chapter 6

They moved slowly through the hallway, the overfed suburban beauty listening to Tamyana’s hot take on the egalitarian movement as she waddled behind her toned form, purple iris locked on the subtle swaying of her hips and the curves of her muscular bum. At this point, it was getting pretty clear to Nym that this girl wasn’t as much an activist as she was a soldier, or maybe a terrorist? These views, they weren’t that unexpected for the plump elf. She suspected that Tamyana was for real, and despite her lack of street smart, the punk girl was actually well learned about the history of non-human activism. Call for violence and for large scale unrest were not new. Deep down, Nym knew that purely peaceful advocacy wasn’t enough, so she wasn’t shocked to hear right from the mouth of this beautiful half-orc. Still, war was so far from her reality that it almost sounded like fantasy. Maybe that was why she wasn’t afraid of Tamyana. It didn’t felt real enough.

Nym had been sheltered by her life of privileges, spent in good neighbourhoods where the human supremacists were few and what you encountered was mostly erasure and casual racism. She debated teachers and human classmates in college, and if she sometimes faced abuse and even death threats as a result, she never really feared for her life. Killing an upper middle class elf girl was crass, even for the authorities. But that was in the suburbs, where the non-humans were few and nonthreatening for social order. In the Greyfields, she would be nothing but a statistic.

As they reached the end of the corridor, Tamyana grew silent and slowly opened the doors at the end of the hallway, her gaze trailing off in shock. The door led to a small wing behind the stage. It was mostly obscured from the ground area, so while she could see out into the main hall, anyone there would have to be very vigilant to notice them.

The room was pure chaos. People were running and screaming, the air was hazy with teargas and smoke from fires that had been started. The sound of gunfire peppered the air, the sharp "bark bark" of semi-automatic guns making the rest of the sounds seem like whispers. Most of the guns were loaded with rubber rounds, meant to leave bruises and incapacitate, but not kill. Some of them weren't. Some of them had real bullets and there were bodies on the floor.

Moving back into the hallway, Tamyana shoved Nymeria back, this time quite brutally. "MOVE!" she hissed as loud as she dared, "We gotta find a way out of here right now!"

As she got shoved out of the way by a seemingly anxious Tamyana, Nym didn’t reacted with the same alacrity as any girl that experienced life and death situation previously in her life. Instead, she just looked confused and lost, almost freezing when she heard the hissing tone in the athletic girl’s voice. The only thing that managed to get Nymeria to move was the bullet ricochet that whistled a few inches left of her, startling her and making her move in hurry. Unfortunately, the luscious curves surrounding the plump elf’s figure were quite the burden in such emergency situation, and as she scurried back in the hallway, the best she could achieve was a fast walk, with her fat hips and love handle slamming against the walls each time she waddled too far left or right. She took so much space that Tamyana couldn’t really move past her mass without ramming her into a wall and squeezing past her bloated curves.

Out of breath, Nym asked, looking back at Tamyana with scared eyes ‘’I didn’t see any emergency exit on this level…humph…w…where? Where do we leave Tamyana!?’’

Nymeria was left fidgeting in place in a state of barely contained panic, her enormous chest heaving as she tried to keep her breath under control. This couldn’t be happening! The rally was publicly announced, it wasn’t illegal. The worst thing they could say about the event was that it wasn’t exactly following safety regulations, but it wasn’t a criminal offence. Why so many cops, why the tear gas, why the bullets? Nym was slowly coming to the realization that it didn’t mattered. None of this mattered. The humans were calling the shots, and entrapment was apparently fair game in these parts of town. She was simply living through her first gross abuse of power from the state, and the little faith she had in the rules was being torn apart each time she heard a scream of pain or a gunshot resonating in the building.

Trying to think fast, the overfed elf managed to build a picture of the building in her mind, remembering how they moved through the large open space in front of the stage, and how they reached this hallway. She didn’t spot any emergency exit, but this was a whole high rise they were in. This was only the first level. Maybe they could take off from some fire escape on another level, or at least hide there. She remembered a staircase they moved past on their way toward this shortcut they were in. It wasn’t that exposed, they just needed to slip out of this hallways and get up a few flight of stairs. Nym wasn’t super hyped by her own plan, glancing at the heavy flab of lard that was hanging down her thighs, but it was better than standing like a sitting duck in this cramped spot, waiting to be swallowed by tear gas or stuck by a lost bullet.

Looking at Tamyana, Nym felt like the gorgeous activist was thinking. She seemed to have everything under control, but they weren’t moving, which make the overfed college girl doubt she had a clear plan ahead of her. Moving closer, the voluptuous punk whispered her idea to the tall toned street girl : ‘’We went past a staircase on our way here. Maybe we can try to go up to find some kind of escape? We can’t stay here, we are too close to the trouble.’’ For now, the chaos outside could still cover Nym’s and Tamyana’s retreat, if they moved quickly. They were still ahead of the crowd. Little did Nym knew, but she wasn’t the only one with this idea. With most access stormed by cops on the first level, some managed to slip out though holes in the walls and narrow windows, but the bulk of the escaping non-humans were moving up, or about to do so in the midst of the chaos.