"Well, isn't this interesting." Machete guy says.
"Who are you three?" Daggers caustically barks.
"Relax Sam, no need to be so rude. If they wanted to ambush us, they would have done it before showing themselves." The tall muscular man rumbles in a calming voice as he lowers his hand from his bat.
"That's exactly right, we have no intention to harm any of you." I say and give a nod to the man.
"What is it you people want anyway." Sam says after giving an annoyed look to the man standing next to her.
Seeing that all four of the strangers have removed their hands from their weapons, even the dagger wielding girl named Sam that seems to dislike us for some reason. I slowly lower my hands as I speak.
"Honestly, we just noticed you four traveling and wanted to speak with fellow survivors. As you can tell there's surprisingly few people left in the city." I calmly stated.
"Considering you were nice enough not to ambush us, I think we can refrain from hostilities, Isn't that right." Machete guy looked back towards his group, letting his gaze rest a little longer on Sam.
"Wonderful, you can call me Reaper, and these are my companions." I nod at machete guy and wave to Andy and Lilly to introduce themselves.
"I'm Andy, it's nice to meet you guys." Andy waves.
"And I'm Lilly." Lilly nods to the four strangers.
"I'm Gideon, nice to meet you. This beauty right here is Iyana. Next to her is Sam, whom you've already met, and the big guy over there is Rick." Gideon introduced himself and then his group starting with the blond archer next to him, then pointing towards the dagger wielding Sam, and finishing with the afore mentioned big guy with the baseball bat, Rick.
I nodded to each as they were introduced.
"How about we start with some sharing of information to lessen the tension, I'll go first." I started off. I know I told Andy and Lilly to keep information leakage to a minimum, but I had a pretty good feeling about these four, and the information I planned to share were things they probably already knew about.
"To the east of us only a short distance the city stops like it's been cut perfectly. Beyond the city is a flat plains area spreading for miles. To the northeast there's a town, and to the southeast we saw a forest. We think there's likely more sections of Earth to our north and potentially south." Considering how close they are to the border I assume they already know everything I've told them, but they may not, and even if they do it's still a good starting point for building some trust.
The four nod along with what I say which tells me they do indeed know about everything I said, but they seem to take it as the olive branch it was intended as, and Gideon responds.
"We've been to the north section, which is rolling tree covered hills from what we could tell, we've also been into the town to the northeast of the city, and all the monsters we've encountered are the same as in the city and plains." Gideon says, giving us another piece of information and a confirmation about the types of monsters in the other areas.
"Thank you, it's nearly lunchtime and we haven't eaten, shall we find some food and eat together?" I ask them.
Gideon looks to his group, and everyone but Sam nods, though she doesn't say anything against us joining them for lunch. After receiving the confirmations Gideon turns to me and smiles.
"Come, join us. We shall find some food and break bread together my new friends." Gideon says to us, waving us to them as he points down a street to the south.
"Let us away in that direction, we haven't scavenged much this way yet." Gideon says with an overabundance of cheer that he's had since we met.
I look to Andy and Lilly nodding before walking over to Gideon's group, my companions trailing after me. We don't have to walk more than two blocks before we find a small gas station that doesn't seem to have been scavenged. Our two groups enter and walk the aisles grabbing food together.
"Ooh, this place still has Doritos, score! Iyana says with a smile as she lunges for the last two bags of Doritos on the shelves.
Everyone picks out what they want from the limited supply. I grab a bag of original lays, a pack of Cheez-its, a bag of teriyaki jerky, a few bags of sunflower seeds for while I'm hunting, and the very last snickers bar in the box. With everyone stocked up on lunch we take it out front and sit down. Our two groups make light small talk as we enjoy the spoils of our shopping.
We find out that both Gideon and Iyana, and Rick and Sam, or Samantha, are couples. Throughout the conversation Lilly keeps asking odd but unimportant questions, like what someone's favorite color is, or what music they like, what flavor of ice cream is their favorite, odd stuff like that, and she only asks one of the questions to each person. I don't know what to make of it, but it seems harmless enough, maybe she's just bored.
As lunch winds down and we move on to more serious topics, like where we were on the night it happened, or how we survived. They tell us that both couples were on a double date when the System arrived, and that they are all friends who did stuff like that often. By that time I've finished with the rest of my food and take out my snickers bar.
"YOU took the last snickers bar!" Sam squawks in outrage, pointing a finger at me.
I almost start willing my energy into my palm, she looks so furious at me.
"Sam, you need to calm down, he didn't do it on purpose, how would he have even known those are your favorite." Rick has his hand on his girlfriend's shoulder trying to calm her down and stop her from advancing on me.
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"Woah, like he said I didn't know you liked them I just saw it and decided it would be nice to have one, that's all." I state, putting my hands in the air, hoping to calm her down.
"Fine, whatever." Sam huffs, sitting back down.
She looks distraught, I'm not sure what I did before to make her angry with me, but apparently taking the last snickers bar has exacerbated the issue.
"Here, you can have the snickers bar, I'll just grab something else from inside." I stand up and hold out the candy bar for her to take. I like myself a good snickers bar, but I like other candy just as much and I saw a kitkat back inside.
She gives me a death glare as I hand her the bar and doesn't take it for several seconds. She breaks eye contact and looks at the snickers like I've poisoned it or something. Finally, she huffs and takes the candy bar.
"Thanks." She mumbles only barely loud enough for me to hear, and she won't meet my eyes.
"No problem" I respond. Before I turn to go back inside, Rick gives me a nod of thanks.
When I return back outside with kitkat in hand, Sam has opened up the candy bar and taken a bite. She looks sheepish now, and when she looks up at me, her cheeks redden and she quickly looks away, taking another bite. I chuckle internally and sit back down.
"Don't mind her she's just upset you got the drop on us earlier." Rick starts, but Sam gives him the same death glare she gave me and smacks his shoulder. Rick just chuckles and continues.
"She wanted to be in charge of scouting, said that "rogues are always the scouts for parties" and that means she would take on that role four our little group." Rick finished, flashing a smile towards his girlfriend who was now pouting to his side.
"Ah, that makes more sense now, and don't worry about it, I'm sure you'll get better as you level up further." I smile towards Sam with the end of my comment, trying to convey that I didn't take offense over her actions towards me. His comment also confirmed her class for me.
After giving the topic some time to settle I speak up.
"So, what are your plans moving forward if you don't mind me asking." I ask to their whole group but focus my gaze on Gideon, as he seems to be their leader to some degree.
Gideon looks to his girlfriend and friends before speaking.
"Well, to be honest we really don't have much of a plan beyond killing monsters to gain levels." He responds.
"Would you mind giving me and my companions a moment to speak about something?" I ask their group.
"Not at all." Iyana was the one to speak.
I stood and looked to Andy and Lilly, nodding my head to the side. Once we were out of hearing range, I asked them their opinions on what I was thinking.
"What do you guys think about grouping back up with these guys tomorrow and hunting together. I think it will be good for us to ally with them, strength in numbers is more important now than ever before." I tell them what I had been thinking since the couples agreed to lunch with us.
It doesn't take long for my companions to make up their minds.
"Yes, I think we should definitely meet with them again to hunt at the very least." Lilly says with excitement clear in her voice.
"Agreed, that sounds like a good plan." Andy nods.
"Good, then let's go make our offer." I say as I lead us back to the still seated pair of couples.
"We've come to a decision and would like to offer you guys a sort of alliance. We would like to meet up tomorrow, and hunt monsters with you guys, safety in numbers and all that. Not to mention finding good people is hard these days." I explain our offer to them.
"If you need time to-" I start, wanting to give them some time to decide, but am interrupted.
"Ha, I don't think we need any time to think about it, we would love to ally with you guys to hunt monsters." Gideon says after only a brief glance towards his three friends.
I give it a second to make sure no one has any complaints.
"That's wonderful, why don't we meet here at about 10:00 AM tomorrow. Does that work for you guys?" I propose an hour that should give my group enough time to get here from further into the city.
"We can manage that." Rick agrees in his rumbling baritone.
"Good, then we'll part ways here my new friends, good luck out there, and see you tomorrow." I say to our new allies.
With everyone exchanging goodbyes and good lucks, we depart from the gas station heading southwest back through the city. With my Energy Control skill, I can feel as they head north from the gas station, not following us. Good, that means they weren't playing the long game just to follow us home and kill us. I didn't think they would, I got a good feeling from the two couples, but that wasn't going to stop me from checking.
After we made it a block or so down the street Lilly moves close to speak with me while Andy is killing a Saber Wolf.
"While we were talking with those four back there, I kept getting these weird feelings, like I should try to find out more about them." Lilly says quiet enough Andy won't hear.
"I think ... I think it has something to do with my class. I don't know how, and I know it sounds crazy but-" Lilly explains with a frown.
"Don't worry it doesn't sound crazy to me. I think you should follow through with those feelings. It may lead to a class that fits you." I tell her, understanding now why she was asking those odd questions. I'm also excited to see what kind of class she gets.
I nod to Lilly then walk over to congratulate Andy on his victory over the Saber Wolf. The wolves are still a challenge for him with their speed, but with his reach from the spear and improved strength, he was handling them well.
It takes us several hours to make it back to our apartment building, having to deal with monsters and zig zagging through city blocks instead of being able to take a straight line home. I think Andy should be nearing level three, though when I ask him about it, he says he can't feel how close to leveling up he is. I'm not sure if he's just not paying enough attention to the feeling of class energy, or if he just needs more time before he's able to feel it. I suppose it doesn't really matter, he will either figure it out or he won't, it isn't my problem.
We spend the next two hours hunting in our usual area, or rather my usual area, as this is only Andy and Lilly's second time out hunting. I take a few detours looking for more supplies, especially medical supplies. We find a few extra cans of food and a surprisingly large amount of deionized and purified water. I don't think many people understood what this stuff was even for because pretty much all of the bottled water from everywhere we go is taken. They can have it; I'll take the water that won't grow anything inside of it after leaving it in the sun for a month. The prize jewel of my scavenging is a fully stocked med kit that we found inside of a gym. I suppose it makes sense to have a more fleshed out med kit when the entire place is for people to purposely push their bodies, sometimes too far.
I honestly didn't think about such a good one being there until I saw it. Though that's probably why it was still there. Everywhere else I looked seemed to have the standard small med kit with bandaids bandages and not much else. I kept it all regardless. As night fell, we returned to our building for dinner. Sitting around Andy's kitchen/dining table eating, we spoke about our new allies, speculating about what classes Gideon, Rick, and Iyana had, among other important and inane topics. As dinner finished and we left four our individual apartments to get some sleep, I stopped Lilly in the hallway.
"Hey, do you mind if I use that dagger you got off Charlie the other day." I asked her.
"Um, sure yeah let me grab it." She responded, ducking inside to find it.
"Here you go. Why do you want it anyways?" She asked while handing me the dagger.
"I want to wait a bit before I show our new allies everything I can do, so I need a weapon to use." I told her.
"Oh, I thought you trusted them?" She looked surprised.
"Well, I don't distrust them, but they have a ways to go before I can say I trust them." I responded before giving her a smile and bidding her a good night.