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Charlie Grey

Charlie carefully walked through the overgrown grasses and weeds between what used to be side walk. His feet made grinding noises as the small stones and rocks that used to be perfectly smooth cement were smashed between his shoes and the hard ground. He looked through the grasses to find something interesting to take apart. Where his small straggler group members would actually spend time hunting for food, Charlie spent most of his time finding small parts and broken machines to trade with the other stragglers. Some parts made good make shift knives and tools, and anything was better than nothing at all.

Tech was not the best at hunting, and was usually more of a nuisance than a help. So instead he wandered by himself, not too far away from the others so that his yells couldn't be heard, but far enough so he wouldn't bother those trying to catch a meal. Charlie's foot suddenly hit something hard that made a metallic clinking rather than a muffled foot against stone noise. He bent down and parted the grass to find an old metal cash register partly buried in the ground. It was rusted and broken, but that didn't mean it was useless.

Charlie hunched over the metal object like a lion over his prey and took his right hand to the dirt that kept the machine in place. He felt grime dig itself under his nails, a feeling he despised, but didn't stop until the register was out of the ground. It was dirty and rusted, but that wouldn't stop him from trying to find what was inside. Charlie dug into his left pocket where he had safely stashed away his leatherman and opened up the the Philips screw driver to start dismantling it. A few minutes passed before the register drawer finally popped open and revealed a full till. He grabbed the bills and threw them aside, hoping to get a better grip on taking the drawer off.

The sound of feet moving behind him made him suddenly stop. He looked behind and saw nothing. Staying completely still for a moment his eyes zeroed in on a squirrel as it bounded from one rotting tree to the other. The sound it made was similar to the sound he had thought he had heard, making him shake his head. "Oy, good going in scaring the crap out of me," He said towards the rodent. He rolled his eyes and turned his attention back towards the register, hoping to find something good. Anyone else would have probably gone after the squirrel for food, but Charlie was useless in that area. There was no use attempting.

Zephyriah Beccaria

Most hunts did not last this long, nor did she Zephyriah usually venture this close to Central Park. Scarcity and necessity—two overwhelming forces that the hunter particularly loathed—forced her towards the nexus of straggler activity on Manhattan Island. There was some irony in the situation. Just two years ago, Zephyriah rarely left the confines of Central Park. She took residence there, scavenged for food and resources with the locals. Eventually, her appetite outgrew what the park could provide, and she and her new team took her talents into the more dangerous, but more bountiful Downtown region.

Sometimes, she wondered if anyone from the park still remembered her—

She prowled down the ruins 6th street, kicking over loose concrete that had managed to stack on top of a larger slate. The rock tumbled down the street, reverberating as it rolled a good dozen feet forward. There was no other sound. Silence played tricks with the mind: on one hand, Zephyriah loved to ambush game from the silence, and she enjoyed it when she could rest in silence with the rest of her teammates. But silence also gave Zephyriah the creeping suspicion that someone was watching her, that she had become the prey to more dangerous hunters. She clenched the black spear in her hand, and with a tense exhale, she flickered her eyes from side to side, as if afraid to move her head.

Heart thumping, Zephyriah tapped her projected spear against the gutted pavement. Slabs of old 6th street lay upheaved against other slabs, and even traversing down the street became a series of hills and outcroppings. Even from relatively level ground, she could only see toward the next upturned slab, and her vantage felt claustrophobically limited. Pressing on through the street never felt safe, yet she knew from experience that the streets were still the best place for stragglers to travel. At least there was no danger of walkers jumping out from around the corner, grabbing and biting her before she could react.

Game was unusually scarce today. As she crept over the last great ledge to Central Park, Zephyriah saw what might as well have been a miracle. A flicker of brown against the green, so slight that she almost missed it. She took a chance. With one quick jerk of her arm, she cocked her spear back and hurled it towards the spot. The squirrel had not ventured but a few feet from the last tree, darting behind the figure of a crouched man, before the Zephyriah’s obsidian spear skewered it on the spot. The sound of the spear whooshing through the air before wrenching through the squirrel’s body had to have been one of the more sickening sounds in the natural world. Even someone like Zephyriah, with the comfort of distance and experience, still never got used to it.

She approached her latest game, body covered with silver sweat despite the cool draft coming from the sea. “Sorry about that,” she remarked to the other straggler, “that was dinner.”

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Charlie Grey

Charlie hit tinkered with a few screws before giving the register a sharp smack. The drawer came loose and out of it's slot. He set it to his side and was about to move on to the gears and tracks inside of the old machine when a sharp whistle behind him shortly followed by the squeal and instant silence of the squirrel that had frightened him a moment before.

Somehow, Charlie had been able to whirl around and jump back to face the young woman, landing awkwardly on his hand. He fell, loosing the ability to support his own weight, and suddenly felt the crack of a bone. The sound matched the feeling perfectly, as he broke his wrist. "God damnit!' He hissed under his breath, the pain was incredible, up there with the worst of his healed injuries, but not unbearable. Though he didn't enjoy the feeling, he had a much higher pain tolerance than most. Without it, he probably would have gone made by now.

Charlie put his other hand around his wrist and gave her the smallest smile imaginable then laughed slightly as she apologized and mentioned dinner. He understood. His broken wrist wasn't her fault, and was a small consequence for the price of a good meal. Besides, it was probably going to be healed in a few painful hours anyway.

"It's fine. No harm done," Charlie lied as he used his still intact arm to push him up to his feet. He held his wrist up, not to show her but to make sure it stayed out of the way, as it flopped to one side lazily, he could already feel the blood in his veins surging to start repairs on the broken bones. The pain was starting already.

Charlie gave her a quick look up and down, quickly determining that she too, like himself, was a straggler. He took a few steps closer to her and tilted his head slightly. She was...well shiny... He couldn't explain why, but she was, which was very curious of him. "You're shiny," he said, his faint British accent coming through.

Zephyriah Beccaria

Her sudden appearance must have startled the other straggler much more than she had anticipated, seeing as he stumbled backward and landed awkwardly on his wrist. Though he did his best to mask his pain, Zephyriah could tell immediately that he had broken something, both from the awkward sound and the unusual aura that his arm produced. She could also tell that he was no ordinary straggler: this one had abilities. Somehow, knowing that he had some kind of power comforted her a little, but not enough to erase that sudden look of concern on her face. No matter how hard she tried to put on a blasé display, she still felt the pang of anxiety and apprehension whenever someone else got hurt.

But she knew better than to approach blindly. Most stragglers were toughened warriors, and she knew some of them were capable of disemboweling her if she was not careful. Even if it went against every maternal instinct in her body, she would still try her best to keep her distance, at least until she knew more about the target that faced her.

Briefly glancing away from him, she stepped forward to retrieve her spear. Though she may not have locked pupils with the man, she made sure to keep him in her periphery. Depending on the person, sometimes it as very difficult to negotiate both peace and the opportunity to step forward and retrieve her catch. For all she knew, the new target could have been a hegemon figure. She had heard that the Golden Banner had extended their boundary to the south side of Central Park, and that their missions were quickly escalating in brutality. Nonetheless, Central Park had been the territory of the bastardly Crimson Saber for years now, and Zephyriah knew that they would not give it up without a fight. The way this figure stood with his back to her felt off somehow, like someone who intentionally walked a ledge on a high-rise.

He could have been a figure that did not worry about an attack, implying that he was a powerful fighter in his own right. Most people that left themselves completely unguarded knew what they were doing—those that didn’t usually found themselves on the wrong end of a deadly weapon. She thought about merely acknowledging him and moving on before any trouble came out of it. But her maternal instinct eventually won out, and Zephyriah could struggle to contain her concern no longer. “Are you sure?” she asked, masking her knowledge that she knew that he had fractured his wrist, “That looked pretty bad.

“And yeah, I suppose I am.” She must have worked up a sweat after a long day of hunting, even though the temperature never rose above a windy 70 degrees. Arriving at the squirrel, Zephyriah reached for the spear, which immediately disintegrated from solid black steel to a murky mist, reforming in the shape of a net that quickly enveloped her quarry inside. She plucked the net off the ground—squirrel and all—and slung it over her shoulder, satisfied with her day’s work.

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