2252066
Lily glanced up at Ben as she removed the bolt from her hunting rifle and began cleaning it. "Right, we're going to need some sort of meat for later." She said as she rubbed a tiny amount of oil into the bolt of her rifle. "What direction were you planning to go, or were you going to go all over?"

2252569
Ben shrugged, rolling his neck and wiping down his power fist with a rag. "I saw some old roads and a few crashed vehicles, so I'm going to see if I can't find anything inside them that would be useful. I also saw another ranger station, so I plan to loot that for whatever I can find. Push comes to shove, this little building is built and positioned for a strategic defense. We can reinforce this thing a bit, just in case something happens."

2254092
Lily sat the bolt of the gun to the side before picking up the receiver of her barrel and oiling it lightly. "You know, it's kind of odd being here. Yeah, we're in a bad spot, but at least it's pretty here, and we have each other." She mused as she cleaned her gun. Despite everything, Zion did have an almost unnatural beauty that she admired.

2258855
Ben smiled and got up, kissing Lily's cheek before going back to cooking the beans. "Yeah. We'll be okay as long as we have one another. I plan to head south to that general store first, then up to the campsites, and I'll see if I can find supplies and maybe a tourist map of the canyon or something. Maybe there's a map in the other station."

2259026
Lily slid the bolt back into the receiver, and then gave it a good smack before sliding it back and forth, checking to see how smoothly it cycled. "I sure hope so. I'm actually kinda curious to see what kind of wildlife is here. Anything beats running into a pack of nightstalkers." She said in a half-joking tone.

2263691
Ben chuckled and stood up, grabbing his backpack and sliding it on. "Well, I'm going up top to use my binoculars. Meet you there, hon." He slipped out of the small room, making sure the blankets stayed covering the bars, and went up to the observation platform, sitting in a chair at the small table. It was just a four meeter by four meter space, covered by a roof. It had two tables, one of which had a CV radio on it. Taking out his binoculars, he began looking around the valley, taking note of all the different caves and structures he saw. By the markings near the caves and on a few of the buildings, he guessed that they might be the work of some tribals, possibly the ones who attacked them.

2263852
Lily hurriedly put the finishing touches on her rifle, and then set it to the side before moving on to her shotgun. It was well broke-in after several months of wear, and it needed cleaning. She hadn't gotten a chance to clean it out recently and the powder was starting to cause a wee bit of fouling. After a few minutes of rushed cleaning, she quickly reassembled the weapon and rushed up top with her rifle, leaving the lever-gun to stand in the corner of the room below. Standing a few feet from Ben, she put the scope to her eyes and began looking around. She let out a soft gasp as she spotted some sort of huge animal with brown, mottled fur, and a head like a dog's. "Wow..." She mumbled.

2263901
Ben looked at the animal through his binoculars, narrowing his eyes. "Yao guai.... I've heard tales of them. They were once these things called black bears, but they mutated into these after the bombs dropped. Careful hunting them, sweetheart." He looked around and, to his surprise, saw a crashed tour bus. "A tour bus. A map and some other useful things might be in there. I'll circle around to that, then I'll come back here after a little more searching."

2266019
Lily grinned behind her scope as she continued to watched the Yao Guai move about, and the gears in her head turned. "I think I could take that thing from here with the right shot placement. I'd be safer here, and if anyone goes to investigate I'll see them long before they see me." She said excitedly. As she observed the bear, she shifted around and watched it from various angles, trying to figure out what angles she could take it from.

2266193
Ben smirked at Lily and rubbed her back for a second. "Then take the shot, hon. I'm certainly not stopping you." Ben watched around the valley with baited breath, both to see his lover's shot, and to see if he could spot any other animals or tribals. He didn't want anyone knowing their location too soon. They had to have a plan to escape the valley before they could start running like hell.

2266473
Lily's rifle followed the head of the yao guai, her crosshairs hovering over its temple. "Three..." She counted down in a mumbling voice. "Two...one." Her rifle cracked as she pulled the trigger, and the massive creature collapsed with a grunt. Lily was so excited that she let out a restrained laugh that bordered on maniacal. "Gotcha!" She said softly. She looked around the area around her kill to see if she had attracted any attention.

2266797
Ben looked around and, thankfully, saw that no one had seen Lily shoot. "Nice shot." He said with a grin, pulling out a knife from his bag. "And I'm gonna go carve it. Back soon." The bear wasn't too far away, and Ben made a mad dash to the dead yao guai, carving up pieces of meat when he got there and trusting Lily to keep him covered from the station.

2267177
Lily scanned her rifle over the area around Ben, making sure that no one was around. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that no one was around, but her heart stopped when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She swung her rifle over to the front of the silhouette and pulled the trigger, letting another sharp crack resound throughout the valley. A big horner corpse skidded across the ground a few inches from Ben and stopped.

2267519
As soon as Ben had finished with carving up the yao guai, he turned to see a bighorner dead at his feet. He eagerly carved the meat from the bighorner, then made his way back to the station, going down below and working on cooking the raw meat so it didn't spoil. "Thanks, hon!" He called from below.