There was blood everywhere. One the walls, the floor, the mouldering volumes left on the old shelves, everywhere. Out at the doorway, a silhouette of a man slipped out of the door, spreading a dusty light across the room, and to the body on the floor, a young woman in a dark jacket. She lay on the dusty floor in an expanding pool of arterial blood, watching as the man who had just shot her stroll off into the wastes, with her duffel bag in hand. The trade had not gone well. He hadn't even had a very good aim. What she suspected had been intended to hit her head instead hit her in the side of the neck, nicking the carotid artery and causing far more mess than it needed to. Maybe being the one who got shot gave her a bit of personal bias, but some of the last thoughts that flickered though Magdalene Atwood's as she bled out in the ruins of a pre-war bookstore, was that the murder had been a very sloppy one. [hr] It was around 48 hours that the corpse of Magdalene Atwood lay in the abandoned bookstore. The blood puddle had begun to become dry and sticky, though no flies or vermin had made any approach upon it. About 48 hours after she had died, the body gave a sudden spasmodic twitch, the back arching up before pushing back down as she was flung up into a sitting position and let out a sudden gasp for air. Two more desperate intakes of breath before she threw herself onto her knees and violently threw up, splattering the already ruined floor with congealed blood and stomach acid. However many times it happened, re-animation was still impossible to get used to. Like even the body rejected such a violation of natural laws. Everything had to die. Very few things had made it a two way street. It took a while, but Magdalene was able to rise onto her feet. Her skull felt like it had been chipped out on the inside with a mason's chisel and her throat was burning with bile. All kind of par for the course, but she was pretty sure she was going to need to find something to drink pretty soon or this was going to get into a really unpleasant cycle. Clumsily, Magdalene reached round the bookshelves. She just hoped that bastard hadn't found the- Her fingers closed round a book. Got it. With shaky hands the book opened, revealing the hollowed-out inside and a concealed ID card with its chesspiece symbol sat within. The motheaten rug in the corner was pulled aside, and the white plastic crates bearing similar chesspiece insignia that had been set into replace the floor beneath were revealed, and the first opened with swipe of the card. LED strips on the inside flared and lit the packages inside. The bag, with a couple of day's worth of rations stuffed inside, was a decoy. It served its purpose very well. Apparently her trader buddy had completely missed the real prize. Three crates of Erubesco field unit supplies. Freeze-dried rations, water purifiers, heat packs, medical supplies...all the kinds of things you might miss living out in the ashlands. Also worth their weight in gold. If anything gold was less important. You couldn't eat gold. Mags reached round in the interior until her trembling hands seized upon an orange carton, which she cracked and downed near enough in one, but for what she lost when it spilled down her bloodstained shirt. Electrolyte drink. Should probably at least render some of the negative side effects manageable whilst she moved onto shifting these things to a new hiding place. Now it was known some shifty fuck would eventually end up at the place. Wasn't usually a problem but... Noise. The reanimator, sat gracelessly propped up against her crate cache, paused and listened. She'd barely noticed over the crashing inside her own head up until then. The explosion, following shortly after, shook the building, and the ceiling shed some dust and little bits of loose plaster. Maybe worth a check before starting the move. Maybe. Magdalene took a shemagh from the chair by the door, and wrapped it round the sticky neck wound that was still rather evident underneath her jawline, before making her way out into the daylight. The momentum by which she did so overtook her a little, and the woman found herself half stumbling out further than she'd really intended to venture. The sight to greet her when she summoned the wherewithal to look around was...unexpected.. to say the least. A man, a man who appeared to be made of metal. In his arms appeared to be a badly injured woman. Trotting up alongside him was a winged horse that the metal man appeared to be trying to shoo away. Behind them a little distance, a build was on fire. Of all the things Mags might have predicted to be out there on her emerging...this would not have ranked too highly on the list. The natural response, at least perhaps for someone with any wish to thrive in the ashlands, would be to walk straight back in and let this bizarre parade keep going on its merry way. What the once-Liberty member found herself doing, perhaps in part down to years of collectivist mentoring, was call over and show concern. [color=662d91]"Uh..you alright over there?" [/color] Maybe it was a stupid question. For most people it probably was a stupid question, though your perspective changed a little when you were standing half-drenched in your own dry blood with a fair-sized gash left in the side of your neck, but actually feeling relatively alright. It seemed kind of hypocritical not to ask. ---- Kora, still grasping her knife in one hand, was not really in the mood for casual conversation. Not when her target was rapidly getting away from her. As such she took the ashlander's response to her in not the most graceful manner. [color=ed1c24] "Ignorant hick. You don't know a thing about me, or about my line if you think we're nothing but a bunch of savages." [/color] She was about to speak when ORIN interjected. [color=0072bc]"Contemporary accounts that portray the norse people as unusually savage or chaotic can be attributed to a saxon christian perspective, shaped by the adversarial relationship between the two cultures, and the christian disdain for pagan religions. The treaty of Alfred and Guthrum in 876 was-"[/color] [color=ed1c24]"ORIN shut it! We're not here to give a scrub a history lesson."[/color] [color=0072bc]"I am not here at all. You however are here to pursue the targets, not knife fight with the locals. Disengage."[/color] [color=ed1c24]"You want me to just let her get away with it."[/color] [color=0054a6]"Yes. Disengage."[/color] Kora cursed under her breath, but complied. She flung her hands downwards and another blast burst out of her hands. It was smaller than before, or possibly reduced by its open area, but in this case it was not meant for offence. Instead what it succeeded in doing was kicking up a great amount of debris into the air. Dust, mud, bits of wood and stone, mixing with steam and ash in order to render the area a cloud of beige and grey. It was, for both involved, most likely difficult to see. But only one of them had a computerized system of guidance. [color=0054a6]"Turn left, move."[/color]