"Forget I said anything about you being a wuss."
The short girl had been traveling with Butch for a couple of weeks, after she had run into him once more at a dank bar in Rivet City getting merrily toasted. Surprising that he would be there, but he did say that he had become bored of the Vault life. He made no intentions of sticking around after she played Hero of The Vault and restored order to their crumbling society weeks prior. It was the only home she knew, after all. The only home he knew. Both said their goodbyes to its isolation and sterility and hello to a wild, lawless wasteland in their unique ways. Bullets and strife was her style, one that she really had no control over. Good riddances and indignant huffs was his.
"Didn't hear that, Butchie. Care to say that again?" she said, mockingly putting her hand to her ear.
"You know, fuck you Elise. You heard me."
Elise giggled and wrung her hands. "How quickly our social statuses change out here." She rubbed it in Butch's face that she was Head Cheese in Charge, Big Woman on Campus. Whatever they called boss-type things nowadays, because she was The Boss.
Outcast in the Vault, with only the overseer's daughter as a true friend, she was the delight of most civilized outposts she ran into… with notable exceptions. Tenpenny Towers could disappear from the surface of the pockmarked Earth for all she cared and none would mourn its demise. She decided to test that theory when she let the asshole ghouls from the tunnels in. Nope. Nary a peep from the rest of the Wastes. Everyone was fighting to survive day-to-day, who cared whether some snobbish holier-than-thou knobs made theirs. Wastelanders are wastelanders, no matter what dumpster or long-forgotten attic they decided to dig their outfit out of.
She glanced at the map on her Pip-Boy, tapped a few buttons, then faced forward. "Eeeyup. Almost here."
Butch played with his switchblade, a thin number he affectionately called his "toothpick". Dunno why he'd call it that, she never saw him stick the blade between his teeth. It probably wouldn't end well and then she'd have to play wasteland dentist with that fingerprint and dirt-covered thing.
"Almost where? Getting us into trouble again… I like trouble."
"Vault 106."
"Ah, shit, not another one of these."
He remembered the run-in at 108 a few days ago that freaked him the fuck out. Shrills of "GAAAAAARRRYYYY" could still be heard in his sleep. Did Elise flinch? If she did, he didn't see her lose control. She just coolly armed herself with the laser rifle she had slung on her back and shot the creepy pod-people one by one, burning holes in their skulls and their jumpsuits. Thinking back to the identical faces, identical voices, the same blue-and-yellow jumpsuits that made up ninety percent of their outfits, he pondered: if he stayed back with Amata and the rest of those clowns, would he transform into one of those? The Overseer sounded like that on some days, an automaton groaning simplistic brain-dead gibberish.
Maybe the wasteland life was rougher than Butch ever imagined. It certainly transformed the studious daddy's-girl nerd into a badass. He toyed with what it could do to him. His dream of a rough-and-tough gang could finally be realized. There were plenty of tunnels in DC proper, weren't there? Tunnel Snakes it shall remain, for there was nothing cooler. And he'd be Mr. Bad Motherfucker of DC. Yeah. He liked the sound of that.
A long forgotten, long abandoned relic of the past stared the journeyers down like a fabled giant. In some ways, they, themselves, were antique. They lived separate lives from the wasteland, closed off from the rest of the dismal, overcast world behind a heavy pneumatic door. This one was cracked open part-way, gathering dirt and foreign matter on the exposed side.
Rusty metal met dirty hands as Elise fidgeted with the Vault door's controls, lodging caked-on filth and flecks of peeling metal between her fingernails. "Let's get this piece open, shall we?"
"Ah shit."
"What is it?" she muttered as she got the mechanism to work. Metallic squeaking noises from behind the door were made as it rolled out of the way. It was like cracking open a tomb. Treasures and stale air lay behind that door. What treasures, they didn't know. But old Vaults were full of sellable crap. Those were perfectly good caps waiting to be made to exchange for stims and weapon upgrades.
"This skeleton."
Butch looked down at the bleached bones, tattered blue-and-yellow trappings, a skull with its jaw permanently hung open in a scream. It definitely wasn't fresh. It also definitely wasn't a raider or scavenger. It was, in a way, one of them, a Vault refugee. He certainly didn't make it far before succumbing to the fate that awaited every single person on this cursed Earth, sooner or later – the joy of death.
"Well." She tapped the front of her foot on the ground. "That's become too common of a sight."
How nonchalantly she brushed that off, Butch thought. Oh, it's just a skeleton. He did not, and will probably never understand, how she got accustomed to seeing the innards of creatures human and otherwise. Sure, it was pretty badass. But the rational side tugged at him like an impatient child and he grimaced.
She wasted no time as she walked through the unknown. "Well, c'mon Butch, aren't you coming?" A condescending glare was shot, laser beams sent direct from her eyes to his. "Or are you scared? Did that bag of bones put you off?"
"Elise, fuck you. Fucking skeleton didn't scare me, I'm a Tunnel Snake."
"Then let's go! Adventure awaits."
As she wandered, skipping even, into the stale, ancient cavern of man's design and ruin, Butch swallowed hard. Bad things certainly waited behind the hunk of metal that protected the world from its horrors… if 108 was any indication. Vaults were nothing but bad juju, including their own. He gripped his trusty switchblade and held on to it tight, like a frightened kid's well-loved teddy bear. Following Elise into the dark, he scanned the area, making sure there were no more freaky clones waiting to jump his ass at any given notice. Especially ones named Gary.