[h3][color=mediumspringgreen]Nora and Bobby[/color][/h3]
Tag [@Horrid] and to a lesser degree [@Jabking]

Upon waking, Nora contemplated the stolen journal.  She had perused it fairly thoroughly the night before, and hadn't found it all that incredibly interesting.  Information about Nigel's demon form and notes on Zone two; and Nora was pretty determined to steer clear of Zone 2.  It did not sound like her kind of place.

The blonde briefly considered finding Nigel and returning his notebook.  She could probably wrangle it into a brownie-point gaining situation, by saying she had removed it from the cafeteria to prevent the service bots from claiming it, or to protect it from further food spills.  But Nigel didn't strike her as the kind of guy to show gratitude, and she suspected that she would have more influence over him by now returning the book than by returning it.   Her decision was fairly obvious, then: after making her bed and dressing in a clean set of scrubs, Nora tucked the journal away into a desk drawer.

The cafeteria was relatively crowded, so after filling her tray with a bowl of milkless rice crispies and a plate of tomato, onion and pickle slices from the burger dressing station, she sat down in the first empty seat she found.  It happened to be adjacent to a thin man in red-and-black Zone 3 scrubs, much like her own.  He really seemed to be enjoying his burger.

"We didn't meet yesterday," she said without preamble.  "Are you going to Zone 3 today?  I think it would be advantageous to form a group.  Safety in numbers, it is said."

[hr]
Zone One was more or less as Bobby had left it.  Red sky, red sun, red buildings.  No flaming red Aggressors at the moment, though; that was a bonus.

He'd entered the Zone through the new portal that led directly into the Foreman's shop, arriving just as another Zoner was leaving.  The Denizen seemed kind of busy, so Bobby wandered around the room, looking at schematics and blueprints of some pretty outlandish weaponry.  Bobby didn't have a lot of experience reading blueprints - he was really more of a spreadsheet kind of guy - Junior VP of Sales and all.

There was a diagram of a handheld, axe-like weapon with curving spikes pinned to one surface; a more realistic drawing next to it seemed to show it glowing red hot along the cutting surfaces.  Another broadsheet showed multiple cut-through views of an enormous drill; there were also numerous things that looked like projectile firearms, and some that seemed to be shooting lasers.  He vaguely wondered if he could manipulate a conventional trigger with his long, straight claws.

As he was examining the schemata, the Foreman approached quietly one side, speaking slowly but quite unintelligibly in his alien language.  It seemed like a question, but Bobby had no idea how to answer it.  He just shrugged his shoulders and cocked his horned head to the side, hoping to clearly convey confusion.  The Denizen pointed at one of the diagrams, then gently nudged the human until he was standing in front of it.  

This one showed something like a more robust version of a sniper's rifle.  The large barrel was ringed with several wired coils - annotated in Denizen squiggles - and there were diagrams of oddly shaped projectiles.  And, to his delight, the trigger mechanism seemed to be a squeeze lever without a guard.

"Sweet," he murmured, turning his head to smile at the Foreman.  The denizen waved his arms around a bit and then ignored Bobby, moving across the room to go back to one of the cabinets, rummaging around and occasionally throwing things into a pile.   Curious, the weredrewsarchus crouched down by one of the walls to wait.