Ruby was sat by a campfire at the Village, listening to the tunes of a guitar that one of the only other women present here, that being Hip, was playing. She was playing an upbeat tone while a couple other lads sat, drinking, laughing and chatting away in Ukrainian and Russia, two languages Ruby understood nothing of. Meanwhile, she was curled up in a ball, cradling her newfound rifle for comfort while ensuring she would not stab herself in the hand.

She stared at the dancing flames, listening to their crackle almost become of the same tune as the song Hip was playing with a smile, blue eyes fixated on the chords. She was still a newbie, apparently, a newbie at playing the guitar. It was a nice, quiet night at the Cordon and Ruby could do little but wonder what tomorrow would bring. Her objective as given by Sidorovich was to go retrieve something from the nearby Car Park, just close to the checkpoint that led deeper into the Cordon. She basically had to stealth her way into the Park, though, as there were Bandits there.

She wasn't too keen on shooting at humans, honestly. She didn't much like killing. And no, contrary to what the cops might've said, she didn't actually kill anyone ever. She'd always made sure to check what happened to the guys she hit with Crescent Rose and all were still alive, just heavily concussed. That included White Fang, funnily enough. She hummed and saw that a bottle was being passed around as Hip kept playing, having switched to another tune.

As it reached her, she wanted to refuse it, but the young Loner that offered it to her seemed friendly enough. She took it and smelled it, only to find the contents were so light in alcohol, it didn't even sting her nose. She blinked, took a quick sip, then smiled as a more sweet taste hit her. The Loner beside her spoke in broken English, "Like? Is apple cider, Roska."

"Yeah, it's great," Ruby chuckled, "Thanks..."

"Charli. Pozhaluysta, Roska," He gave a nod and leaned back, looking to Hip and calling out something to the young woman. She lifted her middle finger at him, the tune stopping for a moment to make way for the laughs of the gathered party, minus Ruby, who wasn't sure what the sign meant. She simply handed the bottle over to the next guy, then leaned back and listened to Hip play.

An older man commented, "Don't worry about Charli. He's a bit of a little shit." which made the English-understanding Stalkers let out short laughs. Minus Charli.

Ruby snorted, "He seems nice, honestly."

"Yeah, but if you live long enough here, you'll learn what Kaskad means," Hip quipped, hands dancing on the guitar now. The man tried to defend himself, but Hip swore at him with a smile, which garnered a few more laughs that Ruby awkwardly participated in. She told Ruby, "If you need someone to teach you Ukrainian or Russian, I'm open for business. Measly sum of like 200 rubles per class for a total of 20 classes of an hour each. Honestly, a steal."

"Maybe I'll take you up on that, Hip," Ruby chuckled, "I wanna be able to scream for help, at least..."

Hip laughed and replied, "You're gonna be able to swing slurs and curses better than even a native speaker. After all, best way to learn languages is through their swears first..." Then she leaned toward Ruby and stated, "Is how I learned English in the first place..." which gave Ruby another reason to giggle. Well, if nothing else, the locals were very nice to her, she thought.

"Had a need to learn to curse out the average Tourist for doing dumb shit," The old man, Kaskad, added with a nod as he scratched his greying beard, "Man, non-locals are morons. They're just looking for an adrenaline fix and the next thing they know, Bandits took them, or they met an anomaly and poof, gone... Ruby over here, as I heard from Fanatic, is a quick learner and knows to respect the Zone."

"Better to respect it than wind up dead," Hip nodded, "Place is a shithole, but it makes for a good home if you learn her ins and outs."

Ruby sighed and curled harder into a ball, cuddling her rifle, "I just wanna find my sis and my friends and get out..." which got Hip to stop and process it for a moment. Much of the Rookie Village had met Ruby's sister, Yang, a while back, when she came storming in and demanding to know where they were. Girl was damn near ready to throw down with Sidorovich for info. Took Fanatic and another man to calm her down.

Since then, she'd been in and out of the village until she stopped coming in a couple days ago, probably having gone deeper into the Zone. Hip commented, "You'll find more than just us few who are willing to help you find them, Ruby," with empathy in her voice as she set the guitar down and leaned forward, "It only takes some time and skill... I'd be wary of the Bandits, though."

"I'm sure Sis can handle herself against them," Ruby more-so hoped than was sure, but she had to keep up the facade-

"I didn't mean her or your friends, Roza. I meant you," Hip quipped. She then turned a little serious, speaking to Ruby straight-forward, "You'd be better off buddying up with someone who's willing to shoot to kill, because you don't look the type, honestly..." which made the young girl flinch. It wasn't like Hip was wrong, but the thought of having to kill anyone still caused Ruby's stomach to churn. Hip then asked, "Be honest, Roska, how old are you?"

"... Fifteen..." She replied, which caused the few ho understood English to blank, Hip's eyes shooting wide open.

"Chto za khren...? Who brought you here...?" She almost demanded, eyes wide at the revelation. Ruby shrugged, to which the girl stated, "So, kidnapped? Blyad, that's..." and she looked around, "We gotta get you home, kiddo. This isn't good. Nobody your age is supposed to be here. The rare teenager that drops in here is either on a bender for his eighteenth birthday and looking for bragging rights, or is past eighteen and is just looking to get away from it all..."

"That's why I wanna find my friends and get out," Ruby told them, "We're all in our teens, we're not meant to be in a warzone like this... Then again, not like home was much better, outside of the cities and Kingdoms..." and she hummed. She pulled out a piece of bread and chowed down on it to stifle a stomach burble that was about to come up. She swallowed the stale bread, then sighed. She missed dad's cooking, or, heck, even Yang's.

"Kid?" Hip blinked, "Kingdoms... You British?"

"Nope... Look, it's a long story, probably involving time travel or something, I don't know," She shrugged, "For all I know, the Zone stole us from home. This place seems weird enough to do that..." words that garnered a short laugh from the other English-speakers. Hip turned to the few people at the campfire who didn't speak English and clarified to them what Ruby had just told them, before all of them also erupted into surprise, shock and various expletives in the local language.

Hip hummed, then stood up and said, "C'mon, Ruby. You're staying with me for the evening..." a seemingly motherly side activating in her. She walked to Rubes and extended her hand to her, which the young girl took with a hint of surprise, slinging her SKS over her shoulder. The two stepped off toward a house while the men seemed to enter a debate about this, or something else.

Hip sighed and rubbed her eyes, "Blyadh, if the Zone actually dropped you in... I hate this place some times."

Ruby nodded, "I'll be alright, though. Thanks for wanting to take me in, Hip..." Before she was led to her room. Hip motioned to the covered mattress on a steel bedframe and quickly lit a fire in the metal stove. The windows had been barricaded, so this place was actually Hip's place proper. She sighed and gave Ruby a nod, before shutting the makeshift door and walking outside.

Hip crouched on her stairs, took out a cigarette and lit it as the nightly chill of the Zone ran over her uncovered face. She pulled her hood up to try and mitigate the chill, then looked up to see Fanatic walking toward her. She spoke in one of the two slavic languages she knew Fanatic would understand, "Did you know Roza is Fifteen, Fanatic? Did anyone here?"

Sitting himself down next to her, he admitted, "The boys just told me. I knew she didn't remember how she got here, but now she's insinuating that maybe the Zone did it? Blyad, I'd believe it, considering the girl glowed red any time she approached Rad pockets. And Anomalies." Then, the realization seemed to strike "Shit, she survived being thrown around by a Springboard..." Then he hummed as the realization hit him and covered his mouth, "You don't think she and her sister are some new type of mutant, right...? Humanlike, but adapting to the Zone better than us...?"

"Don't let the Eggheads or Mercs hear about that. They'll take her and her sister as Artifacts and study them," Hip half-joked, though her grim expression didn't say as much. She dragged deeply from the cig, the embers glowing orange and lighting her face, before she blew out the smoke and added, "She has a job tomorrow and neither of us can leave the town to cover her due to our own business... What do you think, should I message him?"

"Prapor would answer, yes... Though is he not deeper within the Cordon, looking for his Girl?" Fanatic asked, leaning his Kalash against his knee and pulling out his own PDA, "I'd get to it, sister. If he isn't asleep, he'll see the message, pick it up." Then he looked to Hip as she put the cig between her lips and pulled out her PDA, starting to rapidly type out the message to one of their Stalker acquaintances. Fanatic gave her a pat and a nod, then stepped off, activating the flashlight on his rifle.

"Hope you pick up, Ștefan..." She murmured as she sent the message, then went back inside, her own AKS now slung over her shoulder. They couldn't leave this place because they had their own work to attend to, but they could, at the very least send someone to watch over their young friend like a hawk. And Prapor was a good guy, a good friend. Sure, a bit hardheaded, but that was normal for most Loners. Especially ones such as him.

She hummed, sat herself down in her own room's bunk and set her weapons aside, her pistol at least within reach. She leaned onto the mattress and quickly faded to sleep. Come next morning, she was there to watch Ruby leave for her job. The young Rose turned toward them with a smile, silver eyes glimmering in the dim light of the clouded day, before giving a gloved wave of her hand to the young woman. Hip gave a wave back and watched her turn to leave, SKS in hand... And her PDA beeped. She checked it and saw the reply, causing a wave of relief to wash over her.

'I'll keep her alive' their old friend replied over the Net.


On the Road...

Ruby hummed the tune that Hip had played over the guitar barely a few hours ago, during the night, as she walked down the road to Pripyat. In the distance, she could make out the railway bridge that had collapsed and, presumably, the military's other checkpoint in the place. She'd seen the first after a quick zoom out around the place to scout it all out.

She kept her eyes on the sides of the raised road, too, making sure no beasts would come in and surprise her. She'd also packed some essential stuff like food and water for the trip, as well as a bunch of medical kits that Hip had given her a quick rundown on how to use. She knew how to use bandages, obviously, but the rest of the medical kits, like that orange 'cheese' as they called it, were a tad foreign to the young Rose. Still, she figured she'd manage.

The only things she kept in her rig were ammunition, that being several stripper clips of ammo for her SKS, and some mags for her PM Makarov, the backup weapon. She paused for a sec as the distant sound of gunfire reached her, followed by the even more distant, horrific roar of whatever abominations and animals treaded this hellscape. Though she didn't show it, her heart was thumping in her throat, racing even. She was scared.

She pushed forward, only to notice a small encampment made out of old rail cars and various cinderblocks. Descending toward it, rifle in hand, she marched slowly through each of the cars, finding little of interest beside a couple boxes with medical supplies in them. She stopped, however, as she saw a tunnel dead ahead, a tunnel that travelled below the road to Pripyat. Turning on her flashlight, she walked in.

She found it to be a mishmash of radiation pockets that made her Aura flare, various corpses and skeletons and even a fairly fresh body. She winced and walked up to the Stalker, took a knee beside him and turned him over gently. She checked his pockets and found his PDA, before turning it on. Zapad, huh? Weird nickname, but then again, whose nick wasn't weird in this place...?

She pocketed the extra PM ammunition she found on him, as well as a few rounds of 7,62x39 she'd also found on his person, then she stood to her feet and gazed around the place, making sure she wasn't being followed or surrounded, then closed his eyes and made a mental note to report where she found his body. She gave him a pat on the shoulder and murmured, "I'm sorry, man..." only to shudder as a chill shot up her spine.

Stepping out of the tunnel and back on the road, she activated the PDA's GPS map and looked over to her intended target, a marker placed by Sidorovich when she accepted the fetch quest. She hummed, thumbed the device and set it aside, before going to the other side and descending, rifle in hand, into a small patch of woods that would provide cover as she approached the ruined park.

Buildings rose ahead of her, nearby the steep hills of dirt, concrete and gravel that made up the raised point of the railway. They were broken, damaged husks, windows presumably blown out by the first accident that rendered much of the Zone uninhabitable. Corners of wall were missing, rubble strewn all over, while the garages had abandoned, destroyed or stripped vehicles within them, including pickup trucks and a bus.

She took a knee behind a rock, looking into the place and watching as men clad in black jackets, jeans and torn shoes, plus hoods and various face masks, patrolled the place. Some were sat around a campfire, laughing, drinking and eating, weapons by their persons. Double-barrel shotguns that looked worn, old rifles of the same pattern as Hip and Fanatic carried and even pistols and hunting weapons. Even SKSes.

She wondered if it was even a good idea to try and sneak through. She knelt and opened up her PDA again, hiding as best as she could behind the rocks and checking the exact location by zooming in. Okay, the stuff she needed to find was somewhere in a garage close to where the guys around the campfire. She made a mental note and looked over, waiting for a few minutes to see if the guys patrolling with their guns out had any form of pattern.

She counted about six guys outside and four more at the campfire. A total of ten. She could probably sneak through, seeing as she saw that they did keep a pattern similar to just going in circles around the place. Even of the guys outside, some simply stuck around and smoked cigarettes and that was about it. She hummed and looked for an alternate route to the place...

And froze as she felt the barrel of a pistol put to the back of her head. The man behind her spoke Russian, voicing something or other to his boys. Several guns cocked, before the man called out to her in broken English, "What the matter, boy?! Turn around and drop that gun, bitch!" which caused Ruby to lift her hands up. He barked again, "TURN AROUND, SUKA!"

Ruby did as asked, her heart racing, face pale. Tears welled in the corners of her eyes as the man laughed, lowering his pistol and stating something that involved another Suka. He grabbed her by the collar and pinned her against a tree, stating, "Don't know why a cutie like you is here, but me and my boys were waiting for someone else to swing by... Not that we complainin'."

Lecherous laughter echoed from the men around as they gathered, Ruby suddenly realizing just how deep in the shit she was as she saw the entire camp crowd around her. She wanted to scream for help, but felt her words stuck in her throat and only the sharpest noises of fear come out as the man pulled out a knife and gently caressed her cheek with it, only to feel the blade repulsed by her Aura. He blanked, demanded, "What the fuck was that?!"

Before Ruby could answer, or squeak out any more fearful noises... The man's head exploded.

A shot rang out as Ruby slid down the tree, staring at the corpse before her collapse with half his skull missing. She felt the warmth of his blood on her face and stared, the ground, ashen grass and even her clothes painted a deep scarlet. She wasn't even sure where the shot came from, watching as the men around her scrambled and fired their weapons wildly, some running back inside.

Two more dropped dead, the sniper's shots accurate, painting the dirt scarlet. The corpses fell, similar chunks of skull missing from them. Ruby yelped as one of the men grabbed her by the throat and pinned her against him with his hand, lifting his Kalash and firing wildly at the hills, screaming insults, swears and various other things in some Slavic language.

Ruby's mind soon clicked into place as she realized where she was. She could worry about seeing someone die in front of her later! She needed to get outta there, now!

Planting the heel of her boot into the man's foot, she heard him scream in pain and felt the pressure on her windpipe go away. Quickly as she remembered what Yang had taught her, the girl utilized her Aura to enhance the toe of her boot now, as she spun rapidly, delivering a roundhouse kick to the man's forehead and sending him stumbling back. She scrambled, hearing another pair of gunshots echo in the distance and two more corpses drop.

She jumped to her gun, grabbing it off the floor and quickly checking it. She scrambled to try and get her safety off as the man behind her screamed at her, but the damn thing wouldn't budge. She turned around and mistakenly clicked open her bayonet, lifting the rifle with the blade pointed at the man just as he pounced at her. She heard the familiar, sharp hiss of a blade meeting flesh, except this one wasn't an animal's or a Grimm's faux-skin.

Her silver eyes shot wide open as she saw the blood pooling around the wound she had inflicted with her blade, his dark jacket already becoming darker. The stain expanded outward from the wound just below his chest, where his heart was. She watched him collapse, the strength of his body draining onto the blade, then the barrel, then the stock of her weapon. He fell to the side, the SKS's bayonet stuck to his chest as Ruby covered her mouth, feeling the warmth of his blood on her hands.

She scrambled back way from the corpse, over another and letting out a shrill scream, before pinning herself against a tree and looking at the near-dozen dead men on the floor. She started to hyperventilate, heart firing off like an assault rifle. The sounds of gunfire to her immediate left, bursts of automatic weapons, were muffled as the shock finally set in.

She'd just killed someone...

Unwittingly or not, she'd just killed someone.

She felt bile rise up in her throat as she stood there, pale and looking at the dead man on the floor. The sole consolation she had was that she had not seen his face, for it was covered by a balaclava. He lay there, blood still pooling around his corpse. She hoped he'd at least died quickly, considering the pain of being stabbed. She yelped again, feeling a hand touch her shoulder. She tried fighting it off, only to feel herself lifted to her feet. She screamed, staring at the tinted goggles of an old gas mask, before she heard the man behind it call out, "Calm down!" His accent less oppressive than the others around.

Ruby's breaths were ragged, fast. She stared at him as he took off his gas mask, revealing a scarred young man, maybe five years her senior, with jet-black hair and dark eyes. He told her, "It's okay. You're safe now, Roza... They're all gone," before looking her over. He looked her in the eye and spoke as gently as he could, "They didn't hurt you, did they?"

She squeaked out a noise, then covered her mouth and shook her head as the tears in her eyes returned. She peered past him, at the corpse of the man. He looked back, then pulled her vision away from him and said, "Roza... Look at me... You did what you had to do. You defended yourself and nobody will fault you for it, especially not here. The only person who'll be pissed will be Hip and she's more likely to be angry at me for letting you even get in this situation."

Ruby swallowed, feeling the tears in her eyes begin to flow, the dam breaking the moment she heard Hip's name and realized the trooper before her was a friend. She pounced on the man, wrapping him into a hug as her heart slowed. She wept, wailing into his shoulder as he hugged her, patting her head. He said nothing, however, simply looking to the corpse with the SKS in his chest.

The moment Ruby started to calm down a little, the man walked to the corpse. He picked up Ruby's SKS, cleaned and folded the bayonet, then walked back to Ruby. He extended it to her, much to her surprise, then said, "It's your gun. C'mon. Let's go grab what Sidorovich wanted and get you back to the village to rest..." before humming and sighing, "Oh, right... Hi. I'm Ștefan. Ștefan Razcik... Call me Prapor."

Ruby nodded and replied weakly, "R-Ruby..."

He smiled gently, then patted her on the head and said, "I know, Roza. Hip told me about you and... Let's just say I met a common acquaintance deeper in the Zone myself. We can talk about it back at the village, eh? C'mon..." only to start walking the moment she joined him. The trip back to the village would be relatively long, to the point nightfall hit just as they arrived...