Loveland
     A ferocious beast cantered along the gravel road that curved like a snake.  Its engines grinded and buzzed into the ears of those in a mile’s radius.  The drive sprockets of the horrifying machine spun around and around in circles.  The tracks that surround the wheels dug deeper and deeper into the road.  The marks it left behind were recognized by all, but the power it had packed within its armor went unforgotten. 
     Inside the beast, there was the one controlling the reins and his assistant.  There were five, highly trained officers of combat present as well, two of which were stationed at the controls for the weaponry on the creature.  Two more of them were placed at the scopes to be sure there was no danger in their path traveled by all.  The remaining soldier was in the far back of the tank.  He held a heavy piece of dangerous metal in his hand that would fire automatically when the trigger was pulled.  This man stood diagonally across from the only female of the group.  His eyes scanned over her every other second.  He checked to be sure that the chains around her wrists and ankles were still locked in place.  He also made sure that the cannonball attached to the chains hadn’t shifted from its designated location, for this girl was a prisoner. 
     This prisoner had worked in the local hospital of a small town on the oldest planet in the second universe discovered over the course of the first universe’s existence.  A young girl around the age of seven had been admitted to the hospital and was in critical condition.  The doctors temporarily stabilized her and could have gone farther if their lunch time hadn’t arrived.  The current prisoner noticed the condition of the child was decreasing rapidly.  She hustled to the lunchroom and enlightened the doctor who said, “She’ll die; she’s just another person.”  He wasn’t the wisest doctor, but the smartest the little medical house had in the small town.  If he was sick or injured in any way, the patients would likely suffer and die. 
     But the girl saw the darkness of the man, rather than the brightness the others saw in him.  She stated, “If that was your daughter, would you save her?”  The girl was ignored for quite some time until she ordered him to answer her.  His answer was that he would dump his tray of food on the floor, slap the person standing in his way with it, and scurry to his daughter’s side. 
     The girl took the tray from in front of the man and gave him a lopsided grin as he seemed to grow bewildered.  She flipped the tray upside down and the notorious food splattered to the floor below.  She then turned which allowed her back to face him and began to walk away.  She heard his chair screech back and then his footsteps followed her the entire way to the girl’s room. 
     The doctor declared that he would not assist the young girl in any way after the way he was treated.  He observed how the girl who stood in front of him didn’t change her expression.  He could tell that the wheels were turning inside of her head and then they stopped.  The lights that light the room seemed to grow brighter before she pulled the pistol out of her pocket.  Without second thoughts, the doctor operated on the young girl.  Three hours passed and he was successful at saving her life; he was also successful at contacting the authorities. 
     The girl was stripped of her weapon and checked for more.  The one officer removed her wallet from her back pocket and read her name out loud, “Nova Loveland.”  The officers didn’t feel the need to restrain her due to her gender while they called for a Prisoner Tank.  They couldn’t have been more incorrect.  She lunged forward and grabbed the tray that sat on the table and slammed it across the doctor’s face.  He dropped to the ground in a motionless heap. 
     The girl was then dragged to the tank and placed under guard of five men.  Together, they drove through the town and came to a gravel road.  They’d been on the road for a minimum of seven hours and hadn’t stopped yet.  The one guard continued to stare at her and she was becoming bored of sitting in complete and utter silence.  She spoke to the man, “If you check me out any longer, we’ll have to say that we’re a couple.”  She teased with him and noticed that his face turned a tomato red, but not from anger. 
     She snickered to herself and everything grew silent for a time.  At that moment, she flung her arms forward with great force and caused the cannonball to soar through the air.  It contacted two of the men and dropped them.  The other two pointed their weapons at her, but she went low and kicked her leg out before sliding it across the floor roughly.  She must have been inspired by Mel Gibson.  Those men contacted the floor and she boot stomped them both.  She unlocked the chains around her ankles and wrists with the key she apprehended from the unconscious guard.  She gathered the belongings that had been impounded and wrapped the shoulder bag around her appropriate body part.

     The guard that she had teased at an earlier time stood their star struck.  She ascended the ladder to the hatch at the top and climbed through it with record time.  She gently glided to the side and held onto the side where the tracks that surrounded the wheels weren’t located.  She then stepped off and walked casually alongside the tank.  She then entered the thickness of the brush and forest to her right.  She disappeared into the distant fog and hoped she would never be discovered again.

     The trees blurred together as Nova sprinted through the forest.  The bag on her shoulder bounced as she ran.  Her endurance was Olympic level and would have made Usain Bolt proud.  The girl took a breather and pressed herself up against the largest tree she could find.  She looked behind her and was satisfied when there was no trouble at present.  She knelt beside her bag and opened it.  She removed the clothes that she was forced to wear for the prison and placed a black tank top on with a jean jacket atop it.  She then slid galaxy themed cargo pants on and wore blacked-out work boots. 
     Nova didn’t waste any more of her precious time, she ran through the woods and had no intentions of stopping.  She intended to get on the shuttle that went back to Earth, which was the eldest of all the planets known to man.  There, she would be out of danger considering the governments refused to assist one another due to a previous war.  She was caught in her own thoughts when she ran square into the side of a body. 
     She collapsed to the jungle floor and laid there on her back.  She gazed up and saw the guard she had teased earlier staring down at her.  She removed her pistol and actioned it right before his own two eyes.  He told her that there was no way she would shoot that weapon.  She shot the bright orange laser beam past his head which caused his hat to blow off.  She warned him, “The next time you won’t remember your own name.”  She then ordered him to drop his weapons. 
     He dropped the machine gun he had in his hands.  He removed the shotgun he had wrapped around his shoulder.  He slid two pistols out from either side of his hips and dropped the clips.  He then took the smallest pistol from his ankle holster and unclipped his belt that help all his knives.  He held up his index finger to ask her for a moment.  He then removed a large metal stick that cops adore so much.  He shrugged his shoulders at the brunette with gorgeous hazel eyes and raised his hands in the ‘don’t shoot’ position.  He became aware that she was staring at him and got her back for what she said to him only hours prior, “Nice pants, Loveland.” 
     However, his plan failed because she had a comment to fire back, “Nice position, hotshot.”  She continued to point her pistol at him while she gathered the correct ammunition.  She then threw his shotgun around her shoulder and took his other means of defense. 
     “Am I supposed to be your prisoner, Loveland?”  He questioned her actions, but received no answer.  Rather, he was stunned by the shot from the girls’ weapon.  His muscles flinched uncontrollably and he dropped to the dampness of the ground.  His movements began to slow and he laid their limply.  His eyes were drooping closed, yet he still saw the girl staring at him.
     She spoke and thought he wouldn’t hear her due to the condition he was in at that moment.  Tears cascaded down her face one by one and she brushed them to the side.  “I’m doing bad things for good reasons.”  Her voice reflected no signs of her emotional state.  “I’m a bad girl, but a good lady.”  She placed a note alongside of the man who reluctantly fell into unconsciousness.  On the note, it read the location of where he could retrieve the weapons the girl had stolen from him. 
     The girl traveled for several more hours and came upon a great city made entirely of diamonds.  The houses, the windows, the weapons, and most of the creatures were diamond.  The people were crystal clear, as a diamond should be, and they were unable to be scratched.  The girl went to a stand that was selling diamonds that were marked as fruit products.  She paid the kind diamond woman in rubies, which was the money system on this planet known as Scarlet-Ash. 
     The diamond that was said to be fruit tasted marvelous.  It was tough on the outside like an apple, but melted in her mouth like a raspberry.  The juices were a marvelous blend of bananas, mangos, and strawberries.  They satisfied her parched throat as they slid down to her stomach.  She thanked the kind lady who seemed to figure her situation out.  “Trust in one soul and only one, my dear.  You have to trust someone.”  Nova labeled the woman’s ideas as untrue.  The woman simply shook her head, “We are not all diamond; we are part crystal.  I can see straight through you, my dear; your actions were sound.”
     Nova tilted her cute head to the side and sorted through the emotions cascading through her mind.  She smiled a smile that would light up a world destined for eternal darkness.  Her defense was dropped and a laser blast soared right by her.  Her curly, brown hair blurred from the pressure of the laser and she cringed at the sight of it.  She saw the entire scene filmed in front of her hazel eyes.  The fruit stand exploded in the air and the juices from the fruit produced fireworks in the sky.  The laser blast that followed missed Nova by a matter of an inch and shattered the diamond lady into millions of pieces.  She heard the trickle of diamond pieces contact the pavement one by one.  Time itself seemed to slow down and she was frozen in it. 
     She saw the men coming at her and darted into the alleyway closest to her.  Her reflection followed her every step of the way.  Her jacket turned into a cape that trailed behind her like Thor’s.  The soles of her boots slapped the concrete and echoed off the walls.  She had tears sliding down her face as she exited the alleyway and made her way back into the woods. 
     Her mind refused to comprehend the brightest ideas as it once did.  She was only able to run; run far away and leave the harshness of the day’s events behind.  Red beams of light blasted by her and she swerved like a clueless driver on the highway.  A laser penetrated the back of her thigh.  She stumbled, but didn’t fall to the ground.  Another blast stunned her and she shook uncontrollably for a time.  She ceased her movements and breathed heavily, but a needle shot into her neck.  She saw blackness.
     The guard from inside the tank leaned over her and checked her pulse.  He rose to a standing position and shrugged his shoulders.  He shouted to his fellow workers, “I’ll take care of the body!  You guys go back to base!”  He made sure that the boys were gone before he kneeled alongside the girl once again.  He scooped her up in his arms and cradled her head gently.  He scurried through the woods at a slow pace and came to a clearing where there was a shuttle awaiting their arrival.  He laid the girl down in the back of the shuttle and strapped the belt across her chest and waist.  He whispered in her ear, “You’re lucky that young girl was my niece, Loveland.” 
     The stars scurried past the shuttle at a rapid rate.  There was darkness that surrounded the spacecraft on either side.  There was no relative direction in the vastness of the starry night.  The marvelous scene never changed and that was something those who traveled learned to deal with.  Other than the diseases that a doctor like Leonard McCoy from Star Trek would worry about, the area was gorgeous.
     Nova took a deep breath in and coughed as she awoke from a drugged sleep.  She went to rise from the position she was in, but was strapped down.  Or was she?  She could remove the belt that held her chest and waist down.  She felt her muscles protest every movement she made as she wandered through the shuttle. 
     She came to the cockpit and panicked when she found the guard that was in the tank behind the wheel.  She sat down in the passenger’s seat and stared out at the area around them.  The blackness of the sky seemed welcoming and the stars were joyful.  She thought back to the diamond lady, “Trust in one soul and only one, my dear.  You have to trust someone, my dear.”
     An object appeared in space at that moment.  It was wide and spherical shaped with large pools of oceans.  There was even more land that was luscious green and inhabited by many.  There was a second chance seen by the girl in the shuttle for this was the eldest planet known to man.

     The man sensed her curiosity, “You gave my niece, Hannah, a second life.”  He smirked, “Besides, you deserve more than bars as a view.”  He slapped her on the back, “Welcome to Earth; welcome to your freedom.”