Serket the Scorpion Goddess, and the Rangers as a Whole
Thrasher was disappointed to discover some of the more obtuse documents in Vargas' desk were actually his responsibility. As the defacto quartermaster he was obligated to keep track of their supplies, which he did years ago before he got tired of it and capriciously stopped. What remained of his old notes were inscrutable, but he was spurred into keeping records again by Julia's investigations. Honestly, he'd been shamed by the girl, who through no fault of her own had thoroughly shown him up by simply asking questions, his inability to answer even the most basic of prompting him to re-examine the duties he'd halfheartedly taken upon himself and then abandoned without compunction.
None of the old records were salvageable. While at one time they clearly meant something to him that time was long past, and whatever system he'd used to keep them straight had long since left his mind, no doubt forced out by years of late evenings spent in the company of two-hundred-year-old scotch. All of it was old enough to be irrelevant anyway, at least from a practical standpoint. Maybe if the Rangers wanted to chart their growth (or measure their decline, as the case may be) the old numbers would have some value, but the Rangers had no interest in that sort of intelligence. In all their years at the Dam they'd been flush with enough supplies to never be wanting, exact store counts measured on a line would just be pointless minutia, or at least that was what he thought.
He ran his fingers through his long white hair and stroked his mustache as he made one last effort to try and interpret the data he'd typed into documents way back when, stalling before he finally had to do some real work. He looked up and noticed he wasn't alone. Julia had slipped into the office while he wasn't paying attention and was quietly reading in the moldy armchair he sometimes slept in. He cleared his throat and asked, "Would you like to help me with a project?"
Julia agreed, eager and excited to help her friends in any way possible. Also, she wanted more responsibility. Her goal was to earn the Rangers' trust until she had enough clout to steer their actions in the direction she wanted. She knew it would take time, but she was willing to work at it because she knew her Utopian vision for the future was worth it. After spending two days in a muggy storeroom counting individual 10mm bullets in a big plastic bin she was less enthused. Most of the time they were together Thrasher regaled Julia with bold tales of reckless heroism.
"Well, then she noticed the prospectors," Julia listened intently, "So, we had ourselves a decision to make. The old beast was keepin' deathclaws off this side 'o the Colorado, but, when a life's in danger, well, sometimes you just gotta shoot first and hope it all works out. So, I whip out my old Springfield and drop the torch and unload a little in her meaty claw."
Julia gasped in shock, "What happened?!"
Thrasher chuckled, "Heh, heh. Well," he waggled his eyebrows, "got her attention."
She loved his stories, she even begged him to tell her more. For every hour they sat in the Ranger's makeshift armory, they spent maybe fifteen minutes at best actually taking stock of the supplies. Sometimes Julia asked for more stories, sometimes Thrasher found something in the clutter that reminded him of some daring mission the Rangers undertook twenty years ago, before Julia was even born. Counting the number of M1911 pistols reminded him of the time they took on Serket, scorpion goddess of the Mojave.
"She was bearing down on Jackie, real close, almost got her pincers around the poor girl and poison drippin' from her stinger!" Thrasher put a lot of character into his stories. He was practiced at them, as every new Ranger could attest, "Angela put all her weight into the lever and popped the rocks off like a Nuka Cola bottlecap! Ole Serkie, she shrugged the first rock off, sure as day, but they just kept comin'! In less than a minute there was nothin' but a pile 'o rocks oozin' green scorpion blood. At first we thought Jackie bit it, too, but that little girl sure could surprise you, and out clamberin' over the rocks she comes. 'I guess we got 'er,' she says," he burst out laughing and Julia joined in.
To her, Thrasher's word was historical record. She wished she could write down every one of his stories and bind them in a book. It never occurred to her that some of his retelling might lend itself to exaggeration, that in all the years he'd spent sitting in the Dam and thinking about the past some parts had gotten mixed up in his mind. Not that it mattered.
"After you killed Serket, is that when the deathclaws started migrating towards Goodsprings?" Julia asked, "Because she wasn't around to keep them away anymore?"
Thrasher was given pause by her question. No one had ever listened to him as closely as she did, and the pressure was on. He didn't need her showing him up again. After thinking for a minute he said, "Y'know, we never followed up on it. I suppose you're right, that was about the time deathclaws really came out in force in the Mojave. Hrm. I guess it all didn't just 'work out,' huh?"
Secretly, Julia relished in her ability to fluster another man she looked up to. Openly, she knew better than to gloat or assume she had the upper hand on the old warhorse and backpedaled, arguing that since the Rangers were managing the deathclaw population now, it did work out. Thrasher recognized her tactful humility, and mused, "Y'know, you never quite know what the consequences are of everything you do. I wouldn't be surprised if even some of the most unthinking little nothings I've done in my life had some of the most damning results."
The observation left him solemn and withdrawn for more than an hour, their most productive hour in two days. Julia managed to count all the 10mm bullets in the gray bin only to discover the blue metal box beneath it was also full of 10mm bullets, and also some 9mm and 5mm.
As he tallied guns and thought about the past Thrasher slowly started to recall the system he made up so many years ago for keeping track of supplies. The numbers coalesced into something meaningful and he hurriedly left Julia behind as he went to retrieve the old notes. She was so distracted shuffling bullets around that she didn't notice he was gone, and when she heard shuffling in the room she was surprised to look up and see Pills.
"Oh hey! I didn't know you were back," she greeted her friend. Pills jumped at her voice. Her body was tense, like she was balancing on a wire. When she recognized Julia sitting on the floor she tried to act casual, but she couldn't shake her nervous energy and rather than relax she flashed a pained smile and stayed contorted, caught in the act.
"Hey," she fidgeted, "Yeah, yeah, I just got back..."
Julia didn't understand why her friend seemed so uncomfortable. She was worried that Pills was mad at her, that she was keeping her away from something important, but she couldn't figure out what. She nervously returned Pills' forced smile.
"Is, uh, is there anyone in here... with you?" Pills asked while glancing around.
"Yeah, Thrasher and me are counting bullets," she answered and held up a 10mm bullet to demonstrate. All around her in separate piles were Ranger bullets.
"Oh. Uh, okay... Cool. Cool. See you... uh...uh... later," Pills said and suddenly vanished through the door. Julia didn't have time to reflect on their strange, stilted conversation before Thrasher came back with a fistful of old papers. He ignored her as he made his way to the back of the room, comparing the numbers on the paper to pistols on a shelf. Rather than talk to Thrasher about Pills' sudden appearance and disappearance she hoped that any awkwardness in the encounter stemmed from her own insecurity and wasn't worth bothering the old man with. He was too busy muttering to himself about numbers to be bothered, anyway. For the rest of the day he was so consumed with deciphering his old notes that there were no more stories and Julia was able to get a count on at least four different types of bullets and organized them accordingly. There wasn't a set schedule for the work she did with Thrasher. For the past two days they were finished whenever Thrasher clapped his hands together and asked her if she was satisfied with the work done, but he was too busy muttering to himself to dismiss her. She didn't want to interrupt him, but she was tired of the gunmetal smell in the hot room. Finally she decided to approach the old man after quietly standing behind him for ten minutes wondering what to do.
"Hey, uh, I was thinking about, uh... I counted all the bullets in those bins," she pointed to the plastic bins she'd spent four hours rooting through and handed him the piece of paper with their tally.
"My fingers smell terrible," she nervously joked.
Suddenly aware of her presence again he looked up from his old notes. He saw her hopeful and insecure expression and broke out in a warm, paternal smile, a little worried that he'd accidentally alienated her. He gently took the paper and thanked her for her help. Behind him were propane tanks.
"Hey, propane!" she recognized them. Thrasher was about to dismiss her but was taken aback slightly. He was surprised she knew what they were.
"Uh, yes. Giving me a bit of trouble at the moment," he grumbled and shuffled his notes around, "Do you know if Vargas has been using them for anything?"
"Hmmm. No, I don't think so," she said, "Me and Pills blew up a couple."
Thrasher's face became ashen and his expression dropped. He made an inept attempt to hide his shock and dismay, but Julia didn't notice.
"You, uh... you and Pills... blew them up?" he blinked. He choked back anger.
"Yeah! Ummm, we shot..." she counted on her fingers, "Five?" she smiled a big, oblivious grin.
Thrasher clutched his chest and stumbled backwards. He steadied himself by holding onto a shelf. When he was a young man with little more than conviction and a rifle, eager to follow Vargas and Angela's lead, he once guarded an ancient (already more than a hundred years old by the time the bombs fell) natural gas well and refinery as a small group of wastelanders harvested and refined. They had to camp at the refinery for two days. Raiders and bandits were so belligerent it was a grueling forty-eight hour slaughter, of which Thrasher himself was the only survivor. He only managed to save two propane tanks, which he carried in each hand for more than a hundred miles back to the wastelanders' surviving kin. He tried to give them both away, but the wastelanders were so grateful despite so much loss they demanded he take one back to his people. As the memory of those harrowing two days played out in his head in detail too thorough to be accurate he struggled to keep his expression neutral
"Julia I need you to go get Snake and wait with him in his office," his voice was so affect-less she couldn't help but feel nervous. She asked him what she would be waiting for and he told her without any of the warmth that she was so used to, "Me and Pills."
Julia knew for sure that something was wrong, but dutifully fetched Vargas anyway. It was obvious she and Pills were in trouble, yet Thrasher's staid orders were too neutral for her to gauge just how much. Even still, when Vargas asked her why they were waiting in his office she opted not to tell him. The truth would be out soon enough, she figured, no need to rush it.
After twenty awkward minutes Thrasher hobbled in alone. He walked up to Vargas, who asked him what was wrong while beads of sweat made dew on Julia's forehead. Thrasher snarled something unintelligible about Pills, then nodded to Julia, "She can tell you."
She was never more scared in all her short life. Growing up with Harpy she was in trouble more often than not, and at Dry Wells she had become acclimated to it. But, among the Desert Rangers at the Dam she hadn't once drawn their ire and liked it. She thought back to the diverse and unpleasant punishments meted out by her grandfather over the years. She assumed the Ranger's punishment scaled with their greater puissance. Absolutely positive she was about to be taken outside and shot, she stared right into Vargas' eyes and told him in a loud squeak, "Pills and I shot some of your propane tanks and blew them up."
The teenage girl standing in front of him was so vulnerable and scared and proud Commander Vargas couldn't be mad. Staring into her big, brown, quivering eyes all he could do was sigh and rub his temple. Julia shook so hard she almost couldn't stand, her head was hot and she thought she was going to vomit. In the next twenty years she'd be shot enough times to fill an smg clip but at fifteen she'd never been shot once. She saw the aftermath enough to be truly frightened.
"We aren't going to shoot you," Vargas read her mind. She jumped at the word 'shoot' like it was a bullet and almost fell, but Vargas caught her. Even Thrasher softened seeing how shaken up she was.
"This isn't good, okay? But it'll be okay. You'll be okay. Take a seat," he lead her to one of the metal chairs in front of his desk, not the armchair, then turned to Thrasher and said, "I know where Pills is."
He reassured Julia everything was going to be alright again, then ordered her to wait and left with Thrasher. While she waited she sat stiff and upright in her seat, sweat still trickling down her temples and gathering in her armpits. She desperately wanted to read, to escape into one of Vargas' books, but she remembered the time she snuck a book into the wardrobe her grandfather used to lock her in as punishment and when he caught her he set the book on fire and tanned her with a gecko-skin belt. Immobilized by the memory, she sat and dreaded Vargas' response to her indiscretion.
She only had to wait fifteen minutes before the men returned, flanking a sulking Pills. They sat her down in the chair next to Julia, then Vargas took his seat behind the desk and Thrasher sat down in the armchair and lit a cigarette. Julia was too embarrassed to try to catch Pills' eye, and instead stared straight ahead at Vargas like an ambushed gecko. Pills snorted and rolled her eyes at her accomplice's fear, but her accomplice didn't notice. She slumped down in her chair, arms crossed and defiant sneer on her face. Vargas sat in judgment of the pair, each the exact opposite even though they looked so alike to him they might as well have been sisters. Due to the politics of tribal society they were second cousins, but neither could possibly know that.
"I," Vargas started and Julia jumped in her seat, "am deeply disappointed."
"Those tanks were priceless. Do you know how difficult it is to acquire propane? No?" really fucking difficult realized Julia. She squirmed in her chair, " It took half a century to build up our supply. Fifty years of work for thirteen tanks. And you shot five."
Vargas let his words hang in the air. Pills glared at him and said nothing in her own defense, but Julia was so upset and scared she had to try and defend herself.
"I just thought, you guys have so much already-"
"I know. You didn't know. You couldn't possibly know," he said to Julia, sadly but heartfelt. The tanks were a rare resource, but he knew people, especially young people, were more important.
"You could," he pointed at Pills, who didn't react to his accusation besides broadening her smirk, "You did. And you and I are going to talk more about this... But I'm not mad. I'm disappointed. I know both of you enough to know that you are capable of better judgment. And I expect you to exercise better judgment in the future. You are free to go, but if you make an error like this again the consequences will be more severe," he told Julia, then added ominously, "As this one is about to find out."
He pointed a finger at Pills, who rolled her eyes at him. Still trembling, Julia rose from her seat. As she got up to leave, she couldn't help but look at Pills, who shot her a glance of pure loathing. Pills felt betrayed, and Julia felt like a betrayer.
In the barracks by herself she broke down into overwhelmed sobs. Her guilt at betraying not only Pills but especially Vargas, Thrasher, and the Rangers as a whole was debilitating. It felt like the worse thing she'd ever done and she couldn't possibly recover. There was no redemption great enough, she felt, to rectify her fuck-up. She considered suicide, just to get away from the shame. She wished they'd shot her instead of leaving her to bear the mark of Cain for the rest of her life.
Worst of all, she knew the Ranger's would never follow her lead after such a colossal mistake. Nothing she could do could ever erase the blight on her history, and with it dragging her down what supreme wasteland warrior would ever take orders from her? Not only was she a selfish traitor, but her dream was dead, too.
"Hey, are you okay?" she was face down on her cot sobbing when Ace found her. He had just finished working for the day on the Ranger's prize possession, a vertibird almost capable of flight, and didn't know about Julia's mistake yet. She jerked her head up to find him sitting on the edge of the cot next to her.
During her time spent with the Rangers Julia was too busy and not angry enough to act the role of seductress, but in hallways and at meals she would casually flirt with Ace. She couldn't figure out why he always seemed so unresponsive to her playful advances. His standoffish but polite rebukes only made her flirtations more aggressive, to the point where she embarrassed herself by attempting a little strip tease for him while every Ranger at the Dam (besides the fixed Rangers, Really, Ghost Woman, and two field Rangers named Doc Tidemann and La Loca who thankfully she never saw again) were gathered in the lounge. Granted, she'd had a bit of Thrasher's single malt that night, but even still she decided she'd crossed a line and dropped it. In her emotionally compromised state, though, she was desperate to give it another try.
"Oh, I'm fine, thank you, please don't worry about it," she bolted up and dried her eyes, while glancing down and away and arching her back, "Only, could you maybe turn on the radio, please."
Ever since he saw her naked, Ace was torn between his physical desire for her young body and his obligation to be a responsible adult. Toeing the line when they interacted was difficult for him and he'd been relieved when she finally took it too far and backed off. Because a part of him still hoped to be physically intimate with her, he was aware she was flirting with him, but the part of him that was a responsible adult who wanted to look out for her could tell her tears were earnest. He nodded his head sagely and got up to turn on the room's radio. He flicked it on and a jazzy, instrumental melody piped through tinny speakers. Julia couldn't help a few more tears and loudly sniffed while adjusting her outfit and primping her hair. She tried to flash him a big smile when he looked back at her, but couldn't hold it for a second before breaking out in another sob. A fresh set of tears streaked down her face and she gave up her flirtations to wipe them clean. She hunched over and hugged herself.
"Are you sure? What happened?" he worriedly asked after he sat down again. She looked up into his eyes. Hers were red and puffy from crying so much. His were full of concern. She felt ashamed and looked away.
"I blew up the propane tanks," she muttered into her shoulder. He smiled and leaned in closer, gently prompting her to repeat herself, "We shot some of the propane tanks from the armory. I fucked up," she bitterly confessed, then sideways glanced back up at him to gauge his reaction.
At first he was confused, and asked, "Propane tanks?" before he realized what she meant. She cautiously eyed him as he broke out in a wide, pitying smile, "Hey, Julia that's okay. We hardly use propane for anything, that's how we got to have so much."
"A lot less now," Julia muttered and looked away. Ace got up and sat down beside her. He slung a comforting arm around her shoulders, and she got goosebumps at his touch.
"Most people don't have any propane. If you shot all our supply we'd get by just fine," she subtly settled into his grip, pressing her body against his. He couldn't help but hug her closer. Her body was warm, and he could smell her sweet dead-flower scent. He struggled to think of something to say, to think of anything, "It'll be okay."
She turned to look at him, their faces so close they could see nothing but each other. She had stopped crying but her eyes were still red. He kissed her. For a brief and wonderful moment Julia didn't have to think about anything. For the entirety of the kiss she could forget what happened. Then Ace pulled away and she was snapped back into reality. She tried to pull him back in but he pushed her away and stood up.
"What's wrong?" she hooked one foot around his leg and her other into his belt. She could feel how hard his cock was through his rough soldier's pants. She involuntarily bit her lip. He took a deep breath and ran his fingers through his curly hair, tried to cool down. Both of them were flushed.
"I can't do this," he told her.
"C'mon, why not?" she pouted and rubbed his dick with her foot. Even through fabric it felt amazing but he brushed her away and stepped further back. She followed him off the cot and tried to unbuckle his belt but he grabbed her arms. She made a cute noise and squirmed.
"I can't have sex with someone who's been sexually abused!" he accidentally blurted. It stopped her cold in her tracks and he let go of her arms and stared at her crotch, "I mean, what is it even like down there? Can you even feel it?"
"It... I wasn't... I haven't..." she struggled to understand and explain. I'm not fit for marriage, she wanted to tell him, but didn't see how he could understand, "They-"
"It's okay. It's alright," he reassured her, "Everyone knows about what the Twisted Hairs do. If I could stop them from ever doing it again, I would. We all would. But that just isn't how it works out here."
"I'm sorry," he apologized and glumly shuffled out of the barracks. Julia was left standing alone, dumbfounded. The music from the radio faded out, replaced with a quiet hiss.
Even though she wasn't allowed to participate in her old tribe's customs (not that she wanted to anymore), she wasn't aware anyone outside the tribe knew about them. All over again she felt ashamed. She had an obligation to the people she left behind, and now that she couldn't push the Rangers into taking care of it for her, she realized she had to be responsible and take care of it herself.
She never saw Pills again, but Vargas assured her that Pills was still a Ranger as he inducted her into his binder. They didn't have any sets of H3RM35 armor, the Ranger standard dating back to the days when they were just another tribe, but they did provide her with a leather outfit of higher quality than any tribal armor.
Really was there to officially welcome her into the Desert Rangers. She was so proud of her friend and protege, and offered to go on patrol in the wasteland with her to show her the ropes some more. Julia politely declined. She already had a plan for what she was going to do, and she didn't think Really would approve. They spent one last day together at the Dam before Julia took off for good.
They never saw each other again, but they never forgot each other. Julia would always try to live up to Really's example, even though she was never quite as good at killing raiders. Really would go on to leave the Rangers after their failed war with the Legion. Although she didn't dislike the New California Republic, she wasn't eager to serve under their banner and fight for their cause, and anyway by that time she was getting on in years and couldn't fight like she used to. Eventually she gravitated towards the free community of West Vegas, and served as a guard and handywoman, keeping the crumbling buildings upright and keeping Fiends away with her lever-action rifle. She liked West Vegas, she liked the people and she liked the freedom that the people prided themselves on. Just after the second battle of Hoover Dam, well into her fifties, Really passed away quietly in her sleep, content that the Mojave Wasteland didn't need her anymore.