The exotic woman wasn't stupid.  Not only did she jerk her crossbow away when the Cad distractedly tried to take it, but she certainly saw the way he looked her over as he took the<span style="font-style: italic">regular</span>bow and arrows she was offering with her<span style="font-style: italic">other</span>hand.  She sniffed audibly as she turned away.  Zeref would remember it clearly... she was purely practical in most respects, one of the few women of the tribe that had little interest in enjoying her body.  True, the experiences she'd had were all involving the brutes walking around, so she probably wouldn't have<span style="font-style: italic">enjoyed</span>them even if she'd been a<span style="font-style: italic">willing</span>participant.  No, this woman, what she liked most was playing with things... trying to figure out how relics from the past worked, or had once worked, or building things like her crossbows.  She'd been working on some kind of machine before the mindkillers came... it was scrap by now, of course.  For Zeref to bed her would either require a great deal of patience and charisma... or just a great deal of strength.  In the same way as she wouldn't have offered him one of her prize crossbows unless he'd earned that right first, she wouldn't let him deposit his seed within her without him first having<span style="font-style: italic">merited</span>it.  His distracted attempt to take her prize weapon from her hadn't paved the way for an easy task...<br/><br/>She hadn't been with the clan for long... she'd arrived with a group from another clansite a year or two ago.  Something bad had happened during their mindless time after a mindkiller strike, something that had left few survivors.  Melissa's clan, as a generally well-organized one, had survived those times and had often accepted wandering groups of humans.  It helped maintain some genetic diversity, and was one of the reasons there were humans of so many different appearances here.<br/><br/>"Why, thank you, Master Breeder," Onyx said with a wide smile, stepping passed him.  She stopped and turned to face everyone.  "Now, everybody stay close together... very close.  I know you all say you remember things," she glanced at Ted, who was presently picking his nose, "but I, for one, know my memories are a bit hazy.  I might miss signs I would've recognized a week ago..." she scowled, then shook her head.  "Not too close together, so we don't get snapped up all at once, and not too much of a line, so we don't get picked off one by one.  And keep your eyes open.  With the mindkillers having just passed, there could be mutants out there too." She bared her teeth.  Mutants... new beasts, or as had happened at times, humans that had mutated into something no longer human.  Onyx had no compassion for those creatures...<br/><br/>"Retrievers," Mina piped up, stepping next to the much taller Onyx.  "You know your job.  Be ready to die if you've got to.  Give yourselves to the beasts --- in whatever way you have to --- to keep them away from The Cad.  And, ah, from Tia and Ted, too, of course," she added, smiling, not seeming apologetic about the slip of the tongue as she nodded at the girl with the crossbow and Ted.  "The rest of us are more expendable... so just try if he, if those three aren't in trouble, 'kay?"<br/><br/>The three other Retrievers nodded, smiling, understanding perfectly what she meant and was thinking.  Their priority was Zeref... The Cad.  The others, Tia and Ted, were secondary... and the rest were details.<br/><br/>"All right... let's go, then..." Onyx looked at Zeref.  "You remember, right?  That we've got some protection from the beasts around here, because we have a lot of dangerous plants in the tall grasses around the site?"  She leaned in close and spoke more softly, so only he would hear her.  "My memories are a bit fuzzy... don't know about you.  But... just be careful of everything, okay?  Stay away from clumps of grass if you can..."  She straightened.  "Let's go!"<br/><br/>And Onyx led them out of the clansite, heading into the wilds for their first hunt.<br/><br/>As she had warned, there were tall grasses everywhere, dotten here and there with open areas but in most spots taller than a tall man, perfect to conceal deadly flora or fauna.  A trampled path showed where the hunting and foraging parties usually passed, but already the grasses had grown up passed waist height in the last few days... and Zeref would remember that the path had to change often, lest the predators adapt to the patterns.  Passing through these grasses would be dangerous indeed... though at present, he had Mina, Rachel, Janessa, and Lucille pressed in rather closely from all sides... four Retrievers a little<span style="font-style: italic">too</span>eager to protect him.  The other girls spread out a bit more, but he remained at the center of the group.<br/><br/>Poor Ted could only follow, watching the micro-throng with a grumpy look on his face.