Alyssa decided to join Stephen and Carly when they mentioned they would be heading into Chandler-Gilbert to look for his family. She had already committed her team to being one of the several scout teams looking to make contact with whoever was running this portion of the city. It seemed she could knock out two birds with one stone in doing so. Stephen’s family lived in a housing development that was located on the south-eastern edge of the zone the System had designated as the city proper. Leaving from Sky Harbor Airport would set them on a route that crossed directly through the unknown territory, approximately thirty miles in total.

While this would normally not be a terrible distance for her and Lulu alone, her party now consisted of low Endurance mages, and the terrain between here and there had been thoroughly decimated. The majority of the tallest buildings had been collapsed, sometimes flattened where they stood, though, more often than not it seemed like the hand of an angry god and took a swing, knocking them into each other, or to lie in the middle of the road, obstructing passage and forcing her group to find a different route.

Like much of New Phoenix, this destruction extended to an oddly lesser degree, to the multitude of strip malls, apartments, and housing projects. Gas stations still smoldered where they had been burnt down when the now non-existent fire department was unable to respond. Probably because they were being eaten by some hideous monster, or crushed by falling skyscrapers. Glass, plaster, and bits of cinder block littered the parking lots.

Houses were either burnt, burning, or collapsed in some fashion or another. She noted a yard, the grass blackened from a long burnt out fire, a child's swing set similarly blackened and twisted at an odd angle. Another that looked relatively unscathed but for the trio of massive claw marks across the front door where some monstrous beast had attempted to violently enter the building.

Cars and trucks were scattered, smashed, flipped over, and rarely untouched. Occasionally, a cluster of dead bodies would be found in intersections, or hanging out of store fronts, windows, doors, the aforementioned vehicles. All that remained were torn bloody clothes and bones, long since stripped of flesh, muscle, and vital organs by some errant predator or scavenger.

One thought repeatedly came to mind as she walked with her group, picking their way through the devastation, “This is fucking depressing.”

No one immediately responded. They were too subdued by the chaos and destruction to say much. She had pretty much hit the nail on the head.

“It is, but there's something else to it, too. I feel like we’re being watched. Felt it ever since we left the airport.” Stephen commented, leaning against a burnt out Escalade. “Every time I look back, the sensation flees, like whatever is watching me is just at the edge of my vision.”

Choox’il risked climbing the side of a mostly intact gas station to scan their surroundings, “You are right, Stephen. We have been followed for some time. I have only caught glimpses of them.”

Alyssa looked around, realizing she had the same sensation, though not nearly as intense as what the others were describing, though when she looked for it, she could tell that someone was watching. She shivered involuntarily as Carly flared her magic in anger, the temperature dropping several degrees, despite the other teenager being several feet away.

“We can start destroying everything around us that could hide someone?” She offered snarkily.

Choox’il quirked a slight smile as she scanned a dilapidated building behind them, “We might need to, though these might be the residents of the zone trying to decide if we are a threat or not.”

“David said they don’t check if you’re a threat or not, they just attack. I think we’re going to have to confront them at some point. At least if we want to establish contact. Have any of the other teams found anyone living yet?” Carly said, radiating cold nervous energy.

Alyssa was about to respond with copious amounts of sarcasm when the sound of a rock hitting the road in front of her snapped her attention towards the corner of a small sedan. She saw the rock bounce and roll to rest by the front tire. Everyone’s attention was on the rock.

Time slowed as all hell broke loose around her, she attempted to move for cover but found an arm wrapping around her shoulders and a dagger already sinking into the soft tissue of her exposed neck. Fortunately for her, she was standing under the shade of a gas station awning and was able to quickly melt into the shadows. She vaguely heard the gasp of a woman as she disappeared, then reappeared behind her already plunging a sword through her back to protrude from her belly. With her left arm she grabbed the would-be assassin by the neck and held her close.

Time sped up and the sound of battle assaulted her senses. Choox’il had already dropped three of the brown clad attackers, while Carly had encased another pair in ice. Stephen had thrown a young man several feet with one of his gravity spells when he attempted the same move Alyssa’s attacker had attempted on her. Another half dozen men and women wearing brown clothing retreated from Lulu’s shadowy form while Alyssa held her assailant in place.

The woman wheezed in pain, but didn’t struggle as she registered her comrades retreating into the distance. Choox’il moved to a different vantage point and nodded down to her, “We’re clear! Find out what you can from this one and do it quickly, we should not stay for long!”

Alyssa thought furiously about how to go about extracting information to the girl she currently had skewered on one of her blades. With the System in place it wasn’t a wound that would kill you outright, though from the tears, blood, and groaning facial expressions she was certain that the girl felt like she was about to die. Depending on the answers she gave, that was still on the table for all she cared. She chose to drag the girl, kicking, screaming, and gasping in pain, inside the partially collapsed gas station, where she could interrogate the girl with less worry of catching a stray bullet to the face.

When they were well within the shelter of the building, Alyssa wrenched the sword free from the girl’s abdomen, then backhanded her hard with her replacement blacksteel arm. Before the girl could complete the scream that was gurgling up from the back of her throat as Alyssa’s weapon was pulled free, she found herself spinning hard to the floor where a pair of teeth bounced across the tile preceding a glob of blood from her mouth.

Alyssa waited while the girl gathered her wits, seeing that she was clearly stunned, quite possibly seeing stars, and probably suffering a light concussion. Stephen and Carly followed her in silently, casting questioning glances in her direction as they watched their attacker writhing in pain on the ground.

After a few moments, the girl managed to roll over to glare at them with brilliant blue eyes, framed in dirty blonde hair with rosy pink lips smeared in blood. A scowl on her face indicated the fight wasn’t completely beaten out of her, though she kept her mouth shut and waited.

“Okay. Now, you wanna talk, or do I need to stick my sword somewhere more vital?” Alyssa looked down on her, an impassive look on her face.

The girl spit a phlegmy glob of blood to the side then hissed in defiance,“If you think you’re going to make me a slave, I’ll kill myself first!”

Alyssa considered her carefully for a moment before responding, taking the time to get a good look at the girl. She was dirty, like she’d been living out of a dumpster. She would know, she’d done it for a time when she was between flop houses not too long ago. The problem with the dirty girl is that she didn’t look like the kind of girl to be involved in that scene, rather, she looked more like a cheerleader. Like the pretty girl the former Alyssa would have despised for her good fortune.

She looked at the pretty, dirty girl’s blood soaked hands where she held them over the wound in her stomach that was slowly closing up as the System worked its magic. She noticed the stylishly painted nails, chipped, cracked, with grime caked beneath them. A clump of hair, knitted together with dried blood, possibly her own.The only thing the girl seemed to have going for her was a brown leather breastplate and knee pads. Everything else she wore was similarly old, dirty, and torn.

“I’m Alyssa, The First Challenger. What’s your name?”

The girl’s eyes went wide, then narrowed in suspicion, “Bullshit. Everyone knows the First Challenger is with the Warlord of Winslow. Probably sucking his dirty little cock right now!”

Alyssa resisted the urge to smack the girl again. She heard Carly snicker behind her while watching the road for more of this girl's friends. “Just kick her loose, she’s too fucking stupid to realize we’re not slavers, even though we are clearly not the right… uh… you know.”

Alyssa instead opted to level her sword in the girl’s petulant face, “No. I haven’t sucked his dick. I haven’t done that to anyone since before the System, actually. Look, whether you believe I am who I say I am or not, we aren’t here to enslave you. We’re just looking for the whereabouts of our friends’ family who live out here.” She seemed to have the girl’s attention now. “So I’ll ask again, what’s your name?”

The girl bit her lip and scooted back against a row of shelving, the wound in her gut now mostly healed so she wasn’t wincing with every breath. “Jennifer. You’re really not here taking slaves? What about the spider lady with you, isn’t she a monster? Did you tame her or something?”

Alyssa rolled her eyes as Carly snickered behind her again, “You really don’t know anything do you? She’s not a monster. She’s my friend. And she’s also a Refugee. If you know of the Warlord, then you should know about Refugees. Karl’s been giving Sanctuary to all the offworld refugees he can, they now fight for him.”

Alyssa held out her metal hand now to Jennifer. She looked up at the arm, realization washing over her face, “Oh… damn, you… you’re her! You’re really her!?”

Carly blurted out in exasperation at the ridiculous girl, “YES! We ARE who we say we ARE! Can we stop trying to kill each other now and talk like normal people?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry. It’s not been easy since the slave raids started. Lost a lot of friends. We pretty much stay hidden and attack on sight. The guy that owns the city core moved it to the ASUPC campus and fortified it. Everyone else has basically gathered into little gangs that patrol the ruins for scraps while avoiding the raiders.”

“Why? Why not all gather together?” Carly asked from behind Alyssa.

“Uh, I’m not sure, I know the guy in charge of the city is a real hard ass. Used to be military or something. He and the Sheriff had a falling out. If you don’t want to do things his way, he kicks you out.”

“Where’s the Sheriff?”

“Dead. I think. He tried to cross the desert and get help from Tucson. The monsters in that direction are super strong. No one goes there if they want to continue breathing.”

“Ok, so the dude in charge is a dick, the other guy is probably dead, why not go to Phoenix or Mesa?”

The girls attitude slightly returned when she responded, “Fuck that, we’ve seen them fighting for weeks now, and we saw that building fall the other day. You guys showing up are just delaying the inevitable. At least here, if we stay hidden, the slavers don’t bother us anymore. Sure, every now and again a group comes in, but they don’t go near the campus, it’s too well fortified. And Mesa, they don’t have shit for defense. Nah, we’re better off running and hiding right now.”

Alyssa wanted to argue back at the girl, but she understood her logic. Before she had grown and leveled, she would have probably done the same thing. Simply taking the path of least resistance. As she searched for something to say, the building they stood in began to shake violently, a moment later Choox’il shouted a warning.

“Something big is happening at the Line. I see smoke rising near the airport.”

The low rumble of an explosion followed the vibrating earth shortly after the spider woman’s report. Then the ground shook again, and for longer. Alyssa and her team stepped out of the gas station to watch as several more plumes of smoke and debris shot up over the horizon. Jennifer also stepped out of the building, hesitantly eyeing what was clearly the start of a major battle.

“See, not a good place to be right now. Looks like the King is making his final push to dislodge the Governor.”

Alyssa didn’t bother informing the girl the Governor was already dead, she was quickly getting tired of talking to her.

“I need to get back there. Karl hadn’t planned to start the battle just yet, thought we’d have more time to look.”, She turned her attention to Stephen, ignoring Jennifer altogether, “What do you want to do?”

He nodded towards Jennifer, “She seems to be about the same age as my oldest sister. Which school did you go to? My sister’s name is Andrea Hawkings, she went to Queen’s Creek. You don’t happen to know her, do you?”

Jennifer stared blankly past the group as she looked at the picture Stephen sent to her VPA, “No, I went to Gilbert. But if your family was in Queen’s Creek, I’m sorry, but they’re probably gone. That’s right on the edge of the high level hunting ground. Like I said before, nasty shit comes out of there.”

Stephen looked at Jennifer for a moment, the look on his face screaming that he wanted to argue with her, then he looked at Alyssa, “I still need to at least see if there’s anything left at the house. I still need to go there, I’ll go alone if I have to.”

Well, I ain’t letting you go alone, not with all these vagabonds running about attacking on sight.” Carly muttered, giving Jennifer a sidelong look.

Jennifer, against her better judgement, decided she liked the young man’s determination. She still thought he was being foolish, but she could see he wasn’t going to give up until he’d found some indication to the fate of his family. As they hadn’t killed her, she decided the least she could do was guide them through the ruins of Chandler-Gilbert.

“Look, I’ll escort you through the city, seeing as you didn’t kill me. And there’s not even a collar around my neck. So, I figure I can do that much. Maybe we can even check the Campus. They probably won’t let me in, but they won’t shoot me on sight either.”

Stephen smiled at her offer of help, Carly, on the other hand, gave Jennifer a questioning look, “Oh, why is that?”

“Uh, well, that military guy? He’s my dad. He kinda banished me when I sided with the Sheriff over him. I didn’t really think he’d do it. He might not have if I hadn’t questioned his leadership publicly. Kind of an egg on face moment he couldn’t back down from. Whoops!” She shrugged nonchalantly at the group.

“Hmph, guess it’s good I didn’t kill you outright.” Alyssa quipped as Lulu appeared at her side, she climbed into her saddle and shot off for New Phoenix with a wave to her friends, Choox’il following close behind her.

Jennifer looked around sheepishly, then waved for her new companions to follow, “Uh, this way. I know a route that will keep us largely hidden from all the other factions.”

They followed her to a large storm drain that carved into the rocky desert earth, a trickle of water flowing from the mouth of the entrance. “Here it is, this will take us to within a mile of the Campus.”

Stephen entered the tunnel without hesitation, Carly followed closely behind. Before entering, she leaned in to whisper to the girl, “You screw us over, I swear on my last dying breath I’ll turn your tiny tits into popsicles!”