[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=00aeef][i][b]Emanuel "Manny" Newman[/b][/i][/color][/h3]
[i][b][color=00aeef]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Grave Yard
[i][b][color=00aeef]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/d552b003-bb2d-4c09-ad58-f20f3e2d1b17.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	Manny had a moment to calm down and take the scene in. He had more or less lost his calm. Sure, he didn't like how Bass treated him. Like an ignorant old man who couldn't get with the times. And he could admit he was in some ways. But to Manny, it felt so... disrespectful. Manny's follow up was not the best in response though, and looking back there were a lot of other ways he could have expressed his frustrations. It wasn't just the tone though, the fact that he was criticized for trying to be safe with the gun, when it had been handled in a less then safe manner. Confronting Bass then and there was still not the way to handle it though. He knew he would need to apologize for his reaction later, even before Atticus said something about it. What Atticus did left Manny more confused then anything else though. When the guards at quarantine were present, they didn't get involved with anything unless someone tried to escape, or he hoped if they got really violent. It left him thinking why Atticus confronted him now, in a way that felt almost deliberate in drawing attention. Maybe it was more personal for Atticus. Or maybe it was that in quarantine they wanted an environment without influence. He had other thoughts that came with it, but those ones led to the more paranoid, looking for guilt where it may not be present stuff. So he left his thoughts at that.

	The funeral itself was another story. Manny felt out of place here. He didn't know anyone who had died. And the only one he had even seen alive, was Gavin. The moment he decided to save Thana over him. Lola was another person who died that day. Died only moments before Manny got out of his cage. Maybe even as he was doing it. He just knew it was before he met up with the others. And he really didn't know much more then that about the girl. And they knew nothing of him. yet the fucked up part, is that if they hadn't died that day, Manny would have likely died soon afterwards. If the assault had failed early on, or the tank broke down, or anything else that prevented the assault to take place stop it from doing so, Manny would have been one of the many victims of Eden. It wasn't proper to say they died for him. No, that would be foolish. They died in place of him. He got to live, because they died. They had unknowingly traded their lives. He wondered if that was a selfish thought. They came to Eden to kill those who lived there. Those who tortured through there. Manny was just at the right place at the right time. But he couldn't get that idea out of his head. They were trading lives. Who hadn't though? Even before the world went to shit, choices had to be made about who had to die so that someone else could live. Those choices just became everyone's choice once the dead started to walk. Everyone had to start making that choice then.

	Atticus got things moving along with offering last words to the dead. It was hard to focus in the extreme Florida heat, but Manny had grown up, and lived in it his whole life. Though that didn't mean he was immune to it. The sweat running across his head, and the visible confusion from trying to focus was very noticeable. But he knew how to handle it. At least until they were back on the nice cold bus. Many of the survivors took turns saying goodbye. He took better note of Alexander who had some words to say about Lola. He never asked much about Lola, but it seemed he got along well with her. Amelia and Ash got their words in, Ash giving some backstory on one of the people buried. But combined with Manny not knowing the dead well, or the living in this situation well, he had trouble following along. Thalia also had her own words to say about Lola. Even with what little he was hearing now she seemed like an interesting woman. Maybe much for Manny's book but that hadn't stopped him before from liking someone. He wondered what he would have thought of her had she made it down the hallway another 30 feet. Everyone who was going to say something, had said something. Funerals were not Manny's strong suits, and were one of the few times he couldn't hold an extended conversation like in day to day life. But now that everyone else had said something, he felt... wrong for not having anything to say. He felt wrong for being here because he knew nobody who was in the dirt below him. "[color=00aeef]Thank you.[/color]" He said in a quiet tone, almost as if he was talking to himself. Despite all the conflicting thoughts in his head, one thing was clear. He was alive, because of them.



[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=00a651][i][b]Hunter Monroe[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=00a651]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Cell B
[i][b][color=00a651]Skills:[/color][/b][/i]N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/ff63c8f2-413e-4dbc-a9d3-4eb2cf95781e.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	Cage did his own follow up laugh, and it was weird to Hunter. But he didn't pay it much mind. He stayed down until the door was closed leaning upwards from the mattress. Still more comfortable then anything he had used in a long time with the exception of the bed last night. After given a more detailed rundown of the situation he just shrugged. What else was there to say? The first few thoughts that came to mind probably would have gotten less then great responses, but since Cage made it a clear point he planned to spend as little time down stairs as possible he wondered if it would be worth pushing some buttons. He held off for now, Roy was being decent enough and actually seemed to be trying to help. Even if it was just him being professional about it that was something. So he kept shut even though he still just wanted to tell Cage to fuck himself. He had a brief moment of mental horror with that thought, and decided that was not a thought he wanted in his head. Going back to Ray, if he got out of this with anything decent results he decided he needed to talk to Roy and thank him. Hunter knew he fucked up, and had trouble deciding what would be fair or not, but Roy was decent enough to him even if it was just simple comments here and there. Assurances that not all of this sucked as bad as he thought it did.

	Then, he was alone yet again. Trapped in his little cell, the remains of a dead man only a few feet away. He sat on the wall dividing the cells and thought about how to kill time. He was tired, but he figured that was mostly stress compared to anything else. Plus dinner was in a few hours and sleeping at random intervals would only throw off his sense of time even more so. He thought of time passing tricks he had learned on the road. The first that came to mind was to deep clean his firearms. But they were gone. Next was to get up somewhere high and try and do a mock scouting of the area, but he was under ground. Next was just go on walks and see what was happening. But he was in a cell. The thing that was getting him now was that he wasn't able to do... anything productive in his eyes. He considered looking at his more positive memories, but with how things went the last five years that mostly led to... less then pleasant ones. He wondered what something productive he could do. His mattress was an older one with very distinct springs, so his mind quickly lead into taking out one of the springs and trying to pick the lock. The problem? Hunter had no idea how to pick a lot. Many doors he had found were unlocked or he could break into it without much effort. At least a few years ago. "[color=00a651]Huh... fucking apocalypse diet.[/color]" That was something that Hunter regretted a bit. He always prioritized bullets over food. He was never shy of bullets though. He knew where to look, he knew which guns could use them, and he normally had a good idea where to find said guns.

	He wondered how his life would have been different should he had not joined the army. First, he would have had a chance to fix things with his family... properly. Next... he would have been home when things got bad, and he could have been with them in whatever happened. If he had not joined he wouldn't have Met Don, Greg, Simon, and Harald. But in return, he wouldn't have met June and... Lucy. He wondered if that was a bad thing though, not meeting those two. Maybe then they would have had a chance to meet up with someone other then those... people. If he hadn't joined he wouldn't have been forced to listen to that one order. The order every soldier is scared to hear when all hope seems lost. [i]Hold Until the end.[/i] Though, the first time he heard the order, it wasn't given to him or his unit. It was given to another unit attached to... what ever excuse of a regiment that had been assembled. Then it was given to another... and another. Everyone knew what it meant, but no one would say it out loud. [i]Die so the rest of us have a chance to live.[/i] No one objected it, for fear that they would be given that order themselves. And those who were not given the order would make sure it got carried out, out of fear that they would also be deemed... expendable. 

	He put his finger on that. That was the choice he made that changed his life and sent him down this path. Or maybe it was just the unfortunate way of things that he got a recruiter who absolutely fudged his numbers so he was allowed to join. Though that didn't matter now, what matters is he made the choice and he chose wrong. The military might work for some, maybe those who's units were destroyed before they could be deployed against the dead, those not assigned to handle the hordes of refugees on the way to the cities, those who got deployed to handle only the dead. Those who's first deployment wasn't trying to figure out which American citizens were trying to kill you, and which ones you had to kill. It made him think if this was one of those more pivotal moments in his life. Where he could make a choice that would set the rest of his life in a new direction. Or if he had already made that choice.