"He can't leave me alone. He may not." Anger now posessed the mind of Arf. He ran behind the vague figure that represented the inventor. "I will show him that I'm useful too." And for the first time in his empty existence an original self-thought idea appeared in his else so clouded spirit.
Before he had left the place of the battle he quickly snatchet a box with the sentence: first half of five rations, boxes especially made for the war and very cheap too; they were made in mass and didn't taste according to the price. His reading skills were poor but the sign at the top of the box made everything clear. An apple. "If he isn't friendly when I show him this, I will personaly push the box in his throat."

He ran further, gaining ground on the man.

Mal turned his lowly bent head, and his eyes caught the other survivor's burly figure from the reddish gold haze of the sand drifting trough the air catching up to him. Under his cloth face protection, Mal grinned. He knew he probably wouldn't last long on his own. Perhaps it was the sand clouding his vision and distorting his ability to assess the distance, perhaps it was his bad timing, but Malcolm looked back on the wrong moment. One of his legs, which were slowly going limp with tiredness, to his surpise was stopped midway in a step as he tripped over one of the remnants of the walls, making a less-than-gracious dive trough the flying sand and landing painfully on the lying one. In the process. Then, lacking the time, or, for that matter, the strength to get back up in this wind, he rolled over the remnants, and with a last tumbling crawl, he reached the hopely safe haven of the ruin.

"This isn't a sandstorm but an airborne desert" Arf murmered to himself. Suddenly the shadow before him dissapeared. Panic. But when he ran further he saw the body lying on the ground slowly being covered by sand. "I'm saving him. He has to see that I'm a good person, and a strong one at that. But how..." A very blunt but effective idea popped up. He continued to run and while he passed the body, he bent over and simple took up the entire man and threw him over his shoulder.
"You rather heavy for such a slime man" He breathed heavily; the lack of fresh air, the non-stop running and the carrying of the man were very exhausting, even for a man of his caliber.
Finnaly he saw a hole or portal in a wall, or was it a hill? He stumbled inside, gently lay down Malcolm and put the rations next to him.

"That was a close call, wasn't it Malharmy?"

"Congratulations... you're an asset." the Handyman muttered, crawling into the corner and resting his back against the brick. He threw one of the pieces of cloth he had torn off the wagon towards his saviour. "Here." he said. "Get this around your face, or you'll be deaf and blind very soon."
He was actually glad the big guy wasn't as stupid as he first thought him to be. The Handyman looked at what he had managed to gather. His flail was intact, and that was good news. He took the ingredients he had had time to gather, and looked at them, his eyes squinted in the slit formed by his mask. Malcolm was trying to see what he could make.

"Well put those things away. First it's time to eat, I'm starving. I could almost eat a... an ant!" The big man showed a confident smile to his companion. They survived a murdereous, city-destroying sandstorm. What possible more could nature throw at them? Shouldn't think of that, always bad things happen if you think that.

Arf stepped up to the box. "How shall we open this, it doesn't has a button but you have an awfully beautiful ant jaw in your hands. Care to share it with me. Or no: the honor is completely yours to open the box. But don't take to long."

Arf picked up the box and put it next to Harmonia.

For a second, Malcolm remained motionless, trying to comprehend what the other guy had just said. Then his right hand twitched. Then, he admitted, "I take that back. You're not an asset, you're a moron." He raised a hand into the air, and helf it in a cup against the air and sand current.
A quantity of sand gathered in his hand, and he showed it to Arf, yelling at him, partially crying over the wind, but mainly out of pure rage. "You open your mouth wide enough and you'll be eating and breathing sand! Put the cloth around your face, I don't want a big blind oaf on my hands! Get moving!"

"Have it your way meanie." Arf took up the piece of cloth and lay himself next to the handyman. "Ever thought of being friendly against other persons? You must be very lonely." He turned on his back and watched the man. The sand still came in the room in waves but they were spared from the worst.
It was a very old building, made of bricks instead of clay. The floor was covered in sand but how deep he buried his hands, he never touched something hard. It must have been wood long ago, not having survived the hazards of the wars. It's more a shack than an actual house. Sad of the roof though.
He crawled closer to his collegue in fate and tried to rest a little while, not sleeping, that was possibly deadly.

"We live in a deadly desert, surrounded by things that want to kill us, maim us, or, in the best case, just eat us." the Handyman replied with irritation. "We don't have time for civilities. When there's a storm, we run. Who doesn't have the experience to survive must recieve orders from those with experience and follow them, or we all die. It's that simple."
His fingers played with the materials in front of him, turning them over, examining them. A few times, he let them go and made figures in the air with his hands, his eyes closed, as he attempted to imagine what a creation would look like.

The conversation was clearly over. Arf looked at Malcolm, he had a point but it looked more like an excuse than an explanation.
"Since we're stuck in here, maybe we should make acquaintances. It's only you and a me." A shame it is, we did those other two have to die. It was an uncontrollable thought that made his way through the braincells. Sometimes there were tomany thoughts, making it difficult to think and sometimes... There were no thoughts.

"Are is there to much sand to begin a lifestory?"

The sandstorm outside was slowly losing its power, less and less sand being picked up and the wind getting weaker. In about an hour, the weather would clear up to reveal the burning sun and screams of mutated beasts once again.

"There's only enough time for that when you're in a well-guarded settlement." The Handyman clamly replied. A light lit somewhere in the back of his eyes and moved forward, gleaming with full power in his gaze. He had found what he would do. He began checking his different components' rigidness, measuring length (with his arms, since he didn't have anything else) and sharpness.
He didn't mind the two who had died back there. He was too busy surviving.

Arf was fascinated by the man; could he really make something out of that junk? "We'll have to bury or burn the bodies, hopefully the sandstorm did the work for us."

He examined the room more closely now the sand level was raising less rapidly, thank god, he didn't want to die choking in tons of sand, only in the company of a man who didn't care for him at all, if he had feelings he had hidden them very well.
Suddenly he remembered the lines on Malcoms body. He couldn't hide his curiosity. You may never ask such personal questions from a stranger his mother used to say. The memory of his mother made tears apear in his eyes.

Arf turned away ad tried to get some sleep.

"We shouldn't waste our time. If there were more of us, perhaps we could, but now we just can't afford it." the Handyman replied, beginning his work. He didn't let Arf sleep: without looking at him, he hit him lightly with an antenna, using it somewhat like a whip and flinging its end at him, and said, "You're strong, aren't you? I need your help making this thing." without stopping his work for as much as an istant, twisting the antennae around eachother, making ropes from thin, long pieces of cloth which he wove together, and and putting the jaws in where necessary.

Quickly he removed the tears, waited a few seconds until the watery eyes dried up and turned to Malharm.
"What can I possibly do for you? Am I not a moron who can't even spell his name?" Frankly he did had problems in spelling some names, but not his own. He tried to look in the eyes of the inventor but each time a swirl of sand made his eyes hurt and he had to turn away.
"But I'll do whatever is neccesary for our survival." Underlining 'our' with extra accents.

Harm nodded. He hadn't expected the fain-*test*-('") attempt to refuse from Arf. Taking a few antennae he had twisted together, he turned to his stronger companion. "Bend these. Not too far, or you'll break them. We probably wouldn't survive that." he ordered simply, handing the piece over and picking up a rope and a jaw.