Deserae didn’t stop to look to see if Minato had comprehended her order or not, the one thing she needed to look out for right at that moment was herself and if Minato was too busy being…well, himself, then that was no longer her problem. She began to run as soon as the very word left her lips, hopping out of her high-heels and abandoning them behind her to give herself a better advantage to slip away on foot. There was no way in hell she’d be able to get anywhere very quickly with those damn things on.

She pushed herself forward, dodging her small frame into the larger groups in an effort to lose anyone who might be trailing her, only pausing to look behind her when she heard Minato calling after her.

[i]“We can't leave Knox, D.J! He'll probably tell everyone that we are super badass people and probably where we live, too!!”[/i]

Deserae couldn’t see the Asian, but his words were as clear as if he were standing right next to her. Knox? Was he another new member of The Lost Ones? It was a name she didn’t recognize, but that thought was soon pushed to the side as more voices stuck out in room.

[i] “Joshua, stop those two!”[/i]

[i] “Peter, Mark, go to the left, I'll stay here. If Rex catches on he will stay behind them and we can encircle them, unless they plan on running through that wall, hehe.”[/i]

Suddenly a grip found its way around her wrist and Deserae flipped herself around, pulling her free fist back ready to punch when she realized that it was just Minato. How the hell did he get around this place so fast? She ran with him to the railing that opened up the main floor of the cage fight, ignoring the sticky gunk her bare feet were now collecting from the hard tile floors.

And then, Minato was gone…again. The poor kid had been picked up and thrown across the room to be covered in drinks and ash and flying table shrapnel. It was far past the point of feeling sorry for him though; ideally this was his entire fault. Deserae looked in the opposite direction just in time to see a man with a prosthetic arm drop one of the larger guards. Squinting to try to identify the man better, she couldn’t make it out but she was certain that he wasn’t a Lost One; but who knew anymore? It seemed that The Lost Ones were recruiting all sorts of new meat today.

It wasn’t all that tough of a decision for Deserae to start walking away from Minato, she knew that it would be easier for him to find her anyway in this mess, and she still needed to find a way out. Pushing through the crowd again, yet another arm reached out to grab her, however she didn’t even have a chance to react before she heard the Cotton’s familiar voice in her ear.

[i]"Relax, look. Listen to me quick, understand? One of the Wolves just did us a favor. All the eyes here are on them, or on the fight. The bookie is all yours. I'm going to put a gun to his back… Concealed, very fast. You take the box and run. I can handle myself. Now, we don't have much more time. Are you ready?"[/i]

[i]Fuck[/i]

This wasn’t going to end well, she knew that, but admitting it to someone else was something else entirely. The entire screw-up had her on edge and feeling absolutely sick; she was surprised that Cotton didn’t mention anything about her body shaking like she had pneumonia; at least that’s what it felt like. The words ‘I can’t’ kept forming at her lips, but each time was swept away with her own inner struggle, trying to tell herself ‘yes, I can.’
Suppressing the urge to vomit for what felt like the hundredth time in the last thirty minutes, she finally met Cotton’s gaze and gave a pathetic excuse for a nod, signaling that she was in.

“Right behind you.”

If this didn’t work…she swore to herself right then and there that she would never speak to another male again.