Rachel narrowed her eyes as she picked up a small mechanism between her thumb and forefinger. It was the injector module from Colter's helmet which had administered the huge dose of Psycho that had overtaken her in the Galactic Zone three days previously, and it disgusted her to remember how… exhilarated the drug had made her feel. She dropped it to the floor of the Fizztop Grille and smashed it to fragments with a couple of swift blows from her booted heel.
Never again, she thought angrily. I'm not going to end up like Cait. She picked up the broken remnants of the injector and threw them out of the open front of the restaurant, watching the glittering shards of metal and plastic tumble to the ground with a sense of grim satisfaction. Turning back to the table she had just vacated she picked up the partially-disassembled helmet and began piecing it back together – as crude and haphazard as it was, the armour would be still be invaluable in helping her maintain some kind of order in this dangerous, insane place.
In another corner of the diner sat the beginnings of another idea she had had to help her establish herself as someone to be feared rather than simply tolerated. Several partially assembled novatron chassises lay in a line against the wall at the opposite end of the restaurant, their formerly-pristine white and gold armour-plating occasionally disfigured by the ugly laser burns and scorched bullet holes which showed how and where the Disciples had managed to bring them down. With enough time, patience, spare parts and luck, Rachel was reasonably confident she could reactivate and reprogram them to act as her bodyguards – with a full squad of unwaveringly-obedient, heavily-armed combat robots at her disposal, even those unwashed Pack savages would hopefully think twice before trying to stab her in the back.
Hopefully.
Sighing, she picked up a coil of copper wire and blew on it to dislodge a little touch of dust, before slotting it back into its proper place in the helmet's visual display, the cracked visor flickering with a spark of residual power as she did so. The short crackle of electricity arced back along Rachel's skin before she could react, and she yelped in pain wordlessly before dropping the helmet onto the floor and kicking it halfway across the room with a frustrated snarl. "Fuck you, Colter," she muttered, running her jolted fingers through her hair in exasperation. "Fuck you." She wiped the sweat from her brow with a dirty rag and threw it in the nearest trash can in frustration.
The silence of the restaurant seemed to taunt her. Piper would usually have been the first to give her opinion on the situation, but she was on an errand to Nuka-Town's marketplace – Rachel had asked her to find the heaviest armour she could in preparation for the assault on Safari Adventure. If what Gage had told her was true, she would need all the protection she could get...
If anything, Rachel decided sourly, Gage's assessment of the situation in Safari Adventure had been too cautious.
The zone's jungle foliage looked idyllic for about five seconds before the entrance erupted into a flurry of claws and teeth. Rachel watched in disbelief as a trio of large scaly creatures came storming out of the gateway, the corpse of a nearly-naked man lying in several pieces behind them, his shattered sledgehammer clutched in the broken fingers of his severed hands. The beasts were not familiar to her – though they were clearly reptilian, they had neither the horns nor the talons typical of deathclaws – but they were fast and determined, surging towards the mob of Pack warriors she had standing behind her. The monsters' roars were met with hooting screams from the masked raiders, several of whom abruptly broke ranks, brandishing crude bladed weapons and screaming as they charged. Before Rachel could order her remaining troops to provide some covering fire, the monsters almost casually diced their attackers with their scything claws, tearing them into bloody chunks without even breaking stride.
She cursed under her breath and readied her rifle, cutting down the first of the beasts without a second thought. Those Pack members who hadn't charged forwards had enough good judgement to follow her example and open fire on the remaining two creatures. As Rachel had expected, the volleys were raucous and undisciplined, but they did the trick, the large lizards soaking up dozens of bullets before finally crumpling to the ground. When the beasts had finally stopped twitching, Rachel cautiously ordered her rabble forwards with a wave of her hand. As she neared the bodies of the animals, she put a round between their cold, beady eyes just to be sure they wouldn't get back up. After what she had seen of Nuka-World so far, she wasn't going to take any chances.
It took Rachel and her followers a while to even get their bearings in the park, as the savage reptiles kept crawling out into the open, seemingly from every dark corner they could have been hiding in. Rachel lost count of how many she killed before she found what seemed to be a suicide note next to the corpse of a ghoul in a lab coat, telling her about the existence of a cloning machine which had gone haywire, spewing out endless copies of what the author of the note had called gatorclaws – an appropriate name, she thought, considering how fast and vicious the creatures were. Now she and her gang stood in front of the fabrication unit, watching new gatorclaws emerging fully-formed from the machinery on a conveyor belt, their heavily-muscled forms enclosed in thin sacs of amniotic fluid. As each sac rolled into a small enclosed pen, its occupant would swiftly tear its way free, its tongue immediately flickering out to taste the air before it stalked through the pen's only exit and into the wider area of the park.
One of the Pack next to Rachel raised her rifle to take aim at the newest hatchling, clearly intending to start another fight. In these enclosed conditions Rachel didn't rate their chances of success very highly, especially with fresh gatorclaws being churned out at an ever-increasing rate, so she quickly reached out and pushed the woman's rifle down.
"Wait your turn," she hissed. "First we stop more of those things being born, then we mop up the leftovers, understand?"
"Yeah. Sure," the woman said in an almost sullen tone. "Whatever you say, boss."
"Good," Rachel replied, before she pointed to a console on the far side of the chamber and pushed the scrap of paper with the shutdown code scrawled on it into the woman's hand. "You want to make yourself useful, go shut that machine off. Just throw the big switch on the centre of the console and this whole operation ends."
To Rachel's surprise, the woman grinned widely. "I like a challenge," she said, shouldering her rifle and dragging a jagged-edged machete from her frayed belt, before breaking from cover too quickly for Rachel to caution her. She ran as quickly as possible, skidding past a pair of freshly-born monsters as they were still struggling to work out which way was up and ending up at the lever, grabbing it and slamming it down triumphantly. The machine's gears groaned as they ground to a halt. "Boss! I did it –" the woman began, excitedly.
Before she could finish, however, a gatorclaw reared up behind her, slammed its talons through her spine and tore her in half, biting off her head and stuffing chunks of her body down its gullet. Its enjoyment of its meal lasted a matter of seconds before Rachel put a shot right between its eyes, ending it in an instant.
With the fabrication unit shut down, the park was more or less clear. Rachel decided to leave the last few remaining gatorclaws free, if only because the Pack would enjoy hunting them down. She, on the other hand, had very little desire to stay here any longer than necessary…
The Bradberton amphitheatre was full of rowdy cheering and drunken singing that night, with even the wounded Pack members joining in the celebrations. Mason, Piper and Rachel sat at the top table, full mugs of what Rachel assumed was supposed to be some kind of beer sat in front of each of them. Whatever it was, it smelled just as bad as the amphitheatre and tasted even worse – but Rachel had to admit that the kick it had was pretty effective. She hadn't felt this drunk in quite a while, and that somehow had a perverse appeal to it. Anything to distract her from what she had seen today, after all.
"Gotta hand it to you, boss, I never thought I'd see the day we'd start takin' this place back," Mason said, swigging back a mouthful from his own mug. "Colter would've had us sittin' in Nuka-Town with our thumbs up each other's asses forever if he'd gotten his way."
"Glad I could help," Rachel replied, gesturing to Mason's free hand. "How's the hand, by the way? Healing well?"
Mason grimaced. "And here I was just starting to like you," he said sourly. Flexing his fingers he made a fist and showed her the puckered scars left over from their first meeting. "Gets a little stiff in the cold, but it ain't cold here very often, so I guess I should count myself lucky."
"Just checking," Rachel said with a short chuckle. "I hope today proves I don't hold grudges."
"Seems that way," Mason said brusquely, before he tipped his head back and finished off his drink in a single gulp. Throwing the empty cup away into a fly-covered pile of garbage in the corner of the amphitheatre, he let loose a lengthy, satisfied belch. "Y'know, boss, we have a tradition here in the Pack – every time we score a big win, the Alpha has to fight in the cage." He shrugged. "Keeps the animals happy, I guess. Usually I let them choose who I fight –"
"But this time you want to pick me," Rachel interrupted, seeing the direction he was headed. She smiled. "Okay, you're on." She finished her drink and stood up. "Let's get to it –"
"On one condition," Mason cut in, before gesturing to her cybernetic implant. "You gotta take that thing outta your face first. Keep things even." He smirked. "Don't want you shootin' anything out of it, after all."
Rachel laughed despite herself. "If it'll make you feel better about getting your ass kicked by a girl, sure," she said, and then reached up to tap the button on the side of her implant's casing, carefully extracting the lens module and wrapping it in a piece of soft cloth from one of her jacket pockets. Half of her world went dark in an instant as she she shrugged herself out of the jacket, handing it to Piper and slipping on the eye-patch she carried with her at all times, just in case. Adjusting it so it fit as closely to her brow as possible, she began to get to her feet before Piper grabbed her arm.
"You sure you know what you're doing, Blue?" she asked, a worried expression etched on her face. "I don't like this."
Rachel lifted Piper's hand off her arm and squeezed it gently. "I promise I know what I'm doing," she said, trying to sound reassuring. "This won't take long."
As Rachel closed the door behind her, Mason shook out his limbs and flexed his fingers before raising his fists. "Ready when you are, boss," he said, a smug edge to his voice.
Rachel cracked both sets of knuckles, and advanced on Mason without another word. She took a couple of experimental jabs at him to judge his reflexes, prompting him to feint to her left and make a grab at her outstretched left wrist with one hand, clearly trying to take advantage of her blind spot. Rachel deliberately telegraphed her reaction, baiting him closer before yanking her arm back and landing a solid punch into his thickly-muscled stomach. Mason staggered for a moment, his breath grating noisily in his throat before he regained his composure and tackled her to the ground before she could react, the back of her skull slamming hard against the floor of the cage. Her vision blurred for a second and she momentarily found herself missing the clarity her artificial eye would have brought her, an instant before Mason wrapped his hands around her throat and began pressing his thumbs into her windpipe. Instinctively she tried to force his hands apart, but his grip was too tight and her world became tinged with angry red as she struggled to breathe. Desperately she scrabbled at his cheek, managing to jam her finger into his eye hard enough that he had to release her, rolling away and clutching at his face as he did so, snarling and cursing as he did so.
Coughing, Rachel struggled to her feet, clenching her fists even as every muscle in her body shrieked in protest with every breath. Mason almost sprinted towards her as she found her footing and it was all she could do to drag herself to one side, sticking one foot out in order to send him sprawling face-first into the concrete with a loud wet crunch.
He pushed himself up, a bloody gurgle momentarily rattling in his lungs, but before he could get back to a fully-upright stance Rachel had kicked him in the ribs, making him flop onto his back. As he stared hazily up at her, his broken nose skewed grotesquely to the side, Rachel simply planted her foot in the centre of his body, knocking him flat on his back. Dropping down to one knee, she put her whole weight on his ribs and pinned him firmly to the ground, feeling his barrel chest flex awkwardly.
"You're done, Alpha," she said, panting and feeling sweat trailing down her forehead. "Give up."
To her surprise, Mason started laughing. "That was a good fight, boss," he said, before inclining his head to the side to spit out another thick glob of bloody spittle. "Y'know, I think you and I are gonna get along after all."
Somehow Rachel did not feel very reassured by that.