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Ryela quickly crouched down as soon as the lights flicked out. She knew, for one, that the obstacles weren't likely to hide her while she was standing at 5'9" and also that the brick of the wall was not a color that was likely to agree with the dark green of her armor.

When her instructor had finished speaking, she shook her head in response to his question, then turned toward the world, as he put it, in front of her.

She had happened to duck behind a metal drum that had once been painted entirely black, it appeared. To her right was a low wall, sadly gray in color, but solidly built. To her left was a stack of wooden crates. She removed the AK-47 from her back as she didn't intend to harm her opponent and it would just mark her out as not part of the scenery. Her mouth moved wordlessly as she did so and watched the searchlight loop around the room, to peek over the sides of the barrel as she clung to it, curled up to hide behind its silhouette. She left the gun leaned against the barrel and quickly, just after the light had passed, climbed upon the low wall, laying still for a moment, her face, hands and arms buried beneath her. From any distance, she appeared as a black lump, perhaps a stray garbage bag filled with trash, upon the gray wall, but once close it was obvious the lump moved slightly with quietly slow breathing. After a moment, the lump silently turned off of the wall, drifting somewhat as bags do, and landing quietly on the other side. Ryela had caught herself as gently as possible, largely relying on her fingers and her mocassin-ed toes to prevent the sound of a fall. She curled up toward her head, happening to be situated behind a flaming barrel. She smiled at her own luck, from behind a light she was not likely to be seen, it was only once she got in front of it that she had to worry.

She worried for her next move though, as there were only small grassy hills, that only just reached the altitude of her former position on the wall, to her right and a stretch of dark asphalt to her left, with the occasional barrel or pile of rubble toward the side, rather like most streets had these days.

Ryela reached around the barrel carefully, quietly feeling for a small rock in the nearby pile of rubble that she might could use later. She hid it in her palm as she looked around the side of the barrel, to the "street" side as the light passed over, ducking back behind the barrel when it passed over her. She smiled, hiding her white teeth behind the barrel still. She crept quickly, low to the ground against the dark asphalt, as the searchlight swooped around to the opposite side of the room and she hid herself next to a barrel with a cardboard box at a right angle to it at about the same height. As she ducked against the wall behind the cardboard box, her optical nerves finally connected with the rest of her mind. Had she seen something move near the hills? Was it the other Initiate already, or just a trick of the light? Maybe this room wasn't as big as she thought.

She figured she had better wait for another rotation of the searchlight before checking the rest of her surroundings, especially if she had seen something move.

Ryela counted in her head as the spotlight swooped around the room. Hopefully it was a regular thing, not random or sped up as time went on. As the spotlight was on the other side of the room, while still counting, she looked toward the exit, but could only see the soft light cast by the flames in one of the barrels up ahead of her. It was set a little way from the wall to her left, and she hoped there might be a path there, but whatever it was, she would handle it when she arrived at it.

Before the light came around to her hiding spot, Ryela chucked a rock toward the other side of the room, aiming behind where she had thought she saw the other initiate. Hopefully the sound would make him turn in entirely the wrong direction to see her. After chucking the rock, she faced the exit side of the room and flipped over the box to where it was on top of her, with her crouching completely beneath it. She watched the light pass by via a tiny crack of light she let in by tipping the box ever so slightly, hopefully imperceptibly except to herself.

After the light had passed, she slowly began to move, careful to edge the box around the barrel to her left. She watched for the light to come around again, counting silently to determine where the light would be, as she knew she had to stop before it washed over her box. She listened for other sounds besides her breathing as even that was louder than her light steps. She was not sure how much further to the exit, but maybe she could take the box the whole way.

[I figured I might as well throw something fun in.]

Ryela froze as the light passed over her box. When her count told her that the light had passed her, she crept forward again quietly, in the direction of what she hoped was a path to the exit, to the left of the flaming barrel.

She almost stumbled before she realized there was no longer asphalt in front of her. The front of the box already hung over a small ledge. This was not what she had expected, but she would work through it.

She knew the light would be coming around again soon, so she slipped the box enough over the side of the ledge to allow her to pass out from under it, but hopefully not enough to tip and draw attention to itself. She waited for the light to pass before she moved herself, though, to be sure she had time to do so.

Ryela slipped over the ledge, dropping to a crouch behind it. She found her way to the back wall of the room, and ran along it, barely able to see anything over the height of ledge. She hoped that her difficulty seeing over the ledge would also apply to the other side. Either way, she remained as crouched as she could while still moving.

She felt along the wall, searching for a door or a hallway. She watched for the light to come around again as she moved, and would quickly drop prone as soon as it approached.

[I don't know where the door is, so I don't know if her finding the door would take more than the time it takes the light to loop around to her, or if she would find it before the light reached her.]

[Is there anything obviously around to use (marking a specific, limited amount of resources available)? Or is nothing beyond what's on me available to me? Or is anything I could think of available to me?]

[Sorry I missed that, I apparently wasn't very observant in my first reading.]

"Ow!" Ryela's left hand reflexively went toward the wound in her right shoulder, but she stopped herself as her mind registered her instructor's words and the appearance of the shot.

"Well, I suppose I'm lucky in that I can be sure it's clean and cauterized already..." She looked at the wound and swallowed hard. Bone was bare in the quarter to half-dollar size hole. She turned her head forward, staring, looking more than a little woozy before blinking a few times. She turned to the table, wavering a little as she stepped toward it. "Theoretically, a wound would heal faster if it were a slice instead of a round wound...The, ah, ah -- musculature..." She stared down to her left, swallowing once, twice, and blinking as if to clear something from her vision. Her unseeing stare said it probably wasn't helping.

She turned back to the table, her left hand holding herself up using the table, her right arm limp at her side. "The first step of what I am capable of would involve...cutting the wound further in order to make the healing process function along a line instead of the hole..." With her left hand gently on a scalpel on the table, she looked at the wound in her shoulder again, then away, distractedly moving the scalpel more toward the edge of the table without picking it up. She then looked back at the wound and she wavered a little bit before collapsing to the ground in a heap.

[I did this because the idea of seeing bare bone really bothered me, myself, and I thought my first idea of what the result would be was too easy. Blood doesn't bother me, pain doesn't bother me, needles don't bother me, infections don't bother me, but this and a couple other things do. I drew from my experience of passing out when I had blood drawn from my hand. I intend my character to have some theoretical knowledge (as I do) but certain parts of practice are going to present difficulty.]

Ryela cursed in her mind. Fainting at the sight of an injury. She was better than that. Hadn't she handled all her own injuries in the swamp?

Ugh...but clean, white bone in a clear wound that goes straight through? That just wasn't something you see in the swamp, at least not on a person.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'll work on it, that's why I'm here. It won't happen again."