"Hey! I found that first!"

The voice came from seemingly out of nowhere. In the middle of a small, partially crumbling apartment room on the outskirts of the Andal Hail Zone, a heavily burdened young woman with dichotomic hair spun around holding a can of peaches as the sun began to set in the sky.

"What? No, I did!" Catherine indignantly replied, anger already flaring up in her.

"No, you didn't. Hand it over, or I shoot." The argument the two were having would've been almost childish, if not for the revolver the man was aiming at Catherine. As far as arguments went, "I have a gun pointed at you" generally won most of them.

Now that she had a look at him, the man appeared to not be much older than she was. He had spiky black hair, with a black jacket, a gray undershit and a black pair of jeans. Catherine thought he looked like he was trying too hard to be "edgy." His skin, at least what she could see, seemed entirely free of the burden.

"Fine," Catherine spat, throwing the can of peaches across the room. He caught it deftly with his free hand and stuck it into the side pocket of his backpack in one swift motion. She noticed that his backpack was almost bursting full.

To Catherine's surprised, he simply muttered a simple "thanks," before taking his aim off her and turning to take his leave. Catherine, understandably confused, added "What, not gonna rob me blind?"

The man scoffed and responded over his shoulder. "I wasn't planning on it. Do you want me to?"

"Yeah, I just have a thing for bad boys that take all my shit."

The man just shrugged. "As I said, I found it first. I'm not here to steal or anything." He started to walk out of the room.

Catherine, intrigued by his strange morality and demeanor, and his seeming lack of any burden, followed behind. He didn't really seem to mind. "What's a Clean like you doing around a hail zone anyway?" she asked, using a term popular among the burdened to refer to people that weren't.

He just shrugged again. "Taking food from cute girls, I guess?"

"I'd be blushing if I was able to," Catherine replied, deadpan, reflexively scratching the side of her blackened face. "How about a serious answer?"

"I'm not actually a Clean," he replied. "It's just all of those unsightly black veins thankfully appeared in places that are easy to hide with clothing, like on my back. I have a question, though. Why are [i]you[/i] following [i]me?[/i]"

"Curiousity?" Now it was Catherine's turn to shrug noncommitally.

The man chuckled disarmingly. "Well alright. I'm done scavenging for the day and was heading back to a small camp I've set up just outside the hailzone. You're free to follow me back if you want."

This confused the poor girl even more. "You're not worried I'll just steal all your stuff?"

"Nope," the man replied, matter-of-factly. To say Catherine was confused - and rather wary - was an understatement.

However, despite the craziness of the man, she followed him regardless, for it was rather late at night and the last thing she wanted was to be ambushed by the Lost when she couldn't see them. Roughly an hour passed with neither saying another word aside from introductions - his name being Dave - before they managed to reach his "camp," which consisted of a tent and a wheelbarrow with some salvage hidden in the corner between two dumpsters behind an out-of-town hotel. They had managed to avoid any Lost on the way back as well, but that mostly was more due to luck than their ability to sneak through, since the main horde happened to be closer to the center of the hail zone at the time.

Dave took his jacket and backpack off and nonchalantly threw them into the tent, exposing his muscular, yet very burdened arms, before almost casually pulling out his revolver and aiming it at Catherine, who was leaning against a dumpster. "Alright, drop your gun, Cath."

"Wha- You're robbing me [i]now!?[/i]" Catherine froze at the sheer surprise of it all.

"Yeah, I lied before. I only didn't steal your stuff because I couldn't carry it, then you were nice enough to bring it back here for me." The way Dave spoke, one would think he was talking about the weather.

"Oh, fuck you!" Catherine shouted, barely keeping herself from lunging at him.

"I'd rather not. What's that over there?" He said, looking curiously past Catherine.

Catherine turned around and, luckily for her, it wasn't one of those "look behind you so I can shoot you" tricks. An armored vector drove down the road, it's headlights on to see it's way down the road. Someone in the car must've seen the two of them behind the hotel from the road, as the car turned into the hotel's parking lot and parked, a group of what appeared to be more scavengers coming out. There appeared to be roughly 3 of them, all of which carried variations of bolt-action rifles.

"What've we got here?" One of them said, a large, portly man with a bad mustache. "Did I walk in on a robbery or some strange foreplay?"

"Robbery," Catherine replied. "Foreplay," David replied as well, in unison.

The larger man chuckled and turned to his comrades. "They're just a buncha Lost. Let's kill 'em."

Catherine's eyes widened as a shot from one of their rifles went straight past her ear. She dove behind a dumpster to take cover from the next shots, and saw an emergency exit for the hotel nearby. She ran for it and burst in through the emergency exit, sardonically noting she was going the wrong way through it. A second later, Dave ran in through it and slammed the door shut.

"Hey, I may be an asshole but at least I'm polite!" Dave said as Catherine unholstered her own gun.

Catherine flicked the chamber open and was satisfied to see it full. "Tell you what. We'll kill these fuckers, [i]then[/i] I'll shoot you for trying to rob me."

"War makes strange bedfellows," Dave noted, as the two ran further into the building.

Dave entered a room a short bit down the hall and took cover from the emergency exit they just entered through. "I'll hold 'em off here, you go out through the front and get 'em from behind." Catherine nodded, and ran out through the lobby, barreling her way through the front door.

She heard gunshots come from where Dave was as she started to round the building, thankful that this was one of those small, independently owned hotels and not a giant one. As she came to the corner leading to the back, she peeked around and saw the large man and one of his friends on either side of the emergency exit, taking cover from Dave within, with one of the scavengers dead at the base of the door. Catherine leaned around the corner and fired a shot, getting the man's other friend from behind. The large man was startled as Catherine fired another shot and missed wildly, and moved towards Catherine trying to swing his gun up to her and getting shot by Dave from inside, having moved into his firing line.

Now that the fighting was over, David came out of the building - his hands were up in surrender, which was convenient as Catherine was already pointing her gun at him.

"Uh... Can't we talk this out?" He smiled sheepishly.

"No. Get out of here."

"Well, you're no fun," he replied. "Can I at least get my stuff?"

"Fine." Catherine waved him over to his tent with her gun, and he took his backpack and jacket out and placed it on the wheelbarrow, before rapidly dissassembling the tent and adding that onto the pile.

"One more thing," she continued. "I want the peaches back."

Dave scoffed. "Well, aren't you petty," he muttered, tossing the can to her. "I'll be seeing you then, Cath."

"Hopefully not," Catherine replied. 

Once he was out of eyesight, Catherine looked dejectedly at the vector and lamented her lack of ability to drive. Seeing as it was dark out, however, she simply settled for taking some valuables off the dead scavengers - some ammuntion, food, whatever she could carry and sell later for blues once she made it back to SZ Sigma - and locked herself into an apartment room to camp out until sunrise.