((This is not a typical journal entry, rather kind of a scene from Echo’s backstory))

-5 Years Ago-

The girl sat there for probably what had felt like hours, the reflection in front of her more or less unrecognizable from the one she saw only a few weeks, before. The face was bruised, cut and battered, with the most prominent feature being the two freshly stitched cuts on each side of her mouth. She couldn’t even cry, or feel sad for that matter… It felt as if all the emotion had left her at that moment.

A loud roar echoed through the ship as the ship’s heavy turbines started up, a clear sign that the others were done with their business and they were leaving. The girl looked back at the mirror again, emotions finally surfacing – rage, hatred, anger… Who the hell dates someone for two weeks and then drags them over to a group of pirates? The entire past month had been a mixture of lies and torture, physical mental and sexual, thanks to one bit of misplaced trust.

And in that moment, she saw it laying by… a knife, seemingly left behind by its owner. Without hesitation the girl moved to pick the blade up, heading out into and down the hallway. None of the crew questioned her, although the looks said it all, why the hell did we help this girl? She found the door she had been looking for, looking around for any more of the crew before pushing it open and heading inside.

The waves made walking hard, having not spent a day of her life at sea until she was kidnapped, but she found what she was looking for – a small group of prisoners, bound and injured from the fight that had just gone down. One of the captives caught her eye, the guy who had dragged her off, the one she had come to love, and had it shoved in her face while she endured it all.

Kneeling down, the girl would go to look into the guy’s face, the man looking back up at her. He paused a moment, opening his mouth to speak “babe..”, which was quickly interrupted by the sound of wet gagging. The girl had plunged the knife into his throat, letting it sit there for a few seconds before dragging it down, the sound of flesh ripping echoing through the room as the man’s neck was severed open down to his chest, and in moments it was over, the man laying on the ground in a pool of his own blood.

“What the hell?!” came from behind the girl, she turned to look at the sound, a small group of crewmen standing there, one would think they were horrified, but they werent, just supprised. The teenager stood up to face the people, glancing down at her blood soaked knife and hand for a long moment before looking back up at the others, a small, painful smile coming to the corner of her cut up mouth.

“Oh… hey” The girl replied, bringing the knife up infront of her face to look at it more closely, watching the blood drip slowly from its tip. “My names Echo… And I suppose I’m here to join you guys, right?”