Despite the strong electric shock, it only took a few seconds for his mind to come to. As his eyes slowly peeled open, he found a pair of large, uncalloused hands throwing him over their thick shoulder. Startled and nerved by the sudden assault, Terran sent a kick as hard as he could, suckering the man in his stomach and causing him to lose his grip.
"Oomph," the attacker grunted as the air left his lungs.
Even with the body of a frail 14-year-old, Terran's true strength only barely fell short of a fully grown adult in their prime.
An ugly expression formed on Terran's face as the confusion and frustration from being attacked out of the blue filled his mind. He tried to stand up, but not before another electric shock punctured his back. While this time, the shock did not cause him to lose consciousness, he did stumble and trip, faceplanting on the concrete.
"Dammit, you little punk, you really think you can just run away after trying to sneak into the Abyssal District and assaulting a guard."
A second later, Terran felt a hand grip his ankle and lift him into the air before a strong punch landed on his gut, causing him to cough up a little blood. The guard's body rewound, preparing for another punch. Yet, before his hand reached the point of no return, a woman's voice called out, filled with a touch of desperation.
"Wait, please wait! Please, don't hurt my son!"
Attention drawn, the guard turned to look at the woman who had just shouted.
The back street they were currently on could be considered an alleyway. At the moment, there was no one else in sight as there was a turn in the road before the main street.
The guard's lips slightly curled hearing the desperation in the interjecting voice, and he opened his lips to respond. "I noticed your rat of a son acting suspicious and heading down this dead end. After believing he was alone, he attempted to sneak into the Abyssal District. The punishment for that would only be a few days in a holding cell. Yet, after being apprehended, your little delinquent dared to attack me and attempted to escape capture. Running from a guard adds a week to his sentence, but do you know the punishment for attacking a guard?"
Terran had been about to fight tooth and nail if he had to. However, he soon froze. After the guard turned around to face the woman, naturally, in the man's grasp, he had been swung around to face the same direction. A few meters away stood Sophie.
Terran was stunned, not just from the unreasonable explanation by the guard. He was also surprised at how Sophie had found him. It had been a few hours since they had split up, and he had spent quite a few minutes contemplating how he could find her. While in the back of his mind, he was relieved to see the only familiar face in the entire city. He was also ashamed to have seemingly dragged her into the current situation. Additionally, her action of calling him her son came as a shock. While he was smart enough to assume that she had only done so to give her a better reason to intervene, it still came as a surprise.
Sophie's face currently frowned, but her face only grew worse after hearing the guard's following words.
The eyes of the guard had quickly locked onto the sand cat still hanging from Sophie's waist, and his impure smile grew. "I really don't fancy doing paperwork, so how about we make a deal? You give me that cat, and I'll let your kid walk home a free man."
Sophie's face only darkened, and yet she walked forward, all the same, untying the cat from her waist and pushing it into the guard's chubby hands.
"Could you please set my kid down now?" Sophie spat through gritted teeth.
The guard released Terran without a care in the world, letting him fall once more on his face, which had already started to bleed from his previous faceplant. Without a second of hesitation, Sophie knelt down and helped Terran stand up before he could do so himself.
Terran had his own thoughts about the matter and wanted to pay the guard back for his face and take back the cat, but he held himself back. While he understood many random everyday things, the rules and political structure of this city were not one of them. He did not wish to get Sophie into any trouble that he could not undo. Especially after she sacrificed her last few days of work to get him out of his current situation. Instead, he decided that he would do his best to pay her back in the future.
Down a cat, the two stood up and turned around while starting to walk away. However, they had not even made it two steps when the guard's pompous voice broke the silence once more.
"Wait, how could I forget? The kid is also a thief. How do you plan we settle this crime?"
"And what on this godforsaken planet do you believe my boy stole?" Sophie hissed back menacingly.
Immediately, a sneer formed on the guard's face. "He has a sack of fruit on him. Do you actually think I would believe you bought those? Looking at him, it doesn't appear like you even bother getting his hair cut, and you expect me to believe that you buy him fruits!"
In the guard's mind, there was no way the mother and son could afford fresh fruit. There were millions of people living in the Oasis. Yet, the amount of sustainable land was packed to the brim from the ground to the sky. Thankfully, science had developed nutrient fluids that provided sustenance for most people in the metropolis. They were easy to make and were grown in skyscrapers taking up little space.
Meanwhile, all fruits and meats were not something obtainable for the ordinary person. Both simply took up an unsustainable amount of space and other resources to produce and were not for the common folk to enjoy.
Looking at Sophie's and Terran's appearances, it was easy for the guard to deduce that both were extremely poor. In fact, if it wasn't for his slow brain, he would have accused the woman in front of him of stealing the cat as well.
Sophie looked at Terran with a flash of understanding mixed with disappointment. It was clear she had lived through times without food, yet she was still disappointed in him. She had been willing to provide him with food and get him on his feet. In spite of that, instead of taking her up on her kindness, he had run away from her without explanation and resorted to stealing. Although she thought favorably of Terran's previous personality and had her personal reasons for favoring him, it could not dissolve all of the disappointment she had for the boy's choices. But, at the end of the day, Terran was still a child, and there was a certain amount of lenience Sophie held for him, especially after he had been abandoned in the wasteland.
Seeing the disappointment in Sophie's eyes, Terran wanted nothing more than to deny the claims, but what could he say? Miss Sophie, a magical system let me spin a lottery wheel that caused kiwis to appear out of thin air. He was already aware of the screws that were loose in his head, but that did not mean he was stupid. Since the truth would not work, he could try to lie his way out, saying he found them growing in the mountains, but then where would he have gotten the bag to carry them? What if it was known they don't grow on those mountains? After all, in all of his two years spent in the wasteland, he had never come across any fruits.
Without a good enough explanation, even he did not have the heart to lie to the only person that seemed to care for him.
"Ha-ha, you know, stealing is even worse than trespassing in the Abyssal District. Normally I would throw both of you in the sack for a month, but as I said before, me and paperwork are not friends."
The guard's eyes then ogled over Sophie's figure, and a perverted grin appeared on his face. He then gestured towards the tiny mice around Sophie's waist, the only game besides the cat she had snagged during her outing.
"Those tiny rats are simply not enough. Moreover, it would just be wrong of me to take money from you. After all, that would just encourage your little mistake to steel more often. No, we can't have that. Can we? So, how about we find another way for you to pay off his crimes?"
Without waiting for a response, the guard reached out his meaty hand, clearly directed at Sophie's chest. Unfortunately for the guard, his hand never reached its' target. All because his target had reacted after his slightest hint of movement.
Without hesitation, Sophie dropped to the ground at a lighting speed, sweeping the guard's legs out from under him. As the guard hit the pavement, Sophie's foot connected with his groin. She then grabbed Terran's hand and pulled him out of the alley.