Once the flurry of bullets came to an end Einstein was the last man standing until Alice's blade found it's mark. His body hit the ground with a resounding thud and the Raiders who had taken over the Combat Zone were gone. She had knelt to clean the knife off on his clothes when the announcer started yelling at her "So do you wanna talk this out like civilized folk or what?"
Alice frowned to herself at that. She had just gotten almost all the Raiders to kill each other just now. The least he could do was sound a bit grateful instead of complaining. Whatever. She turned back towards the cage where he had been cowering during the firefight and came up short in surprise at the man's appearance. There was a sunken pit where his nose should be and his face looked like it had been made out of clay and by an unskilled potter at that. Combine that with a three piece suit, tie and a frock of orange hair and you had a very unusual looking character in front of her. Alice couldn't help but wonder if all of his skin looked like that, particularly the parts she couldn't see beneath his trousers.
He stared at her, a bit uneasily as she drew closer. The announcer brushed at one of his lapels with a nervous laugh "Looks like it's over. I guess that could have gone worse..."
Cait on the other hand almost seemed amused by what she had just witnessed "I dunno. It was quite the performance from where I was standin'."
The announcer turned to glare at her "Are you fucking high? Why am I asking, of course you are."
Alice remained silent, content to watch, as the two of them began to go back and forth at each other. Cait glowered in response as she defended herself "I won the fight didn't I?"
"You're strung out and getting sloppy Cait. You got lucky today but you ain't got to worry about it now since this one just put us out of business." He looked at Alice as he spoke to her "I'm not sure if I should kiss you or have my little bird here feed you your own entrails."
Cait sputtered indignantly "I told ya to quit callin' me that!"
Alice folded her arms irritably as she ignored the threat "I just got rid of these Raiders for you. How about saying thank you to start?"
"You did do that so thanks. But we've been entertaining those idiots for two years and now they're dead which means we got no audience which means no caps coming in." He looked back at Cait "And if you ain't bringing in caps little bird, you ain't an asset. You're a liability to me... and to yourself."
He returned his attention to Alice as if considering something "So... here's what I'm thinking. What say I let you take over her contract? She can go with you,watch your back while I get this place cleaned up."
Cait's hands balled up into fists as she glared at her boss "What the hell Tommy? Are you trying to get rid of me?"
Before Tommy could reply Alice cut him off. "That's not a bad idea and I'll certainly consider it but I already know the solution to you not having any caps coming in. Tell me, what sells better than violence?"
Tommy exchanged a glance with Cait before shrugging slightly "Food, water, a place to sleep? What are you getting at?"
Alice glanced down at the dress still pooled around her waist and smirked just a tad. "Sex. Sex sells better than anything else. It's something everyone wants, it's always in demand and it's a lot less messy than what you were doing before." She waved her arm at the theater's seating area to indicate the Raider's corpses out there.
Tommy seemed like he was considering her suggestion but she couldn't exactly tell for certain with that face of his. Cait, on the other hand, was livid "To hell with that! I'm not goin' with you if you think I'll be some kind of whore contract or no contract."
Alice reached down and pulled her dress back up to cover herself as she set about trying to ruffle the fighter's ruffled feathers "I'd be lying if I said you didn't have potential." She bit her lip as she eyed Cait up and down "You've got the face and body for it and with the proper guidance you'd have the men quivering at your feet... or women if that's what you'd prefer. But that's not the main reason why I'm interested in your contract. I'm not a fighter myself but from what I saw you seem to have a knack for... combat."
Cait still looked irritated but her cheeks had reddened just a touch and she brushed a loose lock of hair behind one ear. "Well, at least someone here knows talent when they see it." Cait hadn't been looking at either of them but everyone knew who that little jab was aimed at. Alice coughed into her hand to hide a smirk.
Tommy tried to put on a good-natured grin but it seemed forced. "Well, I'm interested in hearing what exactly you're proposing... sorry I didn't get your name."
Alice extended her hand out towards the man "My name's Alice Thomas but you can call me Alice."
She had been expecting him to shake it but Tommy smoothly brought it up to what passed for lips as he kissed the back of it "A pleasure to meet you Alice. As I was saying, I want to hear what you're suggesting but we need to deal with these bodies first. I don't want them making a mess and stinking my theater up any more than they already have."
It was a repeat of how Trudy had reacted at the diner with Wolfgang and Simone's remains. People dying wasn't an area of concern but getting rid of the bodies was. But like before, Cait and Tommy were stripping them of anything valuable first. Alice wasn't particularly keen on helping them deal with this and she took her time in bringing Codsworth back inside. Unfortunately for her, Cait had been dumping the bodies at the door while Tommy inspected all the items they had scavenged.
Cait gave an evil grin Alice as she returned to the theater with Codsworth at her back "All right Alice, we have a cart we used to haul dead bodies off. It ain't big enough for all o' them so we're goin' make a few trips."
More manual labor. Terrific. The only benefit to hauling this cart was that Cait was walking a few paces ahead of her, giving Alice something to look at as she and Codsworth pulled the cart along. Cait stopped them in the middle of an intersection. She still had a bit of a sly grin on her face but the woman's eyes were darting all around as she kept an eye out for... something "We can leave em here. And be quick about it, we can't stay here for too long."
Something was off about the way Cait's head kept swiveling around and her fingers were noticeably tight on the rifle she held. It wasn't until they returned with the second, and last, cart of bodies that Alice had an inkling of what it might. "Cait... where did those bodies go? We were here just a few minutes ago..."
They had dumped a good five bodies in the middle of the intersection on their first trip and now the road was empty. Alice shivered as Cait shook her head "Trust me, you should keep staring at me arse and not think too much about this. You're better off not knowin'." That was advice she was more than happy to follow. Those pants were tight enough to accentuate said arse but not so tight to keep it from jiggling just a little as Cait led them back to the Combat Zone.
Tommy had finished sorting through the loot and was waiting for Alice by the time they returned. He had taken a seat and their was a pair of glasses and bottle of wine on the table. Alice shook her head as she seated herself and pushed the glass away "Thank you but no. I don't drink alcohol."
He shrugged slightly and picked his glass up taking a sip "So let's get down to business. Saying that sex sells better than everything else got my attention but it doesn't tell me anything. What are you trying to do? Start a brothel? There's already enough whores in the Commonwealth not to mention Irma's place in Goodneighbor. I hope you have something more interesting than that."
Alice leaned back in her chair as she steepled her fingers "Brothels can be fun but their rather... vanilla in my opinion. My tastes and my proposal are more of a niche in comparison." Tommy frowned at that and she hastened to explain herself before he possibly jumped to the wrong conclusion. "The common acronym used is BDSM. I don't mean to sound insulting or condescending but I have to ask if you know what that stands for." Tommy shook his head in response and Alice began to elaborate. "It can stand for a number of different things depending on who you ask but they're all grouped under that acronym. Bondage, dominance, submission, masochism. I can explain further but the short version is a lot of restraints and possibly some rather unusual toys depending on how extreme the people involved get."
Her prospective business partner fell silent and his attention fixed itself on his wine as he swirled the glass around. "You're right about that. I don't know anything about BDSM and truthfully I don't really care to. Don't take that the wrong way, I'm not making any sort of judgment here. It's just something I'm not personally interested in. I'm very tempted to say no except I was here for what happened earlier."
Tommy shook his head incredulously and took another drink "I saw it with my own eyes and I still don't understand what happened. You... played with yourself, said a few words and the Raiders started killing each other. If I had been holding a gun then I think I might have started shooting myself and that terrifies me. You terrify me. I've never seen you before today and you almost bewitched me into murdering other people for the chance of screwing you. I'm agreeing to this because I'm afraid of what might happen if I say no and because it's not a terrible idea if I'm being completely honest. I don't know how successful this idea of yours will be but I'm willing to give it a try."
His brow drew down and his face almost looked menacing as he leaned forward "But I'm going to warn you about Cait. We've been here together for a long time and that woman is like a daughter to me. I don't care what you'll be getting up to once we're in business but I don't want you getting any ideas when it comes to her. All those chems she takes – they screw her up pretty badly. Some days she's lucid, other days she can barely walk. If you take advantage of her I will kill you." Tommy took another drink and set the glass down with a loud thud. "Now then, let's discuss what you need to make this happen and how we're going to split up the profits."
The rest was a matter of negotiation. Tommy might have said he feared her but the... whatever he was didn't allow said fear to have any impact on his bargaining skills. Or at least that's what it felt like to Alice. Nonetheless they came to an accord and shook hands on it. Tommy would be in charge of the boring business aspects such as finding workers, handling money and maintaining the building itself. As for Alice, she was free to handle the fun parts like training said workers and eventually getting to play with whatever customers they would have.
Their were a few problems that needed to be solved however. First was actually having people to work here. The most likely place to find potential workers was Goodneighbor and Tommy wasn't wasting any time in heading there along with some of the loot from the Raiders. She had offered Codsworth to help explain what she needed but Tommy had declined. "I got enough of an idea from what you said earlier to pitch this to Hancock. Odds are that he'll be able to provide us the kind of people you're looking for."
That just left her and the robot alone with Cait. She sent the robot off to watch the entrance since he didn't need to sleep and to get him out of the way. It was still the afternoon but she had seen Cait disappearing through a door on the stage when they had gotten back from hauling the bodies off and the other woman hadn't shown her face since then. Alice let her curiosity get the better of her and she opened that door to see what was behind them.
The backstage area looked like it had seen better days and most of the dressing rooms were covered in dust and spiderwebs but there was a light coming out of a doorway at the end of the hall. Alice stopped outside and knocked once on the doorframe. Their was no response and after a minute she knocked again, louder this time but still nothing. Eventually she peeked into the room to see what was going on.
Cait was lying on a thin mattress, her unblinking eyes staring up at the ceiling above her. Alice frowned as she walked up to the bed's side. She snapped her fingers above Cait's face but there was no reaction whatsoever and then she saw it. A large oversized syringe with two canisters attached to the sides still poking into a vein in one of Cait's arm.
Alice scowled and folded her arms across her chest. She had seen the marks on Cait's arm earlier and Tommy had said she had drug issues but it appeared she had underestimated the issue if the size of that needle was any indication. It was just as well Tommy would be gone for a few days, perhaps a week because Alice had the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn't like what was about to happen any more than Cait would.
