Catherine woke up the following morning very abruptly as the door to the room she had siezed crashed inward onto the floor. Out of reflex, Catherine fumbled for her revolver as she shot out of bed, and managed to prove her lack of dexterity by dropping it. She got a glimpse at what caused the door to crash down; a lost. The flesh on its face was half melted off, and the rest was covered in the black veins that covered most of Catherine herself. Its clothing, where it wasn't shredded, was entirely fused to its skin, and one of its knees was bent the wrong way, causing it to lurch slowly towards Catherine, its jaw hanging loosely open, with a strange, black substance drooling out of its mouth.

Catherine's first thought was "dammit, couldn't I just get five more minutes to sleep?"

As the lost was almost upon her, she resigned to going at it with her fists; the usual way she dealt with lost. It lunged, and Catherine stuck out her right hand and caught it by the throat, and with practiced precision, straightened her left hand out, and delivered a nasty left hook right into the lost's head, her hand coming out the back of its skull, which had been weakened by decay. She then released it, and threw it off of the hand it was stuck to.

"Ew," Catherine muttered, flicking the black blood and cranial matter off her hand. While that was one of the easiest lost's she's ever had to brain, considering the injured state it was in, its insides were still as disgusting as ever. She eventually wiped her hand off on the bedsheets.

The sun was rising anyway, so Catherine decided now was as good a time as any to get going. She packed up her bags, retrieved her revolver, and set out onto the road.

Her destination was none other than SZ Sigma. A heavily militarized town that offered as much freedom as a town under permanent martial law allowed, SZ Sigma was one of the better places to sell scavenged materials at, if you didn't mind the tariffs. It was almost akin to a trade capital, if such a thing existed in this apocalyptic world, where the heavy military presence kept merchant's and scavanger's minds at ease alike, though the fierce regulation on prices and taxes choked the free market.

Not like Catherine really cared too much. Blues were blues, and she paid no mind to economic matters. All the stringent policing did was make it harder for her to be cheated, as she had a tendency to fall victim to due to naivety, and she wasn't likely to be robbed either. Not that you'd want to walk around the back alleys at night, but at least the criminals there didn't beat you up in broad daylight for being burdened. They'd be shot, if they tried.

After several ardously boring hours of walking along a road that was so uninhabited Catherine nearly had to fight off tumbleweeds, she eventually reached the gates of SZ Sigma.

The heavy military presence there meant getting in was a bit of trouble, usually. Her weapons were confiscated and she was given a writ for each of the guns she had on her; one revolver and three bolt-action rifles of varying calibers that Catherine didn't care for. The only ammunition she knew about, or needed to know, was .32, as that was what her trusty revolver carried. The good thing about the writs, however, was that they were easy to lug around than three rifles.

On literally the other side of the compound, a caravan had finally reached its destination. Jones let out a heavy sigh of relief as they passed a few burned out buildings, their gazes passing onto the walls of SZ Sigma. Their battered wheels were finally ready to stop, and that damn shopping cart's squealing could finally get out of his head. Their trip up to Asylum had been rather uneventful. A few Lost, but those had been easily dealt with. Their short stay in the brothel-filled city had recharged up his men for the final stretch. Of course, then they had to get robbed. 

Ten beat-knick thieves, decked out in metal saucers, scrap metal, and he even saw one with a tire strapped to his chest, had attacked their party. Normally it wouldn't have been much of a fight. They had the usual equipment and weapons, tire irons, planks with nails in them. Deadly, but not very wieldy. His hired muscle had iron baseball bats, rough blades, and the strength to use them. Of course, some son of a bitch had to pull out a gun. One of the robbers, a toothy eyed git pulled out a rusty pistol and had shot Johnson. Right in the face. The man who fired the gun had the privelege of getting brained a second afterwards. Still, it hadn't been good at all. Another one of theirs, one of his underlings. He was barely more than a kid, but he had his guts pouring out onto the floor. Jones shot him with the pistol later when they couldn't put his innards back inside. 

So, things weren't in high spirits. He just wished he was back in Asylum, snuggled between a woman's unmentionables. He had a job to do if he wanted to pay for said womanly benefits, though. 

Reaching the gate, he pulled out a special little certificate branded by the DERB officials. Still smelled like fresh paper even though he had been holding onto it for a few months. You needed one of them if you wanted to get into a DERB safe zone without paying a large fee. Of course, to buy one of them was a larger fee in itself. 

After a good twenty minutes in the middle of the shopping district, Catherine was getting rather frustrated. The bolt-action rifles were worth much more than she was offered, she was sure of it! But no one was accepting her offer! Eventually, she caught wind that a caravan had arrived, just recently. News traveled fast around here, especially one that meant the merchants around here might be getting some lucrative deals soon.

Intending to intercept the caravan and try and trade with them before they got to the merchants and bled dry, Catherine set off towards the opposite end of the settlement. It wasn't too hard to spot the caravan; a procession of carts and trolleys being pushed by several people all in a tight group. It wasn't quite the large, rich caravan Catherine was hoping for, but its better than being swindled by the merchants.

She approached the caravan from the front and asked the first person who seemed to be part of the caravan, "Do you mind telling me who to talk to, to trade with you? I have some scavenge you might be interested in."

The blonde haired man Catherine had approached gave one look at her and sneered. "Piss off, we're not trading to Burd- Geah!" he said as he was rudely interupted by a smack to the back of the head by a taller dark haired man. Just in time, too, for Catherine was almost about to do it for him. And much more forcefully. "Cut it out, Ron," Jones said with a frown covering his face. "Why don't you go help push the carts? Tell everyone I'll catch up." The man, Ron, gave a groan. "But she's just a Burd-" and was soon interupted by a fierce glare. "Fine, but we don't get paid for standing around."

Jones laughed, "But I do pay you to push those carts, now git." He turned back to Catherine, a small smile replacing the frown. "Muscle, eh? All they think about is protecting the cargo, never out to make a deal, small as it may be. Th' name's Jones. Abrams Caravans? Heard of us?"

Catherine extended her hand for a handshake. "Catherine, and yeah," she lied. "You're pretty popular for providing good deals," she added, trying stay incredibly vague.

Jones grabbed the hand, shaking it vigorously. "Always try and satisfy my customers. Now, what're you looking to sell? Today's goods consist mostly of food, if you're hungry. Canned goods. Nice stuff. Had some of the salted pork this morning."

Catherine's stomach rumbled at the thought of salted pork, the man's reminiscing making her even hungrier. As much as she was able to loot from the scavengers, food wasn't something they had a lot of, unfortunately. Whether he was intentionally trying to make her hungry or not to get her to buy food didn't even pass her mind. "Uh, well I recently came into contact with some rifles, actually." She pulled out three pieces of paper; the writs for the rifles.

"Mm.. rifles are usually a good commodity. People always want weapons." He took a good look at the pieces of paper, making sure they weren't counterfeit. He was satisfied. "A .357 and a few five-five six. Interesting."

He stepped back for a few moments, rubbing his scrappy chin. 

Catherine, being the marketing genius she was, remarked, "Uh-huh. The merchants only offered 20 blues for each of them, and that was with the ammo," not knowing that maybe she should try and make it sound like there was actual competition for them, rather than making it obvious there wasn't.

Jones raised an eyebrow, staring directly at Catherine's black eyes. "Twenty-two blues for the .357 seems like a profitable deal. After all, directly trading with me has no taxes, you know. And for the two five-five six's, I'll give you a box of canned food. Hell, since I like your eyes, I'll throw in a orange and we'll call it a deal." He grinned yet again.

Catherine's eyes widened slightly in shock, before blushing a small bit from the compliment. Not so much out of embarresment so much as the fact that most of the time, if someone commented on her eyes it was to say they looked like oil-fields, and that was if they were being nice. She pondered about the deal for a second. 22 blues was actually a profit of about 5 in total, as opposed to dealing with the merchants once she took into account the taxes, and the box of canned foods, as well as the blues, meant she could probably stick around town for a while and take a break from all the scavenging; something she hadn't been able to do for several months now. All in all, it was a pretty good deal to her.

"Deal," she said, holding out the writs. He took them, pocketing them into his coat. "If you'll follow me, we need to catch up to my convoy. I promise not to ditch you here." He winked, waving a hand for her to follow. She kept pace with Jones as he jogged back to the caravan. It wasn't far, after all. They had only talked for a minute or two. "And your eyes. I was serious about that. They're rather interesting... like big black pools of water. Never seen a Burdened with nice eyes." Catherine's blush returned again, the poor girl being overly-susceptible to compliments. Conveniently, not many people tried to coerce her via compliments anymore, and usually went for a display of force, and Catherine wasn't easy to intimdate. Jones, however, kept catching her off guard.

With a quick word to one of his fellows, he hefted a box off of a cart. He opened it, revealing twelve cans of food, and Catherine had to mentally keep herself from drooling at the sight. Salted pork. With a quick flourish, he also revealed the orange and the bluebacks. "I got to make someone smile, so its a good deal to me." 

Catherine at this point looked wide-eyed at the orange like, to excuse the cliche, a kid in a candy store. At this point, she probably would've sworn her life to Jones the way she was gawking at the thing. She grabbed it and shook her head to clear her thoughts and keep herself from just devouring it then and there, as well as to try and save some of her dignity. "Uh, thanks for the deal," Catherine said, pocketing the bluebacks and grabbing the box of canned goods with her left arm, cradling the orange in her good one.

"And here's another offer for you. We lost a man on the way here, a good guy. Shot in the face by one of those bastard thieves. You look like you got a bit of muscle on you, and you're obviously smart enough to do well on your own. Plus, 'finding' three rifles doesn't really suit you. You probably kicked some ass to get them." 

Catherine's eyes gleamed a bit, partially from the recognition as to her combat abilities and partially from the offer of being a guard. At least, that's what she assumed the offer was. Most people tend to not trust Burdened to guard much of anything, assuming they'll just run off and steal the cargo. "You're very perceptive, Jones. I did loot the rifles off of some people, yes. But they attacked us first, simply for daring to be burdened as we were."

"Its part of the job. You can't make it in the business if you don't have a good eye. Most people can't see beyond the black veins and red eyes. Beneath them they're just people. A little bit roughed up, a little sick, but still people." He sighed, staring off into the sky. "Especially for someone who's lost one to the Lost. You said 'we', right?"

Catherine opened her mouth to speak, in an attempt to correct herself, but was interrupted. "That would be me she was talking about," a dark-haired man said, approaching the two from seemingly nowhere. "I'm Dave, an-"

"Jesus christ!" Catherine shouted with a mix of anger and surprise, "Where the hell'd you come from!?"

"Over there," Dave replied, pointing dismissively off in the general direction of the Andal Hail Zone, not really answering her question. "I just felt like stopping by to say hi. Also, you got robbed for those rifles. You're really bad at selling stuff, Cath."

"Wha-" Catherine started to say.

Jones gave a grunt as he interupted Catherine. "I did not, I sold at a much fairer price than the local merchants would have. Or are you a bit jealous? Oranges are pretty rare."

Dave shrugged. "I'll admit the orange was a steal, but a quick trip to Mendal or Townhill and you would've been able to sell those rifles for 35 blues each. You could've easily bought three oranges with that, if you knew where to buy from. As for that position you're offering, how much are you paying Cath anyway?"

Catherine interrupted him. "What the hell are you even doing!?"

Dave shrugged again. "Trying to keep you from selling yourself away for only a few blues a day? You're not very nice to the guy trying to help you, ya know."

"You robbed me!" Catherine replied rather angrily.

[i]"Attempted[/i] to rob you, and failed. And besides, maybe I feel a little guilty? Still, don't you think you should ask before you accept to work for him?"

Jones raised an eyebrow. "Lovers quarrel?"

Catherine's blush returned rather whole-heartedly. "Wha- No! And what made you think I was going to accept anyway?"

Dave just laughed. "Please, I could do better than her if it was that," he said, before turning back to Catherine. "Oh please, the way you were looking at him I wouldn't've been surprised if you let him fuck you for half an apple. If I had known you were so easy I would've [i]complimented[/i] all your stuff off you rather than trying to rob you. Besides," he turned back to Jones, "you never did say how much you were offering for the guard duty."

Jones glared at the man. "Okay, buddy. I think we got off on the wrong page here. I'm not trying to rob anyone. I gave her a good price. Twenty-two bluebacks, an orange, and a full box of canned food. Enough to feed someone for a week. And if she joins, she gets the normal pay. Five blues a day, a good meal, and a bonus if we have a succesful haul. Plus the healthcare isn't that bad." 

Catherine mostly just stood there, unsure how to respond as her previous would-be robber now tried to haggle on her behalf. Dave looked thoughtful for a moment. "I would say that's pretty decent pay... for the average mercenary, that doesn't venture too far out of the walls of most settlements. I know you weren't there, but this girl here managed to fight off three armed bandits basically by herself. Where else'd you think she got the rifles from? Not to mention managing to turn the tables on me after I tried to rob her. Embarressing, that. Also, she is a wiz at scavenging. She found stuff that I missed when searching through the hailzones. I even saw her take out one lost once using her bare hands, didn't even need her gun or a weapon. She just rammed her hand through it's skull like it was nothing."

Jones walked straight up to Dave, looking him straight in the eye. "You're either the greatest haggler I've ever met, or you're just plain mad." 

"I like to think a little of both. Believe what you will, she's worth more than 5 a day. She'll find you more than that just looking through wreckage on the way from one town to the next," Dave added

Jones looked back at Catherine, who more or less stood there confused. "This guy. This guy. Fine, ten a day, plus a five percent share in the company. That's a lot if you knew how much I made monthly."

He sighed, "And I'll throw in some more oranges."