Kat was laying downwind by the fire, taking a break, hands behind her head. She heard Troys question, offering some knowledge
"Me and Rain once tried to shortcut through a little town called 'Defiance'. This was before I let Rain do the navigation.
Bunch of violent bastards, all of them-they were more interested in the other gangs than us. Funny thing is, just us two 'outsiders' riled them up. They went crazy, started killing each other to try and get to us. We mosey on, let em fight.
I counted at least 40 gangs in the place, each of them with different colors and symbols. Some had territories that were just a single building. Saw alot of Mutant gangs too-but they were usually smaller, weaker, and actually more polite if you can believe that. Not all of them were killers. Some of them are just folks trying to scratch a living. All of them were dangerous and desperate, though. Me and Rain dealt with a few of them for passage and quarters-mostly the smaller ones, that knew they couldn't afford to lose even one member.
See-Me and Rain mostly watched, and hid-I noticed they were nasty in close quarters fighting, using lots of Ratchets, Spears and Blades. Just plain nasty all around, really. Not a lot of guns or high tech stuff-I don't think they do much trading. We stuck to the borders between gang territory to keep safe-most of em wouldn't come out there, afraid of getting hijacked while they were hijacking us.
I do know, though-If you see an older person among a city gang, you best run for the Hills-anyone whose survived the meatgrinder is apt to be deadly and wise for their years.
...if we take this job, we'll have to be fast-and not get into fights if we can avoid them-we'll never get out otherwise...we'll have to give the appearance of force, though. Make it seem too costly to attack us, and they won't.
Unless they're Reavers of course. Then all bets are off." Kat finished, flipping her hat back over her face.
She still remembered the bodies piked up on the Reavers Gang territory, painted with ghoulish red, and shuddered. People said the Reavers always lived near heavy sources of Slow-Death (Rain would call it Radiation), but instead of killing them, it made them stronger, even made it so they didn't have to eat, drink or sleep. They apparently lived to spread this Radiation, putting tumors across the land wherever they went-poisoning water, blighting crops, infecting people. They weren't just animals, like the Draculas-they were organized, deadly, and apparently growing in number if you believed the rumors.
The pair had wisely skirted around them, back in Defiance.