"So what have we learned to day" Emily asked Andrew as he stood over the ruined and burnt corpse of a bird.

"Well for one there seems to be a one or two percent chance that fire weapons will combust the target which will do about twenty hits worth of damage" Andrew answered considering his findings, the nets were able to 'capture' the birds and when unraveled was able to realize them something that had been slightly problematic for them however it allowed them to more easily test things on the birds. What he was testing now was the effectiveness of the fire spears/staffs, he and Emily were at odds of what to call them, the findings were not as grand as he would have thought but it revealed some other interesting insights.

"Hits?" Emily interrupted his thoughts with a question "What are those supposed to be."

"Weren't you at the meeting we talked all about it there" Andrew glared at her as she shrugged

"Must not have been paying attention" Emily just sighed with a put upon expression as she turned to the rest of the group."So how long exactly do you think their going to go at it?"

Andrew looked at the two teams and sighed with her " I don't know I lost hope when when that John guy sang the entirety of the pokemon rap song I mean seriously who memorises that" Andrew groaned as the whole group started to sing another song "Man and I thought I was a nerd!"

"Ha, you are a nerd didn't you once quote the entirety of the Patton speech before a raid once" Emily glanced at him as he stood up with a grone.

"Hell no! I did quote some of it but that was more of a one time thing" Andrew to a look at the net that he was using they hadn't really learned how to tell how many birds were trapped in a rope yet but he guessed that their were at least three left.

"Anyway to answer your question Hits are..." Andrew started to get back on topic after their little tangent.

"Please Andrew I'm not stupid It's pretty self-explanatory just get back to telling me if flaming weapons are worth it" Emily interrupted.

"Than why ask Ugh... never mind the thing is the fire reduces the number of hits to kill by three doesn't look like it is affected by hitting weak points though so it's good but not amazing the most interesting thing is that enemies can catch fire I counted how long it took for them to burn to death." Andrew watched Emily as he continued "Which was pretty messed up and disturbing by the way."

Emily nodded at him "Yeah I have got to say that was pretty cold of you"

Andrew glared at her completely unsure if that was supposed to be a pun or a normal comment

"Anyway it took about two minutes for them to die if we change it to hits per second it would take five seconds to have the bird take a 'Hit'." Andrew made quotations with his hands it was a difficult really defining how much damage something can do when they were using such a loss definition as hits in the end all he could say is that it took 155 seconds to burn a bird to death so the #htk for flaming weapons was 28/13/9 with a 10% chance to burn for 1 hit per 5 seconds and a 1-2% chance to combust for 20 hits. Thinking about it Andrew had to admit it was an improvement especially if they could learn how to increase the chance to proc combust, he was a little worried to be labeling something as a proc especially after the failed kiting attempt this was real life after all.

"Hey earth to Andrew" Emily waved her hands in front of his face "Care to tell me the verdict doctor." she spoke in some weird accent he didn't recognize

"flaming weapons are powerful but inconsistent there is a one percent chance to insta kill the birds if their hit in the head or heart but other than that it's not that impressive" Andrew said "Not worth the resources need to make them we could use that fuel for more important things like not freezing to death."

"Well that's that then, we better be getting back to the Don and the rest I want to kick that dumb fuck in his dick" Emily said as she stood up and started to walk back to the group. In his mind Andrew silently wished Don luck. As they were gathering the group together Andrew asked the question that had been bothering him for some time.

"By the way what's up with the whole tribal thing you guys have got going on?" Andrew asked

"It's supposed to be a whole Aztec berserker role play thing neat right" Emily looks at her group "We look good don't we can't wait to get some war paint and stuff maybe some tiki masks like stuff."

"Ok but why thou?" Andrew knew that Emily was a fan of things like role play and cosplay but felt that in their current situation didn't call for playing around.

Emily stopped and looked at Andrew seriously "Why? well I guess I could stop and think about how in all probability I'll never see my mother or father again, or how we have no modern convenience and are under attack by giant chickens. News flash Andrew were in a pretty fucked up situation and I think It would be better for us to focus on what we stand to gain than on what we lost and for me right now that's trying to become a badass amazon." She frowns a bit before shaking her head and smiling sadly "I think we're all trying to cope with that fact... don't you?"

"Yeah i guess ugh... I'm not good at this type of stuff let's just get going I'd like to make a pillow or something before night comes." Andrew said as he scratched his head awkwardly.

"That's the spirit Andy let's not think about being our sheltered, pampered, and entitled selves and become the badass dual wielder girl and the stoic spear guy and while we're at it we can make all the fluffy down pillows we could ever want" Emily said sunly as she wrapped an arm around Andrew's shoulder as they faced the horizon.

"Hey Andrew can you hear me did you guys meet up with the second group yet" Don's voice echoed from the walky on Andrews waist.

"Uh should we answer that?" Andrew asked feeling awkward.

"Shh, Of course not we're having a moment here Andrew, a moment and that shouldn't be ruined by asshole dicks who send people on suicide missions" Emily said with a bright smile that made Andrew feel cold the continued attempts to contact them that Emily made him ignore only made him feel worse.

'sorry guys I don't know why she's pissed at you but she has me in half a headlock so I'm not going to make her angry anytime soon'

"The place looks deserted." Emily said as they came upon the clearing the strange stone reverberating with a strange hum. Their two teams had managed to make it back to the crystals without meeting any other teams or birds.

"Well I would hope not the said they had made a push after we left if they were still here it wouldn't bode well for us" Andrew answered as he looked around the area finding the remains of some birds at the edge of the clearing. "looks like they went to... the north" Looking up from his compass "we should catch up to them pretty quickly if we follow" as Andrew said that one David came up with the walky."Andrew we got a call from Jace!" looking left and right Andrew made sure Emily wasn't around before answering.

"WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN WE THOUGHT YOU GUYS HAD DIED YOU ASSHOLE" Jace yelled from the walky. Andrew just sighed as he started to answer the walky was plucked from his hands by Emily who started to shout at him. Andrew deciding to let the two go at it gathered his own team and scouted out the area the main group had fought its way out from the clearing having head south back toward the original grove and looking at the remains of the battle it had been a brutal fight the only bodies they found were birds though so the main group must have managed pretty well not to have any losses. He knew it was a matter of time before some fuck up kills someone heck he almost died not even two hours ago.

"Alright everyone we're going to try to collect some of this crystal than we're going to go south and to going the main group" Andrew Addressed the two teams as Emily's shouting match died down coming over to the group she started to talk as well.

"Ok I just finished talking to the main group They've been making progress but they have been having problems with random encounters which for those of you how don't get it means that the birds are fucking ninjaing into existence to attack them. So we're going to be moving as a group since we seem not to be experiencing the randO encounters we'll be going back to the 'starting area' to cheek how everyone else is doing and I guess we'll figure out how everyone else did when the get back in an hour or two."

With that the group started to move collecting the materials that Andrew wanted to test out and starting to go back to the only place they could call home.