Note: School is starting, so expect longer delays between chapters now.
Everyone walked along awkwardly. Meri spoke at last. "So, um, what are you're names?"
The first guy, a tough, brutish looking person spoke first. "Dave, and if you're wondering why we decided to be looters, it's because of Bandits like you!" he snarled, pointing his finger in Zev's face.
Zev wasn't the angriest one though, Cliff was, surprisingly enough. He stepped in front of Dave, grabbing his outstretched arm. "Don't EVER say that again, got it?"
"Says the Armayan who's girlfriend is a Desert Bandit? Dave smirked back.
Daniel stepped in the middle of the two. "Come on, lets not kill each other over this, ok? Not worth it." he stated.
Both teens glowered at each other for another minute, then finally separated. Cliff made sure to make his way to the front of the column of Survivalists, while Dave stomped off to the rear, leaving Daniel, Meri, and the two other looters walking in the middle, a little wary of each other now. Zev had followed Cliff.
"Sorry about that. Dave's a little...proud." the girl said, embarrassed. "My name's Claudia Rose." she added a second later.
"Well then Claudia, glad to meet you!" Meri said, smiling. "Who's the little guy?" she said, looking at the kid next to Claudia.
"Who's calling who a kid!?" he snarled back, despite Meri being about six years older than him. He scowled, stomping off to the back of the column.
"Boys." Claudia muttered. "His name is Connor, by the way. He's my brother. He seems to model himself after Dave though. You'll see, Dave can be a great guy to be around. It takes time for him to like you. I feel bad for that Bandit over there." Claudia frowned.
"Hey, you can go meet her if you want too!" Meri said. "Her name is Zevara, but just call her Zev to play it safe. She's really friendly, but don't make her angry."
They started walking for the front of the column. "I thought Desert Bandits killed everyone they saw!" Claudia said. "What's different about this Zevara?"
"One, its Zev. Two, she insists that most Desert Bandits are friendly and kind and not bloodthirsty like everyone says they are. Most Armayans would think she's crazy."
"I think she's crazy already."
"And I think she's prettier than you."
"What!?" Claudia laughed. "Impossible!"
"Not so. Even if you're right, I top you both!" laughing and joking, they walked up to Zev, who was pacing alongside a loaded wagon.
Zev noticed them coming and decided to have a little fun. She jumped into the wagon before they saw her, and hid inside the supplies. Claudia and Meri walked up.
"Where is she?" Claudia asked. "You said she would be right here..."
"Yeah, I know. Zev told me that she'd be here, but...this isn't like her." Meri replied, a little confused.
At that moment, Zev slipped out the back of the wagon, and crept behind Claudia as she walked along. Zev held a practice wooden sword in her hand, and aimed it at the back of Claudia's neck and spoke softly in her ear "Don't say a word, and give me your emeralds. Now."
Claudia's eye's widened, and not seeing it was only a wooden sword. She spun around, grabbed Zev's sword hand, and tried to punch her in the face. Zev blocked the blow easily, but backed away, laughing.
"What the...?" Claudia asked.
Meri laughed too. "Zev, you make...interesting first impressions.
Claudia was suspicious. "Wait, what? That was a joke?"
"Yeah, what about it?" Zev asked back.
"Well, it's just...well...how can a Desert Bandit be...friendly?"
Zev gave her an odd look.
"I'm sorry. It's just that, in the City...we saw Desert Bandits do things...and some of the soldiers wouldn't protect us. That's why we became looters in the first place!"
"That's OK. It really depends on where you come from in Sholtar that decides whether you're a bloodthirsty killer or...just normal I guess."
"Sholtar?" Claudia asked. "What's that?"
"My homeland." Zev answered. "It once was a lush area, but for whatever reason now it's a wasteland. What little green areas remain have been taken by the chieftains. That's how you get power in Sholtar. Water. Vegetation."
"Oh." Claudia said.
"Soooo. I bet the scenery in Sholtar isn't nearly as good as the Royal Gorge here in Armaya!" Meri said.
"No way. I don't know what this "Royal Gorge" is, but in my homeland on clear nights you can..."
And so the conversation continued. The Survivalist column made its way through the small roads running parallel to the Highway, trying to avoid running into looters, Desert Bandits, Armayan Army units, and Notch knows what else. Alone now, Daniel walked up to Richard, who was intensely staring at a map while he walked along in the center of the column.
"Where are we going to build this new civilization?" Daniel asked abruptly.
Richard turned. "Over those mountains. It's like another world in there. The mountain chain surrounds the little place, so it's the perfect spot to build a town or something! It's not really little, ok, but it's not too huge for our purposes. See them?"
Daniel looked to the left and saw them, the mountains rising up out of the ground. "Why hasn't anyone colonized there yet?"
Richard frowned. "That's the problem we have. There is no way to actually climb up the mountainside. It's all cliffs on the side facing away from the habitable land in the middle."
"So, why are we going there if we can't get inside?"
"We are planning to make a camp up against the cliff and mine our way inside. I know, I know, that's going to take a rather long time, but I think if we can get our hands on some TNT we can speed up the process greatly."
"Will other people come? Looters, Bandits, Armayan Soldiers, they all could want to stop us."
"We'll have to defend ourselves, then."
Several hours of marching later...
The general feeling in the column was utter awe as they stood before the massive ring of mountains, staring straight up at the massive cliff.
Richard broke the silence. "Alright people. This camp is going to have to last a fairly long time, so we're going to need wood, and a lot of it. We'll also need stone, food, and wood, but that can wait. Anyone not cutting down trees will help unpack supplies."
The group became a bustle of activity, and Zev, Cliff, Daniel, Meri, Claudia, Dave, Cray, Beth, Raymond, and four others fetched axes from a supply wagon, and went out into the woods to cut down some trees. Each selected a tree and started chopping. Raymond checked in a few minutes later to see progress, and when he looked up he laughed. Hard. Only two had managed to cut down a tree, and a couple hadn't even started.
Cliff had slammed his way through almost half of his tree, but it was crude and brutal.
Zev had no idea what to do with an axe (she had never seen real trees until a week ago) and was staring curiously at it.
Claudia and Meri had teamed up, but were barely strong enough, even together, to make a chip in the thick trunk.
Daniel was trying to handle his axe like a sword, and it wasn't exactly working out.
Beth could drive her axe a quarter of the way, but no further.
The four other Survivalists were strong and managed to chop through half of their trees, at most.
Surprisingly, Dave had effortlessly managed to cut down an oak tree, and was in the process of cutting it up into manageable pieces.
And Cray had brute-forced his way through a birch tree.
Raymond shook his head, and called for everyone to come to him. After they did so, he explained "This isn't really going anywhere. Girls, find something to do, and everyone else, look at how Dave's doing it. He seems to be pretty good. Dismissed."
Zev, Meri, Claudia, and Beth clustered together, not knowing exactly what to do.
"You know, I could teach you girls some of these martial-arts moves." Beth suggested finally, winking at Zev, who scowled, but not with hostility, more with hurt pride.
Meanwhile, Dave was teaching the other guys pretty efficiently, and in no time, everyone was chopping up pieces of wood, and processing them into usable planks.
By the time they had arrived, it had been late, so only an hour into their work, Marcus walked up. "Richard wants us to get back to the camp. We have dinner and shelters ready, and he says we can do some weapons training." They followed him back to the camp.
As they got back, they saw that people had gone fishing, as they had fish for dinner. There was a couple good campfires set up, and some tents as crude shelter, but it didn't seem that there were enough for everyone. There also was some markings in the cliff to indicate were the mine would be, and training field that had target dummies for both bows and swords. A crude wooden palisade had been started in one corner of the camp.
After dinner, the camp broke up for weapons training. Zev headed over to the archery section, where six or so archers were busy firing arrows at the dummies. She observed they were very rigid and slow in their movements, not flowing and quick like she had been taught. All the archers had heard that the new Bandit girl was a great archer, so they all watched as she walked toward the firing line. They were all very surprised when she did not stop at all, but in one fluid motion pulled out her smaller bow, notched an arrow, and fired, all while moving, which astounded them. The arrow hit the target dead on. She looked around.
"What did I do?"
Meanwhile, at the sword range, Daniel was defeating all comers in sparring sessions with wooden swords. Seeing nothing was really getting done, Raymond walked up. He got the archery people over and handed them swords, and then divided the Survivalists there into two teams, and asked for leaders. Daniel stepped forward, but to the surprise of all, Cliff also stepped forward, brandishing a wooden axe.
"You're going down!" he smiled to his old friend.
The teams ended up being Daniel, Beth, Zev, Max, Marcus, and five others on one team, with Cliff, Claudia, Dave, Meri, Raymond, Cray, and four others on the other. Richard stood well off to the side, refereeing the match.
On a common thought, the two teams began attacking at the same instant. Daniel found himself fighting Raymond, and the two dueled in the midst of the fierce fighting. Daniel parried every attack that Raymond was throwing at him, but was being pushed further and further back.
Then, Daniel looked past Raymond for a moment and saw Meri, who wasn't fighting at the moment. And who was looking at him. Getting beaten up. That thought rienvigorated him, and he did his signature move, slicing, spinning, slashing, and jump attacking. It worked perfectly, and he hit Raymond, tagging him out of the fight.
Raymond scowled. "I'll get you next time!" he promised.
Max was quickly knocked out of the fight by Cray, while Claudia was hit by Zev, who was slicing her way through the enemy team. Cliff angled to fight her, but Zev was intercepted by a young girl, whom she gently knocked out of the fight. She then turned to Cliff.
"You're next! And don't think I'll be so gentle on you!" she yelled as the dodged a swipe by his axe. She dove to avoid his next swing, and then lept over his axe when he aimed low, then kicked him in the face and stabbed in the chest with the wooden sword. Cliff lay on the ground, stunned. Zev bent down and quckly kissed him on the cheek.
" I said I could kiss you back there, didn't I? Now STAY down!" she said, regaining her game face.
Before the fight could continue, Richard stepped in and yelled. "Everyone, stop! Find a place to sleep, it's time to go to sleep."
A chorus of groans and scowls followed his command, and the Survivalists ran to claim the few tents available.
"Come on!" Zev said to Cliff as she pulled him along to a big tree. The branches were oddly formed to make a platform of sorts in the middle of the tree.
"Think you can get up there?" Zev grinned.
"No problem. Of course I can!" Cliff grinned back, and jumped onto the closest branch, pulling himself up. "See?"
"Hah. That had no style!" Zev ran at the branch, then jumped, grabbed it, and did a gymnast-sque swing onto it. "That had style."
"Rigggghhhht." Cliff started climbing and pulling himself up, trying to reach the platform before Zev.
"I'll give you a head start! You need one!" she yelled after him, and sure enough, five sconds later, she started vaulting, swinging, and jumping up the tree.
Cliff reached the top, panting, and saw Zev wasn't there. "Heh, I guess I didn't need that head start after all, did I?" he said to himself.
"Actually, it didn't matter." came a voice from above. Cliff looked up in alarm. Zev was hanging from a branch above him, and with that she let go and joined on the branch platform, also tired. "I can gloat tomorrow. For now, I'm just gonna sleep."
And so the Survivalists had their purpose. They had a new land. They had a band of warriors.
And they were going to build a new civilization.
School is coming up! And we know what that means...slowed down chapter updates! Sorry about this, but my parents want me to at least get accustomed to my new grade before continuing with my writing. So, I guess I'll see you soon...hopefully! Don't give up on me yet. I'm not dead...it's just school. See you soon!