It’s amazing how benign some problems can seem if looked at from a different angle. If you just take yourself out of the situation and look at it from far enough away, the once-monumental problems seem miniscule. Like ants, almost. The irony was not lost on Marcus as he looked down from his perch atop Wesley High School at the cluster of Realians that had gathered at the front of the school. They were terrifying not in the sense that they were grotesque horrors, but in that the opposite was true, and far more unsettling. They looked far too human, actually. Indeed, they<span style="font-style: italic">used</span>to be humans in the embryonic stage, but they were genetically engineered to be something far greater than human.<br/><br/>Their eyes were what made them terrifying. Mad, frantic, blind with indiscriminate bloodlust. Everything about them was unsettling, though. The way they posture themselves loosely, just enough to keep themselves upright, was almost enough to liken them to zombies. Unfortunately, they were so much more intelligent than that.<br/><br/>“We’ve got five at the south entrance. One of them has a gun,” he reported to his com device, nestled into his shoulder where he’d clipped it onto the strap of his backpack. “Lex, you copy?”<br/><br/>A few moments of radio silence passed by, and just as Marc made to reach for his shoulder again, the silence finally broke with a static. “Copy that. We’re clear at the north entrance. Straight shot to Termina.”<br/><br/>“Right, coming to you.”  His leg swung out from under him in a rather dramatic step down from the lip of the building’s roof. He spared one more look over the edge, both to make sure that none of them had heard the drop and to visualize blowing them all up one last time before he left.<br/><br/>The rooftop walk from the front of the building to the south took very little time. The school wasn’t that big - a true testament to the value the government put on education back when there was a functioning government to dictate that sort of thing. Marcus personally would’ve killed a man if it meant he could attend a school that was made of cardboard and duct tape. Schools weren’t particularly high on the list of priorities for the survivors. Book learning had to give way to more practical learning; building traps and shelters, how to keep warm in the winter, how to use a gun, how to not get killed.<br/><br/>On the bright side, he supposed that this would make an interesting period to discuss in new history books, in a new generation. Problems and perspectives.<br/><br/>“Took you long enough.”<br/><br/>Marcus rolled his eyes. “Took me like, a couple of minutes.”<br/><br/>Lex scoffed from his seat on the edge of the building, legs idly swinging in the air. “Find anything?”<br/><br/>“Not much that’ll get us anything,” he admitted, dropping down to sit next to his brother. He shrugged out of his backpack and dumped its contents down behind them on the roof, hands sifting through canned food, batteries, rolled up blankets. It hadn’t occurred to him to show Lex - that didn’t do much good these days - but long, spindly fingers interrupted Marcus’ inventory anyway, feeling and regarding each of the items individually. After the elder of the two was at least semi-satisfied with the turnout, Marcus pulled out something else from the side pocket of his cargo pants and held it out for wandering hands to find.<br/><br/>Lex turned it over in his hands, ghosted the tips of his fingers over the zipper before finally opening the pack and delving into the contents. “What’s this?”<br/><br/>“It’s a suture kit,” Marcus began, but by the time he made to continue, Lex’s interest had already piqued and he’d begun pulling out each item and feeling over the packaging for any holes or tears. “Everything’s still sanitary. I checked the packaging before I got excited about it.”<br/><br/>His brother sighed fondly, a sound that he was not used to hearing anymore, and tucked everything neatly pack inside and zipped the pack. “Marc, this is fantastic.”<br/><br/>Marcus smirked. “Yeah, I thought you might like that. You gonna apologize for complaining that I took too long, now?”<br/><br/>“No,” Lex answered simply, holding out his free hand for Marcus to help him up. And he did, like a good little brother and full-time babysitter. “Now, get us down from here. Termina awaits.”