The water AJ had ordered had been brought out to him as his meal was still being worked on in the kitchen of Stella’s Dine-In.  As thirsty as he was, the water was almost the best he had ever tasted, and it was all he could do to refrain from chugging it.

[color=f7941d][i]Come on man, control yourself![/i][/color]

And then the shooting started, and it was all AJ could do to avoid spitting the precious water back out.  Memories of a firefight AJ and the scavver gang he had been a part of against a Ya’ii warband came unbidden to his mind, and AJ found his reaction then reflected in his reaction now; he froze.

His paralysis lasted momentarily as he struggled to process what was happening around him.  Then, he took a deep breath to calm his shaky hands, grasped his cup, gulped down the rest of his water, then he lowered his profile and grabbed his bags.  AJ would survive this the way he had that other fight; by staying low and avoiding making himself a target until absolutely necessary.  Maybe this kind of thing happened fairly regularly around these parts, and it would all blow over soon…

[i]“The Striders are attacking us!”[/i]

As the body count started going up, AJ forced himself to get moving toward the exit while he kept his head as low as he could despite his height.  His hand gravitated toward the holster where he kept his pistol at.  The gun wasn’t anything spectacular; it was just a snub pistol that had been assembled mostly from scrap at some point after the war, which AJ had acquired as loot from a raid his old scavver gang had perpetrated.  Despite that, the gun had been surprisingly reliable for AJ to this point.  He had been able to hit cans at nearly thirty yards with it during target practice, and the gun had only jammed on him twice.  He doubted the gun would help him much against anybody wearing decent body armor, but hopefully he wouldn’t find himself in that situation today…