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Part Six: Angelus' Story

The orphanage we lived in was in Pacis... in Amriro. It was just an old worn-down hospital building. It was horrible living there... some of the windows were cracked or had holes in them; some were missing entirely. Cold drafts of air would always find their way through the halls and rooms. Instead of trying to fix anything they either covered it up or closed the problem area's down... there weren't many kids there in the first place.

It was sometime in October... almost November so I had just turned nine when we escaped from the orphanage. It was night and the few adults who were supposed to be on watch weren't paying attention. There were seven us in all; though two of us we didn't notice till it was too late to send them back. There was Phillip, David, Sylvia, John, Tracy and Abigail... and of course me as well.

The one who came up with the plan to escape was Phillip; he was basically our leader, he was twelve about to turn thirteen and was the oldest of us. He's just a squirrel with mostly brown fur and his bushy tail... he also had a dark streak of fur starting on his neck and going all the way down to the tip of his tail. He wears round... no oval, shaped glasses and has green eyes and had short dirty blond hair. He was around four feet seven inches tall at the time if I remember correctly.

David... he's a raccoon with gray blue fur and black stripes on his tail and black fur on his arms and legs... same with the mask on his face. Though there's fur on his face above and below both his eyes that looks like scars but are a part of the mask of fur. He has... had dark blue colored eyes and dark brown... nearly black colored short hair. He was around the same height as Phillip; about two inches shorter but had just turned eleven; he was the second oldest. He kinda went against Phillip's ideas... on minor things but on major things he agreed with him.

Sylvia, she's a mink with dark brown fur and blond colored hair that reached her shoulders. She has pale green colored eyes and was ten and half years old. She was the third oldest of everyone... and stood at four feet tall. Sometimes she would side with Phillip and other times she would side with David... she was like a tie breaker for them.

Then there was John... little John we called him; because even though he was already nine... nearly ten he was the shortest of all of us. He's a husky; a Malamute actually, with reddish and white colored fur. He has fiery red hair and crystal blue eyes. He stood at three feet four inches tall... I was younger than him but I was already two inches taller than him... a few inches shorter then I am now.

Then there was Tracy and Abigail. They were both seven... and the youngest of us all. They tagged along and by the time we knew they were following us we were already out of the orphanage so we let them come with us. Tracy is a little mouse girl with gray fur, blond hair and blue eyes while Abigail is... well basically a classic patterned orange tabby cat with gray blue eyes and black hair. They were actually smaller then John at three feet two inches tall, but over the next year they'd be over two inches taller than him.

After we all escaped the orphanage we were lucky and managed to find an alley that actually had something covering the opening in between the two buildings we lived between; at least part of it did, that at least kept us out of rain and later snow. Over the next few days we managed to find large cardboard boxes and old thrown out blankets and clothing. They weren't much but they helped.

It was Phillip that suggested we all go by Sette... he said it was a word for the number seven... since there were seven of us now. He said that we should become a family and always look out for each other. Even though he was young... he was like an older teenage brother to us and even like a father figure to Tracy and Abigail.

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"So you're age's varied from seven to twelve... basically thirteen and Phillip acted as the father figure of the group?" Durante asked.

A small smile made its way to Angelus' face as she nodded. She sighed and started to tell him a little bit about life on the streets. How they had to beg for food and money and how they eventually started to steal food from bakeries and meat shops; though the girls were able to walk up to shops and were able to ask for leftovers and scraps without worry.

She even admitted to learning how to pickpocket people by simply bumping into them. How they had to run from officers that held up the nearly nonexistent law and the corrupt cops that took bribes from local gangs and the mob and weren't above simply shooting a child if they were a nuisance.

"They're the o-ones that were the m-most dangerous... but as long as w-we stayed away from them, we w-were fine." Angelus said.

"That's horrible... didn't the orphanage call the police to let them know that you all had escaped?" Durante asked in a sorrowful voice.

"No... they didn't."

Durante sighed in frustration as angelus said "That was only w-what went on during the day... night... n-night is another story."

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At night is when the bad people came out. They were worse than the dirty cops... not even the good officers could do anything about them. They came with guns, blades and homemade bombs. They would shoot their guns, destroy buildings and kill people because they didn't pay them on time. Though that didn't compare to what happened during a whole week not too long ago; it was filled with fear and death... it even continued during the day.

It happened nine months after we left the orphanage... it had started sometime in the night while we were sleeping but it woke us up violently. Out of nowhere we were woken by gunfire close to where we slept. We had no idea what was happening so Phillip got up.

He yelled at David and told him to watch us while he went to the end of the alley to see what was happening. He was almost shot and killed right then and there. He came back yelling, telling us we had to leave. Just as we were about to head out an explosion happened near where we usually entered the alley from, making it impossible to get out that way.

For the first time since we lived there, we had to use one of the fire escape ladders that were further behind us to exit the alley... since it dead ended. Sylvia and I helped Tracy and Abigail get onto the ladder before we too climbed up. When we were all on the roof of one of the buildings we could see fire spreading across several buildings and several smaller fires in places across the city that we had never been before.

There were many people with guns and other weapons firing at each other. They didn't care who they hit and killed many men, women and children. Screams could be heard around the entire city and the smell of blood and smoke was sickening. We were constantly on the move since it started and were hardly allowed to rest... let alone sleep. I think that night was the longest of them all for us... all the smoke, screams and gunfire... it was frightening.

We thought morning would bring peace like all the other times but... it never came. There were area's where no fighting was going on at the moment and in those places we learned what had happened the previous night was the start of a mob war. Two rival mafia families started fighting over something... I can't quite remember what but I think it was over something small and unimportant.

People had boarded up their windows and doors and most likely either went into their basements; if they had one, but most tried to leave the city. We couldn't do either... but during that time we had managed to enter bakeries and meat shops and actually have something to eat before the bad people started fighting nearby.

Pacis was in pure... chaos. Fires continued to burn during the day and through the nights. We were lucky to survive through it... but we did have our close calls. Tracy and Abigail were almost killed and David was shot but it passed clean through his arm. We all feared for him; we had seen what happens to people if injures were left untreated... we had seen infection set in on other people who we met on the streets. Thankfully his arm didn't get infected.

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"I heard about that on the news. You all stayed there during that?" Durante asked in surprise.

Angelus nodded her head and said "We actually had a better c-chance in Pacis then o-out of it. After th-things settled down... we d-decided to return to where we lived. The entrance was in s-sh-shambles and the buildings had been b-burnt down. We had to find a n-new home."

Durante sighed again and shook his head "I think that all the mob's and mafia families should be brought down." He said; not knowing that his family was a mafia family nor that his father was the don.

"It wasn't all t-that bad... people became nicer after that and were kinder t-to us. With all the rubble and destroyed b-buildings around, we h-had to learn how to get through d-dangerous area's quickly." Angelus told him.

"How did you navigate through them?" Durante asked.

"We had to learn how to free run. In fact the place we eventually found t-to live at, y-you needed to know how to f-free run to get to it."

"Free run? What's that?" Durante asked curiously.

"Free running? ...it's to get t-though an area as fast and as easily as y-you can. Like being a-able to run along or running a-across bars or climbing up and running along walls; if you're g-good enough... though it takes a w-while to learn. You need to have g-great balance and strengthen the muscles in y-your forearms and these muscles too" Angelus said as she patted her calves "I c-could give you a demonstration if y-you'd like." Angelus asked a little nervously.

Durante thought about it for a second before saying "Yeah, I'd like to see that... it sounds interesting but where did you hear of free running?"

"We saw another person who was homeless like us free running. We asked him w-what he was doing and eventually w-we talked him into teaching us t-too. He called it free running but said the actual name was... ah... it started with a p... um... oh, parkour!"

"Huh... I really got to see this for myself but later. Okay so you've told me all that but... how did you get from Pacis to Dormio?" Durante asked.

"Well... it happened a few days ago..."

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After that mob war things had gotten better for a little while... then things started getting worse. When we first moved onto the streets there were people who were at least kind enough to warn us of things, or when Tracy or Abigail wondered to close to the edge of the street and were about to get hit by a passing vehicle people would pull them from the edge.

Now people tried pushing us into the vehicles... spat on us, kicked us and pushed us onto the ground and not just us but all the homeless. The mob war made them all... cold and heartless. Well David got sick and tired of it... so did Sylvia and I. David got into a fight with Phillip and it ended with David yelling he was leaving. Phillip kept saying things would get better but we didn't listen to him.

Sylvia and I looked around at what was happening around us and agreed with David. We left that night and snuck onto a shuttle craft at the space port. David was smart enough to check and see where it was heading; to another city or to one of the colonies, and he figured that Dormio would be better than Pacis.

The ride from Pacis to Dormio was only three hours. We wondered why it was so short and why there weren't many people onboard. We found out after the shuttle had landed and after we snuck out through a hatch in the landing gear bay.

The shuttle was privately owned... and... and the owner didn't take kindly to three stowaways... he... he...

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Angelus stopped as she wiped away a few tears that were forming in her eyes. She was starting to sniffle and shudder a little. Durante looked worried and asked "Are you okay Angelus? You don't have to continue if it's too much."

Sniffing and wiping away the tears Angelus forced a smile and said "No... I... I want t-to tell you."

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After we exited through the landing gear the owner saw us as he exited the shuttle; the owner of the shuttle was a cat of some kind, he had pale grayish blue fur all over and his hair was a dark brown and his eyes were a pale green. He was wearing a white dress shirt with a white vest over it and black dress pants.

He yelled and cursed at us before he drew a handgun of some kind and aimed at us. We were all shocked and fear had gripped us and froze us to the spot. David, he... he yelled at us and told us to run. He pushed us a couple times to get us moving... and when our backs were turned, we heard gunfire.

We didn't look back until we had turned a corner and were momentarily safe. That's when we heard the screaming. David was screaming out in pain... when we peeked around the corner we saw he had been shot in the legs; one of the shots hit his knee and blew it out.

He walked up to David while he was still screaming... he... he aimed the gun at David's... at his head... and... and...

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Tears were falling down Angelus' cheeks as she cried, trying to finish the sentence she was speaking. She was crying, shuddering and had started hiccupping. "He... he... s-shot him in... in the..." Angelus tried to say but stopped as Durante grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her in a hug.

"No more Angelus... don't say anymore. I'm... I'm so sorry." Durante said with sorrow in his voice and hugged her tighter as she burst out in tears and started to sob. "It's okay Angelus... Its okay, you're safe here. Whoever he was, you won't see him again." Durante said as she cried in his arms.

"David's dead... (sniff)... and I d-don't know what happened t-to Sylvia." She said in between sniffles.

"It's okay..." Durante said trying to reassure her.

"N-No it's not... (sniff)... a day later... (sob)... w-we ran into h-him again... on the street and... and... (sob)... he... he shot her too." Angelus said in between sobs and sniffles.

Durante cursed this person in his mind and patted Angelus on the back to try and sooth her. Angelus said one more thing before the crying hit her full force again "I... I managed to f-find a... a... (sniff)... a hospital and... and left her there. She was... b-bleeding so much..."

After she told him that she started crying her eyes out again, this time for over fifteen minutes and actually cried herself to sleep in Durante's arms. Even though she was asleep Durante still saw tears flowing down her cheek fur. Her head was resting on his left shoulder and he was afraid to move; lest he would wake her.

Durante sighed in frustration and thought as he looked at her "For such a cute little vixen... the world has been truly cruel and ugly to you." He slowly moved her into a position where he had one arm behind her; leaving her head resting on his shoulder and supporting her, and the other beneath her legs. He gently stood up and started carrying her to his bed.

"She really is light." He thought as he walked to his bed and gently laid her down on it.

He stood up and looked at her; the tears had stopped and she was sleeping soundly. He smiled to himself before he decided to go over to his music stands. He looked over to the clock and saw it was two twenty seven before he arrived at his music stands. Instead of picking up a violin he moved a chair closer to one of his cellos before picking it up and getting it into position. He then proceeded to play a gentle melody; one reason why was to give Angelus something nice to sleep to... the other reason was to try to get his mind off of what she had just told him.

He had been playing for about five minutes when Nora knocked gently on his doorframe. Durante stopped playing and waved her in once he saw her. She quickly looked around the room as she walked up to him and spotted Angelus sleeping on his bed. Once she got to him she asked "Did something happen young master?"

"She was telling me about her past... and about a couple friends who came here with her." Durante said and frowned.

"She told me she had come here with a few friends. What happened to them?" Nora asked; seeing the frown on his face.

"The guy whose shuttle they stowed away on didn't like it that they had done that... so he shot and killed one of her friends at the spaceport. She and her other friend later ran into him somewhere in town and he shot her other friend. She said she took her to a hospital but she was bleeding badly... I don't think she survived." Durante filled Nora in.

Nora had placed her paws over her mouth when he said one of her friends had been killed at the spaceport. "Yesterday on the news... they said a young raccoon boy had been shot and killed at the spaceport on the edge of town. Even though they covered him up... I could see where he was shot... did she..." Nora said to him and started to ask him.

"Yeah... she saw him get shot. That was her friend David... she started crying and sobbing after she told me, I grabbed a hold of her and pulled her into hug and said I was sorry for what happened... she cried herself to sleep in my arms. So I put her on my bed to sleep." Durante told her.

"Well... I guess it would be better to let her sleep then. But... I was going to take her shopping for clothes, she really needs her own. I know she'll need a dress for tonight... though I get the feeling she doesn't like them." Nora said and looked over at Angelus as she slept.

"Why not have Mr. Leonzio take a few measurements and have him give you what her size is. And if she doesn't like dresses, just get a simple one. Oh and I can tell you this, she prefers clothes that she can move in. I think that's why she doesn't like dresses... they're too cumbersome." Durante told her.

"Aye, that's a good idea young master. Will she be alright in here or would you rather her be back in the room we took her to last night?" Nora asked.

"She'll be fine there. That and I think she'd get a little scared wondering how she got back there from here." Durante said as Nora said farewell and exited his room.

Looking over to where Angelus slept Durante thought "Actually... I think she'd look beautiful in a dress."