Marin winced as the men burst out in laughter.

"Don't try too hard," breathed one, a wild-looking pale young man with a shaved head and vermillion eyebrows, clutching his sides.

"Most of us are better with English, anyway," added another, his voice muffled by the Guy Fawkes mask concealing his face.

"Yeah?" asked Marin putting on the least-interested air she could as she tested the strength of her bonds. Laughter died off as the group regained its composure. Marin soon found that she couldn't escape from the ropes, and stopped straining against them. "So?"

"We saw you on the news, miss," a tan, black-haired, long-mustached guy answered. "The Demon Girl of Guant&aacute;namo! I'm sure we'll get a good reward for you." 

"Reward for me?" Marin mused absently. She figured that she could escape anytime if she truly needed to, aided by her demonic pets. When she had first had the idea of freeing herself from her prison, it had seemed absurd, but she managed to get by with a little help from her friends. It startled her that there had been news about the escape available to the public, but it wasn't a problem. Overall, she was not very worried. "Where are we?"

"A beautiful beach near Baracoa," answered Red Eyebrows, "near the eastern end of Cuba. What's it to you?"

Marin didn't answer. She must have drifted over from the ruins of the detention camp. She remembered a stray bit of debris making contact with her head as she made off on the back of a demon, and she didn't remember much beyond that. Now she had washed up on this beach, and it just happened to be the campsite of some guys bent on carrying out justice. She laughed inside. <i>What luck.</i>

"What luck," chortled Guy Fawkes. "To think that we were about to set off on another smuggling run, and we just happen to run into a few extra meals." <i>So much for justice.</i>

"You set your sights too low," grumbled a heavyset man, balding and wearing mirror shades. "Special special girl like her, worth at least a <i>hundred</i> meals apiece for us. <i>Good meals</i>."

"Did you say something about smuggling?" Marin asked after deciding that she did in fact wish to ask.

"Indeed I did," leered Guy Fawkes. Marin of course had no idea whether or not the man behind the mask was leering, but the mask was leering. And it suited the words. "We're a band of smugglers. We have no common nationality, no useless loyalties, no ambitions... we just give oppressed Americans what they want in return for the money that lets us eat."

"Noble goal," commented Marin without blinking an eye. 

"It is, huh," said Guy Fawkes, evidently the group's most enthusiastic member. Marin made a note to herself: the youngest and least experienced. "We're in with lots of government types in Florida, they always let us right in when we boat up."

Marin was genuinely impressed at this last tidbit of information. Criminal activity, within the flawless Establishment bureaucracy? She smiled a little at this, gazing off into the Caribbean as she pondered the possibilities. Perhaps she might find some new allies thanks to these careless smugglers.