Despite the sun being out, it was a rather chilly forty or fifty degrees when the Chinese woman stirred from a night of restless dreams, dreams of both good...and bad memories.  She sat at a kitchen table, all by her lonesome in an abandoned house she decided to stay the night in, rather than brave the frosty winter nights of the Northern Commonwealth under a crumbling overpass.  She was beginning to almost miss the arid desert heat of the Mojave...almost.

Her .45 was broken down into pieces on the kitchen table, each she meticulously scrubbed with an old toothbrush dipped in a can of motor oil, using a tiny steel rod with cloth weaved around it to swab the barrel and the silencer.  It wasn't the best way to maintain her weapons, but at least it kept them firing for a while longer.

The expert she was, Mei assembled the gun in rapid pace, not a single part out of place as she put it all together and cocked the slide, setting it on safety.

She stood with a stretch and a yawn.

Last night's mission went smoother than expected for her.  A man paid her 350 caps to kill two beastly raiders after the men burned his wife and two children alive.  It was easy enough just to draw the bastards out and snipe them, but Mei took a more...personal approach.

She tracked the two men and their rowdy band of chem junkies and cannibals to an encampment in an abandoned hotel.  Then, one by one she picked away at their numbers from the shadows, either with a well placed silent headshot or a combat knife slicing their adam's apple.  When it was all said and done, both the vicious animals were put down, along with their entire gang.

Xia-Mei relished every kill.  The world would be a better place without those bastards preying on the innocent.

After cleaning her weapons and holstering them, Xia-Mei set out from the abandoned house.  The harsh white glare of the winter sun caught her obsidian eyes, causing her to squint them with a grimace.  She muttered a curse under her breath and continued on.