[center][h2][color=A52A2A]Vincent Cawler[/color][/h2][/center]
The first moments of a chase were the most critical.

There's the obvious reason, that if you were caught right at the start then it isn't much of a chase, but there's more to it than people think. How hard do you sprint? It needs to be enough to make a gap behind you but not so much that you'll run out of energy quickly. What's the right stride? You need to adapt your foot placement on the fly, so you don't trip over yourself or slip against the terrain. Your route was important too of course, needing to understand the right time to duck, weave, turn a corner, or keep straight. All of this under the pressure of being pursued, usually by someone who doesn't have your best interests in mind. It was the sort of thing you understood only with experience. An art, not a science.

It didn't matter if your pursuer was human, bear, or super-strong prison guard, once the flow of running was ingrained into your head it really helped. And Vincent sure did know about running.

Flecks of concrete from the guard's swing flew like shrapnel, cutting into his calves. Vincent grit his teeth but didn't let himself falter. If anything it spurred him even further. When he neared the prison gates, Vincent though he had a chance. Until one of the guard's batons clipped him on the arm. Pain shot up, down, all throughout his arm like the very nerves caught fire, and he let out an instinctual scream, but it hardly slowed him down. Vincent just clasped his hand over his bicep and kept running.

He made it a decent distance before he petered out to a stand. It wasn't the pain, or the exhaustion, that made him stop. It was the prison itself. Vincent's eyes gazed over it all, the throngs of chained prisoners marching by the dozens, getting into their desks and having tubes stuck onto their helmets. It was like the situation finally stuck in Vincent's mind, pushed away the dust and cobwebs and overridden his Flight-or-Fight. The pain and the sounds and the smells, it was all too [i]real[/i]. It couldn't have been anything but.

Which meant that the two guards catching up to him weren't Barclay police, a thought that actually relieved Vincent. Who or whatever they were, he wouldn't be simply arrested. Being beaten, enslaved, possibly even killed was more preferable to Vincent than ordinary jailtime.
[center]...[/center]
The two guards soon returned to the others who fell into this strange world, Vincent carried between them, all limp and ragged, before he was unceremoniously dumped somewhere between the others and the Pondwater lookalike. His limbs were covered in welts and bruises, his face swollen and his lips split. He was still breathing, at least. Vincent didn't try to stand back up, only lifting his head to hack up a small loogie of blood before collapsing again. Now that his fate was purely his own to worry about, his will to fight was gone.