Simply Survive

"Well, you're a scrap of a thing, aren't you?"

Summer crossed her arms, mirroring the large, muscular man with an army-close haircut in front of her. Kilborn's voice was deep, commanding as his presence and he looked down at the woman with a judging eye - and it would take courage, perseverance and skill to make those eyes approving. Summer sensed all this instantly and rather than be upset by it, she saw a challenge and determined fire bubbled up in her veins. She didn't defend herself, her size or the way she looked. That wouldn't impress this man.

No, actions would speak louder than words here, but only the right ones so she remained silent, waiting.

They were in a separate courtyard-type place within the wall, but sectioned off from the places like Targas' workshop in the main courtyard. This was the training area, the combat ring and this is where her testing would be done. Summer noted that they'd gathered an audience - hadn't Targas said something about her being the newest recruit in a while? - and the woman studiously ignored them, focused solely on her assessor.

"I have heard you have some enhanced hearing, Scrapper. Let's see for ourselves, shall we?"

Summer merely nodded and let him wrap a blindfold around her eyes, listening as he walked away. She was alone in the ring now and having some idea of what was coming, she steadied her breathing and calmed her body, techniques she'd picked up long before the apocalypse started. She was centered, alert when the first shot was fired and judging by the sound, Summer knew it was a BB gun they used.

Well, at least I know they don't want to kill me.

It was a quick thought, as quick as her movements as Summer avoided the round with ease and then another and another. They started getting interested then, she could tell, as more than one gun now fired and like a contortionist, the auburn-haired woman avoided being hit, sometimes narrowly, but she did. It almost obvious that she had the body of a dancer, all slender grace and light movements and it served her well.
 
Targas finished the majority of the repairs he had piled up and decided to check on Summer, see how she was doing with Kilborn. He wandered around the compound and into the training area, making his presence known and making his way to the front of the crowd. He stood there silently and watched as the exercise went on with his arms crossed. She was doing remarkably well and did a silent motion to have some of the shooters ricochet some of the rounds off of the concrete.
 
The first ricocheted bullet was surprising, Summer would readily admit that, and she felt one hit her shoulder, earning a hiss before she adjusted and avoided the next. More sounds, different sounds. The bullets were bouncing up from concrete, more wild that way, less predictable and instead of listening for just the whooshing air of a charging shot, she had to focus on that AND the pinging noise of the bullets hitting the concrete, the subtler sound of them flying back through the air - some of them further from her body than others.

Once she knew what to do, though, the woman was far more prepared and the instant everything clicked in her head was obvious as she once again moved like water, flowing.

Sweat began to pour from her body with the heat and it came to Summer than that it was more than just a test of hearing - it was one of instinctual reaction AND stamina. How long could she last before the bullets started hitting more often?

A damn lot longer than most of them suspected she was willing to bet.

Determination anew filled the female and she decided right then and there to not go down without some kind of fight. No, that wasn't how the outside world worked and this wasn't proving anything except that she could AVOID danger. It was good, but not enough. So while the shots fired at her and she avoided, in the lulls, Summer started to pick up objects - rocks - from the ground. Her nose worked then, keen and powerful to tell her just WHERE her shooters were as her ears followed the general direction of the bullets.

She started hurling the rocks and the very first one was dead-on, hitting one shooter directly in the chest, over his heart. Kilborn saw it clearly and motioned for that man to stop shooting, his judging eyes returning to the female in the square as she started to retaliate.
 
Targas smirked at the man being hit with the rock. She was rather good at what she was going and made a gesture at Kilborn and he nodded, starting to make some noise, something that the rest of the crowd did in suit. A test to see how fast she can adapt to rapid noises and threats, for sure.

He then took the rifle from the man who had been hit and took careful aim, calculating the ricochet pattern he wished to create. After a second he planned his shot and fired. The round missed purposefully, hitting the ground at her feet and bouncing up at the wall and up to a lamp and back down to the concrete and back up at her. He was honestly surprised with how well that actually worked.
 
Oh, for the love of everything holy!

Well, at least they weren't underestimating her. They were stretching her limits, though, and while Summer adapted pretty quickly to the new noises, working fast to filter them out and concentrate, it did affect her time when it came to taking out 'enemies' as she had to direct more of her attention on not getting hit. Her movements were growing a bit slower, more forced, but when Targas' bullet started to ricochet all over the place, she kept tabs on it.

She caught the thing in midair as it came up to hit her stomach and the smirk was plain on her face as she ducked and rolled to avoid another shot. She felt a BB land in her thigh and grimaced. Ow. Okay, that shooter was gone. A rock found its home in the man's chest, near his neck actually to inflict just a touch of pain and Summer felt another bullet graze her arm in the time she'd had to devote to taking the shot.

She lasted ten more minutes before being hit by three different projectiles one after the other and Kilborn called a halt to the exercise. Summer stilled, alert for a trick, but none came.

"Impressive, Scrapper. You lasted twenty-five minutes. You can drop the blindfold now."

The auburn-haired female did just that and she touched the back of her hand to her nose, grimacing at the blood that was beginning to run in rivets down her chin, dripping to the hard concrete beneath her, but not before staining her clothes on the way. Damn. She hated when that happened. Using the cloth that had been around her eyes to wipe at the blood, she watched warily as Kilborn approached her and rightly so as when he got within striking distance, he did just that.

Summer ducked and leaped away, hands automatically going for her knives....only they weren't there. She cursed under her breath and focused on the large man again. Oh, this was going to hurt.
 
Targas watched as the two went fisticuffs and smirked to himself. She was going to fit in just fine, he thought to himself, and judging by the looks on the others' faces, they were thinking the same thing. He pushed his way back through the crowd and went back to working on the orders that he had, letting her testing go on.

He finished the projects at a remarkable speed and was left at the table with little to do. He got up and began making something, welding and hammering parts together, doing something he hadn't done in a long time: making a gift. The thought of it actually made him smile before his mental defenses shut it down. He shouldnt be thinking like this, it compromises his safety and those around him but he knows hes human and these things do happen. Maybe it would be best to just focus on what he was making...
 
Okay, so she hadn't done so well in the hand-to-hand combat...well, more like she got knocked on her a** more times than she cared to admit and she could feel the bruises starting to form all over her body, but she hadn't given up and that counted for something. The mental part of the test was held after lunch and that Summer averaged at. She wasn't stupid by a long shot, but nor was she a genius by the same distance. She was smart, though, and did fine in that area.

Her shooting was tested and in that she passed with flying colors. First-aid, was decent, but it showed Summer that she actually had a lot to learn if she wanted to pursue that line of work. It was clear she was being accepted by the end of the testing and finally Kilborn called a halt to everything, the two of them facing each other. "You'll need more combat training."

Summer nodded. "All right."

"You need to learn another weapon."

"Okay."

"You'll have to brush up on your medic training."

"I will do whatever you want me to, Yoda."

Kilborn cracked the barest hint of a smile at that and Summer outright grinned as the man sighed and finally nodded at her, the smile growing just a little. "You did well, Scrapper. You passed. Welcome to the Legion."
 
Targas had heard the news but he was determined to finish what he was working on. He almost had the mechanics down behind what he wanted to do and then comes the details. Many times throughout the day, people stopped by to see what he was working on and most people saw it as a type of bracer with complex clockwork in it and just moved on. He was the mechanical engineer here, not them, so they had no idea what the device was even to be used for. He worked for many more hours, getting the details just right and fitting for the newest Legionnaire and smiled to himself. He did good, though why he made it was still a mystery.

He shrugged off his marginal concern for his mental stability and went to find Scout.
 
(( OMGosh, I can't believe I didn't see that you'd posted...sorry!! ))


Summer had been left on her own to celebrate or nurse her wounds, whichever she saw fit, on her own for the time being and she'd taken to the walls at first, looking out over the city, for danger and just for the heck of it. She could remember what used to be, how things were supposed to look even though the invasion - or whatever people wanted to call it - had started over ten years ago. She'd been so much younger than, about fourteen maybe when everything started.

Her family. She hadn't thought about them in years. And she wouldn't start now...

Shaking the thoughts away, the auburn-haired woman retreated down to the lower levels and as she walked across the courtyard, she looked down at her arm, eyeing the cut there with a serious edge to her pale blue eyes. It wasn't healing as fast as it should have been and she didn't like it. Damn, maybe that Leaper had been a bit more thorough than she'd at first believed. Still, didn't mean she was going to lose her mind, but....no. No, she'd worry about THAT if it happened, not before.

Her ears picking up familiar footsteps and her nose recognizing the scent of the person she was about to run into easily enough, Summer looked up and stopped just before hitting Targas. A brow rose and she tilted her head, eyes glittering and a faint smile at her lips. "So...I got in. Yay me. Where you off to?"
 
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Targas stopped in his tracks, eyes that were once slightly glazed over returning to normal and fixing on Summer.

"Oh, hmm. I was actually coming to find you. I made you something but I dont quite know why, I think it was meant as a 'Welcome to the Legion' gift but my mind is a little hazy right now."

Targas looks genuinely confused as he finishes speaking, holding something folded in cloth out. He unwraps it and holds this strange device in his hand.

"Its a type of bracer Ive been designing for a while. I have a few prototypes that I have been working on but this one just felt...right. As if it would work. Take it and put a knife into this slot here handle first..." He said as he handed the device over.

Its a bracer made of leather and steel plating, with complex gear mechanisms and a protective casing over those parts. There was a metal cutout, freshly welded, of the Death's Legion insignia on the plating itself. The entire device was stylized with red and black bands that reinforce the bracer itself.
 
Summer's eyes widened in true surprise and she blinked, looking from Targas to the bracer with a gaze as truly puzzled as his own. He'd...made something for her? The woman wasn't quite sure how to react to that - and that was truly sad if one thought about it - as she took the gift and held it carefully, her fingers tracing over the metal and leather, the etching with a wonder she didn't feel often. It was...well, it was useful and simple - the thing itself, not the way it worked obviously - and it really should not have inspired the strange, curling warmth that it did inside her.

Pale blue eyes looked up into....oh wow. His eyes were gray, a steel color as hard and strong as his demeanor and the auburn-haired woman realized it was the first time she'd really LOOKED at him without the sunglasses. Oddly enough, she felt something close to the beginning of 'like' for the man she saw behind that gaze.

"Thank you. It's...I mean...I will use this. Thank you."

She smiled a little then and looked down, back at the bracer as she strapped it on and slipped one of her knives inside. It fit perfectly, felt almost natural on her arm and Summer flexed her wrist, hitting a pressure mechanism that had the knife sliding out of the brace and into her waiting hand. The woman chuckled. "Oh, I'm going to like this."
 
(I forgot to explain what it did but you got it spot on >.< Twas designed to either eject blades or to hold them in a locked position so you could have a retractable blade and always be armed.)

Targas nodded and gave a little smile, still wearing a confused and almost dazed look on his face. He noticed his own demeanor and shook it off, returning to the hard shell he knows. After she made sure it worked he nodded to himself and excused himself, proceeding to pace around the compound and wondering where that all came from. Something inside of him stirred, something that had been dead for a long time and he was growing concerned.

"Heh...lovely." He said to himself as he shook his head while wondering around the base.
 
(I figured as much. :) Oh, and I am time-skipping a week - hope that is okay. Just let me know if it's not.)

A week went by rather quickly in this place and for the first time in a long time, Summer could actually distinguish between the days. Oh, there were similarities between them, such as her sparring lessons with Kilborn - and OW did she hurt after those! - weapon's training with an instructor by the code name Snake and then medic training with a woman called Lily. In the grand scheme, though, every day held something a little bit new and perhaps it was for THAT reason that the auburn-haired woman didn't yet feel restless, like she needed to burst out of her own skin rather than stay in one place.

She'd felt that way on and off for around five years, ever since she first got virus-infected, but now...the desire seemed to have settled and while Summer didn't understand it, she decided not to question it. Better to just go along for the ride at this point, right?

Everything was going well. Almost too well. Sort of.

Summer looked around, making sure she wasn't being given attention as she rolled up her sleeve and grimaced, hissing between her teeth at the sight of the scratch on her arm. Gah, no...this was not good. The cut itself looked about half-healed, but dark red tendrils had started to branch out from the wound itself, working their way up her arm in an almost intricate pattern. It was like nothing Summer had ever seen before and it actually worried her.

She didn't FEEL any different. She wasn't frothing at the mouth - obviously - wasn't craving human flesh, was still talking, eating, functioning...but this was definitely NOT nothing. She just didn't know what it WAS.

Sighing, the woman rolled her sleeve back down and exited the shadows, taking a sniff around before she started toward the office. Apparently three new missions were coming up and Summer was to be assigned to a team. She wasn't sure whether she was looking forward to that or not.....guess it depended on which team she was with.
 
(I return!)

Over the past week, the cold sweats in the middle of the night became more and more frequent, to the point to where he wasnt sleeping often anymore. The symbols kept coming back to him, always getting more intense and it started to feel like he was going to go insane. Normally he would go talk to someone about this but that would require telling about the artifact, something that he couldnt do. In the later part of the week, he started to carve the symbols into random things he started to make in his spare time, usually smelting them back down and reusing them.

He hadnt seen Summer often as she was usually training, but when he did a small smile crept across his face. He was quick to hide it and silently scold himself for this growing attachment.

It was a week since she had been accepted into the Legion and when he saw her, he noticed something in her body language. If he had learned anything over the years, it was when someone was hiding something and he felt that something was going on and the concern was growing in her. He decided he was going to talk to her, so he waited until dusk to find her as her training should be finished for the day. He wandered around the compound until he was able to find her coming out of the shadows bearing a more concerned expression than normal.

"I've been looking for you." He said, very to the point.
 
Summer shouldn't have been surprised by Targas' voice, but she'd been focused on her newest task, her mind still on the wound on her arm and it was undeniable that she started when the male made himself known. The knife from her bracer appeared in her hand and her stance had slipped into a defensive one before her eyes registered just who she was looking at. Summer blinked and then breathed out in a sigh, straightening and bringing her fingers up to her temples after she slipped the knife back up her sleeve.

Her senses scolded her, telling her that she really should have known Targas was near, but the auburn-haired woman ignored them for the moment, lowering her hands, crossing her arms and raising a brow. "Well, you found me and scared the living daylights out of me to boot."

A faint smile flickered at her lips. "How can I help you, Targas?"

She hadn't seen him in a while, but that didn't mean she hadn't thought about him....which was strange in and of itself, but oh well.
 
He looked genuinely surprised that he was able to startle the woman in front of him but he wouldnt let that distract him for why he sought her out.

"Ive noticed that you have been growing more concerned over something and the look on your face as I approached cements that notion; and yes, that means I have been growing concerned for you; and yes, that means I have some sort of attachment which to me is rather surprising. It feels like something long dead is coming back to life and I dont know how to feel about it but it makes me feel almost...happy."

He spoke with an air of caution, almost uncertain as how to word what hes saying and how to voice his concern. He looked at her with some compassion in his eyes and what looked like honest concern.
 
If she'd been startled before - and mildly so seeing as the male didn't have a knife in his gut - Summer was absolutely flabbergasted now and she stared at Targas with wide eyes, like a deer caught in the headlights. It was a look not many would get from her...ever...and the woman opened her mouth to speak before shutting it again, doing that at least three times, all ending in the same way; silence.

What...just what was she supposed to.... Okay then.

Summer cleared her throat, tucking her wild hair behind her ear and she looked down, away and then back at Targas again, very suddenly looking much younger than she was, uncertain. "I...thank you? Ummm...okay, that was unexpected and....I guess that's...what you feel is...good..."

Oh for the love of pizza, she sounded like a bloody school girl!

Summer shook her head and frowned at the male before her, crossing her arms again. "Just what do you want me to say to that? I mean, yeah, I like you too, odd as that is considering I don't much like anyone, but... Why did you just blurt it out to me?"

THAT was the part she didn't understand. And why in the blue moon was he worried for her? They hardly knew each other! I mean, yeah, she was more...on edge right now and maybe she had looked worried, but most people kept to themselves about things like that. What...had gotten into Targas? Summer almost instantly regretted her words when her eyes met his again and she sighed, running her hand back through her hair.

"Sorry, I'm not...mad. You just...caught me off guard. I'm not sure what you want."
 
"Because I want to make sure you are ok. You are being assigned to my outfit and I want to make sure you will be able to hold up, for the safety of the group. Thats my official reason. My unofficial one is that I want to make sure that you are ok. Now please, talk to me about whats got you so concerned. I promise that I wont run off to an officer or shoot you."

The way he looked at her when he said that last sentence showed the most honest statement he could make right now and showed a rather great deal of concern. To him, he genuinely meant what he was saying though he didnt know why he was saying it but it felt right, almost good, to feel this again; to feel in general.
 
Okay, he was officially weirding her out....in the most warm, endearing way she'd experienced from anyone in a long, long time.

Summer looked at Targas intently for a long moment, searching his rugged face and steel-gray eyes with a mixture of confusion, uncertainty and tentative trust. She didn't know WHAT had brought this about, but in truth she'd been growing just as fond of him as he seemed to have grown of her. Sometimes....these things weren't really explained logically. In a land where you lost people left and right, one tended not to form attachments of any kind and then....sometimes, out of the blue, people found a connection and BECAUSE there were so many deaths, their mindset had morphed to understand that fast-growing relationships would result in more than slow ones would. You could lose the person you cared about at a moment's notice. Best to have as many memories with them that you could.

Was that what was happening now?

The auburn-haired female didn't know, but what she DID understand was that Targas' scent was honest. He wasn't lying and there was nothing in his voice to suggest that he was playing with her. No, he was sincere; sincerely concerned and just as sincerely confused by his own attachment to her.

Well, good. That made two of them.

Summer finally nodded slowly, looking around. "I'll tell you, but not here." Not out in the open where anyone could hear them or come along at any moment.
 
"Come to my room then, its the most private place there is. Its an unspoken rule for roommates to enter if they bring someone else in and they dont listen at the door. Its rather frowned upon here as while we have little privacy, its courteous to give what we can in it."

The look on his face was serious in terms of the truth and he turned to start walking without waiting for a response. He knew that no one would intrude or look in on them unless they wanted two very angry mercs after them.