It'd look comical from an outsider's perspective. A dozen military men and women, some with experience and training, all paralyzed at the fearsome sight of a man with a golf club and his band of rowdy goons, each with melee weapons of their own. Max got the idea that she'd be very much terrified of Nephi, but for him to successfully intimidate the likes of Deacon or Emma was… destabilizing, and further brought her morale down. Had Nephi decided to run at them, she wouldn't have reacted to them, even if he were to pick her for last in his killing spree. But, fortunately for her, the Fiend leader relished the disgust and fear his actions inspired, granting them the time to recover. He hardly stood idle in anticipation, but at the very least he didn't charge into the fray. The sheer triumph of intimidating "NCR dogs", as he called, was probably more satisfying for him than merely killing them all.
"I love the Lord because He hears my voice and prayer… for blood," Nephi did a chuckle, somehow still managing to sound bored. And that made him scarier than the bloodthirsty screaming berserker that Max had thought up of before the fight. He seemed almost bored with the inhumane violence all around him. "Just kidding. I have your eager dumbasses to thank for the glorious fucking bloodshed that I'm going to dish out. You've been sent to kill me, right? Well, I'll kill all but one of you. You'll stay alive long enough to warn the others about what happened. Feed them the "wah he caved my friends' skulls in" sob story and shit."
"… I've g-got a better one," Emma piped up. The defiance in her voice snapped Max out of her own daze and apparently did the same for the rest of the troopers. And of course, there was fear in it, but that fear certainly didn't get in the way of Emma walking up to stand in front of the entire group, including her own Lieutenant. Nephi raised an eyebrow at that, and a smirk formed on the edge of his lips, only to lose it when she leveled the grenade launcher his way. He didn't seem much scared or even concerned, for that matter, but merely annoyed. Like the grenade, he very well may receive to the face would merely irritate him. "I'll explode you up. About a dozen witnesses will say that I really did just reduce the oh-so-mighty Driver Nephi to bits, and the Fiends are a foot closer to their collective grave. How 'bout that for a sob story?"
"I don't care about your shitty speech, you two-bit cannon fodder," He pointed at his head, wholly unconcerned. "Press the fucking trigger and see if you can get rid of me that easily."
"With pleasure." Emma did as asked and the mighty grenade launcher shot… thin air, even though the barrels circled. Max laughed slightly at that, out of pure nervousness: They really were all going to die. Nephi didn't seem too surprised on his own, almost like he anticipated that the grenade launcher would blow him up.
"It's hard to find grenades in the wastes, ya know? Anyway, what-" A bullet lodged itself somewhere below his right shoulder, causing Nephi to pause as if to acknowledge it. He glanced at Emma, who had quickly discarded the now-useless grenade launcher to fight with a much more reliable M911. Without so much as acknowledging the pain, Nephi pulled a flashbang from behind his back, having perhaps collected it from a previous corpse before the encounter. Seeing the danger, Emma, Deacon, and a few others of the soldiers began shooting at Nephi but two of the Fiends near him jumped in front of their leader to take the shots for him, the various chems they'd taken keeping them steady on their feet no matter how many bullets managed to ravage their torso. Nephi himself was hit by one or two of the bullets, but that hardly stopped him from launching the projectile at the group of soldiers. Acknowledging the threat, Max grabbed Emma by the back of her collar and, with the strength granted to those in difficult situations, pulled her backward. It wasn't an expert thrown like those Emma did back at Boulder City, but it was close enough that the blast reached the soldiers nonetheless. For five long and uncomfortable seconds, Max's world was limited to a white void with bursting statics, and her vision did not exactly grow clearer past those five seconds. What she saw was blurry and difficult to navigate, which she blamed on her brain and body being almost out of sync together: Her every action was sluggish, happening seconds after her mind gave her body the input to do something.
And as soon as she felt like she was back on her feet, a shape burst into existence near her, impacting Max in the jaw and tossing her right back down. The pain had trouble communicating itself as anything more than numbness in a section of her mouth, but clearly, there was danger going on. And she was in a situation where dealing with it would be extraordinarily difficult! Meanwhile, her aggressor leaped on top of Max, and she felt a similar numbness somewhere in her chest, lightly snapping her out of her trance. At the very least, Max could identify an attacker now: It was that surviving Fiend they'd captured from the last fight, right before Nephi's arrival, and he was wrapping his hands around Max's neck! "Wake up! It's more satisfying if you know you're going to die!" Max, weak as she was, reached for his head to hold it back, and he laughed at the effort in answer before a gunshot suddenly cut him off. The bullet didn't quite punch its way through his head, but the way he suddenly slumped over the young soldier was indicative enough of its success. Groaning in disgust at the smell, Max began to remove the body, somehow feeling very little empathy for a man who had been trying to murder her seconds ago.
"You good?" Asked Emma, having recovered from the stun grenade way quicker by the looks of things. With a casual kick, she removed the body of her friend and helped Max up.
"… N-not really," Max answered, rubbing her neck and suppressing the nasty little memories adding themselves to the nasty modern events. Her world was still blurry, and Emma's words were only heard because she happened to be standing right next to her.
"… Well shit, because you're going to need to be at your best," the Fiends were running wild over the soldiers of the NCR: All of them were in the middle of pinning down or immobilizing troopers or Deacon himself, while Nephi was running roughshod over the rest of them. Dazed by the grenade and seized by panic, those poor troopers fell one by one to Nephi's mighty golf club. Max was thankful for the blur, if ever so slightly because what she could see was not pleasant at all. The Fiend was fast and strong, having already decimated nearly half of the dozens of soldiers he was facing down in the seconds it took Max and Emma to recover from the flashbang. His weapon was deadlier than any machete and he swung it with great skill and strength for one of dubious mind, easily cleaving through limbs or caving heads in with nothing but a casual swing. Left unchecked like that, he'd be able to easily reach the other soldiers, and that'd be the end of them. "Alright, game plan. I'm going to distract Nephi. You help out the others in the meanwhile. The more of us together, the worse Nephi's odds are. We need to shoot him in the legs."
"You'll distract him?! Look at him!" Max balked, as Emma seized her rifle. "He's cutting them in half with a single swing!"
"This is the day the Lord has made! Rejoice and be glad in it, assholes!" Nephi laughed his flat tone from earlier all but gone.
"He'll kill us all if we let him reach us. I'll do what I can do to buy time. Use that time to turn the tides, alright? Now's not the time for a big fucking speech, Max! Go ahead and be the soldier I know you can be!" Emma went ahead, her gun drawn, and Max knew it'd be dangerous to distract her at such a moment. So she set off on her own.
"Don't die!" She said, half-jokingly. Emma smiled but kept her focus on Driver Nephi up ahead. He moved quickly and his movements were erratic on top of that, making it difficult for her to track him, and her daze from that stun grenade made it very difficult to aim for his head. Taking her own advice, the soldier raised her gun and shot at Nephi's legs. Doped-up as it was, the chems wouldn't be able to do much to make up for busted kneecaps. And shooting him in the head would become all too easy. Unfortunately for her, the Fiend leader was slaughtering her allies with such ease that he could afford to look away from the massacre to see how his own troops were leading the charge, and he could see that one of them had failed to subdue the enemy soldiers. With naught but an annoyed grunt, Nephi seized one of the troopers by the throat and began to run at Emma, counting on the grunt to function as a human shield. Without hesitating, Emma shot at Nephi, but the bullets failed to hit much more than the ground or the dying NCR soldier.
"You son of a bitch!" Emma stopped firing and waited for Nephi to get closer... only for him to toss the corpse of the soldier after getting closer. Surprised by the tactic, yet already ready to dodge, the black-haired woman rolled to the left twice, very narrowly dodging a crushing downward blow from Nephi. Completing the roll by going unto her stomach, Emma aimed at Nephi's legs now that he was that much closer, but found her reflexes to be slower once again when he kicked the weapon out of her hands. Or rather, kicked one half of it out of her hands: He'd struck so hard, the barrel of the weapon had been torn off entirely and sent aside. Containing her shock, Emma let go of the wrecked weapon and once again rolled to the side, very narrowly dodging another mortal blow. Lacking the time to use a gun at such a close range, the soldier got up and grabbed her combat knife by snatching it out of her belt. Nephi, who was already preparing a swing, beheld the weapon and laughed, interrupting his attack before it could be done.
"Bullets haven't done me in but a knife will," he laughed flatly. "Stupid bitch." Then, Emma lunged at him, and she was satisfied to see Nephi's expression shift for the briefest of seconds before he hurriedly leaned out of the way. The blade still narrowly missed its target and carved a large red gash on the side of his face. This injury, he seemed to notice for just long enough for Emma to jump back before he could retaliate. First blood was hers! Now it was a matter of not dying before she could cut him up.
"What's that Nephi? You're bothering to dodge this time?" In answer, the Fiend leader an at her, and Emma shut up to properly focus on the fight. Elsewhere, Max wasn't seeing her friend's battle against the drugged-up golf enthusiast of the wastes. Instead, she was legging it towards one of her fellow troopers, who was under attack by one of Nephi's goons. Dazed as he was by the grenade, he could barely put up a fragile defense, that the Fiend stood ready to breach with her relentless punches.
"What's wrong?! Weren't you guys going to kill us all?! C'mon! Get up and kill me!" Max, upon getting closer, aimed at the Fiend and cut her down with three bursts of fire, the Fiend's relative immobilism making it fairly easy to get enough shots to the ribs, left arm, and torso. With a grunt, the soldier pinned down beneath her removed the corpse of his body and hurriedly got up. Before he could say anything to her, a hand suddenly reached out for his leg. And while there wasn't that much strength in the limb anymore, the fright of it made the soldier fall down again: It was the very same Fiend, not all that concerned with the multiple bullets lodged in her body. She was still smiling, ignoring all the blood spilling from her mouth and numerous other wounds. Max did nothing yet, too surprised and terrified to act up yet. The NCR soldier had been told to shoot at the head but…
"C'mon!" She wheezed. This snapped Max out of her trance. And she promptly ended the threat for good by emptying the rest of her magazine into the Fiend's head, spilling blood and all manner of important head bits around the body. But Max kept shooting anyway until the magazine was dry because she really didn't want to see the raider get up behind her back. She even caught herself still pointing down at the body with the rifle, pointing an empty gun at a useless corpse. The unfortunate NCR soldier at her side freed himself from her hand with great haste and stopped to observe the battlefield, seeing the rampaging Nephi as well as the struggle of his fellow soldiers against the Fiends.
"S-sorry but we gotta talk later! Help me kill these Fiends!"
"Help you?!" He scoffed, taking his helmet off and throwing it at his feet, on a puddle of gore. "No! I'm running to the farthest fucking place away from these crazy crackheads! And so should you!" As soon as he was done, he bolted away from the battlefield and into the nearby ruins.
"W-what the fuck! Come back!" seeing that her inspiring call to arms didn't do much to motivate the fleeing soldier, Max threw her rifle away and yanked his abandoned rifle out of the ground, not bothering to clean up all the blood and dead people bits stuck to it and charged along to her new target. "Y-you, guys! Near Neph! Help me kill those Fiends damn it!" Max could almost pity these guys: It was harsh to be thrown into such a dangerous scenario. But they wouldn't achieve much running around like headless geckos. Thankfully, most of the soldiers ran over to Max, though she suspected that it was because the other Fiends were that less scary than Nephi. She thought of asking them to gun down Nephi, using the tried-and-true NCR tactic of drowning the target in bullets, but Emma was standing right next to him and she had her doubts over their combined ability to aim there. And it wasn't like Emma could move if she wanted to: Nephi was sticking to her like glue, keeping up with her no matter what she tried to get the distance she so desperately needed. And yet she looked to be winning: His golf club could only hit empty air whereas Emma would scar his flesh with each of her strikes. His torso and stomach were more scars and wounds than actual tissue by now, but his movements didn't decelerate and he took the pain in stride, not even reacting to the numerous stabs she hit him with. And his aggressive attacks forced Emma on the defensive and made it so that she couldn't try to slice his neck or stab him in the head: She could only desperately swipe with her knife, and score meaningless hits.
Tearing her eyes away from the fight, Max noticed that she had four remaining soldiers with her, and about three were looking to flee the premises like that guy from earlier. "C'mon! We're fighting to save our comrades! Give it your best!" The shakiness in her voice greatly hurt any authority that Max could muster, but the idea of someone being in charge and knowing what to do at least got them a bit less hesitant. Which was good: They were already reaching the second Fiend, who was sitting on a trooper's back and keeping her head down into the sand with one hand and holding a stained knife with the other. "Don't shoot carelessly! There's someone else under him!" The young private, and chief of this little troop as far as they were concerned, held her gun up and used a single burst of fire to shoot the Fiend on the left side of the body. The bloodthirsty junkie fell aside in silence, not even reacting to being shot at. Inspired by what she'd just seen, Max accelerated as soon as he was down but kept her gun drawn. Reaching the unmoving trooper, Max saw the Fiend on the ground, still moving about, and wasted one bullet to the head to definitely put him down… and another, also to the head, to be prudent.
She observed the rest of the battlefield, wondering where to go next. The earlier explosion had scattered corpses –in one piece or not- across the battlefield, as well as flaming debris and other pleasantries, where to go next to? She could see at least two more people struggling with their own Fiends, including one in serious danger, but she could be wasting some precious time rescuing them. Should Max…"She's not breathing! What do we do?!" Max glanced back to see her fellow troops: One of them was tending to the unconscious woman.
I don't know! She almost blurted, but those people were relying on her, how could she say this? How would Emma handle this? "G-get the sand out and put her on her back! We'll get back to her later! Hm… The two of you! Go help Emma! She's fighting Neph!" She said, pointing to the two soldiers on the left. She'd go with them too, but an idea was forming itself on the back of her skull, clueing her in on a way to defeat Nephi. He was too jacked up on chems to go down to bullets, at least easily, and their best shooter was fighting up close with him… But what about that AER9 thing? She hadn't used such weapons before but surely it could help Max take down Nephi without needing to specifically aim for the legs or head! A hole to the torso and he wouldn't be hopping around like before!
"… Us? But-"
Max almost groaned in irritation. "J-just help her! The rest of you, help me with the rest!" Max stormed off, leaving half her troop confused on where to go next. The only part of things that she had in mind was getting the AER9: How they'd handle Nephi was up to them, so long as it wasn't stupid. By a stroke of luck, getting to it seemed like it'd be easy: One of the remaining soldiers on the ground was Lieutenant Deacon, who was putting up a surprisingly strong fight against the opponent Fiend. The stun grenade had weakened him as badly as the rest of his troops, and the Fiend was both younger and doped up, but he'd managed to grab one arm and was holding the Fiend's chin with his right hand, holding it up.
"Private Doleetle!" He yelled, in almost disbelief at seeing that she of all people was coming to help. Dire as the situation was, Max couldn't help but very slightly enjoy the situation. But first, she focused and aimed for the head, so as not to shoot her lieutenant's hand off by accident. Knowing this ahead of time, the Lieutenant placed his hand right beneath the Fiend's chin. Even this was a rather tall gambit, but Max more than lived up to his expectation when she managed to shoot the Fiend in the head, making him slump forward.
"Lieutenant!" Max didn't stop, preferring to put an early end to the threat of the Fiends. "We've got to save Hawkwood and get his AER9! Nephi won't be able to shrug off a shot from that!"
"Go ahead!" Hawkwood, unlike the lieutenant, seemed to be at the losing end of his fight with his attacker, of larger build. Seeing this, and in a desperate attempt to save him, a few of the soldiers shot at the attacker, though their bullets mostly struck the ground around them, kicking up small dust clouds that make it difficult for Max to know where the head was at. With her remaining bullets, she shot at the Fiend, hoping to disable him by filling him with enough bullets. Multiple bloody holes emerged over the right side of the freak, including one very close to the neck, but the Fiend seemed to ignore the damage. What he could acknowledge was that he was under attack though, and he solved the problem by grabbing rock-sized debris and bashing Hawkwood in the face with it to get it over with. The other NCR troopers screamed in horror where Max instead aimed to make the Fiend pay by shooting him, but her gun ran dry once more: She'd definitely wasted some bullets earlier on. The AER9 laid below Hawkwood's corpse, apparently out of sight and out of mind of the Fiend. With unusual clarity for a junkie, the raider dove for Hawkwood's rifle and raised it against the gathered forces brought against him.
"DUCK!" Max tossed herself to the ground as the Fiend emptied the bullets at her two slower comrades. He did not aim with precision, being content with pulling the trigger and letting the bullets do the rest. Not the most glamorous of tactics, but it was enough to kill the nameless soldiers that were with Max. Keeping her head down in case of bullets, Max reached for her sidearm as soon as that familiar click echoed and got right back up, gun pointed at the raider. He'd already tossed the rifle away upon realizing it was empty and was beginning to look for another weapon to use, apparently completely forgetting about the young soldier. She'd shoot, but because he was apparently tough to kill even by Fiend standards, Max aimed for the head as well as she could before firing four times over. Two of the bullets whizzed past entirely, another grazed the neck and the fourth finally struck him in the head, causing him to fall down into an inert slump… which she was still tempted to shoot at, just in case.
The good old Lieutenant ran past her, heading for the AER9 as well. "Good job, Doleelte!" Elsewhere, Emma and Driver Nephi were still stuck in their slow dance. Far from weakening, Nephi was only accelerating with each successful blow on his person, apparently taking the pain more as a challenge than as a sign that he was genuinely taking damage if he could feel it at all. This bode badly for Emma, who was running out of stamina the fastest of the two and barely dodging the club as it went. She'd sometimes attempt to run back or gain distance, but he'd never let go, and taking her eyes off him for one second…
"Die, Nephi!" Emma's "backup" arrived in time to open fire at him, the duo attempting to shoot the Fiend's leader to death. This got his express attention, which would be an occasion for Emma to try and stab him in the head, but the indiscriminate shooting method of her colleagues and a bullet's distinct lack of regard for what it was being shot into forced her to back away from the fight to avoid becoming a friendly fire victim. The bullets whizzed past Nephi or crashed into the ground around him, kicking up dust all around the Fiend. Far from worried about what he was being faced by, Nephi looked past the soldiers even as some of their bullets managed to impact him in the torso, and the sight of his troops laying in defeat. "May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands, 'coz the others can't do their work for shit!" he grumbled, before throwing himself at the soldiers with nary a warning. The sight of Nephi running at them paralyzed the inexperienced troopers, and they lowered their weapons in pure fright or quiet acceptance of their deaths. Either way, after reaching them, Nephi proceeded to violently smash their heads into a pulp with a single nonchalant swing of his golf club, still keeping his eyes on the target: Deacon, who was pulling out the AER9 from underneath Hawkwood.
"He's coming your way! Max!" The young soldier, who'd been distracted up until now, turned around to see Nephi, his torso and stomach covered in blood and gore –be it his or someone else's- running at her at top speed. It felt… good though. He was close to her now: Those chems of his couldn't ignore a bullet to the head, and he was at too close a range for him to dodge or her to miss. Shouldn't she try her luck, argued the NCR soldier within herself? She could even toss herself at him and see if she could buy Deacon barely enough time to get the AER9 ready! It'd be a noble endeavor. And also a suicidal one. And as she saw Nephi charging at her like a bat out of hell, his numerous wounds apparently only enhancing his aggression, speed, and power, Max decided to perhaps let her instinct decide on what to do next: She leaped out of the way, with desperate speed, leaving the path free for Nephi to take.
The regret seized her nigh-immediately, but it was too late: Max crashed to the side, unable to change her course or aim accurately in the current circumstances, and Nephi happily took this occasion to reach Deacon. Once he'd gotten close enough to the distracted Lieutenant, the Fiend leader didn't even bother with one of his religious speeches or taunts, nor did he allows the distracted Deacon an opportunity to get some defiant last words of his own. Instead, he gave the lieutenant the same gory death he'd been dishing out to his soldiers so far by bashing his head in with his golf club. Max closed her eyes, but the sound of her superior's head exploding was sufficient for a lot of future nightmares to form themselves in her skull. Though she was starting to doubt the idea of having a "future" anymore.
Nephi briefly stood still, but Max did not seize the occasion. The idea that she'd cowardly abandoned her superior officer in his hour of need had paralyzed her. Or perhaps all the build-up of the violence had gotten to her. Or the adrenaline just couldn't ignore the pain in her jaw and stomach, and the sudden return of it all was too much to handle yet. The explanation didn't matter, only the situation: The young soldier was kneeling right beside Nephi, completely frozen with a forlorn look on her face. He'd died, and it was her fault. All those soldiers had died, and it was her fault. All of it.
"… You're pretty smart for an NCR soldier ya know?" Nephi coughed some blood out, but ignored the event and tore his golf club away from Deacon's ruined body, ignoring the AER9 below to focus on Max instead, resting his golf club on his right shoulder. "Well, at least you bought yourself more ti-" A series of gunshots startled Max. And while Nephi was very unlikely to let the noise interrupt his little speech, the bullets were a different story. One of them finally pierced him in the leg right above the knee, two others impacted him in the chest and the last struck him in the head, shattering the helmet into pieces, though she suspected that some of those flying bone fragments belonged to the Fiend. The Fiend leader fell down, his eyes wide in surprise. Max was as surprised and finally got to her feet to take two steps back away from him, silently relieved. Emma arrived next to her, holding that fancy revolver from before. She held the weapon down, as if considering firing one or two more bullets into the corpse of the Fiend, but the pool of blood forming below him was evidence enough in her eyes.
"E-Emma!" Max almost cried out. Every word hurt, but she wasn't about to let the pain distract her. "I… I fucked up! They trusted me and I fucked up! I…"
The black-haired soldier considered her, the grime making her expression hard to read. "… That was a nice dive, yeah," Max lowered her head in shame and opted to let Emma speak her mind. "… But look, we've killed Nephi, doesn't mean that more Fiends won't be pouring out. We need to get the fuck out of-"
"Killed me?" Croaked a horrible voice near them. Reacting quickly, Emma slammed Max backward and promptly leaned out of the way herself, just barely missing what could've been a fatal stab-by-golf-club attack. So much for precaution! She thought, glancing at Driver Nephi's apparent last stand: He'd barely gotten unto his knees, to begin with, and a massive amount of blood was leaking from a hole above his right eye, where Emma's bullet had lodged itself in, having not fully pierced all the way to Nephi's brain. But that was fine: At this range, she wouldn't miss. Emma moved to point the barrel of her revolver at Nephi, but the junkie only smirked at her one mistake: Not moving any further away from his club. His reflexes still lighting-fast even in his pitiful condition, the Fiend twisted the golf club to the left, so that the head of the weapon would face the back of Emma's left leg, and pulled it towards himself with all his remaining strength. The head of the improvised weapon smashed into the back of Emma's leg as a result, toppling her on her back. Her revolver fired, but the abrupt movement saved Nephi from its fifth bullet. To make things worse, the Revolver's slipped out of its owner's grip and fell aside into the sand, depriving her of a weapon.
"Em!" Max, having barely recovered from being pushed, got up to help her… But it was too late: Seizing his opportunity, Nephi lunged, doing so even as he stood on his knees, and grabbed Emma's neck with his right arm. With the left one, he raised the golf club, preparing a killing blow with it. But he was just slow enough for Max to toss herself towards her friend's revolver!
"Max! Shoot him!" Commanded Emma, herself reaching for her knife. But she'd be too late to stop Nephi before he could do him in: It was all up to Max, and she knew it. Summoning every little bit of strength left in her body, the soldier reached for the weapon and didn't even bother getting up, instead aiming directly at Nephi with her stomach on the ground. And that particular moment would come back to haunt her often.
She'd wonder, from there on now, how she could've done this better. She could've steadied her hands, or remembered to reload while Nephi was briefly down. She could've even tried to aim a little bit before firing, confident that Nephi's killing blow would've been stopped if he had been shot in the head before he could swing his arm. Hell, maybe ram him off her entirely? Every action she could've made would've resulted in a different outcome in Max's eyes. And isn't that how regrets works? It always come down to thinking back on that one action in particular and desperately thinking things could be better if it had been carried out differently. But things do not change so easily: Perhaps sometimes fate is at work, and nothing that Max could've done would've spared Emma from her fate.
Max shot, the bullet missed Nephi's head entirely, and he brought his golf club down on Emma's head, shattering it to pieces before another effort to save her could be mounted forth. The Fiend leader chuckled in delight, observing the bloody mess at his feet "… Like a squashed melon, eh…" His smile grew just a bit wider when he thought of the last girl,, expecting to see her frozen in fear and grief. Easy picking for him, even in his weakened state. The whole operation had been a bit costly, but nothing that some stimpacks couldn't handle.
A scream of rage shook Nephi out of his thoughts, and he looked in the direction of the soldier to see her lunging at him with a large knife in hand. It wasn't anything that Nephi couldn't handle at his prime, and he'd have snatched her out of the air with ease in any other conditions, but his arms moved a little bit too slowly, to his belated surprise. With nothing to prevent her from attacking, the NCR goon drove her knife in Nephi's left eye as far as she could, driving the blade deep into his head. With her other hand, she reached for the bullet lodged on his head and attempted to cram it deeper into his cranium with her thumb. Those two particular actions were too much for Nephi's body to ignore, and the most excruciating agony lit Nephi's body ablaze: It was like the combined pain of each of the wounds he'd accumulated during the fight had caught up to him at this very instant. Overwhelmed, Nephi screamed in pain for the first time in years. "YOU FUCKING BITCH!" He lashed out at her via his arms. His golf club swiped nothing but the air, but his arm at least managed to strike true, striking the young soldier right below the throat to hurl her off him.
Max fell on her back and shot Nephi a glare, not yet being done with him. He was weakening: The fact that she was still living and combat-ready after being struck by him was proof enough, but she'd verified this a few seconds earlier when he screamed in pain. He was cornered, and they both knew it. But cornered or not, he was still dangerous: Max's breathing felt short, and when she tried to stand up again for the next part of her attack, she found herself coughing out some blood, though it very well could be from that punch on the jaw from earlier. But the pain didn't bother her: In fact, it only fueled her, like a reminder that whatever she was feeling at the moment, Nephi was having it ten times worse.
Nephi, meanwhile, grabbed the knife lodged in his left eye and pulled it out with a pained screech. "KILL YOU!" he yelled, hitting the ground all around him with his golf club. Even in his pathetic state, a single swipe of it felt like it could cut Max in half. But she wasn't afraid: With his leg ruined like that, he wouldn't be advancing at her anytime soon. With the knowledge that she was safe as long as she didn't approach him, Max turned around and began walking towards Deacon's corpse. "KILL YOU!" Nephi repeated. She didn't pay any heed to his rambling yet, kneeling over Deacon's corpse and grabbing the discarded AER9 instead by pushing the body aside. Any pang of guilt or regret she could have had over his death was shoved aside, for now: She felt perfectly calm.
With the laser rifle in hand, Max began walking back to Nephi with a cold smile on her face. "What's that Nephi? You haven't got any psalm left?"
"FUCKING KILL YOU! KILL!" He tried to crawl his way to her, but she was wise enough to keep more distance than Emma did. He'd never reach her in time.
"… That's fine, I wouldn't have listened anyway," Max raised the weapon: It felt agreeably lighter than her service rifle. "… Get fucked." She pressed the trigger… and didn't let go, letting the AER9 have its way with Nephi instead. Several red flashes of light blanketed her surroundings as she unleashed the weapon forth at Nephi. He disappointingly did not get to scream in his last seconds: The first beam alone reduced his head to mere ash. And every subsequent beam only contributed to destroying his corpse. Soon, all that was left of the fearsome Drive Nephi was… a mere mound of smoldering ashes. Irony being what it is, his dreaded golf club had somehow not been hit by any of the lasers, allowing it to lay intact next to it. The irony of it all amused Max, and she threw the AER9 away.
And then it all caught up: The shame. The guilt. The regret. The horror. And if it hadn't been enough, the pain and fatigue gained from the fight caught up in an instant, making Max fall to her knees. Her expression unreadable, she studied the corpses found all around the battered battlefield, only stopping short before her vision would bring her to Emma. Her head was a mess: The thoughts came crashing down on her all around. She'd think of the pain sometimes, but another instant she'd think of the death toll, and the next it'd be of Emma's fate and the one after she'd try to forget. Like forgetting the memory would somehow bring Emma back from the dead… She had nothing to focus on, her thoughts jumped in and about without any rhythm or reason. The main theme seemed to be that the NCR had won today but at what cost?
Not being able to decide what she should feel, besides relief, grief, rage, or fear, Max decided to lay down on the sand a bit and observe the blue sky up above. It was Fiend territory, and they would definitely be coming over to check the commotion, but the young soldier didn't think of them nor did she think about the opposite scenario, where some brave NCR folks would step up to rescue her. It all didn't matter to Max, who was content with sitting there for the rest of her life. Odor aside, it wasn't so bad after all.
Max stayed there, in the ruins, her expression blank as she fixed the cruel sun above.
…
"… Hmmm, the lieutenant guy said it was 250 caps per bounty… That's 250 already…" Veronica sat on a nearby ock, methodically rubbing her power fist with some fabric before the blood on it could get too dry. "… 500 if we bring him Cook-Cook's head… 750 for Driver Nephi… Hm! Hm! I'll just need to be selling off a few of my wares and… Hey, boss!"
The mystery man she'd be accompanying the past few days didn't even acknowledge her, finding it preferable to sit on a pile of deceased Fiends and watch the sun. He had taken the mask and helmet off to feed on the dozens of bodies beneath and happened to be in the middle of eating a human leg, which didn't even give Veronica pause at this point. Not particularly because she was cool with the cannibalism and murder, but because she knew full well that he wouldn't stop it if she asked of him. Getting him to murder and eat Fiends, the worst of the worst in the Mojave, was already a solid compromise in her eyes.
She likewise wasn't too surprised to see him ignore her. He tended to do that. "We'll nearly have enough caps to get to Vegas, Boss. I know you'd have rather punched them all to death and… while I really appreciate the approach, I think getting on the nerves of Mr. House's cybernetic army is not something that even you would want, right?"
Six didn't see fit to stop mid-mastication to answer. "Pussy." Aah, a magician with words he truly was. "Courier Six", as he insisted on being called, was… peculiar. On one hand, his unpredictable fits of rage and violence, on top of the cannibalism, wasn't too much of a winning pair and Veronica very often kept him at arm's length, in case he'd decide to attack her too and too many times she had to distract him from murdering an innocent Wastelander by convincing him to kill another, less innocent, nearer and tastier person. He'd almost justify the Brotherhood's stance on isolation and keeping technology away from outsiders all on his own, even if Veronica knew better than that.
On the other hand, he was impressively good at killing things. The pile of Fiend corpses at his feet proved that well enough. Not even Cook-Cook, a Fiend so depraved even the others were wary of him, could prevent himself from being torn in two by a punch to the guts. Veronica thought she'd never live to see the day where someone would punch through a metal armor with fists of flesh and blood, but the Mojave seemed to get weirder and weirder with every coming day.
A saner person would have turned tail at the sight of the Courier hoisting a man overhead and tearing him in half while laughing in absolute delight at the blood splashing down on his face, but Veronica saw an "opportunity" to travel aboard and confirm what she thought of the Brotherhood all along. She'd seen McCarran and its numerous troops, far exceeding the knights and Paladins in the Bunker all on their own, and now she'd seen the Fiends. Without discipline or advanced weaponry, those raiders had managed to be a big thorn on the side of the NCR in the Mojave. Why, at this point they'd taken more NCR lives than any Paladin in the Mojave.
All she needed was more "proof" that the Brotherhood's methods were dooming it and she could go back to Hidden Valley. She'd need to do it without the Courier though: Yes, it was dangerous to travel all alone in the wastes, even if you happen to have hand-to-hand training and a power fist, but she wasn't getting his crazy ass anywhere near her family and friends at the bunker. And on top of that, the good Courier would only get McNamara to hunker down on his stance that the outsiders are all savage animals. She'd simply need to slip out on him, but he wasn't too bright nor all that perceptive, so she was sure it'd work out. They'd just need to get to Vegas, where ruled House and his robots, and she'd get the last shred of evidence she needs. Veronica could only hope that they'd get to the Strip in time though: It was tiring to sleep with one eye open all the time.
"… So, do we go for Nephi? He's close-by." She jammed her thumb over his supposed direction, but he shook his head while leaning to pick up another limb to consume.
"No. Eat." He took a huge bite out of that arm and leaned to look at Vegas. Veronica shrugged, knowing that he wouldn't compromise on interrupting dinner time, and sat down, looking away from the copses to tinker up with her glove. Behind her, Courier 6 briefly stopped masticating on the bones to focus on the pretty lights and buildings ahead. With his free hand, he reached out for Cook-Cook's head, laying at his feet, and held it forward, as if he was holding the city in his hands. Then, he closed his fist and crushed the head, even obliterating the helmet that the Fiend leader had worn in life.
"Yeeessssss…"
…
Inhabitants of the Strip in need of a laugh, search no longer! The Tops is proud to announce that they've signed a contract with Hadrian, the Comedian Ghoul. After his amicable departure from the Atomic Wrangler, our good old Hadrian made his way to The Strip, where he was subsequently hired.
"We pride ourselves on diversity, baby. Ghoul or not ghoul, we all have the same inside, ain't it true? Hadrian's a riot and we look forward to his future performances!"
Reached for comments, Hadrian's agent only said that "This is indeed a prodigious victory for Ghouls in the world of show-business. However, my Client has nothing to say about the matter outside of the stage, thank you."
The move has been criticized by some for being a "cynical attempt at grabbing the hard-earned cash of ghoul clients". A particularly wrathful customer, who has wished for anonymity, states "Why don't we hire the best man for the job instead of a ghoul? It starts with a comedian but in 25 years we'll be answering to a Ghoul president! I'm warning you all! They won't return the kindness that we're showing them right now! What if he goes feral on stage?! And besides-"
…
Chapter 16 done. I'm sorry, but I don't Emma's got this at least!
I appreciate your review and that of Adelkman. That idea of Nephi quoting psalms was brillant! I hope you don't mind me borrowing it like that.
I'm curious, how many of you had guessed that Emma would die? Or at least die at this point of the fic? I guess she always gave those sacrifical vibes, but I'd be pleased if it came off as surprising to at least some of you guys! Anyway, with that, part 1 of the fic is over! The epilogue of that part will be for the next chapter, and then part 2 will begin! I've got things mapped out in my head for it and can't wait to show it to you!
What did you think of the chapter? I love reviews and stuff so keep them going friends!
See ya later alligator!