[h3]The Lone Survivor[/h3]

	It appeared both of them had been raised with distinct "ideas," furthermore ones which seemed to include not questioning the order of things. Some things, it appeared, were the same in both places, despite the fact that his faction was fully militarized and hers ... not so much. 
	The main difference was the likelyhood of you receiving a bullet for opening your mouth at the wrong place and time. Probably, anyway. She would most likely have noticed if people were disappearing, especially with how small her faction apparently was. He had been moved around aplenty, from base to base, being given no true chance to form lasting bonds with the people he met, and [i]he[/i] had figured it out. Not that he would ever be able to prove anything. People fell in battles all the time, and what you did not see not happening, you could not claim really did not happen... Especially if they just stuck to something that was a bit of both. Deliberately pick suspicious individuals for suicide missions - something they could either go along with or be trialed for treason if they refused. He suspected they did that kind of machinations, too. 
	In the and, did it really matter? He will have the chance to get acquainted with the life in Eighfour sooner or later, if things went as planned, and by the sound of it, it was not so much some unforgivable societal [i]faux pas[/i] he had to be worried about, but his old faction, the Trenians, or who-knows-who rolling in and Eighfour exploding itself as the only form of retaliation they knew. Set everything flammable within twenty-five kilometers ablaze, she said...
	None of this was helping. Not having his mind to get stuck on some singular track, anyway. It was as he had said - they would have to think. Check the place out. Check the people out. See who their neighbors were. Find out whether there ways to mask their presence or make them seem capable of hitting back, or whether there was a way to convince people to leave. (Who did he think he was? Some random guy who showed up and decided that being from a much bigger, more formidable faction gave him the right to order people around?) Active retaliation was pretty much out of question, as it seemed he would be the only soldier they had... Yeah. Standing here and making vague guesses about something he did not know what to expect from was getting him nowhere. [i]To hell with it.[/i] Do not think of the elephant in the room. It would not fit out of the door, anyway, so there was nothing to be done about it there and then.
	His new acquaintance was apparently fairly enthusiastic ofer what he had dubbed "hell-lasers". Awe-inspiring, certainly, but ultimately, his own enthusiasm had been greatly dampened by them being on the other side. Most things tended to lose their charm when they actively sought to get shot at you. Truly shoot at you at the first opportunity, with an intent to kill, rather than just aim at you. Out of the two of them, he was probably much more used to being aimed at. Security checks, he had long mostly gotten accustomed to. Knowing that first serious mistake would be the end ... not so much. There probably was no getting fully comfortable with that bit, just having enough self-control to be able to not do dumb mistakes or stay in hiding. 
	Letting her examine a "hell-laser" was probably not within his abilities, in any case... 
	Her reaction to him mentioning machine-humans did not go unnoticed - nor did the fact that her right eye was probably glass or something, indicated by the fact that she did not seem to even notice she was touching her eyeball. Most people had instinctive aversion to being poked in the eye, and would blink their eyes shut and flinch away just from seeing something get that close.
	Either she had had contact with something like that, and they were at fault for her apparent ... injury? was that it? ... or there was something else she had not told him. It seemed unlikely the woman had had contact with the same people from upper plate he had been referring to... They had lost, and from what he knew, were no more. He guessed the woman was at least a handful of years older than he - which would have made encounters at least possible, if she had wandered up there ... seemed unlikely, though. She had given no indication of being contact with other entities, even when he had outright asked. His old suspicion reared itself - the thought that she was somehow one of them, like those people. Something to be figured out sooner rather than later. 
	At the very least, there was some food to be had, even if, for the time being, he would have to stick with looking like a half-drowned Anderekian. Ironically, the nature of the food she described meant that he would soon be both soaked [i]and[/i] thirsty, unless she also carried something to drink (which, to be fair, was not at all unlikely). A part of him wondered how far would the woman's hospitality extend, but what he said was also quite accurate ... he really had not eaten since before the skirmish, and it was beginning to affect his ability to think on things other than the fact that he had not eaten for a while. 
	"Yeah. That will do. I suppose in half a day I'd be ready to test the edibility to those trees... I suspect the result would be in the realm of 'not very'."
	He also could not help but notice she had not moved. Did she still expect him to reconsider and shoot her? For whatever she had in that cart of hers? 
	"Eh, and look, unless you try to shoot me in the back of my head, I'm not going to shoot at you, either. I need a permanent place to be, you want to try and save Eighfour, yes? Might be more effective if we don't also constantly feel the need to watch one another's hands while we're trying to sort those things out, yes?"
	Would probably still need to relocate before they set up a picnic...
	"Do you know a place we can go? Unless you'd rather head back see what your people think of my likes..." He sighed. "I haven't exactly earned much favor with opting out once it was clear everything was gone. Looks like it's not limited to humans. Do I have to formally sacrifice a herdbeast to rid myself of the status as the marked one? And how come I can't even [i]see [/i]them?"