<i>I nearly died, I nearly </i>died<i>, I nearly died again. Careful... I need to focus, I need to </i>focus<i> on even the tasks that I've never had to focus on before. Too much new going on, just too much to take anything for granted. Oh yes, I could relax, relax now that everything has calmed down... and catch the first bullet that flies nearby. Or, I could focus, focus and observe, and not stand in the fricking line of fire...</i><br/><br/>Finally, having a moment to think about something else than the tense situation, the memories of her near-death experiences came back to haunt her. Annie looked towards the whirling blades of the chopper and felt a cloak of desperation falling on her shoulders as she realized she'd have to climb back inside it.<i>One last push and then it's all over,</i>she thought,<i>The job will be done, and </i>then<i> I can relax. Not now. Now, I focus...</i><br/><br/>For the first time, she paid a careful look at the people around her. The masked man... Project 19, who she was now more afraid of than the deathclaw she had fled from. It wasn't the<i>oh—shit—oh—shit</i>type of fear, but the kind of that would wake her up at night to turn on the lights and see that the room was indeed still empty. The deathclaw she had seen coming, at least, even if it had been just from a few feet away. And more importantly, she had known deathclaws existed before her first encounter with one.<br/><br/>Now, the woman... was she just as helpless as Annie herself, or just pretending? People were difficult to read... Annie looked further past D, who suddenly seemed a lot less influential without his weapons on. She observed the pink-haired girl administering herself with something, hopefully the Radaway that Annie hadn't had time to give her, although she wondered if she'd even have remembered to do so. There was someone near the girl, who Annie didn't remember noticing before. He, umm,<i>she</i>, also had a mohawk. Maybe those two knew each other...<i>Oh for heaven's sake, what's with all these assumptions?! It's not a goddamn playground where you can make friends just by happening to have shirts of the same color... Besides, her mohawk is blue.</i>The corner of Annie's mouth made a little twitch.<br/><br/>Realizing how utterly lost she was out here, she sighed in frustration. In Annie's world, deathclaws were mere campfire stories, and guns killed geckos and feral ghouls, not people. In her world, people<i>helped</i>each other out. Her world was protected by the secure location of the ruined vault her commune had settled long ago. It hadn't been easy living there, but at least it hadn't been a fricking<i>nightmare</i>. This wasn't her world. Her world ended beyond the hills that she had crossed over a week ago.<br/><br/>Annie noted the ghoul near the two girls, and then her gaze drifted back to the chopper... There seemed to be more people there than those they had left there, but Annie couldn't see them clearly. Then she recalled the friendly face of the woman who had saved her life, and once again, all her focus was completely gone.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>