The Past.

Tanner's heart raced as she grasped the edges of the hole's rim. To her surprise, a woven net of camouflage covered the top, casting a patchy, dim light into the deep abyss below. She also noted the added effect the netting would have, in that no one could discover such a hole or its occupant, leaving them alone to their horror.

Moving aside the netting, Tanner rolled out of the hole, onto her back in the rain and mud from the storm. Her body lit up by the surrounding lighting as she raised her toned, yet feminine, arms in triumph...

The Present.

Serghei Bystrolyotov was aghast, as the muscular, well-dressed King flicked his finished cigar into the night and prepared a covering of camouflage netting.

"Wait, wait! We had a deal!" Serghei said with a bluster. He searched the hole for something, anything, to turn the tide of his capture. "You said I would be free to leave!"

"You are," Gale said with an eerie calmness.

Gone were her honey-drenched flirtations, her singsong voice. Gale's bright emerald eyes seem to fade into a shade of hazel as she opened them to a normal shape, letting the ambient light strike her full iris for the first time that evening.

"The main road is 10 klicks south of here." Gale explained, dusting off the legs and curves of her combat leotard as she arose from the ground. "Once you are on the main road. 30 klicks in either direction leads to civilization."

King completed his preparations of the netting and moved into position alongside Gale.

"You just need to climb out of that hole." Gale instructed. Her voice became laced with a seriousness, freezing Serghei at his core.

The moonlight faded under thick clouds. The rain started again as the earlier storm rolled back in. "Something that, speaking from experience, gets a lot harder when it's raining. So I would hustle."

"Tootles!" she taunted. Her eyes were emerald again and her voice singsong for full effect.

As Serghei's furious words echoed through the air, King concealed the deep hole with a woven camouflage net. Giving some distance to the pit, Gale walked a few steps forward, extending her arm.

With the hole now concealed, King hastened his steps, closing the distance between him and Gale. Extending his arm, he offered it to her, a true embodiment of chivalry, which she accepted.

As the couple walked away from the flurry of obscenities hurled by Serghei, King couldn't help but note the evil that he had just witnessed.

"Cripes, Red! Dare I even ask where you learned that little slice of hell?" King asked. He laughed in disbelief.

Gale was back to her serious self. "Not hell, big guy, it's just a hole," she stated, hugging onto his oversized biceps. She then looked off into the distance. "When you're in one, you learn things about yourself."

King, noting that Gale's mind had wandered into her past, leaned in and asked, "Yeah? So, what did you learn?"