<strong>RUTH</strong><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide</div><div class="spoiler_body">Anise doesn't have much more to ramble; she's conservative with what she's got to say, at least usually, at least when it comes to work.  So she staggers on, and soon, with Ruth's help, she's in the infirmary, crashed down on station one, one of these little cots that serve well enough for Ruth's purposes.  By then, the damage is more apparent; the eye she'd had covered has swollen shut, but it looks like most of the blood is coming from a little bit further up, past her hairline.  Getting her out of the top, she's got some pretty awful bruises, black and blue and green and nasty all over her side, like whoever did this to her never bothered to move her, just took laid out all that damage on the one side.<br/><br/>Yeah, she's got broken ribs, a couple of them, without a doubt.  Clavicle, too, definitely seen better days.  At least the bleeding has slowed; all those bruises are accompanied by a few scrapes and cuts here and there, but the worst of the damage is definitely blunt.<br/><br/>That's hopeful, though.  She's not showing any real signs of internal damage, besides the few smashed bones, but isn't that how internal damage goes?<br/><br/>"Shit," John says, and he says it a lot since Anise and Ruth return.  He's a good aide, though, and if nothing else, he knows where to find those things that Ruth needs to do treat her patient.  His skill is mostly just in that, though -- being a good aide.<br/><br/>Once things have calmed down a bit, Anise is talkative again, though sticking with her rather matter-of-fact approach.  "I'm going to kill her," she says, crossing an arm over her wounded torso.  "I'm going to pull that bat out of her hands and smash her head in."<br/><br/>While Ruth is tending to Anise, John says, "Should we do something?"<br/><br/><strong>Ruth</strong>, should you do something?  What do you do?</div></div><br/><strong>HAVEL</strong><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide</div><div class="spoiler_body">Morgan and Havel take off; he's on a mission, and she's not the most talkative person as it is, and over the roar of their bikes, what's even the point of trying?  She's got a pretty slick bike, not the same kind of beastly, high-handled monsters most of the guys ride but a hunched over thing, more like she's riding a rocket than a chopper.  She's gotten some shit for it in the past, but whatever; when the gang needs an outrider, who do they send?  Yeah.<br/><br/>The ride to Gomorrah from the laager isn't incredibly long; a few minutes, maybe, ambling along at a comfortable pace; the roads aren't in good shape anymore, and going too terrible fast isn't incredibly safe, even for someone who is very at home with their bike.  Wouldn't do very well to have things break down five minutes out.  Beyond that, the road follows a few twists and turns along the way; Gomorrah's not settled in perfectly flat land, after all, and some hills sprout up as they go.<br/><br/>Those hills usually don't provide an issue, but they cause some problems for Havel and Morgan as they head toward town now: they round a corner and are greeted, very abruptly, with something nobody really ever wants to see: a funeral procession marches down the road.  Now, for most of Gomorrah, dying just means getting tossed into a shallow grave, unless someone cares about you.  Even if they do, it usually doesn't account for much more than a decent grave and a wooden marker.<br/><br/>But these aren't average Gomorrans; marching straight down the road, head-on with Havel and Morgan, these are a bunch of solar cultists.  It's a group of about eight people, each of them wearing nothing more than skirts in yellow, orange, red, that have long since gone so pale as to border white.  Some of them have dark skin; a few others are tanned so dark that they match.  A pair of them are just badly sunburnt.  The high priest leads the procession; it's an older guy, maybe his late forties, all wrinkled by age, with skin black as the midnight sky and a skirt as white as bone.  He's a scarce sight; he doesn't often leave his cult's little compound out in the desert waste.<br/><br/>One of 'em looks familiar to Havel -- shit, is that Yankee?  Fucker's been scarce around camp the past few days, but here he is, wearing a not-very-faded orange skirt, walking alongside this corpse-bearing litter.  He's sweating pretty bad, but it's to be expected, more than these others are for sure.  He's got the first inkling of the tattoos all of the other cultists are wearing -- a bright yellow mark on his forehead.<br/><br/>There's room to bypass these people if you take off the side of the road, but it'll be acting under fire, and the fire is, does your bike hold up to this sudden off-roading?  If you take it slow, that's easier, but the high priest is with 'em, and rumors abound that all it takes is the high priest setting eyes on you to pull you under his sway.  You don't believe that superstitious bullshit though, do you?  <strong>Havel</strong>, what do you do?</div></div>