've been exposed, everyone else will be worse than ever. I screwed myself trying to help you."
She sounded kind of bitter there, which didn't seem right from her.
"Don't give up yet," Cinder said. She tried to shift positions and could only do so enough to stare at the celiing. "We're still not done. These people are fools."
"Were you actually singing?" Kate asked Emerald.
"Yeah..." Emerald was a little embarrassed now. "It's a trick I learned from my mentor. Something she always does when she's in trouble. She knows a song for everything. I'm not that good, but, it helped. At least I got my mind on something else."
At this one of the guards looked up finally.
Softpaw had been taken away, but that incident was fresh in everyone's mind.
"They are afraid to touch us," Cinder noted.
"I think I know why," Kate said. "I heard people talk about it after the raid that brought me here. They said that some of you only have to touch someone to make the Grimm come out of them, and that it renders that person helpless before you. I was starting to think, Cinder, that that was why they hadn't done more to you than they did."
Cinder raised an eyebrow to herself. "I see... Wait...could that be why Mala hasn't personally been doing that much to me? She was so full of venom, I thought she would do it herself,. I couldn't understand why she kept delegating, but that makes perfect sense."
"Ey, pipe down over there," one of the guards finally spoke up.
"Make me," Cinder tossed at them defiantly.
"Cinder..." Mercury warned.
"You want us to come over there?" The guard stood up.
"Go ahead," Cinder said. "From all I hear, you might be struck dead if you try. I've already killed 4 of you. Roll those dice, but the odds won't be in your favor."
The guards hesitated.
"Technically all we have to do is watch them," one of the others sitting said. "Not keep them quiet. I'm not risking my neck just over a little smack talk."
The other one sat back down reluctantly.
Royal, thinking that, if they weren't going to stop them from talking, he might as well use it, strained to get a better look at Esmeralda. "Hey, how does Mala's Semblance work? You said it was called Fatal Attraction?"
"Gross," Mercury said. "Who could be attracted to that."
"You can't even see her," Emerald said.
"I saw her briefly. She looks like a snake."
"People can be attracted to ugly things," Hazel spoke flatly.
"That is how it works," Esmeralda spoke up. "I've only learned it over time by observing, since she never would explain it. Mala draws people to her. Her Semblance makes people more inclined to do bad things. At least I think that's how it works."
"So it's like temptation?" Royal asked.
"Temptation...?" Esmeralda almost didn't seem to know what the word meant.
"Sounds more like negative charisma," Mercury said.
"Like Salem," Emerald said. "She made doing bad stuff sound appealing, in a way."
"I object that it's the same thing," Hazel said. "No one Salem found wasn't already on a path of destruction. She just turned it her way. This woman, if she is a woman still, seems different."
"You should have heard her talk to me," Cinder said. "She went on about how everyone is corrupt deep down. It was insane."
"Sounds a lot like what you used to think," Mercury said.
"Mercury!" Emerald warned.
"I said 'used to'--and us too. Remember? 'No one can be that happy all the time'?"
"You know, Shine talked to me about that," Emerald said. "I guess I realized slowly that what I took to be happy was just not giving up on the world because of the bad stuff in it. Still having hope."
"She wants to take that too," Cinder said.
"She's good at it," Royal said. "I was pretty close to losing it while I was around those...whatever they were."
"I'm surprised she's giving us a chance to even talk," Mercury said. "First move of anyone like that is to isolate people."
Likely Mala had not counted on her guards being such cowards that they wouldn't shut them up.
Cinder noted that she seemed to overestimate her crew a lot... Perhaps usually they were more ruthless.
"You know, she's not even that clever," she said aloud. "If it wasn't for the dark powers that give her an advantage in this hellhole, she'd not be on top. It's that everyone does her bidding. And the Grimm."
"We couldn't have escaped even if she hadn't used the Grimm," Mercury said. "But even Salem was less creepy about it than her. It's weirder seeing a human do it...or someone who was human once."
"Salem was human before," Emerald pointed out.
"I didn't know that at the time, okay?" He was miffed. "The question is, how do we survive?"
"Anything we say to that effect, they'll tell her, and she'll use it against us," Cinder said.
That was true. The guards glanced at them warily again.
There was not much point to talking about the situation if they could not plan.
"You know what I keep thinking about?" Emerald changed tactics. "How Shine acted about being captured by Kanap. Not that I was there, but from what I heard. She never was afraid of them."
"No," Cinder said with grudging respect. "I believe she'd refuse to fear the devil himself."
"Aren't we not supposed to fear that thing anyway?" Mercury remarked.
"Easy for you," Royal said. "At least you could fight. I wish I could do something."
"They stopped me from fighting," Mercury said.
"What my point was," Emerald said, "is that why they always get the upper hand? I mean, can you picture if Shine even met Mala? Or if Wally did?"
Mercury snorted a laugh. "I can't see that guy taking her seriously at all. He'd probably snack on something while she was going off."
Cinder smiled faintly to herself. "Shine would just tell her all the things wrong with her ideology, and that she wasn't afraid of her. I can hear it now. 'No matter what you do to me, it won't change what I think.'"
"That's a good way to get her to kill you," Esmeralda said quietly.
"Maybe..." Cinder agreed.
"I don't know," Emerald said. "Her ability to find common ground with anyone always surprised me. Just saying."
"With reasonable people," Mercury said. "Not ones like this."
"I'm just saying, have we even tried another approach? We were kind of cocky doing it this way. And something you said earlier bothered me." Emerald leaned back. "You said we 'defeated the gods'. That's not true. We didn't do that. We resisted them, but that's not what defeated them. I don't think we really defeated the Grimm either. We're protected, that's all. Every time we think we can do this, we take hits. Big ones. Shouldn't we have figured out it's not working?"
"But it's our job to fight them," Mercury said.
"To fight them," Hazel spoke. "But to think that makes us their masters is a foolish idea. Or that they are not a threat to us if we become arrogant. No one ever underestimated the Grimm and didn't live to regret it. Or people like Mala..."
"Does she have a last name?" Royal asked.
"Mother's last name was Paris," Esmeralda said. "But Mala's never used it. Frollo was Gene's last name. I dont know her father's."
Cinder had not even known it either.
"I can't get over that you two are sisters," Royal said. "How did you end up so much more normal?"
"I wouldn't call myself normal," Esmeralda said. "But I suppose I had no other choice."
"No, there is always a choice," Cinder said firmly. "You choose to be what you are. Mala did not have to be this way. All that about being born inherently evil is garbage."
"I don't know, I think some people are born with a screw loose," Mercury said. "Or several."
"They might be, but they could still fight it," Cinder said firmly. "The choice to come back here, to kill everyone, that's not just having a screw loose."
"I remember one of the brothers I had," Esmeralda said, "before she slaughtered them all. He said that about Mala, that she would just bail if she got the chance--if she was smart--but that she was crazier than anyone else and he didn't think she'd stay out of trouble if she did leave. He said that Mala needed the tribe in a way, to have something to blame, or she would have nothing to live for. I didn't get it."
"Sounds pretty smart," Mercury said. "No wonder she killed him."
"She killed them all. It didn't matter if they were harsh to her or not," Esmeralda said. "I liked Morty more, though. He wasn't so bad, considering that Gene was both our father. Sometimes I think Mala hated us more for not being as nasty as the others."
"Trust me, she does," Cinder said darkly. "She hates anyone who could prove her wrong, I think. If there was another way, and she missed it, then it's only her fault, and she can't stand that."
As she spoke this, it clicked for her...and also it sounded so familiar.
"It sounds to me like Mala took the label of the tribe and made it her whole identity then," Royal noted. "It's almost sad that she has nothing else to live for. But I can't feel sorry for her. She's a monster. Esmeralda, was it? Was she ever not like that?"
"She was never not off in her head," Esmeralda said, "from what I can gather...but if you want to know if she was ever nicer, she was to our mother. The last person she ever cared about. When she lost her, she lost her pity. Some people only care about one person in their whole life, and then that's it, I guess. They didn't even get along so well for what I remember, but I guess she owed her mother for trying to raise her. Though sometimes Mother would wish she never had any children. She thought she'd never have been caught if she hadn't."
"That's so awful," Emerald said. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry? For what?" Esmeralda said. "That's how the world is."
"It's not for everyone," Emerald said. "I had a pretty s----y childhood,too. I was all alone on the streets. Till Cinder found me."
"Don't make it sound so noble. I was just using you," Cinder muttered.
"Maybe," Emerald said. "But it was still the most trouble anyone ever went to for me. You could have been worse. And because of that I met Mercury, Hazel, and then all my other friends. It was still a change in my destiny."
"And now you're here," Kate said bitterly.
"That's not Cinder's fault," Emerald said. "I chose that. I don't work for her now."
Cinder felt guilty. It was her fault in one way...but she could not possibly explain that, not where the bandits could hear her.
Some of them had started listening to this again, she could tell from how they were holding real still.
"But there are people who have it better," Emerald said. "If everyone was more considerate of others, maybe most of us would have it better. I just learned after a while that doing the things I did, and that tribe does, makes more of the same problems. Only helping people ever makes it better for anyone else."
"Some of us felt like everyone should suffer as much as us," Mercury noted. "My dad was just like these guys. Beat the crap out of me on a daily basis. He and Mala would get along. I don't know what was wrong with him. But eventually I realized that if I kept all that inside, I would never have any better. I'm still working on not getting pissed off when I think about it, but the here and now is that life doesn't have to suck. You can make it what you will. And I've realized that the only power against the darkness we really have is...well, it's cheesy, but it's love. Not that weird, sugary kind, but the guts to protect people's lives because they have some meaning to you. I guess it took seeing the evil in the world to make me see that people who do good really do have to be completely different. I guess everyone can be evil, but not everyone is. When you ask yourself why some people make different choices, it's harder to lie to yourself."
"I would not have thought I could ever change my path," Hazel spoke, "or have forgiveness for the many things I did. But I believe now that God does forgive us, and gives us blessings that we do not deserve. I've never hoped for that much, and I've ended up with far more than I hoped for in the last few years. I could die content now...but you're young, and you should have your whole lives ahead of you."
"Oh, don't say that, Hazel," Emerald. "You have Raven and her weird family. And us. You're not that old yet. You could still go for a few decades. You have to try as hard as us."
"I'd like to keep living," Royal remarked. "I'm just starting to get what life is actually about. But even if I don't make it through this, I've been much happier in the last year than I ever was before, because of all of you. You're the realest friends I've had. I can say that much. And what I believe now means that even death isn't the end. I never had that before. I guess I can't complain too much. Not that I think I'm going to die...but even so. There are worse things in life, like never experiencing what it's really about at all."
"Hmm," Cinder said slowly. "Perhaps a life that's empty and long isn't really better. Did living thousands of years make Salem's life any better? Or Ozma's? It was wrong because they had nothing but trying to escape it. I suppose in that way, even if this was the end, I'd be better off than them. I'm not just giving up yet."
"Trust you for that," Royal said.
"I wish I thought what you guys did," Kate said. "I don't feel ready to die at all. I hated living here, but I had hope I might get rescued... Isn't it too cruel if it doesn't happen? I mean, why go on so long at all? My life was barely starting. I mean, I wanted to do things. I want to leave the village, I want to get married, have a family, see more of the world."
"Well, adventure isn't what it's cracked up to be," Mercury said. "Maybe the rest depends on the person."
"But my life didn't matter," Kate said. "That's the worst part. All of you have done something for the world. What have I done?"
"Don't say that," Emerald pleaded. "You are part of the reason we kept looking for the tribe so adamantly--and what's made people take it more seriously... If the tribe ever is brought down, you'll be part of why. That's not nothing. And your family cared about you--that's not nothing either. I wanted that when I was a kid. I mean...not that this isn't bad, but, I don't think it means you had no meaning."
Kate sniffled. "Maybe...but still...even if I could just talk to them one more time..."
"Listening to you all makes me feel almost sick with envy," Esmeralda said. "I've been useless my entire life. And weak. And no one cared about me except for my mother... If I had even a day to do the things you did, I would feel better. And I have to go on here, even if you don't. I think I'd envy you almost."
"It's not worthless to do what you did," Cinder said. "You fought. You tried to help us."
"Yeah, even if it didn't work, you didn't just take it," Mercury said. "That's something."
"It matters to at least try," Emerald agreed. "It shows you still have a spirit. That's what makes us human, wanting to be free... So, at least in my book, you're not useless."
"We're not judged by our strength," Hazel said firmly, "but by our character. I think it takes more courage to resist this kind of corruption than it does to inflict pain on others. That should matter for something."
Esmeralda felt a little better at them saying that.
The other bandits were casting them odd looks.
Then one of them stood up suddenly.
"Are you all for freaking serious?" he said.