"I knew this would come in handy."

Rachel finished removing the Silver Shroud costume from her overstuffed case, popping the suit's accompanying fedora back to shape after she had stripped down to her underwear and begun assembling the outfit, the pants, shirt and waistcoat nestling underneath the thick white scarf and long black trenchcoat. She held her hands out to either side. "How do I look?"

Piper looked nonplussed. "Why do you have that with you?" she asked flatly.

"It's the most heavily-armoured clothing I have that isn't military-issue," Rachel explained, shrugging the last inch of herself into the costume's coat as she did so. "The waistcoat alone is one step away from being standard combat armour and the coat is lined with ceramic plating that can stop a twelve-gauge shotgun round." She rapped on it with her gloved knuckles, producing a dull echo. "See?"

"No, I mean why do you have it with you when you didn't know this was going to happen?" Piper continued, exasperated.

"I wanted this to be a surprise," Rachel said with a sigh. "The protectrons in Dry Rock Gulch are programmed to respond differently to someone wearing a Silver Shroud costume – Nate and I saw it in a live show once when we were on vacation there. Nate told me it was because of some cross-promotional deal between Nuka-Cola and Hubris Comics." She shrugged. "I just wanted to show you that myself."

"I don't know whether to be flattered or creeped out," Piper replied, folding her arms. "Anything else you want to tell me about before we get killed?"

Rachel reached into a pocket of her coat and drew out a soft, segmented folding pouch. She opened it up and removed three items from it, putting them on the nearby seat of the carriage. "These are all spare implants for my eye. I brought them all just in case." She raised her eyebrows. "Better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them, right?" Holding one up, she showed Piper that it was a copy of her regular ocular implant, with a blue lens. "This is a regular eyepiece in case anything happens to the one I already have." Then she held up the second, which had a red lens. "This is an infrared module in case we get caught in the dark." The third and final one was tipped with a green lens. "And this is a targeting lens. It can interface with the VATS in my Pip-Boy so I can shoot better." Before she packed them away again, she held up her right arm, quickly tapping her palm with her middle and ring fingers twice as she did so, and in an instant a double-edged blade the length of her forearm extended from her coat's sleeve. "And this is something I picked up from Tektus when we were in the Nucleus."

"What do you mean?" Piper asked, her brows knitting together. "I didn't see you take anything off his body except his stupid headgear."

"Not literally," Rachel replied, double-tapping her palm with her middle two fingers again and retracting the blade back into its housing. "Just the idea of it. If I'm out of bullets and out of every other option, I wanted to have one last resort handy, so I built one and put it in the sleeve of this coat. I call it my Silver Sabre." She mustered a weak smile. "Catchy, huh?"

"That's one word for it," Piper breathed. "How'd you know how to do that, anyway?"

"My mom was an engineer, remember?" Rachel said, tapping her temple. "She taught me how to tinker with gadgets like this all the time when I was a kid." She chuckled despite herself. "You should have seen the automatic catapult I built for my tenth birthday. Kept my dog Sasha entertained for days."

"You know, if we weren't heading towards a death-trap I'd be worried about you," Piper said. "Seems like you're looking to start a war, not go on a honeymoon."

Rachel took a deep breath, her good humour fading again. "Si vis pacem, para bellum," she said in a low tone. When Piper looked at her in confusion, she continued "It's Latin. It means 'if you want peace, prepare for war'. Nate told me the army used that phrase a lot."

"You didn't have to make it your personal motto as well, Blue," Piper said, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips, "but right now I'm glad you did." She glanced up towards the front of the train as it began pulling into a dilapidated station, which was strewn with piles of trash and broken panelling. "Looks like we'll need all the help we can get."

The Gauntlet, as the disembodied voice on the other end of the speaker system had called it, had been a slog. The turrets, fire-traps and gas leaks had left her and Piper exhausted, with Rachel having had to take the lead due to her extra armour. When they came out the other end, taking deep lungfuls of musty air as they tried to shake off the after-effects of the poisonous fumes as quickly as possible, they found themselves in a locker room which was strewn with a suspiciously generous quantity of boxes of various kinds of ammunition. Rachel knew enough about raiders to realise that this was no coincidence – and sure enough, after a moment the gruff, razor-blade voice she had heard in the train carriage crackled out of the ether, bringing with it a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Listen the hell up," the man who had called himself Gage rasped. "If you want to make it out of this alive, I've only got a minute. Find the intercom on the wall; I'll make it quick."

Rachel swallowed her distaste and crossed the room, pushing the button to speak. "Who is this?" she asked, deciding to play along. "What's going on?"

"You make it through this alive and I'll explain everything," Gage said, sounding a little exasperated. She wondered how many times he had had this same exact conversation; judging by the corpses she and Piper had passed by on their way through the Gauntlet, this was probably not an uncommon situation. Still, that didn't excuse him not letting her in on something that might save her life.

"No," she snapped. "You want me to listen to you? Tell me now."

Gage sighed. "All right, all right. The Gauntlet's the Overboss's pet project. Lure in whoever we can, however we can."

"You must have loved Piper and me coming here all by ourselves, then," Rachel retorted.

Gage laughed. "Could say that. You ain't the first one to come here just looking for a blast from the past, I'll tell you that much," he admitted. "Fact is, though, you're stuck here now, so I need you to listen up."
Rachel pursed her lips. "And why should I trust you, exactly? You're not exactly a convincing presence here."

"Depends on how much you value your life, I s'pose," Gage said, a thoughtful edge to his razored words.

"And what's in it for you? You don't seem the charitable type."

"This ain't just about what's in it for me," Gage snorted. "Both of us reap the rewards if you pull this off."

"All right," Rachel said, folding her arms. "I'm listening."

"My kinda gal," Gage said, an odd enthusiasm coming into his voice. Rachel didn't know whether to be amused or disgusted by the thought of this stranger approving of her, but she decided to let it go until she had a better idea of his motives beyond self-interest. "Look," he continued, "you made it this far, so you obviously got skill – but this fight coming up is rigged, you get me?"

"Rigged?" Rachel repeated, annoyed. "All right, what am I looking at?"

"I'm getting to that," Gage replied. "Overboss Colter, his power armour's set up to draw energy from the electric grid in the arena, so the damn thing's invincible. You name it, someone's tried it – miniguns, grenades, not a scratch. You get what I'm saying? It's like God Himself has a hand in front of him."

"Wouldn't have expected anything less from a raider," Rachel said sourly, prompting another chuckle from Gage.

"You know us well, then," he said, amusement thick in his voice. "You want to win this thing? I stashed a weapon in the locker right behind you. Go get it."

Turning on her heel, Rachel crossed the room and wrenched open the door, hoping to find a higher-calibre weapon than either her pistol or the slapdash pipe rifle she had liberated from one of the corpses littering the pathway of the Gauntlet. Maybe even a Fat Man launcher…

Instead, all she saw was a bright red plastic squirt gun, shaped like Nuka-Girl's trademark blaster and full to the brim with water. Is this guy for real?

Picking up the gun, she turned back to the intercom. "Is this a fucking joke?" she screamed in frustration. "This is a toy, you asshole!"

"Hey, that 'toy' is what's going to win this fight for us," Gage said, his voice blunt. "I know what it looks like, okay? You're just going to have to trust me. Once the water in that thing hits Colter's armour, the circuits are going to short out. It'll kill his defences for a while, but you'll only have so much time to do some damage before they recharge… but you take him out, and I promise you it'll be worth every minute spent in the Gauntlet."

"You sure about that?" Rachel said sceptically. "I'm not big on risking my neck on the hunch of a total stranger."

"Sure as shit," Gage told her. "You just be ready to take him out when he's vulnerable." He paused, muttering something she couldn't quite make out over the intercom. "All right," he continued, "it's time. I'll open the door. See you on the other side, new meat."

"Yeah, well, fuck you too," Rachel muttered under her breath.

As the annoying, gloating voice she had heard throughout the Gauntlet called for spectators to assemble at the Cola-Cars arena, the locker room's door opened onto a short passageway with one wall largely made up of reinforced glass panels. Through them she could see who she presumed was Overboss Colter standing in the centre of the debris-strewn killing ground, clad in a huge, hulking suit of scrappy power armour, a large, bulky shell encasing the armour's upper torso. Behind him stood another man who was busy fiddling with some cables at the rear of the armour. Rachel made sure to take a mental note of that focal point – perhaps she could make good use of it in the upcoming fight. Popping out her ordinary optical implant, she slotted in her targeting eyepiece and blinked her good eye twice quickly so that a green grid overlaid her vision, the implant synching to her Pip-Boy in an instant. Sure enough, her Pip-Boy's built-in combat-assistance systems lit up the rear of the armour like a Christmas tree, giving her the smallest glimmer of hope. The suit's right knee appeared to be slightly weaker than the left, too, its heat signature rising above the suit's general temperature as the crude servos strained with every movement.

"Got me wired up yet, Gage?" the armoured man said, his brutal voice distorted through his suit's vocaliser unit. Then he turned and looked up at the passageway above him and snorted with amusement. "Well, look at you," he sneered. "Think you're some kind of fancy vigilante? 'Fraid the hero ain't gonna win in this story, bitch." He paused, looking back at the man who had been tinkering with his armour. "Gage, go shut off that alarm and let them through… one at a time."

Rachel had been waiting for that – raiders invariably only liked strength in numbers when it was skewed in their favour.

Then Piper, who had been conspicuously silent this whole time, said "So you want to do rock-paper-scissors to choose who gets to go first, or what?"

"Not funny, Pipes," Rachel said, not looking at her and instead checking her pistol's firing mechanism. "I won't watch you die."

"And you think I want to watch you die?" Piper snapped, her voice sounding hoarse and frayed at the edges. "What are we going to do, Blue?"

"Simple," Rachel said, slapping her pistol's magazine back into it and pulling back the hammer with her thumb. "I kill him, and we both survive."

"I hope it's that simple," Piper whispered. "Good luck, Blue."

Rachel grabbed her by the lapel and drew her in for a quick, passionate kiss then, a hungry, abrupt meeting of their lips. "I don't need luck," she said. "I have you."

The door opened and she stepped through to the final gateway leading to the arena. Overboss Colter stood with his back to her, raising his arms to address the gathered throng of raiders as they chanted "Death! Death! Death! Death!" with ghoulish glee. Their garb and demeanour was as diverse and colourful as she had ever seen in a large gathering of the Commonwealth's most lawless thugs – it was as if they had been gathered from completely different regions of the country. She supposed she would find more out about them if she survived, but she filed that thought aside – staying in the land of the living was a higher priority right now.

"Disciples! Are you ready for blood?" Colter cried, receiving a crazed roar in return. "And the Pack! Are you ready for things to get wild?" Another roar. "Operators! Are you ready to see me notch another kill?" A slightly more muted response, almost as if the Operators, whoever they were, were not quite as deranged as their counterparts. Something else to bear in mind for later. "And you," Colter said, pointing a single metal finger at her, "are you ready to die?"

The door swung open and Rachel strode out into the arena, the gust of wind caused by the air of the tunnel escaping into the arena blowing her coat out around her. Briefly she considered accentuating that effect with her melodramatic Silver Shroud voice, but there was really no time for the usual theatrics the outfit inevitably brought with it. Readying the squirt gun in one hand and her pistol in the other she charged headlong at the hulking brute, unloading a volley of water directly at the surface of his armour, which crackled and spat arcs of blue electricity as he advanced on her, the muzzle of his combat rifle flashing as it spat a sharp burst of bullets at her. As the water hit the electricity, Gage's theory came true as the Overboss began to spasm uncontrollably, his armour shuddering as its systems screeched out of control. Wasting no time, Rachel pumped as many bullets into Colter's weakened knee joint as possible, and was rewarded with a satisfying shower of sparks as the armour crumpled and locked in place, prompting a guttural howl of frustration from its occupant. Before she could press her advantage again, though, the suit's electrical shielding came back online, wreathing Colter in a shell of blue energy once more.

No matter. Another volley of water and the barrier collapsed again. Sprinting towards the immobilised suit she moved around to its rear and extended the blade in her sleeve, neatly severing the cable connecting Colter to the arena's power grid with a single slash. "Bitch!" he yelled, his voice suddenly robbed of all the bravado it had been filled with only a few moments previously. "Fight me like a man!"

"You first," Rachel snarled, before she retracted her blade back into her sleeve and spun the release wheel on the dorsal plating of his suit, popping it open and exposing Colter to the outside world with a hydraulic hiss. Grabbing him by the scruff of the neck she dragged him out and used her momentum to fling him a few steps away from her. Taking a moment to size him up she saw that he was perhaps in his early-to-mid forties, muscle that was clearly running to fat contained underneath his mismatched leather armour, with a shaven head and lengthy scars flecking his face. He staggered for a moment before his hand went to his belt and slipped deftly into the bloodstained power fist hanging on his hip.

"I'm gonna turn your guts to paste," he hissed before he activated the fist's humming energy field and lunged at her, aiming his weapon towards her stomach. She kept her guard down on purpose, knowing that the salvaged steel prongs crudely mounted on the front of the ramshackle improvised device would hit the layered torso armour in her coat's lining and nothing else. Sure enough, they impacted against the segmented plates and snapped neatly in half, although she still felt an echo of their impact even through her multiple layers of armour. The fist was clearly still more than capable of inflicting serious damage on her if left unchecked, so Rachel knew she had to stay alert.

Colter clearly sensed a moment of distraction then, and decided to close the distance between them, aiming his fist at her unprotected face with a desperate bellow of rage.

In an instant Rachel had double-tapped her palm and extended her sabre once again, jamming it through Colter's inferior, patchwork armour and out of his back before withdrawing it and watching him sink down to his knees, his final breath rasping in his throat as he slumped sideways into a haphazard heap.

Retracting the sabre after wiping it clean on the dead man's sleeve, Rachel drew her fingers across her brow, noticing abruptly that she had lost her hat. She turned and spotted it lying on the ground next to one of the rusted dodgems, so she walked over to it and set it back on her head as the door separating her from Piper swung open, reuniting the two of them. It was only then that she noticed the stunned silence from the crowd that had up until that moment been hooting with bloodlust. The voice which had been mocking her was now steeped in disbelief.

"Holy shit!" it exclaimed. "The new meat's pulled off an impossible win! Colter's out! Gage, what the hell just happened?"

"You saw it," her guardian devil's voice said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "We all saw it. We got ourselves a new Overboss!" Some other voices she didn't recognise chimed in then, expressing their shock at Gage apparently crowning her as the new head-bitch-in-charge, before he cut them off. "She survived the Gauntlet. She was smart enough to take my advice and strong enough to kill Colter. She's what we need. So how about we show some respect for our new leader?"

"She'll get respect when she earns respect," a woman retorted in a condescending tone, her voice sounding like honeyed murder. "I won't defer to some filthy Commonwealth scavver just because she did us one favour."

"Then you better wise up quick," Gage snapped. "You think she won't do to you what she did to Colter? Get the hell outta here, all of you – I'm gonna show our new boss the lay of the land. Over here, Overboss!"

Abruptly Rachel noticed that his voice was coming from the glass booth on the other side of the arena. Closing the distance between them she could see that, like Colter, he was clearly north of the usual age range for a raider. Evidently he was either very good at what he did, or was smart enough to let others do the work for him. She guessed it was the latter – although judging by the fact that his right eye was covered by a metal patch, perhaps a certain amount of trial and error had been involved.

She could identify with that.

When she reached the booth, Gage smiled at her, his one-eyed gaze displaying a distinctly un-raider-like relief. "What'd I tell you?" he said. "Worked like a charm."

Rachel snorted, almost bursting out laughing. "You really wanted Colter dead, didn't you?"

"Dead, 'outta the way', what's the difference?" Gage shrugged. "Point is he's dead." He sighed. "Look, I know this ain't exactly gonna make a whole bunch of sense right now, but you need to listen. Taking out that lazy-ass numbnuts Colter wasn't a snap decision – bunch of us've been working on that for months now. And now that he's actually gone, well… that leaves us a vacancy."

"Since you keep calling me 'Overboss', I'm guessing I just got that promotion?" Rachel said sourly. "Do you people hand out leadership like candy to anybody who knocks on your front door?"

"I know what it sounds like," Gage said, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his left palm. "All I'm asking is that you trust me on this and give it a shot. I swear it'll be worth it."

"What?" Piper said, incredulous. "Blue, you can't seriously –"

"She's the Overboss, girl," Gage snapped at her. "She can do whatever the fuck she likes. Now shut the fuck up while the grownups talk."

Oh boy. Wrong answer, Mohawk.

"Don't you tell me to shut up, you asshole!" Piper snarled. "I have as much right to talk as anyone! I –"

Rachel held her hand up to shush Piper then, much to Piper's chagrin. "It's okay, Pipes, I got this. We can argue more about it later." She paused, re-focusing her attention on the one-eyed man on the other side of the glass. "All right, Gage, I'm listening. Tell me what you need me to do."

"Okay," Gage began, "it's like this: there are three gangs running the show here in Nuka-World: the Disciples, the Operators and the Pack." He sighed. "And raiders being raiders, they ain't exactly playing nice with each other. Thanks to that jackass Colter this place is a powder keg ready to blow sky-high. If things go too far sideways, the streets of Nuka-Town are gonna be runnin' red with blood. Now I think you got what it takes to fix that problem, so are you in or what?"

Rachel feigned a smile. "Better pay well, is all I can say," she replied. "All right, I'm in."

Gage's grizzled features broke out into a broad grin. "That's the spirit," he said in a relieved tone. "Now I'm sure you got a lot of questions, but this ain't the time. Let's get you to Fizztop Mountain – the restaurant at the top is your new home. We can talk more there. Just let me get that door for you…" He pushed a button on the rusting, decrepit terminal next to him and the heavy door leading to the rest of Nuka-World swung open with an unhealthy creak. "Welcome home, Overboss."

The air that blew into Rachel's face as the door opened smelled like a three-day-old soup made of rotten meat and sour milk. There were piles of trash lining the corridor which were coated in congealed food, large rad-rats skittering between them squeaking to each other as if they were having a conversation about their new leader. Rachel shooed one away in disgust as it investigated her boot curiously, and it scampered away into the darkness with a disgruntled squeal.

"Sorry about that, boss," Gage said with a chuckle. "You get used to them after a while. Kinda cute in their own way, though, don't you think?"

"Not the word I'd use," Piper muttered, before Gage gave her another searing glare.

"I ain't gonna tell you again: mind your mouth, girl," he said, scorn dripping off his words. "You know, I ain't known you for more than five minutes and you're already working my last nerve."

"I hope so," Piper said. "You don't scare me."

Gage turned around and deliberately stood nose-to-nose with her. "Maybe I don't, but the gang leaders ain't nearly as forgiving as me. So you better learn to hold your damn tongue, missy, or I promise you they'll cut it out and make you wear it round your neck."

"They can try," Rachel said, grabbing Gage by the corner of his armour and looking him directly in his single eye. "Let's get one thing straight right now, Gage. Anyone who touches my wife without my permission won't touch anything again, do you understand?"

"Completely, boss," Gage said, holding both hands up defensively. "Ain't gotta tell me twice. It's the gang leaders you gotta convince."

"And how do I do that?"

"You need to visit them on their home turf," Gage replied simply. "Find out what they want, how they see this working out, that kind of thing."

Rachel raised an eyebrow. "Wait," she began, "why do I have to go to them? They can come to me this evening if they want to get to know me. Make sure they know I want to see them at nine sharp."

"Say no more, boss," Gage said. "Anything else you need?"

"Just one thing," Rachel said, tapping her chin. "Got any cigars?"