As the next day began the captain called the team together near the entrance of the building. Once everybody was there, the captain stepped onto a bench at the side of the room and told everyone to be quiet and listen up, “Alright people, here’s what we're gonna do, me, Cloud, Webs and Boomer are going to head to known neighboring settlements to see if they know anything about what’s happened here, the rest of you are gonna stay here and wait to see if anyone shows up, if anything happens while we’re gone just listen to Lawrence, he’ll be in charge while we’re gone. Our trip around the settlements should only take about two days. Those who I said are coming with me get ready for a long walk in the snow, cause we’re walking, everyone else, dismissed.” the captain finished as she waved her hand in an outward direction, making most of the group dispersed in different directions.

As Rusty walked back to the middle of the building where the big rock was where he was having a nap before this, he thought about the situation and realized how little of a surprise It was that he wasn’t picked for the trip, considering that fact that this was both his first mission and that he had yet to receive any actual training, it was the logical decision to keep him in the safest position.

“Rusty! Taste!” Lawrence called from behind him. As Rusty turned around to see what Lawrence wanted some grayish cloth as he unfolded it he found it was a gray apron.

“Put those on you two, we’re going to make lunch,” Lawrence said as he put on an apron of his own and began walking to the buildings kitchen, “If you’re not in here in the next five minutes then you won’t be eating tonight” he finished walking through the doors that led to the kitchen which Taste in an apron soon followed shortly behind him, and after Rusty was changed out of his armor and into the apron, he followed.

It turned out that Lawrence was rather adept in the kitchen as he easily cut the vegetable into tiny pieces. Rusty, however, was not so adept, the most complicated meal he had ever made at his home were sandwiches, but it turned out that Lawrence didn’t even really need their help, he moved, cut and prepared everything faster then Rusty thought possible with Lawrence having them just move things around when he asked or to prepare the next ingredient he needed. After only a few minutes Lawrence had already finished a vegetable soup in a rather large pot that was boiling over a fire, a pile of sandwiches that he had wrapped up for the away team and was about to start cooking meats when he noticed that Rusty and Taste, out of things to do, were playing rock paper scissors to pass the time. After scolding the two he told them to clean the kitchen while he finished what he was doing and that if it wasn’t spotless then he’d make them sleep out in the cold that night.

After everything was done in the kitchen, the group gathered in a large dining room that was close to the kitchen that had two large tables that looked like they could sit several dozen people at a time. Taste and Rusty carried the food into the dining room and put what they had onto the end of one of the tables closest to the door. Rusty using his ability to make it easy to carry had carried the pot of vegetable soup that Lawrence had made while Taste carried in a plate with some slices of meat that were covered in spice that Rusty couldn’t recognize, but then again there isn’t any spice he would recognize.

Rusty sat down at the end of the large table in the room that they had put the food down at, most of the team was already eating. Across the table from his seat was cloud who had his helmet off for the first time that Rusty had ever noticed, e found that Cloud had surprisingly short hair almost making him look bald if one didn’t look close enough and also no facial hair to speak of.

After taking note of what Cloud looked like under his armor Rusty turned to look at his own bowl of soup and began to eat.

“Hey Lawrence, why did you make such an obscene amount of soup?” Rusty heard Webs say down the table, “There is no way we’re going to finish that entire pot!”

“It is always better to have more than needed then to have less,” Lawrence replied, crossing his arms in approval of his words.

“This is clearly just a huge waste of supplies, right captain?” Webs said as he turned to look at the captain.

"It doesn't really matter all that much to me, I mean he is the one that buys that buys most of the supplies for or missions anyways, and besides food always tastes good!” she said affirmatively.

“So you don't care if he wastes supplies? You know what” Webs said letting out a sigh, “It doesn’t matter anymore, one of these days we're going to run out of supplies on the road and die, and it's gonna be both of your faults.”

After his final statement, Webs didn’t speak again for the rest of the meal, which other than that the mood went back to normal.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

After everyone was done their lunch, the away team gathered at the front gate of the building where Lawrence gave them the sandwiches that he had made earlier. With the four members of the away team, the captain, Webs, Cloud and Boomer being gone, that left Rusty, Taste, Lawrence, and Pause. Rusty, who had nothing to do, figured he’d go talk to Lawrence to pass some time. When Rusty found Lawrence he was sitting on the big rock in the center room reading a book about some guy called Kaiden Flint.

“What is it Forge?” Lawrence asked.

“What are you reading?” Rusty replied with.

“That’s not important,” Lawrence said, closing his book, “Now I’ll ask you again, what do you want?”

“I’m just wondering around bored.”

“This is perfect then,” Lawrence said as he hopped down from his perch on the rock to the floor, ”As I’m certain that Webs didn’t give you any proper training during your introduction, even if he did have enough time to, so I’m going to do it, are you ready?” Lawrence asked putting his hand on Rusty’s left shoulder.

Before Rusty could answer him, Lawrence said, “Well, it doesn’t matter if you’re ready or not, come,” he said motioning his hand for Rusty to follow.

After following Lawrence through the building for a bit they eventually walked into what appeared to be a training room. In the middle of the room, there was a with a circle painted on the smooth ground that was most likely meant for sword duels, other than that there didn’t appear to be anything, it was just a large empty room, perfect for training in weapons or our's. Lawrence walked into the middle of the room and began taking his armor off, leaving him in just a brown shirt, red pants, and brown shoes.

“Alright then, I want you to touch me, you can use your ability to accomplish this, but you have to physically touch me yourself.”

“Okay then, this should be easy” Rusty replied, reaching down to his bottle of blood.

“Alright then, we’ll start in three,” Lawrence stood in a casual stance well Rusty formed a gauntlet of blood around both of his hand by sending half the blood to his left hand and the other half through his clothes to his right hand, both gauntlets identically covered in spikes, “Two,” Lawrence stayed how he was while Rusty took a stance and readied himself, “And one!” Rusty formed a hand of blood from his left gauntlet that shot towards Lawrence. Lawrence sidestepped the hand just for smaller hands to shoot out from the arm of the blood hand that Rusty had shot out. The small hands chasing Lawrence forced him to retreat behind him where the original larger hand that Rusty had shot out was coming at him as Rusty had looped it around after missing the first attempt. Lawrence only noticing the hand at the last moment ducked to just barely avoid it, leaving a cut on his cheek. To avoid the smaller hands Lawrence rolled to the side, away from Rusty. Rusty would have followed him with his blood more after the roll, but he was effectively out of blood for the left hand, so Rusty brought all of the blood back into the gauntlet and merged the left gauntlet into the right one so that he'd have enough blood for next time.

So he finally sees that he can’t beat me this way? Lawrence thought to himself as Rusty brought all of the blood he had out back in. This is my chance Lawrence thought, I’ll close in while he’s trying to think of an effective strategy before he comes up with one. Lawrence started running towards Rusty who was only a dozen or so steps away but before he even made it five steps Rusty had manipulated his blood to entirely cover the area under Lawrence. Lawrence who was shocked at the sudden strategy was unable to do anything as several dozen blood hands shot out of the blood to grab him, holding him firmly in place.

As Rusty began to approach, Lawrence began to laugh, “Do you really think it would be that easy? Do you even know what my ability is?” and then it occurred to Rusty that he didn’t know and realizing his mistake used the blood hands to bring Lawrence towards him in fast enough to touch him in the next second, but when Rusty touched where Lawrence was, he didn’t find Lawrence there anymore, and Lawrence's shirt and shoes fell to the ground.

“Thanks for giving me the cut earlier, forgot to give myself one at the beginning before I took off my armor, but thanks to the one you gave me I was able to smear some blood on the ground when I rolled to dodge your hands.” Lawrence said, now suddenly standing a dozen or so steps from where he just was, “You know they don’t call me Port for nothing, anywhere where I have blood I can teleport my blood, my body or parts of my body at will at any time, like through the bloodstain that I made on your shoulder just before we came here.”

Rusty looked to his left shoulder to see a small red stain so small that if Lawrence hadn’t pointed it out he would have never noticed. Rusty looked back up to Lawrence to see his right hand being swallowed into his body, which was the last thing he saw before he was punched in the face by a hand that had come through the stain on his left shoulder.