Elizabeth Ward woke up and instantly winced in pain. It felt like her head was splitting in two. The creaking of the rusty old aircraft carrier made it hard to sleep. The drugs Cindy Cantelli provided helped but the downside was a nasty headache in the morning. This was easily remedied with the proper dosage of more drugs. Med-X works amazingly well to ease the pain. She opened her bedside drawer and pulled out the syringe, and injected it into her forearm. The effects were almost instant as the pain was replaced with the high created by the drug.
She got up and put on a merc adventurer outfit she purchased the day before from Bannon at Potomac Attire. She brushed her short, dirty blonde hair and grabbed the caps from the table. She was running low on money and needed more or she wouldn't be able to afford her next fix. She had to find a way to make a ton of caps, and soon. She'd talk to her friend Cherry about it. Cherry had arrived in Rivet City at around the same time as her and they quickly became friends. Cherry said that she had been brought to Rivet City by some Lone Wanderer that had "saved" her from Dukov. That was a little over four years ago.
"I don't know what to tell you Liz," cherry shrugged, "you could always get a job working for one of the merchants."
"Yeah right," Liz laughed slightly, "seriously though, where the hell am I supposed to get some caps? I'm not good at anything anyway."
"Well you'll just have to either find some kind of job or just give up the meds."
Liz sighed heavily, "Yeah I know, I'll think of something." They finished their breakfast at Gary's Galley and got up to take a walk around the ship. On their way out, Liz caught a glimpse of a man she had never seen before. From what she saw, he was quite muscular and had fairly large arms although he wasn't huge. He had a 5 o' clock shadow and short black hair that was fashioned into a short faux hawk. He had on a merc grunt outfit, probably for comfort, and some kind of black fingerless gloves, but they didn't seem to be made of cloth like the ones she'd seen usually were. She couldn't see his eyes from her angle, or tell much else because he was turned away from her and sitting down
While she was staring at him she bumped into one of the wastelanders who had been carrying some food he had just purchased which caused him to spill it.
"You fucking bitch!" he shouted, "watch where the fuck you're going!" he raised his hand in attempt to strike at her but found he couldn't bring his arm down. Everyone in the room had seen what had happened and now everyone's eyes were on the stranger who only seconds ago had been several feet away sitting at the Galley drinking, but who now had the wastelander's wrist gripped tightly and was glaring at him. Now that he was standing, Liz noticed he was around six feet tall give or take an inch or two, and his eyes were dark, and the color was hard to tell exactly but seemed to be brown. He looked to be in his early to mid twenties at most. He had a
The wastelander tried to swing his other arm around to hit the stranger but the blow never met its target. In fact, it never came close. The stranger, still gripping the wastelander's wrist, struck him in the chest with only the palm of his hand which knocked the wind out of him and dropped him to his knees. Then he twisted the wastelander's arm around and pushed him to the ground. Before anyone knew what had happened the stranger had the wastelander on the ground, one hand on the back of his head pushing it down and the other twisting his arm into a position that he could use to cause the wastelander extreme pain if he chose to make any attempt to fight back. One of the security officers came over and asked what was going on. After being told the situation and what had just occurred by Gary, the officer, with the aid of Chief Harkness, took the wastelander and dragged him off towards the ships entrance. The stranger, without saying a word, walked over to the Galley, sat down at the same seat he was in before the incident, and resumed drinking. Liz cautiously approached him and took a deep breath, something about him made her very uneasy and nervous.
"Th-thank you, for saving me," she said, "I-" the stranger held up his hand and she stopped.
"I didn't save you," he said calmly, "I merely stopped him from hitting you. If he would have shown signs of attempting to kill you the security would have been dragging off a corpse."
"Oh, well still, thank you."
"Don't mention it, now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to finish my drink in peace." He said, lifting his glass to his lips.
"Okay. Sorry." She said. She turned and hurried over to where Cherry was standing.
"Are you ok?" Cherry asked worriedly, "You're not hurt are you?"
"No I'm fine thanks to him." She said motioning to the stranger sitting at Gary's Galley.
"Who is he?"
"No idea, but he's strong. And fast. And I'm gonna guess by the way he took down that wastelander that he's got some kind of training."
"He's kinda hot too." Cherry giggled.
"True."
"Did you get his name? or at least where he's staying?"
"No."
"Well, why the hell not?"
"I don't know! It didn't cross my mind."
"You're hopeless"
"Gee, thanks." They laughed and walked out of the market.
"Oh, he had some kind of weird accent too. I've never heard one like it before."
"Maybe he's a foreigner. We should go talk to Pinkerton, he's good with stuff like that.
"Okay." Then, the two girls headed off towards the broken bow of the ship. The stranger sat on top of the ship, one leg dangling off the edge, watching the girls as they headed away from the city. Then he stood up, and walked back inside.
