"I'm calling it right here. This world can officially bite my ass."

Please Stand By
Chapter One: "Got a Light?"

As it turned out, tossing pebbles down amongst a pack of angry and confused mutant hounds from atop the edge of a dilapidated freeway had not been one of Nora's brightest ideas. It was all fun and games at first, with Nick hovering behind her and muttering darkly to himself whilst casting pointed, unimpressed looks her way whenever she deigned to snigger, until the ominous tick, tick, tick of a suicidal Super Mutant manifested from a nearby bus.

She blinked. "Oh, shit."

Nick glanced at her slantwise, murmuring, "Is this a good time to ask if you believe in karma?"

Nora did. Well, had. 210 years prior, times had been much simpler. Good was white and bad was black and indoor plumbing was taken for granted. Then, she staunchly believed you reaped what you sewed, good deeds and bad intentions alike. There was no in-between. But now? Now everything was gray and muddled and gone to nuclear shit. Still, Nora tried to be a good person—the same person, even if irony had bitch-slapped her in the face because, yes, she was still a mother, but had lost her child in a wasteland; her wedding ring still glinted in the sun, but her husband was dead. She killed people to keep others safe, not unlike an old-world soldier, but now wondered if cause and effect influenced anything worthwhile in this new radiated age that took and never gave.

Whatever good karma she had banked in the hopes of keeping her family safe had been exhausted the moment the cryogenic chamber had locked her in Vault 111, and Nora was quick to learn that the post-apocalyptic Commonwealth held no mercy for a bleeding heart.

"If you're referring to yesterday morning," Nora countered, a hand snaking for the rusted sniper rifle slung across her back. "I will have you know that I did, in fact, pay Myrna for the flip lighter. She just wasn't looking."

Nick levelled her a glower.

"You paid for it with pre-War money."

"It's legal tender. Nobody has stated otherwise."

"The entire Commonwealth begs to differ."

With a noncommittal shrug, Nora tucked the butt of her rifle into her shoulder and pulled one quick round straight through the blinking red light of the Super Mutant's makeshift bomb. It exploded in a mushroom of gore and nuclear refuse and a litany of plastic forks. Casually, she flicked yellowed flesh off her arm as Nick waved smog out of his face.

"Remind me again," he began. "How many days did you say it's been since you escaped 111?"

"I didn't. Why?"

The full weight of the detective's unblinking, synthetic eyes had whittled information and confessions out of hundreds before. But none of them were Nora, who had taken to enthusiastically skirting his questions like it was a national sport of old, and was peering at him with an overtly beatific smile as she fluidly popped a new clip into the rifle.

"You know your way around a firearm for someone who's lived the majority of her life behind a white picket fence," Nick replied.

She waggled a brow. "Careful, detective, that's borderline assumption. Whatever will Watson say?"

"Who?"

Nora sighed, "Never mind," and was about to open her mouth again when her head snapped up, dark eyes zeroing in on something in the distance.

She didn't direct him to fall back with the customary sharp flick of a wrist. Instead, Nora slid forward, grabbing a handful of Nick's trench coat and tugging him behind her with all the strength her small body possessed. A moment later a grenade clattered where he'd been crouched.

Another Super Mutant had appeared, head bobbing through the windows of the bus. It cackled boastfully.

"For you, human," it bellowed. "Hot potato!"

"Nora!" Nick seethed heatedly, grabbing a hold of her vault jumpsuit. "Move–"

With the tip of the rifle's barrel, Nora clocked the grenade over the ledge a mere three feet behind them. It exploded below, and the death throes of several mutated hounds momentarily filled the air. Her answering grin was bright-eyed and sly, before she began searching the pockets of her utility belt until extracting the flip lighter she'd filched from Diamond City Surplus. With a flick, it lit, and she chucked it at the Super Mutant's feet.

The iridescent swirl of gasoline sloshed around its grayish toes, and immediately caught fire. It, too, exploded, raining down more gore and the blasted innards of a Carlisle typewriter.

Nora pivoted on a heavy boot, arching a brow at Nick.

"What?" he asked defensively.

"Kinda glad I bought that flip lighter, huh?"

"Stole, you mean?" Nick rectified, then pressed his lips together thoughtfully. "You like proving people wrong, you deflect questions with more questions, and you seem to possess a built-in bullshit detector. Either that sole survivor story is fabricated and you're a synth, or you were a lawyer before the bombs fell."

Nora tensed, face darkening for a millisecond before it contorted into an expression that looked like she'd just masticated a mouthful of rotten mirelurk eggs. Her eyes flickered away, towards the horizon peppered with the silhouettes of skyscrapers.

"I'm right," Nick hedged, voice quiet. "Aren't I?"

Truth be told, she hated these moments. Hated when Nick got that look in his eyes. The one that calculated. That analyzed and knew. The one that put two and two together, tallying up all the snippets of her past until they mapped out a nice little a picture that gave an unhindered view of all the demons and ghosts that still lurked from a life long lost. The interview with Piper had been one thing, had been on her terms where she divulged only what she'd wanted published, but the detective's probing gaze struck all pressure points.

Not that he used it as ammunition, but remembering life as it used to be was like skirting a psychological minefield. Most memories were perilous because they were raw, dithering creatures. Fortunately, she took comfort in the way repression hardened her skin and tunneled her vision in the endeavor of finding Shaun.

Slowly, Nora wiped sweat and grime off her palms onto the bright blue jumpsuit of Vault 111. The fabric was just starting to become threadbare, the knees in particular needing to be patched thanks to her preference of stealth tactics over open combat. She pulled at a wayward thread, glancing at the detective before heaving a sigh.

"You're right. It's true," she said, and took a deep, cathartic breath. "I'm a synth. Do you need to see the 'Made in The Institute' stamp on my ass as proof? Damn, Valentine, everyone's right—you are good."

The detective had the good grace not to appear too needled, but eyed her as he stood.

"Whittling information out of you is like teaching a brahmin voice commands," he muttered dryly. "It's not dangerous, nor impossible, but it's full of the unexpected and guaranteeing several stages of groan-inducing irritation."

"Moo."

Nick groaned.

"I'm sorry, Nick. We were having a moment before, weren't we? That was a moment. It just didn't feel like a moment and–"

An explosion cuts her off. The flames that were still puttering with life from Nora's lighter trick had amassed into a fiery detonation when a trickle of gasoline from an adjacent car snaked downward, setting off a chain reaction of decrepit automobiles combusting in succession like a line of dominos. They were both blown aside. Nora was sent slamming straight back into a meridian, body quivering from the force and breathless with pain, her vision threatening to blackout. Nick took the worst of it, however, being buffeted several feet into the air and over the freeway, landing amongst the deceased hounds far below.

After a few agonizing moments, Nora heaved herself upright with trembling arms, dots speckling her line of sight.

"What a literal pain in the ass," she lamented weakly, pressing a hand against her ribcage. "Why couldn't tubes of Bengay survive a nuclear holocaust? Damn, that smarts."

Noting the detective's absence, she scrambled to her feet, taking a moment to breathe deeply until her vision stopped swimming and the knifelike jabs of pain in her side abated. Tentatively, she peered over the edge.

"Shit," she seethed, before springing forward.

The freeway had been shorn apart half a century prior, revealing skeletal rebars that descended towards the ground below, making it easy for Nora to climb down. Once reaching Nick, she saw that one arm was dangling by several sparking wires due to a muffler's exhaust pipe lodged into the fleshy mesh of his shoulder. He was barely conscious, the yellow sensors of his eyes surging erratically like they were on the cusp of short circuiting.

"For the record," he said, voice like gravel, as Nora carefully aided him upright. "I blame you for this. Of all the people traipsing the Wasteland for me to follow, an insatiable pyromaniac hellbent on secrecy had to go and save me from the bowels of Vault 114. Now can we kindly find someplace safe where my servo motors and drives can comfortably break down in peace?"

Nora clucked her tongue, sliding his good arm across her shoulders. She managed to mask a sharp wince as the detective leaned heavily against her.

"I've told you a million times to stop exaggerating, Valentine. You're not going to die. I'll get you patched up and functioning at a 100% in no time, and then you can be salty at me all you want. Oh, wait. Excelsior!"

"What now?" Nick groused, watching as Nora unsteadily swiped something from off the ground.

"Look, one of the hell hounds had it."

She held up a fancy gold-plated flip lighter between two calloused fingers, the brightest of smiles etched onto her face.

Nick groaned in defeat.