Lorica falls on the Young Avengers
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"Thank you."

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She nods.

"By the way, do you know if any of the dark things are sapient?"

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"Liches are and imps probably are too. Tainted humans and woke shadows and banshees could be, they talk at all. I think the others aren't."

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"Thanks. Helping against the non-sapient stuff's way more doable, but killing sapients - there's rules about when you can do that, back home, and I'm not part of a country legally at war with the dark things or anything." Plus verifying stories and all that.

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"Some places don't let civilians take care of tainted humans on their own even if they can in case they can't tell but the others it'd be hard to mistake them."

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"Less a 'you might be mistaken' thing for us, more that our society at least tries to do universal sapient rights. Fails a lot, but you're theoretically not allowed to kill other sapients without it being like immediate self defense or you're both soldiers in war, and supers especially tend to walk a more fine line there and be more careful about not killing people, because - using powers to kill people is kind of really taboo? In sometimes weird ways."

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"Well, I suppose you can limit your interventions however you're comfortable with as long as you don't stand in the paladins' way when we do the rest of the work."

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"Jian says other side's attacking civilians. I'm not gonna try to stop you guys from fighting to protect yourselves from that."

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"Thank you."

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"Is there anything going on right now that is an emergency? Otherwise might be good for me to regroup, gather intelligence, all that..."

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"If we had an emergency we knew about I'd be out dealing with it."

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"Okay, cool."

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Meanwhile - a few weeks ago, in fact - it's a fine fall day in a quite different forest, the sun making its way rather lazily across the sky, peeking through the trees and the thin wisps of fog on the mountain.

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This is really too often to get stuck in an alternate universe.

Lorica kicks off the ground to get a view above the trees.

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There's a river over that way, and a highway over that way, and where the highway and river skim nearest each other there's a modern looking - albeit very run down - town, a number of smaller roads branching off if the gaps in the trees are anything to go by. The mountain's a long ridge line, and she's in a valley between two of the ridge lines right now.

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She lands and jogs townward.

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There don't seem to be a lot of cars in use - she passes rusted wrecks on the side of the road, no one driving really.

Town: buildings are either abandoned and in the process of being rather efficiently scavenged, or really really decorated, buildings painted with giant murals apparently advertising their use. There's a few cars in use, here, most of them heavily modded and painted in patterns that often seem to fit the car (or, more often, truck - pick up trucks are popular here) more than car decals usually do. There's people out and about. A lot of people are doing some sort of craft as an idle thing, and given the technology level a disproportionate number of people seem to be wearing handmade clothes.

The signs are all in English, fortunately.

Also, more than a few people turn to look at her as she approaches. Nobody's wearing anything like her power armor, after all.

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"Hi, I'm lost," she says to the most interruptible looking local. "Can you tell me where I am?"

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That's a woman leaning against a truck, watching her.

"Like, town or region or country lost? This's Waynesboro, Shenandoah province. Country of Appalachia, if you wandered over the border some point."

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"Thanks, that helps. Uh, border with where?"

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She blinks. "You from one of those bunker cults? Columbia's closest, eastish of here, Ohio Country's north-westish, Dixie's to the south and west a smidge but they might'a renamed themselves again."

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"Thanks. ...what are the salvage rules around here and what can I do to earn dinner?"

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"If someone's working a thing they'll mark around it, usually with flags. Otherwise take what you can use. Dinner - if you wanna earn it and don't wanna rely on some stranger's kindness, people'll pay for good craft, and your suit looks like a whole damn portfolio. You can also trade small useful things, or bits of high value salvage - digging through the dust's more than some people wanna do. Restaurants usually take coin, farmers often take work-trade. But most non-craft work and commissions and the like you'll wanna talk to a union rep - the union building's down Main Street, hard to miss. It's also a good place to get a bed and two hot meals a day - they sometimes put people up while they're getting on their feet. I wouldn't work direct for anyone not in good with the unions, myself."

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"What kindsa craft do people tend to want?"

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She shrugs. "All sorts. High value's stuff like vehicles and phones, since those're hard to get running reliably. A good radio or fridge is medium-high value, and stuff without electronics is low through medium-high value depending on what you're doing. Clothes and tools and the like are always a solid bet, especially if they've got a well-done knack or are hard to make, but people tend to pay less for them for hour put in."

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