Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

Moray nods, adding that knowledge to his mental collage of Kara - and knocking half the damn thing off, rattling the picture he'd started to put together. Well, that was what he got for trying to figure her out, he guesses.

"Well, at least it's not the dunce corner," he notes, and sets the horn up on the shelf, then steps back to stand next to Kara, surveying the lost list of trophies she's secured from all over the place. "We'll have to bring one back from the Sierra, I guess."

There's something about her stillness that lights a frission of energy through his hands and shoulders; it seethes, uncomfortable and making his hands want to move. What he'll do with them is beyond Moray; but something about the way Kara is uncertain he finds intolerable.

Then Hrolf takes the decision out of his hands by yanking the monkey fist out of Kara's hand and swinging it around to thwap her in the thigh with it, then takes off down a hallway towards, presumably, his own adventure.

"We'll have to bring one back from the Sierra, I guess."

“Yeah.”

Quiet.

And then Hrolf is suddenly right there, snatching the toy she’d made for him and thwaping it against her leg before taking off. Kara’s instantly thrilled, watching him take off for the hallway with a genuine smile and a slight widening of her eyes.

“He likes it!” She had figured it’d be fifty fifty on him rejecting the toy, but he’d snagged it away like that like any regular dog-aw, she loves that furry Legion deserter. She’d get to pet him in no time.

Kara glances back up to Moray, then the horn-and then down at herself for some reason, her jacket. She looks like herself again, anyway-all her impulse and amusement.

“Here-” Her delicate, deft little fingers drift across the various pins and badges before settling on what was secretly her favorite-a brass little bird relief against a shield shape, his chest shined up to a golden sheen, delicately etched feathers surprisingly detailed for however old it had to have been. “This is my luckiest one." She slips it off, a very obvious blank space where it'd been, the denim behind it less faded than the rest of her jacket.

"Luck’ll be important in that place, every lick we can get of it.” She’s waiting for permission, it kind of seemed like. Large blue eyes looking up at him, holding the pin in her fingers. “I got lots of luck to spare, but you my friend…” A slow grin blossoms on her lips.

Always a joke with this one.

Moray hums in amusement, then reaches up and starts undoing buttons on his fatigues. Four quiet snaps in the stillness of the underground Vault echo, before he pulls the top apart, baring a faded tank-top underneath the outer fatigues. The fatigues had always smeared his shape into bland bagginess, but now the hard curves of his pectorals arc from beneath the low collar of that tank-top, and the slightest glimpse of his arms, equally ridged with muscle, all faintly damp from the sweat of the desert.

" . . . It won't fall off, here," is all he says, and waits for Kara to pin him through, hands clenched on the spread flaps of his fatigues - tense, anxious, for reasons he can't say. "That'd be unlucky, wouldn't it."

Moray's voice is quiet, a little rumble as he looks down at the fire-haired woman with an inscrutable gaze.

A joke about a pin paying for a disrobing flits across her brain but doesn’t reach her lips, for once. Didn’t seem right, somehow.

“It’s stuck with me,” Kara says cheerfully, eyes on what she’s doing- catching a pinch of cloth between the metal finger pads of her index and thumb, the butt of her hand and her wrist resting against his hard chest.

He’s holding tight to either side of the opened fatigues. She felt reassured about her not making the crass joke, for some reason.

She pokes the sharp little pin through the thin fabric, taking care not to accidentally poke him. She half wondered if that’d even be possible-dude didn’t just feel like marble, he looked like it, too. Her hand looked laughably small on his chest right now.

“I think it’ll stick with you, too.” The little bird was now pinned on the upper right side of his chest, an emblem of sorts that she decides she likes there. She taps it with a grin and pulls her hands back, pleased.

Kara wonders what he’s thinking about. She can’t tell, his green eyes didn’t always give much up. She also wonders about the touching rule, a little.

She hopes he wasn't thinking about Devon's hypocritical insult.

“There’s a shower and stuff, if you want.” She says, hands moving to clasp behind her back, a measure of cute. “No bubble bath though, sorry.” She teases.

Moray looks down at the bird, then does up the buttons over it, absent-minded. Once it's sealed beneath his outer shell, he glances up at her, eyes still green and opaque. "I don't have anything similar to give back," he says. "I don't keep things, as a general rule. Only functional tools - less to lose, all around."

His head tilts. "A lot of my old rules don't seem to have any good reason behind them when you're around," he says, and his hand halfway moves as if to - what? - but then he steps back instead and nods. "I'll go make use of that shower now, if you don't mind. I smell like Hrolf."

He feels vulnerable. The cool steel is cracking and he doesn't really know what to do with the absence of the burning hate-static that has defined his entire existence. It's too much to deal with for long, and he's done nothing but hang by Kara's side since she reentered his life in a way that gave her definition far past any human he's known for years.

He keeps wanting to know more, and the sudden existence of desire where there had only been indifference alarms him.

He could really use the shower, but equally, he needs to think.

“Well, now we’ve got the deathclaw horn.” Kara inclines her head towards it. It was what made her think to give him her favorite pin, in all honesty. Some kind of almost trade.

"A lot of my old rules don't seem to have any good reason behind them when you're around,"

“Rules, schmules.” Kara says with a wink. “Sometimes it’s nice to just do whatcha want.” She’s a bad influence, and she hoped to never be any other kind.

“Go ahead-water stays hot just about forever.” Easy. Companionable. And those deceptively innocent looking eyes always so goddamned amused. “I’ll steal mine after.”

~*~

Kara had started packing a slightly heavier pack, was still deciding on her load out. Draped over the back of the couch was a familiar royal blue vault suit, but someone had meticulously removed the yellow reflective numbers off the back, cut them up, and then refitted them together into a rough circle where the numbers had been-another sun motif, it looked like. Shorter, hardier boots sat behind the couch underneath the draped vault suit. Just like the taller ones she was currently wearing, an ace was tucked behind the laces and pressed against the tongue of one boot-this one the ace of hearts rather than diamonds.

Kara was testing the weight of a baseball bat it looked like, a gun sling across her back. She held the handle and tested the weight before sliding it back on the shelf and picking up another one. She apparently liked that one, and that’s what she dropped into the sling.

“Good shower?”

Moray reenters the clutter room freshly washed, droplets still trickling down from his short hair. "Yeah, been awhile since I was anyplace with enough water," he replies, glancing at her new outfit. "So you're going into an unknown death pit with a baseball bat as your weapon of choice?"

He picks out the other side of the couch and starts unlimbering his weapons: the heavy, brutal LMG that he still hasn't had a chance to fire, the sawed-off shotgun with its hilt spike, and his khukuri from his back sheathe. Then he starts pulling ammo clips and grenades from sewn-on pockets all over; a dozen lockpicks, screwdriver, and miniature chisel; needle and thread, compass, what's probably a miniature sundial; a bevy of equipment both useful and unnecessary, sealed into the formless-looking fabric of his fatigues. He accounts for each and carefully slides it back into its assigned pouch, and then starts running a through check on his twin guns, stripping and oiling them.

"I joke," Moray says, glancing over, "but if you're on the ground, it's awful hard to get a swing off with anything blunt without either clipping the ground or stopping short on what's atop you. I've got a spare knife if you need it."

“Baseball bats are plenty useful. Ya know, knocking heads, hitting home runs-” Kara responds cheerfully as she pulls it back out of the sling, an appreciative pat to her other hand. “-sliding through the handles of a supermarket to keep your ‘friends’ from hunting you down and killing you-very handy!”

That was an oddly specific mouthful.

She’s got her own hodge podge of items in her jacket and backpack. Bobby pins, bandages, food rations, water, ammunition, flashlight, blanket, two stealth boys and several grenades, not including the pineapple clipped on the inside of her jacket. The final gambit, she liked to call it.

“You act like I don’t know how to fight.” Kara says with smirk, leaning down just slightly to grasp the handle of the knife pressing into her calf and sheathed into her boot, a grin. “Just cause I run my mouth more than anything else doesn’t mean I can’t win a scrap.” She’d rather shoot someone and be done with it, but sometimes you just had to fight dirty-she’s too small to fuck around.

“And Lil Devil, of course.” A given.

She pokes around and finds the matching metal knee pad to the single one she was wearing, brought that over to the modified sunshine vault suit, unstrapping the other one to drop that there too.

Moray nods, satisfied. "I'm aware," he says. "So long as you have the fallback, all's good. This is just the first time I've gotten to -"

He chokes. What had been about to come out of his mouth is 'see what's under the jacket' but his brain engages in time to save him from that terminal-level blunder. He huffs, and restarts his sentence. " - compare arsenals."

Where the fuck had that come from? Why had he cared, instead of just straight-facing through it?

Stupid questions. Instead, he leans over and handily plucks the knife from her boot and sets to sharpening it, making sure the edge is both keen and clean. "Granted, I feel better now that I know your only options aren't a choice between talking shit and giving grenade hugs. It's nice to have a medium between verbal and actual suicide, sometimes."

Kara quirks a brow, smirks. “Where would the bubble gum fall in my ‘arsenal’?” She’d gotten a man killed just by talking at him, after all. Who knows what other stunts Kara’s pulled like it, reading a situation and knowing or guessing the people enough to get a desired outcome like that.

She watches him sharpen the knife, the movements rhythmic, second nature to him probably. “I mean, you gotta take yourself into account, too. I’m like, this big, don’t look like much of a threat, always cracking jokes. Someone gets too busy trying to look down my shirt and then WHAM-O!” Kara taps the bat against her hand again. “Right in the kisser. And then I just make off with their stuff and away I go.”

She’s being ridiculous. It seemed to be her favorite past time.

“You though, you’re too big to get away with that. You look scary, people expect you to be able to hold your own and then some.” Kara shook her head. “No surprise pop flies for you.”

She returned the bat to the gun sling and slipped out of that, setting it with the vault suit. Off came her jacket too, revealing the black tanktop again, her wiry toned arms and shoulders, the small waist. The small sun tattoo on her right shoulder blade. “I’m going to go steal that shower. Don’t go sharpening my bat now-and eat anything you want, I’m not hurting for stores anytime soon.”

~*~

She felt a million times better without the grime of several days of travel on her skin, fresh faced and rejuvenated. She’d changed into an undershirt and a pair of shorts of some kind-probably what she’d wear under the vault suit tomorrow.

“Pretty sure I’m as packed up as I get.” She’s saying, holding a towel to her hair and carrying a painted rebreather in the other. One side had the hazard symbol, and the other a poison warning-both painted on like graffiti. She tossed it in with her other stuff, then tossed the towel on top of one of the foot lockers next to the bed.

However eye-catching she was normally, post-shower Kara was an order of magnitude worse. Her slim limbs were out in eyeshot, and the brief t-shirt and shorts she was wearing was barely anything on that either. Moray's mouth thins and he deals with it by glancing over their shared supplies, making a mental list of everything. It comes up green after about twenty seconds, and he gives it up.

"You look good," he says, and then shuts up before he says something else stupid. Instead Moray compresses himself into one corner of the couch, his guns laid over the opposite arm, and stares at nothing.

He doesn't know what he's doing.

"It won't be easy," Moray says, flat. "But whoever Big Wig is, he hasn't got enough to deal with either one of us, let alone both. I'll get you through."

It doesn't feel like the right words, but it's what he knows how to say.

Moray seems mad he said it. His face was a study in blankness for a moment, utterly inscrutable. "Probably wouldn't wanna meet President Eden in these clothes, but hey, thanks." Hrm.

Kara nods, watching him. She's not so sure they're coming back, but they had a better shot together than apart, she figures-and her odds were a lot better with Moray in tow, now.

Not that bad odds had ever really stopped her before. And if Vanessa was there, she had to try no matter what.

But Sierra Madre was a seperate, different thing, something to start towards tomorrow. This was the -now-.

Kara's lazy saunter was more subdued as the woman moved over to the arm of the couch he was so compressed against. The fingers of her left hand touch the fabric of the arm rest, trace over it absently She's oh so casual-but also quiet again.

Like last night, she's intentionally telegraphing her movements.

"Couch is pretty lumpy." She says, nodding to the stuff on the opposite side. "And kinda full of stuff."

Her hand traces from the couch to his arm, once again trailing down to his wrist. "You shouldn't sleep here with a whole bed over there."

Moray looks up at her, and for a brief moment all of him is visible: the thin vein of humanity, the crunching gears of logic above, and the clouds of frustration, friction, between his parts and between him and all other parts of humans - internal inconsistencies, the gears catching and stuttering, heating up. For a heartstopping moment there is nothing in his face or body but that potential of motion and a teetering crash.

Then he untenses, so slow from unfamiliarity, and his hand turns over, fingers brushing against hers.

"Alright," Moray says, eyes flicking away. "Let me lose the fatigues."

He unbuttons the top, baring pale arms and the hints of a chest exercised like a machine or a craftman's tool, firm and solid. He shucks the pants, and the undershorts he wear look a little silly on him, to be honest; big, powerful legs and little grey shorts, functional and nothing more. Unadorned with his armor or his guns, without the forbidding distance or his cyclopean stare, Moray looks -

- different.

He steps up to the bed and seats himself there; he glances over at Kara, and scoots back enough to make room for her.

Then he offers her his hand.

It's more than a little scary. He might be vulnerable and she might not want to hurt him somehow, but he's also fucking dangerous, and maybe she's out of her goddamned mind entertaining ideas of 'protecting' him from...herself?

The fine hairs on the back of her neck raise and a spiral of alarm shoots down her spine, a warning siren somewhere in the back of her head that brings a quick and sudden urge to grin, maybe make a crass joke and then back the fuck off in a hurry. They were all alone in here. She also wasn't armed, and if he lost his shit and decided to attack her now, she was fucking toast.

But Kara represses her survival instincts for all she's worth, poker face without the smirk firmly in place. She never had been much for caution. Was all about the high stakes game, and like with anything else, she wins. Well. This time.

He slowly relaxes, his fingers brushing hers and his eyes losing some of the frightening intensity. Her jackhammering heart finally slows up a little.

And now she's repressing the urge to kiss him. Luckily he looks away, as she's not so great with the impulse control and ten seconds ago she'd been pretty sure she'd overstepped enough to get murdered. The fuck was wrong with her brain, anyway?

Kara steps back to watch him mostly undress. She's not exactly shy, and she's curious. But for his sake-okay, SOMEBODY'S sake, she makes herself busy with...straightening the couch cushion?

Wow, Kara.

Kara headed to a little control panel on the wall, turning on the power to the little green lamp and turning down everything else. She's questioning her own impulses a little, which wasn't like her. Too much thinking-the hell did she think she was, Play-doh?

"Way more comfortable, right?" She says with onenof those genuine smiles as she accepts the hand, a knee pressing into the bed as she climbed into it. He seemed better. No strangulations today.

Kara's small hand gave his a squeeze. She's warm, and the scent of her shampoo and what had turned out to be lotion was stronger than usual, fresh from the shower.

Moray's thumb strokes along Kara's hand, tentative. He looks at her, steady. "Yes," Moray answers, but it has nothing to do with the difference between the bed and the couch. Instead he lays down on his side, still facing Kara. He hasn't let go of her hand yet, and his touch is gentle.

He doesn't know what to say - and doesn't think words would be right, anyways. This thread between them is too fragile for jokes or snide commentary. Instead he reaches up with his other hand, and cups Kara's cheek. The bare touch sets his skin alight, and he merely holds it there for a moment before he draws back and settles into the bed proper.

All the things he wants to say don't come with a language.

Him touching her face should have been such a mild, who gives a fuck thing, but instead it was very, very out of the blue intimate, and Kara's pretty sure she's blushing again if the heat to her face is any indication.

But maybe she doesn't care. It's such a careful thing and she's not used to being careful, but this whole...'thing', whatever it was matters somehow, in a way she can't entirely figure but wants to do right by.

Kara slips closer in a near copy of how it had been the night before, her soft chest and petite form pressed into his hard muscled side, an arm snaking over his broad chest. Except this time, there's hardly anything between them, just the thin tanktop and her undershirt.

He seemed to maybe need the touch. He might need it pretty bad, actually. Her cheerful 'nothing matters' mentality wasn't his mentality. He was too intense, seemed so coiled up and wound tight that at any given minute he might explode, and it STILL wouldn't do him any good in the after.

She wonders what the hell had happened to him to make him like that. She wonders about carrying around your own little prison, keeping yourself locked down and under max security all the damned time.

She wonders why she wants to hold him so much, when the thought had never occured to her anywhere else ever.

But hey-sometimes it was nice to just do what you wanted. And for Kara, that was all the damned time.

Every inch of contact between them bows Moray's spine - removes another of the metal rods holding him in place like a skeleton, as the touch of a woman simply and completely undoes him. Or maybe it's the touch of someone he trusts, and that the reverse is so abhorrent that he has to chase away anyone that might commit such a sin. The simple coolness of Kara's skin uncomplicates him in a way he'll never be able to describe, and with her against him, Jonah is able to understand something about himself in the stillness that he never has in the years since he last allowed it:

He needed it.

Jonah's arm slides down over Kara's back, his touch gentle against her bare shoulder, and runs through that red mane, silky between his fingers.

"Thank you," he says, soft. It's so much easier, now.

Her skin tingles where he touches, his fingers surprisingly soft and gentle. A secret.

People like her just fine but as a sort of passing amusement. She was something crazy and out there and almost always full of shit, but she got away with it because she was charismatic and easy on the eyes. Waltzing around like she owned the place, engaging those who looked a mite too long with flippant, crass jokes about things they were never going to get, making a general spectacle of herself whenever she found it amusing. Jokes. There had been two cocky, arrogant conquests that had been hilarious at the time-and still were, honestly.

Nothing like this. Nothing that mattered.

”Thank you.”

It does something to her, and she’s not sure what. But immediately she decides she is never letting anything bad happen to him, ever.

Kara tightens her one armed hug, a nod against his chest. “I’ll see you through, too.” She promises in that softer tone he’s heard a time or two, a secret, honest thing.

Moray's lips press against Kara's brow - not even entirely sure of what he's doing, just reflex that's deeper than bone, in the species rather than in him. He hasn't let himself move so instinctively ever; even in his earliest memories, the natural habit of his body having too dire a result to indulge. That is all gone now. It feels like dust before this.

"Sleep," he says, benediction and coaxing invitation, then sets his chin atop Kara's head and takes it himself. He drifts off easier than he ever has - secure.

~*~

When he wakes in the morn, everything is different.

Even before, during that odd night in the bunker, Kara had pulled away before he had awoken - this time, he came to consciousness with her still in his arms, and the awareness that he could spend all night with someone else at all is a better evaluation of the change in himself than he could ever have imagined. Moray nuzzles down into that scarlet hair again (he'll probably never stop being fascinated with it) and then -

- does nothing.

It doesn't offend him.

Moray lets himself enjoy this quiet morn, and doesn't hate himself for it.

More color to her face. Kara’s not sure if it was the action itself-or the fact that it made her feel embarrassingly warm and fuzzy on the inside. He rests his chin on her head after a soft spoken word-and Kara can’t resist the pull of it, the comfort. It’s not so bad, maybe, being soft in secret.

~*~

Kara doesn’t sleep so much as pass out, heavy and hard and utterly uncaring what went on around her during. She’d gotten used to sleeping in noisy places-you got it where you could, and maybe it was a pretty dangerous thing, sleeping so hard-but she didn’t care and wasn’t worried.

She’s the most uncautious thing imaginable, and it extended even to this.

Probably recharging for all the fuckery she’s constantly engaged in.

Kara eventually comes to herself, sleepily lifting her head to see Moray, then looking around the vault in general, as if she was vaguely surprised to be waking up there.

“Hrm.”

She stretches her legs and back out before dropping her head back against his chest. Alright. This adventure starts today. Time to suit up and get to it.

…

“Good sleep?”

~*~

Kara went into the hygiene room and returned zipping up the vault suit the rest of the way up over her naked collarbone, the shorter boots on her feet and laced up, the ace of hearts caught in the laces of one, the knife he’d sharpened in the cuff of the other.

She pulls on those unique gloves again, tightening the straps at her wrists. Her hair is a little fluffy from sleep. “Okay. Sierra Madre. ‘Fore we go, just gotta-well, clear up something, okay?” Right! She’s no bleeding heart, dammit.

“This ain’t a rescue mission. People die in the Mojave all the time. Sometimes because of me. Business, survival, because it was funny-you know, it happens. I ain’t ashamed of fucking any of it, I commit to what I do.” She considers a moment. “No sack cloth and ashes for me is what I’m sayin’. I’d probably opt for the smiting.” A firm nod.

“But…Vanessa’s in trouble because that dipshit Devon thought it was something to hang over my head. She’s not. But I’m still going because...fuck him, that’s why. She was better than him and his crap town, and she’s better than dying horribly because some stupid fuck thought it’d bother me. This is a spite mission.” Against a dead man? Eh, she’s going to stick to the story.

“And it comes with some kinda payday, bigwig gets involved or not. So-” Kara rocks a little on her boots, blowing air through her puffed cheeks. “Anybody asks, now you know.” Right! Right.

She slips on the holster with Lil Devil nestled in the curve of her waist, then the jacket, then the gun sling with the baseball bat. The rebreather slips around her neck and hangs there. She’s pretty sure she’s got just about everything-thinking it over as she straps on the metal kneepads.

Elias is already in his fatigues when Kara returns, putting back his various knickknacks and survival tools, and he listens to her spiel without so much as a changed expression. Fresh from the bed, his expression is placid and relaxed, without the fraught tension that characterizes it around other people that aren't Kara.

"If you want this Vanessa to live, then to the Sierra Madre we will go, and I will kill everything that is in your way," he says without looking up, as he reslings the LMG and holsters his shotgun. "If you decide that you have tired of her existence, I will execute her and it will not bother me. If you decide you don't care, then it is irrelevant to me. I go because you go. Whatever your reasons or goals are, I am with you."

Moray stands up, then, and faces her, weight leaned onto his back leg as he cocks an eyebrow, finally steady again. "And it's not anyone else's fucking business, so they can fuck off."

His characteristic reserve and defenses reestablished; his armor, rebuilt. There's just some secret way Kara knows, can see that no one else can view, that lets her right through. That line, that precious thread, straight and true, runs between them, and guides him now like a lighthouse he can see from any shore.

It's made his typical, brutal honesty rather a fun tool, too, because denying reality isn't Moray's style. Kara matters to him. It's a fact. Might as well embarass her with it when no one's watching.

[Moray has become your companion!]

Kara opens her mouth, closes it, then opens it again-but words utterly fail her. For once, the mouthy merc is speechless.

“I uh...okay then. Glad we’ve settled that, then.” She eyes him a minute, then checks her backpack before slinging it onto her shoulders. “I’ve mentioned you’re a mean bastard, but seriously, you are a mean bastard.”

She’s not quite sure how she’s ended up with an unstoppable death machine on her side, but the Mojave better be glad she’s mostly harmless in her amusements, most of the time.

Kara grins, pulling either side of her unzipped jacket forward again, a nod to the shelf with the deathclaw horn. “C’mon, let’s go get our souvenir.”

The Sierra Madre turns out to be a cliffside casino, set well above a dingy sprawl of a town on the desert floor below. The entire area is coated in a muck of reddish-brown fog that just tastes disgusting even at a distance, and the sunlight is filtered down to a muddy light even at midday. Moray peers at the place through his spyglass and glances over at Kara from their scouting perch, about a half-klick away from the place proper.

"You're right," he says. "It's a shithole."

There's no sign of the fog freaks she mentioned, but if his luck holds they're indoors and in the cramped streets he can see winding through the villa, especially the shanty district to the left. Worse, if the air quality is that bad from the fog, the water is definitely just as bad, given that the fog has enough mass to sink to the ground. He glances dubiously at their canteens, and then at Hrolf, who is staring, restless, at the giant graveyard ahead at them.

"Where should we start?" he says. "Casino proper probably has whatever the Big Wig wants, but if he could just walk in there, he wouldn't be going through all the trouble."

Kara had her binoculars out again, peering at the same thing he was through the good and the cracked right lens. “Yep. And that’s exactly why I told Devon to fuck off-cheap bastard couldn't have paid me near enough to go in there.”

She lowers the binoculars and reaches into a pocket, producing another crappy map, this one on nicer, less worn paper than the one he’s seen before. She steps closer to let him see it better. It definitely wasn’t to scale, but there was some kind of reasoning to it-a building was marked with a clear medical cross, x’s seeming to indicate and count off surrounding dwellings, Kara having counted buildings rather than feet or anything of the sort. There were also little up arrows on some of the x's for some reason-roof symbols? It looked like she had mostly been in the western part of the little villa, and only along a set route. “I climbed over the wall here-” She taps the map near the medical symbol, draws her finger towards the west. “Moved along the roof on these two buildings to avoid the denser areas of fog. Climbed down and kinda went this way, then had to duck fog weirdos, got pressed along this way-”

She's turning the map as she says this, mentally remembering the twists and turns, visualizing. "This was where I camped out for two of the nights, but I was running low on supplies and knew I had to start heading back."

"I eventually finished out here." She finally taps a circle just above a gate looking symbol. “This is the fountain with the ghost lady. I left that way. Pretty sure I wasn't spotted whole time I was there. Least, nothing tried to engage with me.” A shrug.

“But anyway, that red fog is some caustic shit, and it looks thickest leading back towards the casino. There’s some kind of ventilation system throughout the villa but it’s not working-I fixed one of the fans and that let me move through an area to get to the fountain. So we are probably going to have to work at that first before we can move on the Casino."

That and look for evidence of Vanessa or her brother. Kara honestly doubted he would have made it out here though. It'd stood around mostly undiscovered for this long, after all.

Moray nods grimly. "Medical first. Anyone that's alive in there probably headed there first - if there's empty cabinets, shit like that, it's a good sign someone with reason is alive and kicking. We make it there, I'll block off the lower level and set up a ladder system with some pitons to that rooftop so that we have a guaranteed exit and a fallback position if everything goes to shit. We hit ventilation to open up our ability to move, and then press for the Casino proper."

He slides his spyglass closed and starts trotting for the wall Kara had indicated. That tool goes in one pocket, and out of another comes a metal cylinder, which Moray fidgets with for a moment and then slides out into a rod, which he fills with a second cylinder to reinforce the hollow structure. Then he uses a curious catch on the end to affix his khukuri to it, producing a makeshift-looking spear that he holds underhand, that heavy, wicked-looking blade hung down and gleaming. A third cylinder secures the connection like a shackle, and what had been a juryrigged mess starts looking like an ugly, proven weapon of war, thick and metal.

"You lead and scout," he says with a jerk of his head. "You see a fog freak by itself, maybe two, signal me - I can take a yao guai leg off with this thing, and quietly. I don't know if they react to gunfire, but let's not test it unless we have to. Might be able to lure them off and kill them too. But first, let's get that medical building secured before we do any intentional provoking."

His mind is solidly on the mission now. He has a competent VIP, a hostile area and a force occupying it, and an objective that lies beyond. Everything is numbers or waiting to become so - the universe resolved into clear lines that he can follow.