The Nuka-World radio transmission had been creepy, to say the least. It wasn't just the artificial cheeriness of the advertiser's spiel, nor the uneasy nostalgia that the thought of the amusement park stirred in her. No, the worst part was that the transmission should not have been broadcast at all. The fact that any word was coming out of the amusement park in this day and age meant that someone was there, and someone was trying to make contact. Why, Tuesday didn't know. Her best guess was that it was an attempt at a distress call of some sort, which was why she and Piper were on the way to investigate now, but the truth was she had no idea what they were walking into.
She brought a suit of power armor and a healthy stock of ammo, just in case.
Both turned out to come in way more handy than she would have liked.
"Why are there Gunners here?" Tuesday was currently gasping to her partner as they crouched behind a defunct automobile at the entrance to the Nuka-World transit station.
"No good reason," Piper returned through gritted teeth as she rose up just enough to fire a pair of shots over the hood. She dropped back down just in time to avoid the bullet that went ricocheting off the metal in response. She let out a shaky huff and slid wide eyes to Tuesday. "You sure you want to go through with this?"
Tuesday's brow tightened in frustration. "Of course I don't," she grated, popping up to cover Piper as she caught her breath, "but we have to. Someone might be in trouble."
That was her answer to most things these days. She hadn't been able to save her own family, so she was desperately trying to fill the void by saving other people instead. She was fully aware of the futility of it; aware that she'd never find peace after everything she'd been through, but what choice did she have? She was here, now, in the bombed-out radioactive future that had previously only existed in her nightmares, and there was no going back. There was no way out except death, and there was nothing to live for except other people. Saving them—or loving them, occasionally. She glanced down at Piper, who half-lay against the wheel well beside her knee, tensely but expertly reloading her pistol. Her heart softened just a little.
"Your funeral," the reporter grumbled into her collar, but Tuesday knew she wasn't really upset. At least—not that the vault dweller was bent on going to offer aid to whomever might need it. More that it was necessary to risk her neck in the attempt. They'd had plenty of conversations about it before now.
Refocusing on the firefight, the two women peered over the hood of the car to gain a sightline on their opponents. Two left. Piece of cake (if cake was made of blood and violence and left a bitter taste in her mouth, even after all this time).
She and Piper exchanged a glance before raising their guns and making a quick end to the conflict. It was easy, logistically, when they had solid cover and the Gunners were backlit by the haunting glow of the Nuka-World sign. Internally was another story. The sigh that Tuesday released upon gunning down the last enemy was not wholly of relief.
"Let's get in there and see what all the fuss is about," she grumbled as she led the way out of cover and toward the eerie transit station. Piper's footsteps against the pavement behind her were a comfort in the dim.
Inside the station was much more like what Tuesday had expected. On the ground beside the tram itself was a man hunched over a bloody-looking wound. The vault dweller relaxed a fraction—he must be the one who sent out the transmission as a distress call—until she realized that she received the call days ago and this man couldn't possibly have lasted that long if he were in as dire a state as he claimed.
"My family," he kept stressing, even after Tuesday offered to heal him with a stimpak. "My family is in danger. Save them first. The raiders have them."
"Right," Piper affirmed in a tone of uncharacteristic hesitance. She must have been picking up on his sketchy vibes as well, because she gave Tuesday a glance that said as clearly as if she'd spoken aloud, what do we do?
Tuesday grit her teeth. She knew what they should do: turn right back around and get out of here while they still could, because Harvey's story was thin enough to see through and she didn't like what she glimpsed on the other side.
But she also knew what she was going to do: board that stupid tram to Nuka-World and gird her loins for a fight with a shitload of raiders, because if there was so much as a sliver of a chance that some poor soul's wife and son really were in danger at the other end of that line, it was her job to save them. After all, no one else was going to.
So she sighed heavily and nodded to her partner, who hefted her gun in understanding.
Then she aimed a withering look at Harvey and dropped the stimpak she'd offered beside him, just in case he really did need it. And, "Don't make me regret this," she said lowly as they headed for the tram.
Harvey visibly gulped.
…
To nobody's surprise, what Tuesday and Piper found at the end of the line was not, in fact, Harvey's endangered family.
Tuesday would have said she'd expected this, except she didn't think she could have dreamed up what they actually found in her wildest nightmares.
"What the fuck is this place?" Piper demanded, not for the first time, as she and her partner dropped back against a sheltered wall to avoid the blast of yet another frag mine that had nearly taken their legs off.
Tuesday breathed hard and deep through her nose, trying to calm the mix of fear and scathing anger that wanted to boil up inside her. She was so annoyed. Why was the world hell-bent on screwing over everyone who wanted to do good? Why was her life just one cosmic fuck you after the other? What had she ever done to deserve this sort of punishment?
It was a little better with Piper beside her, but at the same time it was worse. It just left Tuesday wondering how long they had together before one of them met a violent, inevitable fate and left the other in a pile of shattered pieces, like everything else in the Commonwealth. The vault dweller tilted her head back against the wall and groaned.
"Blue? Are you hurt?" Piper shot upright immediately, and Tuesday gently waved her off.
"Only on the inside," she grumbled, and it wasn't really a joke. Piper's mouth flattened into a crooked line, but she didn't press. Tuesday was up and moving before she had the chance to.
"Be careful," her companion called softly after her, more as a statement of concern than any real advice; obviously they had to be careful. Tuesday was again guiltily glad that she was here.
She was not, however, careful enough.
She went through the open security gate ahead without Piper, intending to check out the conspicuous terminal on the other side of the room, and she figured it was a trap but hadn't predicted just what kind. Her heart dropped into her toes when the gate slammed shut on her heels.
What new devilry is this? she hardly had time to wonder bitterly before a hissing sound split the air and her hair ruffled in a sudden breeze from above.
Shit.
Gas.
Even as she realized it, the toxin hit her lungs and she broke out in a coughing fit as her vision blurred at the edges almost immediately. She turned quickly to go back the way she'd come, only to find that the security gate was locked tight and no keyhole gave her an easy means to change that—and Piper was stuck on the other side. Tuesday pressed an armored hand to the grated window, at once relieved and panicked that she was separated from her companion; relieved because Piper was not also sucking in lungfuls of toxic gas, but panicked because that meant Tuesday had to solve this all on her own—and fast.
"Blue!" Piper's shout was muffled to her suffering senses and faded further as Tuesday stumbled away from the door, head on a rusty swivel in search of something that might spare her an anticlimactic death by asphyxiation. "Blue, find a valve! Shut it off!"
A valve. There had to be a valve around here somewhere. Tuesday followed the sound of airy hissing around the corner to her left and laid eyes on it with a twinge of relief. When she stepped toward it, her knee nearly gave out beneath her, and she had to try again in order to get herself moving forward. Piper was still yelling someplace behind her, growing more desperate and yet more distant as Tuesday gagged and swayed in the cloud of gas.
She pushed onward toward the valve.
Before she could reach it, two radroaches, both huge and glowing, erupted from the ground below as if they'd simply been waiting to ambush her. They had, probably, with her luck.
Tuesday acted on instinct, treating the roaches like any other she'd faced before: with a dose of lead to the thorax. Only, she forgot that she hadn't faced all those other roaches in an enclosed room filled with flammable poison gas.
Her first shot sent the room roaring into flame.
"Blue!"
Shit.
Tuesday threw up her hands to cover her face.
Her power armor was the only thing between her and a quick end as a blackened stump. Even then she could feel every inch of exposed skin scorch in the heat and the breath sucked right from her lungs. Good thing Piper isn't in here, she was coherent enough to think.
The only bright side to the inferno, as it were, was that it knocked the radroaches out of commission, for which Tuesday was thankful. Unfortunately, it did not stop the flow of gas from wherever it was emanating from, which meant she was still slipping by the second. She had to hurry.
As the last of the flames choked themselves out, the vault dweller stumbled into a crouch before the locked terminal against the wall, squinting through blurring eyes at the codes that dotted the screen. When her senses proved too far gone, she rifled frantically for a stimpak from her bag and plunged it into her leg through a chink in her armor, praying it would fight the effects of the gas.
Her eyes and mind cleared just enough for her to recognize the pattern, and she selected the right password to an approving beep from the terminal, and the hiss of gas cut off. A few clicks more had the security doors open, and Piper rushed in at the same time the gas rushed out.
"Blue!" her partner's voice split the air again, seeming loud enough to ring in her ears. In a second Piper was at her side, supporting her as she knelt on the floor to catch her breath. "Are you alright? Jesus, this place is fucked up!" Tawny hands cupped her face in a search for damage and Tuesday winced as they contacted the light burns there. The stimpak she'd shot up was working on those as well as her addled senses, but not fast enough to be comfortable.
"I will be as soon as we get out of here," she grunted out through the pain. She gripped the terminal's keyboard with one hand and Piper's shoulder with the other and levered herself shakily to her feet.
Piper let out a sharp breath like she'd been holding it. It was close to relief, but didn't quite manage it. "Right," she affirmed, steadying Tuesday as she rose. Her warmth physically hurt in the wake of the fire, but the vault dweller wouldn't have forgone it for anything. "Hopefully we're almost there."
…
They were not almost there.
On the contrary, it turned out that the worst was yet to come.
The asshole at the end of the Gauntlet was apparently just there to remind her that she was not, in fact, home free quite yet. Instead she was supposed to participate in some harebrained deathmatch for some bloody title she wouldn't have wanted if her life depended on it (and it did). And what did he give her to defend herself?
A water pistol.
A fucking children's toy.
When he handed it to her, she stared at him for a long moment, seething, weighing the possible consequences of shooting him in the face right that instant—with a real pistol.
"I made it through your fucking Gauntlet. Can't we just go home?" she growled out between grinding teeth.
"'Fraid not," was the man's gruff, infuriating response. "It's either your life on the line or mine, and I like mine too much to risk it."
Piper's hand on Tuesday's wrist brought her to the realization that she'd been gripping the gun at her belt. The simple motion may have saved Gage's life. She peeled her fingers away from the grip with effort and forced herself to take a deep breath. It took all her self-control to resist letting it out in a roar of rage. Out of all the stupid, twisted fuck-you situations the Commonwealth had thrown at her so far, this was by far the worst. This time, the punishment for trying to do right was cruel, deliberate, and extreme, and there was no way out. It was like the universe was trying to condition her into the sort of heartless asshat everyone else on this bloody rock seemed to be, and she was this close to snapping and doing just that.
But she couldn't. She wouldn't. For Piper's sake, and for the Minutemen's sake, and for the innocents' sake.
So she took the bloody water pistol and turned away from Gage with a look hard enough to rival stone and began trying to prepare herself for the fight that might turn her world on its head for a second time.
She was once again stilled by a hand on her wrist, and when Tuesday turned she was met by wide, wet hazel eyes. She'd never seen a look quite like this on Piper's face: sheet-white and absolutely terrified. "I'm so scared, Blue," the reporter rasped, low enough that Gage wouldn't hear.
So am I, Tuesday was thinking, but she put on a brave face for Piper, even as the resolve within her withered. It probably looked as much a flimsy mask as it felt. "We've faced worse," she pointed out. Which…objectively, was probably true, but this situation was so starkly different from anything they'd faced before that she had no idea what to expect, and that made it all the more terrifying.
Piper echoed her thoughts with a grim set to her lips. "Something makes me think it's different this time." She stepped close to Tuesday so only she could hear her next words, whispered in bare pleading: "Please come back. Please."
Tuesday leaned down to bring their lips close before she knew what she was doing; before she remembered that they were in a nest of enemies who might regard their relationship as a vulnerability. But Gage was the only one around, and Tuesday spared him only a quick cursory glance before deciding that she didn't care what he thought and leaning in to kiss Piper hard.
She let that speak as her promise. She couldn't quite bring herself to voice the lie outright.
They broke away reluctantly; breathlessly. Tuesday ran a gentle hand over the side of her partner's face, and Piper leaned into it, frantically blinking back tears. There was a chill in the air when they pulled apart. It remained as Tuesday turned and stepped into the deathtrap that was Colter's ring.
...
Colter was tough, but he was slow, and Tuesday had her preferred advantage of space to maneuver (read: hide). It took an obscenely long time, and she didn't escape unscathed, but in the end Tuesday took down the Overboss. Against all odds, the bloody Thirst Zapper did its job and let her gun him down while his suit was shorted out. It was her sledgehammer that did the final deed, though, in the interest of giving the audience a show so maybe they wouldn't kill her after. She wasn't sure if the shocked gasps and hesitant cheering were a good sign or bad.
She couldn't dredge up the energy to care just then. For one thing, her limbs felt weighed down with lead—which wasn't far from the truth, considering she was now dragging the broken plates of her power armor along with her in the wake of the fight—and secondly, she had more important things to pay attention to. Namely, the red-coated figure rushing out onto the arena floor like a racer out of the gate as soon as the security door allowed it.
As she approached fast enough to cause Tuesday concern, her voice carried across the open space. "Oh my God, you're okay," she half-sobbed, for the vault dweller's ears only. Once within range she flung herself into her partner's arms and pressed them close together, uncaring of the stands full of raiders watching. Tuesday supported her by her hips with a touch as careful as the ungainly armor would allow. The awkward hug felt like a huge sigh of relief for both of them.
When Piper pulled back and settled on her feet again, the snarl on her face became clearly visible. "I hate this place already," she hissed into the safety of the space between them. "These worthless shits seem dead set on making me watch from the sidelines while you risk your neck."
Tuesday grunted in regretful agreement and swiveled her head to look back at Colter's fallen form. She wasn't truly that hopeful, but she said anyway, "Hopefully this means they'll let us go."
Almost as if on cue, Porter Gage stuck his head out from the doorway at the exit to the arena. His triumphant cry of, "Looks like we've got a new Overboss!" sent all of Tuesday's fragile hopes crashing into the abyss. She couldn't manage a sigh deep enough to express the giant hole emptying out her chest cavity. They were most definitely not home free. She doubted that she'd ever been so far from free in her life—notwithstanding the icebox, of course.
Piper's hand curling anxiously around her own was the only thing keeping her grounded enough to avoid either a panic attack or a wild murder rampage. Or maybe both. Her voice, however, was not so steadying. "What the hell have you walked into here, Blue?" she managed weakly beneath the din of the now-roaring crowd.
It was a long moment before Tuesday gathered herself enough to turn lost, empty eyes on her partner and admit, "I have no idea."
…