"You know, Boss, most gals your age are out on the town flaunting their stuff on Saturday nights." There was a pause as he poked his head out from behind the flipped table and drew back in quickly as more gunshots were fired. "Not cornered in a hot room with a ghoul and raiders."
Estil looked up from reloading her six-cylinder pistols and grinned at Raul. Dirt was smudged across her face along with blood, hers and otherwise. She looked back down to her pistols, wide brim of her cowboy hat working well to hide her face. "Most girls my age aren't as good of a shot as me." She finished up with her pistols. "Alright, you take right, I'll go left and we'll kill these bitches."
He didn't have time to argue or make any comment about his knees before she was up. She spun on the balls of her feet to face the raiders, her old, leather, cowboy boots making a distinctive clicking sound when she finished her movement. She was powerful in her stance, feet wide, arms stretched far. Raul's knees creaked when he stood, lacking her gusto, and turned as well to find that her guns were already exploding, shots hitting a raider nearly each time.
He vaguely noted, as his quick hands drew his own guns, that she wasn't a half bad shot. He fired, blowing a clean hole in a particularly nasty piece of work. With a bit of training she might be half as good as him, of course, something like that would require some personal training.
Using two hundred years of control, he let his thoughts die away into gunfire before they took a turn for the worse. The room, small dark and dank, was echoing with gunfire and sounds of agony as the raiders fell. Raul shoved his pistol back into its holster and looked to his travel buddy, one Estil North.
Estil took a moment before putting her pistols up as well, she walked forward, movements a little more stagnate then they had been. She looked down at the raiders but couldn't bring herself to loot the bodies, Raul could see the hesitation, the way her moral system kicked in a little too hard and pushed her out of the room without so much as grabbing a single cap. He gave a low chuckle before following her; she really was just a kid.
They pushed their way out of the small gas station and out into the cool Mojave night. The air was clean and crisp compared to the musk and blood that had clouded the station and their noses, the change made them take in deep clean breaths. Raul didn't care what anyone said, you could smell a rotted human body every day of your life and you would never get used to the smell. That was one thing that impressed him; she never even came close to gagging at such things.
"Hey boss," he stepped towards her, the full moon allowing a clear view of the twenty-something year old.
Estil had been looking out across the vast desert, her hands shoved deep into the pockets of her warn and ripped jeans. It took her a moment to acknowledge him, her mind beginning to slow with the need for sleep. "What's up, Raul?"
"Are you feeling alright?"
She looked back at him then, deep shadows cast across her usually attractive features. "Yeah, why do you ask?"
He motioned vaguely to her torso. "You seem to be a bullet magnet, is all."
It was then she looked down. Her torso, clad in a not-so-white undershirt and a button up plaid piece sported curious hoes that were scorched around the edges. Blood was seeping out of her and staining the garments with an ease that nearly mocked her. She took in a sharp breath, to hold in a scream in agony as the pain started to set in, lighting her muscles on fire like a bad injection of Psycho.
Half an hour later the two unlikely partners were sitting by a half-assed fire, her bloodied shirts had been pulled off and replaced by the last of their bandages after she had pulled the bullets out. She was sifting through her backpack, trying not to bend too much as she looked for a shirt that hadn't been totally ruined.
"Raul, can you please give me some more med-x?" Estil looked from her bag to the ghoul who sat a few steps away from her, his fingers working on opening a box of Fancy Lad snack cakes.
He didn't bother looking up from the box that held everything good in the world. He knew she'd be looking at him with those soft eyes, trying to make him bend to her will; there was no reason to even bother. "Sorry, Boss," he frowned at the box as it continued to deny him access, "you've already had enough to numb a Deathclaw."
Estil gave a frustrated sigh as she pulled on another shirt, a large old tee-shirt she had taken from home before trekking out. The shifting it took to get it on wasn't worth the effort in the end when she was left sitting, trying not to hiss from the pain that was still in the process of being numbed. She placed a hand on her torso, feeling the thin bandages under the stained shirt.
"Don't suppose we got any stims?" The southern drawl was tense in her voice.
The ghoul gave a happy chuckle as the Fancy Lad box gave way to his teeth and he was presented with cleanly wrapped cakes. "Ran out yesterday, Boss, you have a way about making things want to hurt you, you know."
Sighing, the young woman admitted defeat and slowly made her way to lay down on the blanket she lovingly called a 'bed'. When she was left staring up at the sky, a sky so dark that the stars were like drops of light and hope, something settled within her. After leaving home mere weeks ago and stumbling upon Raul they had never stopped moving, never stopped trying to survive and just make it. The sky, well that calmed her, the sense of something being stable for thousands of years humbled her, if only for the rare moment.
"Can you grab the first watch, Raul?" The med-x was really kicking in, her own voice sounded hollow in her head and it felt like her mouth was full of tar when she tried to speak.
"Staying up late while you sleep to watch for murderers and nasty creatures? Sounds like a vacation, Boss." He licked the sweet cream from one of his cakes off of his thumb and heard an airy laugh before everything on her side of the humble camp fell still and he was left with a crackling, dying, fire.