Rebel (revised) "Walk," I tell myself. "Just keep walking. There's nothing that you can do.” That's the reasonable side of me. My other half is screaming, Yelling, telling me to turn around and be the heroine that I know I really am. This empire fills me with an outrageous amount of hatred. How can this government go on knowing that there are people in this sort of condition? I hear the injured moaning my name. People crying for help. But I can't. They will kill me. And I sure as hell can't help them if I'm dead. Before she left, -before this whole mess started- my mother told me to trust no one. She said to me, "They will kill you; they won't even hesitate. You're just another #life out of the thousands that they've already destroyed." And now that they have caught me, they will. I'll eventually die once they are done trying to torture information about the rebels out of me. "Keep walking!" This time it isn't me. It's one of my guards. My captors. There are seventeen all together. Seventeen might seem a little over-the-top, but my captors don't like to be made a fool of by one of their own creations that they fabricated in one of their experimental laboratories: a 14-year-old girl with a matted ponytail, super-strength, and kick-ass reflexes. I guess they can't have enough people to take care of me. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an elderly man stands in my main guard's path. He is covered head to toe in rags. His entire body is caked with dirt, and it seems as if he hasn't bathed in years. His leathery face has tired bags under his eyes and almost every aspect of him suggests that he is about to collapse. The only the thing that still burns bright is his eyes. The bright blue bores into my soul like the#moonon a dark night. They put me in a trance, made me feel like I was drowning in the sea. "Stop," he whispers in a raspy voice. "Step aside," shouts my head captor. His burly voice seems to rumble through the air. I shake my head at the old man slowly. Telling him that I'm not worth it, in a way that I know only his jasmine eyes could read. "No." He says in a stronger voice. The guard pushes him to the ground. Hard. I even hear a crack. But the man just gets right back up with the same gleam on his eyes even though his face is contorted with pain. The old man is pushed to the ground again. But this time my "escort" starts to kick him. And he doesn't stop. He pulls his foot back, over and over again, until I'm sure that the old man has multiple broken bones. I feel so helpless, so useless. "You see," one of my other guards voice booms at the crowd that has begun to form "This is what happens when people like her come along," he screams, pointing at me. "Let this peasant be an example!" He draws a shotgun out of his pocket and holds it beside the helpless man’s head. I read peoples’ faces and they all show the same thing. Fear, sadness, and utter desperation. This old man, he is hope. And hope mustn't die. Hope can't die. Because hope is the only thing that I know of that can keep people together, keep everything from falling apart. That's when I decide that I've had enough. These tyrants have never stopped me before! How could they now? I grab the guard next to me and shove him into about every other one beside me. It's like dominos. They all go tumbling down. I grab a gun out of the first guard's pocket that I can get a hold of. A kick to the face, a punch to the jaw, or a shot in the foot. This gets me through 10 big burly "escorts". There are still seven of these rugrats left for me to fight. But it doesn't matter. The whole crowd has swallowed the remaining guards. Fighting, I realize, for something that they believe in. Because of me. So I will stand and fight until every last one of these bastards are kissing our feet. And I'm pretty sure that my people will too. It took me a while to realize that my mother was wrong. I'm not just another person. I'm the this government's worst nightmare. I could ruin everything for them. I give these people-my people- hope. Courage. And something to fight for.