Getting a good story usually primed Pipers need to do something, anything from the confines of the pedestrian and sedentary life of Diamond City. While it was safer than just about anywhere in the Commonwealth other than the previously exploded mass of bunkers and tunnels that was the Institute it was boring and Piper didn't do boring.
So after a few days of milling around the destroyed parts of Boston that Blue had completely razed to the ground in term of corpses she had headed out north, past the farmlands and workstations that comprised Minutemen territory and towards somewhere a little more dangerous. A region that was patrolled but sufficiently lawless. Wet but not much rain, muddy and windy for the atmosphere she was going for in this new paper aswell.
Somewhere that Blue would go, somewhere that a drugged up sniper with god knows how many addictions and a penchant for going from stand off (ish) friendly to a berserk psychotic mess. Somehow she counted Blue as a friend.
A nearby building, shaped like a lighthouse provided cover and somewhere to stay the night, it gave a good outlook of the area with a ravine nearby and itself a vantage point to study,write and even a nearby terminal for note keeping.
It sounded perfect.
Until she got shot at.
By a super mutant.
She didnt even notice or hear, but Piper did feel the impact of a pipe submachineguns round hit her square in the chest, a few months ago that would have been a killing shot but thanks to Blue's countless hours of tampering with clothing and ballistic fiber, the round felt like a kick to the gut rather than said gut decorating the outside.
She then bought her gun out, a customized revolver with emphasis on Pipers arm and wrist strength, again courtesy of Blue. Piper returned shots with the Super Mutants and forced it into cover (her gun made a bigger boom and the Super's were into that) before pulling out a flare pistol that (again) Blue gifted her and shot a distress warning into the sky, while she was confident of winning a gun fight with a low ranking Super Mutant, they travelled alone.
The flare illuminated the darkening sky in a bright white light and all she had to do now was wait, return fire and hope that the "here in 15 or less" Minutemen chant was worth something.
Another Super Mutant joined in, this one with a shotgun that started blasting the locked door piece by piece while the other shouted badly worded childish insults, Piper returned fire again of course, hitting heavy and armored parts with her pistol to keep them off her.
Five minutes later and with frustrated aim, terrified screaming and wondering how the door (a very holey door) was still standing, a sniper rifle barked ignited into her ears and ripped off white bone from the weaker mutants leg, five seconds later and the struggling to stay still large green man was decapitated.
A friend? The Gunners had snipers, hell even the raiders did too and the BOS was known to conduct scout patrols and she didn't count them as friends. So she stayed put.
Ten minutes and the bigger Supermutant had gone off to join the raging battle that was occurring off from where the sniper had fired from, in the time since Piper had heard screaming, shouting, submachine guns and even a shotgun.
Fifteen and the heavy boots of a human started approaching, Piper breathed in and pointed her gun at the door. The marching stopped and whoever it was outside sighed and then knocked.
"Hey"
It was blue, that low and gravelly voice was too distinctive to miss.
Piper opened the door and jumped back in surprise at the sheer bloody mess that stood before her, a fully armored character with multiple punctures that battered the chest and thigh pieces, a reddened and slick'd power fist that barely held onto its sling on the hip, coupled with a obscenely ridiculously amount of bulging veins that permeated whatever exposed skin shone and topped off with a undercutted hairstyle and a manic look that couldnt focus properly.
Piper was damm sure if the voice didnt give it away then Blues look certainly did.
"You uh, wanna come in. It's a bit shot up in here but I think you probably killed or scared everything away?" Piper offered, standing back to give the now limping Blue room to come in.
"You got a light?" Samantha grunted as she came in, fiddling with the straps of one of her armor pieces. The light shone on the former Vault Dwellers face to reveal a flushed expression and a small puncture mark in one of the bulging neck veins.
"I dont smoke anymore Blue"
"And?"
"It's bad for your health"
"Piper"
"Blue you had a lighter the last time I saw you?"
"Its gone..somewhere"
The strap of armor Blue had been fiddling with fell to the floor and a syringe came out of a pocket, a pocket that had a few familiar triple glassed needles missing and a small bottle that was half full.
Blue held up her exposed arm to the light , squinting as she turned it over and over, Piper caught a glimpse at how disgustingly pale and red the fleshy part of the elbow joint looked. Clearly Blue had been using again too much in that arm and the scowl that showed up confirmed it.
Samantha groaned in pain and hitched a breath as she fumbled with the other armor piece on her other arm, throwing it to the floor in a clang as she near stabbed her syringe into the elbow, squeamishly Piper looked away and was greeted with a much calmer if more pale looking Blue (if that was even possible)
"I could really use that light"
Piper rolled her eyes. "Theres some matchsticks in the drawer nearby but dont blame if you die of lung cancer"
Blue chuckled humorlessly and after a few moments of finding the match, a light and a undamaged and unmuddied cigarette had leaned against a nearby wall, letting out a deep sigh with a lolled head.
Piper figured that she should probably ask Blue about why her normal needle was busted again, why Blue couldnt stop the little sways from side to side, why Blues eyes couldn't focus. Why there was an unloaded pistol on her and why Cait often talked about Blues feminine and definitely not deep voice.
If Piper could find the courage to, even if Blue was someone she cared about. Plenty of psycho, buffout and med-x addicts were utterly impossible to talk to and...and.
Somehow Piper could tell that it wasn't just the drugs that made Samantha into what she was now.
The light hurt her eyes and stabbed her headache with a glowing fire stick. Normally she wouldnt care but that kind of light? A bright red bulb in the sky was a Minutemen one, one that she was obligated to stand by and assist.
So assist she did, Sam found a vantage point in some ruins and willed her headache to go away, trembling fingers from caffeine or something that she had a day ago messed up her normally quick routine of unloading her sniper rifle from the strapped hold on her back, two minutes of fumbling later and she had set up , a bipod deployed on a rock, a suppressor part that lay on the ground and the best fucking scope the US had ever made layed infront of her eyes.
She saw a building below the flare that hurt her eyes, somebody was inside and having a firefight with two mutants outside.
One was armored and would take too long to put down, the other was side on. The annoying part about Supermutants and the wastelands creature was how difficulty they would be to take down in one shot, sure a bullet to the heart or internal organs solved the problem but (especially in) a Mutie had enough padding, fat,muscle in the sides to soak up the bullet long enough that they always needed a frontal shot.
So she shot the kneecap off instead, no matter how bad her fingers got, the headache pounded. Years of hunting the fucking reds taught her to never miss with the best damm sniper rifle the US had ever imported.
She'd killed enough Muties and with the same technique to know where the head would be, her trained veiny fingers that rubbed against her gloves slided the bolt back, another bullet locked into place and she blew that fuckers head off.
And then she fucked up.
It wasn't just two mutants, a third one had been near her this entire time and right now was about to cleave her own head off with a sledgehammer.
Samantha immediately disconnected from her rifle and rolled out of the way . scrambling to her feet, automatic reflexes shot out and with lightning speed she pulled her pistol out of its holder and aimed for the green fuckers eyes, but it was empty.
She clicked the trigger, nothing.
She held it down, nothing.
Her rifle now out of reach and a useless pistol that she threw at the mutie to no avail, Samantha had two options, she could either run and be defenceless or she could fight the mutie hand to hand.
She dodged the heavy and predictable swing ,and then again. Ducking and weaving between blows. Sam needed her powerfist but getting it out would take a few seconds, so would a good dose of PCP and its commonly used twin that came in the edible form.
She opened the gap, the mutie followingly clumsily. Samantha found a empty glass bottle on the floor and then broke it in half against the remains of a car door, she faced the enemy that bore down on her and with a good bit of timing, smacked the pointy and shardy end of the broken bottle into the fuckers eyes, leaving it to scream and holler in pain for a 15 seconds she reached for a PCP triple syringe in a pouch and without hesitation stabbed herself in the neck with it, then came the pills the she popped open and swallowed them dry.
Sam felt rage instantly, the headache went away and so did that light in the distance that hurt her her eyes. She unclipped her power fist and charged the mutie head on.
It swang at her, she dodged and punched her pneumatic gauntlet into the motherfuckers arm in a single and bloody punch, severing the tendons and forcing the Mutie to rear back in pain again with a arm that dangled uselessly.
She finished it off with a punch to the heart.
Samantha picked up a little pipe smg with her free hand that must have fallen from the Mutie as a back up weapon, in time she located the second one at the building and fired precise and calculated single shots as it closed the distance and charged her. She was too slow this time and it actually butted the bayonet of its shotgun into her thigh. Sam screamed in pain and the blinding hot rage that PCP flooded her veins with burst into action.
She gripped the trigger and wildily sprayed automatic fire into the armored Supermutant, the shots ricocheting off but had the desired effect. The Mutie fired back with its shotgun and she recoiled backwards but recovered quickly, and definitely faster than the Mutie did.
Sam knew she had two advantages, with their big and clumsy fingers. Muties couldn't reload or aim well, and that her chest plate was bullet resistant , while the bullets hurt and did a bloody number on her body, it was only surface level.
She was starting to feel hot and weird, the kind that you got when you didnt drink water before going into a hot shower.
Sam threw the pipe gun at the Muties head and charged it again, the PCP and steroids screaming at her to turn the green fucker into a bloody mess and she obliged , whacking the bastards shotgun out of its hands and eating the return swing of a bladed fist that thumped into her wounded chest. She laughed and tanked the hit, the pain fueling her as she hit back wildly with a punch that crushed the Muties collarbone.
"COME ON!, THAT ALL YOU GOT FUCKER?" Samantha screamed and kicked the Mutie in the unarmoured balls.
It roared back and punched her helmet off, careening the vault dweller into the ground but Sam laughed that off too, recovering and then holding the Muties other swing in her pulsing pale hand.
It looked at her in astonishment before she cracked its head open like a tin can.
~~~
Some time passed and she felt sweaty, hoarse. She didnt dare to look at her arms or veins or anything that looked like either.
Sam wandered aimlessly, ignoring the two dead bodies and the broken buildings, skeletons and glass that littered her feet.
Then she found someone, someone that popped up from behind a wall. A smattering of blue hair with a coat of pure white that stung her vision.
She followed, picking up a nearby pistol. Sam called out someone's name that she felt that she should recognise but didn't, the figure continued to walk slowly but always out of reach like it was taunting her.
She almost caught up to it but she hastily tripped over a rock, a pair of wire stuck itself in her thigh and Sam was left to stumble afterwards, powerfist tucked away somehow and a strangely light pistol that her left hand clutched and pointed the barrel of its own accord at the figure.
Another minute later and her clouded vision faded, replaced by a ray of sunlight that gleaned onto her rifle. Sam had come back full circle and shrugged off the confusing display, the memory already fading as she resolved to find out however sent the flare.
"A settlement and its people always need help of some kind" Preston had drilled into her and she'd rather make a four hundred metre limp to see whoever requested the Minutemen rather than have her ear blown off.
A hundred metres left to go and her rifle was firmly back its place, Sam itched for a smoke but her old lighter was busted by a shotgun shell fragment and she needed one badly. To replace the withdrawals of pills and needles and that faint bit of blue hair that she kept irregularly finding.
A door in front of her. And she knocked.
Now she thought about it, some morphine would probably help the painful breathing part go away too.
~~~~
"Hey Blue" Piper reached over to place a reassuring hand over and then onto her friends shoulder, she didnt get a response, verbal or physical. Just a stoic statue that covered itself in body armor.
"Samantha?" Piper asked again, rubbing her hand this time.
She got a response, a dreary and sighful one that leaned its head to the side and brushed a cheek against Pipers hand. "Murrrr"
"You doing alright over there?" Piper softened ,setting Sam's hair back in place with her other hand.
Sam's shoulders relaxed and the sniper sipped on a canteen of water. "I've been better" She responded with that voice that sounded like sandpaper, sandpaper that if Piper was looking Blue in the eyes she'd know that Blue didnt like that voice.
"Why do you ask? Everyones been saying that recently"
"Everyone?"
"Cait did"
"Cait is everyone?"
"I don't talk to many people" Sam turned round and leaned on a wall, one of her favourite things to do.
"Oh?" Piper's brow furrowed , sliding her hand down to lightly gripe at her friends cold and bruised elbow, covering it with her warmth. "Not a fan of people?"
"Not a fan of people" Came the agreement, and a soft moan of presumably being warmed up by something other than the light of a cigarette.
"Cait talked to me you know?"
"What about?"
"You?"
"Oh? Good or bad?"
"Worried, she thinks that you might be addicted to something and I, well I think the same"
"I'm fine Piper"
"The trembling hands, lack of body heat and the fact that you can't focus on me without swaying side to side disagrees Blue"
She didnt get a response after that, Piper probably should have felt miffed, annoyed even. When Samantha left the house after making sure it was secure and shrugging off a "thank you for saving my life" as something she would do every day, Piper really just felt pity.