Author Notes: As before, I have no claim to either Fallout: New Vegas, or High School of the Dead. As before, a big thanks to Drgyen and Inconspicuous Llama for their beta work!
The first rays of morning light, sliding through gaps in the boards that covered shattered windows, woke Kohta. Dragging himself away from the refuge of dreams, the teen regretfully returned to the Wasteland. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he searched for his glasses, Kohta noticed that Takeshi was still awake, staring at the sleeping form of his former girlfriend. Kohta found his glasses and got to his feet, his movements stiff after a night of sleeping on the doctor's floor.
"Did you get any sleep at all last night, Takeshi?" Kohta asked, as he checked his weapon for damage or dirt. "If you didn't, today's gonna be rough on you."
Takeshi jolted, as if he'd forgotten that he wasn't alone in the dusty room. With an awkward laugh Takeshi admitted that, not only had he not gotten any sleep, he'd hardly even blinked the entire night. Kohta sighed, realizing that there was nothing that could be done about Takeshi's inevitable crash. "Has she woken up yet?"
"No, but the doctor said we should try to wake her up in the morning. Besides, Min-san only paid for a single night in this room…" The two boys looked at the sleeping girl. Compared to how she'd looked only ten hours ago she was vastly improved. The pallor of her skin had reddened to a healthy tone, and the wounds inflicted by the ghouls had been disinfected and sewn up. The injection of more stimpacks had rapidly increased the rate of skin and muscle repair, and much of the damage had already healed. Finally, the dehydration and bruises she'd acquired as a result of the trek to Novac had been fixed by the healing effects of the stimpacks, and an IV drip-bag. Taken together, Rei was nearly healthy, and there was no reason not to wake her.
Takeshi leaned over the bed, and began to gently shake Rei, while repeating her name aloud. Privately, Kohta suspected that she'd wake up faster with a shout in the ears and a punch to the arm, but wisely kept such advice to himself.
Rei's hazel eyes slowly opened, and a smile bloomed as she saw Takeshi looking down on her, a protective and relieved smile on his face. "Takeshi-kun…" She murmured, as the happy pair descended into a private little world. Kohta idly wished he was back with Saya, wherever she and the rest of the girls had gone.
The tender moment was disturbed when Dr. Straus hammered on the door to the room. "The sun's risen and the bloatflies are out! Time for you to leave!" As the good doctor stomped away through the crooked house the room's occupants sat in silence. When the distant thumps faded, the three teens looked at each other and exchanged disbelieving looks at the doctor's lack of social skills or tact. Slowly, Rei got to her feet, supported by Takeshi, while Kohta policed up their meager belongings.
The teens squinted in the mid-morning sunlight as they left the house. Already, the air was shimmering with heat, with visible distortions rising above the broken asphalt of the ancient road. Slowly, they walked towards the looming dinosaur, and the motel that wrapped around its base, where their comrades had stayed the last night.
Kohta walked ahead of Takeshi and Rei, who walked side by side. The two were almost, but not quite, holding hands as they went, still shy in their affections. Kohta's thoughts drifted away from the environment and the troubles ahead, and returned to the memory of a rare smile from a certain pinkette. Sighing, he imagined the bliss of running his unworthy hands down the long pink tails that spilled over her shoulders, down to her waist. So distracting was this fantasy that, as he turned the corner of the motel, he almost ran into a man coming out the opposite direction.
"Watch it, punk!" the bearded man roared, shoving Kohta backwards, the joints of his battered and much repaired leather armor creaking at the exertion.
Kohta stumbled back and nearly fell over as he frantically sought to regain his balance. Pulling himself upright, he glared right back at the larger man. For a moment, the same part of his personality that had threatened Shido with a nail gun, the same part that had exalted in the world's end, rose to the fore. His hand itched for his rifle, but before he could reach for it, the saner parts of his mind dragged the Beast back into its chains, out of sight and out of mind. "I apologize, sir. I wasn't watching where I was going." Kohta said as politely as he could.
The bearded man looked at him for another moment, before grunting. "Just make sure it doesn't happen again." He muttered as he walked out of the motel's courtyard, apparently eager to be on the road. Behind him, a pack animal followed.
For a brief moment, Takeshi, Kohta, and Rei all stared in confusion and shock at the two headed cow that ambled after the traveler. It was sizable, at least six hundred pounds, with a dun orange coat; Its udder looked grossly swollen and discolored, and two heads swayed placidly side to side. One head sniffed Kohta as it ambled past, checking to see if the boy had any roughage stored away in his pockets.
As the cow and man walked away from them, the three expatriates nearly collapsed against the crumbling stucco that covered the motel's cinderblock wall. Kohta felt a deep sense of vertigo, and fought his nausea. At that moment, Kohta fully understood just how far away he was from home. It felt like an empty void had opened in his chest, just behind his ribs, and it was trying to suck him away, trying to hollow him out. For only a second Kohta was tempted to let it, to embrace the soft and merciful void. "Saya-chan…" he murmured "Gotta stay for Saya-chan. Gotta protect her. Can't leave."
Kohta shook off the last vestiges of that horribly empty feeling and looked over at his friends. Rei was gently weeping, and Takeshi was doing the best he could to comfort her. Kohta was about to join Takeshi in his effort when a sudden shout from up the road startled him. The bearded man was yelling, something about an attack, a death. Kohta cautiously advanced up the road, and saw what the man had reacted to: A middle-aged woman, dressed in somewhat-shabby clothing, was sprawled across the broken cement of the ruined pavement, an entry hole in her neck clearly visible. The exit could be seen from the other side, in a brilliant spray of blood that had already dried, and begun to attract flies.
As the shock apparently wore off, the wastelander clicked his tongue at his pack-cow, and resumed his journey. The cow actually stepped on the dead woman's leg on its way through, something the wastelander either didn't see or didn't care about. Within minutes, the traveler had left the town's outskirts, heading north on the ruins of the old highway.
Shaking his head at the disregard for human life, Kohta turned back to his friends. "A woman died out here last night; someone shot her down, and I don't think she ever saw them. We can't let that be us – we need to stay frosty, all the time." Takeshi and Rei both nodded.
"We need to find the girls." Takeshi said, and the small group turned back to the hotel.
Min, Saeko, Shizuka, Alice, and, most importantly to Kohta, Saya were already outside, sitting in a shadow and watching the world go by.
"Big brother!" Alice yelled, running towards Kohta as fast as her legs could carry her, and wrapping her arms around his legs as soon as she dived into his feet.
"Alice-chan!" For a moment, Kohta felt an anxiety that he had not even noticed lift away from his shoulders. The child Takeshi had rescued had become the little sister for the entire group, but to Kohta, she seemed almost more like a daughter. As he knelt in the dust, returning the little girl's embrace, Kohta felt the warm paternal feeling of a father reunited with his child. The void and anxieties of the world discarded for the moment, Kohta practically luxuriated in the warm emotions.
Finally, the surrogate-father/daughter moment ended, and Kohta stood, picking Alice up as he ascended. With Alice on his shoulders, Kohta walked over to the shadow where his friends waited, his eyes drawn irresistibly to the brilliant pink of his beloved's hair.
Her hazel eyes met his hungry stare. He smiled a smile that still held a component of the puppy-like adoration that had defined his relationship with Saya throughout the years of school. The enforced maturity of the last few weeks was also present in his smile, honed to a more mature edge of a man who has seen the end of life, and thus understands how fleeting life truly is. Her smile was internal, suppressed under a small frown and an affectionate, nearly whispered, "Baka…"
As Takeshi, Min, and Saeko spoke, Kohta and Saya moved away from the rest of the group, further along the motel wall.
"I missed you, Saya-san." Kohta spoke first, his serious voice undermined by the enthusiasm of his words and his grin. As the girl on his back fidgeted, he laughed, and continued. "I missed Alice-chan too!" A more pleased squirm followed.
"Baka-Kohta, did you think that I'd miss someone like you!" Saya's hollow, faux-irritated reply masked the truth of her emotions to nobody, as the simultaneous pull of one towards the other would have been evident to even the most ignorant of passers-by, were any to wander through the courtyard.
The two sat side by side, barely touching as if by coincidence, with Alice between them, nearly napping. A man wearing a red hat left a hotel room to their left, and walked out into the courtyard, slinging a rifle and a backpack over his shoulder as he went. Dismissing the young pair after a cursory look, he strode across the shattered pavement towards the leaders of the group, and joined the discussion.
The desert heat combined with the night's long watch soothed Kohta into a contented numbness, a pleasant feeling that he savored as the minutes passed. Finally, some sort of consensus was reached, and Min headed towards the dinosaur, Takeshi in tow. Saeko, followed by the grim hat-wearing man, returned to the shadowed patch, where Shizuka had bounced to her feet at her approach, pulling Rei in her wake. As the swordswoman beckoned to them, Saya shook Kohta towards wakefulness, and the pair, along with Alice, walked back towards the others.
"This is Boone-san. He will be accompanying us." Saeko introduced the stranger who towered over her, speaking in Japanese. The man in question seemed to recognize his name, and glared down at the back of Saeko's head from behind his mirrored sunglasses. For one absurd moment, as Kohta followed Boone's glare towards Saeko's crown, he wondered where Saeko had found such an ugly hat. After spending a few seconds contemplating the incongruous headpiece Kohta forced his attention back to her words.
"He is a former member of the military of Min-san's homeland. He agreed to help us after Min-san and I did him a favor last night. He doesn't speak Japanese, and doesn't seem to enjoy talking very much anyway. However, he is an excellent sniper, and so a worthy ally." Saeko continued her introduction. Kohta was not surprised to learn the man was ex-military; he had the look and the stance of a highly-trained warrior, and apparently the attitude to match.
Alice, however, somehow failed to pick up on the intimidating feel of Boone's very presence, and giggled at the grim-faced sniper, attracting a blank-faced stare from the tall man. Kohta decided that Boone actually might look amusing, with the almost-constipated scowl that seemed engrained on his brow, if one could ignore the near-tangible aura of menace. As Kohta stepped forward to apologize on her behalf, Alice surprised everybody there by greeting the stone-faced killer, in English no less!
"Hi Mr. Boone! I like your hat! Red's my favorite color!"
Kohta turned on his young charge and struggled to control his surprise and irritation. After schooling his features into a wide grin, he crouched in front of the child. "Alice-chan? You speak English? Why did you never tell us!"
The little girl turned an innocent smile on the teenager, as Boone silently watched the two. "My Papa taught me! Before he…" The smile ran off her face as she recalled the last time she saw her father, blood staining his white shirt and a handkerchief concealing his face. Tears began to pool in the corners of her eyes, and Kohta was filled with the paternal need to make things right, to stop her suffering.
Before Kohta could move, still stunned by Alice's unexpected fluency, Boone, of all people, stepped closer to the weeping girl. Even as Kohta wrapped his arms around her, the sniper put a single, calloused, hand on top of Alice's head, gently but irresistibly tilting her head upwards, until her tearful eyes met the hard, concealed stone-like eyes embedded in a craggy face.
A potent silence filled the space around the small group, as Kohta and Alice waited. Then, with an almost completely unemotional delivery, Boone shared these sage words: "Sometimes, death is better than survival." And, with that, Boone nodded, and stepped away. Alice was not reassured by those words, and hid her face in Kohta's shoulder.
Kohta glared at an unimpressed Boone, trying to convey his anger through the sunglasses and hot desert air.
Saeko reclaimed the group's attention with a small, ladylike cough. Speaking in Japanese, she began to explain her plan. "Well, another English speaker is a valuable asset. This will help our group embed in the local population more quickly."
"Embedding, Saeko-san? Are we not moving along and leaving Novac?" Rei asked, brows knit in confusion.
"Not entirely, Rei-chan. Sad to say, we'll be dividing up for a short time. This new land is vicious and dangerous, and not all of us are combatants. This town, Novac, will be a safe area for those unskilled in combat, for the time being." Saeko explained.
"Essentially, Takeshi-kun and I are concerned about the chances of survival of Shizuka-san, Alice-chan, and Saya-chan. Furthermore, Rei-chan, Takeshi wants you to have a bit more time to recover from your injuries. However, we are all in Min-san's debt; without her help, and her money, we would certainly still be at that infested ruin, and might even be dead." Saeko paused, and looked around the little circle of faces, all of whom showed signs of agreement. Shizuka was the exception, as her attention had been drawn to a pair of circling vultures. Boone stood behind her shoulder, face as blank as a stone wall, betraying no reaction thus far. Kohta wondered what he was thinking about, or if he had been distracted like Shizuka by passing birds.
"That said, I will accompany Min-san, and will assist her in persecuting her enemies." Saeko's lips curved slightly, apparently at the thought of the bloodshed to come. The rest of the group stared at the purple-haired young lady, silently expressing consternation at her imminent departure.
"And… You've discussed this with Takeshi?" Kohta inquired, in as calm a tone as he could. Saeko turned towards the still chubby boy.
"Yes, Kohta-kun, I have. After detailing my reasons, he has given me his blessing." For just a moment, Kohta could almost see a shadow hanging over the older girl's face, as her lips lost their smiling edge. "I regret having to leave him, as well as the rest of my friends, but I have sworn an oath; even if I hadn't, the honor of my father and family would have demanded such an arrangement."
"Well, what are we supposed to do, then?" Barked Saya "Just sit here and watch the world go by?"
Saeko shook her head, her humor restored. "No, Saya-chan." The pinkette glared at the swordswoman, annoyed by her laughing voice. Kohta resisted the urge to reach out and cup her chin, to bring it down for a kiss. "You will be helping bolster Novac's defenses. Kohta-kun will take Boone-san's place in the dinosaur's mouth, and will defend the town from there. You, Takeshi-kun, and Rei-chan will first work to learn the local dialect, and then will assist in the salvage operations at the test site. Saya-chan, if you could put your genius to work, it would be a great point of honor to restore machinery to a functioning state! Meanwhile, Shizuka will assist the local doctor, and Alice will learn whatever she can in town, as well as interpret."
It was at that point that the disagreements began in earnest. Saya, no mechanic, insisted that she had no idea about how to fix any "stupid piece of scrap" the scavengers dragged back. Shizuka didn't want to work with the doctor; Strauss was, apparently, "Scary! She's got crazy eyes!" Kohta wondered aloud if Saeko and Min had bothered to ask anyone in town about their willingness to accept a new "family" in their village. Takeshi, who had just returned from the dinosaur, promptly turned around and left to fetch Cliff Barscoe, studiously avoiding Saeko as he did so. Rei, interestingly, spoke up in affirmation of Saeko's intent to travel with Min, though Kohta suspected by the smirk on her face that her motives were less than honorable. Barscoe, when he arrived, began to dicker with Takeshi and Kohta about housing in the motel that he'd suddenly and unexpectedly inherited from the mysteriously deceased Jeanie May, as well as the cost of provisions, and what Kohta would be paid for his guard duty.
Finally breaking away from Mr. Barscoe after reaching an agreement, where Kohta would assume Boone's old hours in exchange for free room and board in the motel, but he'd have to buy his own ammunition, Kohta sought out Saya and Alice. While reaching down to rub Alice on the head, Kohta stutteringly asked his angel whether she'd be willing to room with him. True to form, Saya had blushed and shouted at him, before running off. Kohta wasn't concerned; after the last week, he'd begun to realize that all of her self-righteous rage was naught but a cover for a confused and somewhat naïve young woman trying to come to terms with the world. Kohta didn't chase after her, but resolved to leave his door unlocked.
Dragging his attention away from the retreating back of his angel and the smaller angel who had wandered off to kick a tin can down the decaying sidewalk, Kohta turned back to the bickering collection of small groups. Takeshi and Rei were off to one side, both blushing furiously. Shizuka was talking to the newly arrived Doc Straus and her bodyguards, who seemed surprised at the seemingly boundless supply of energy the encumbered blonde was pouring forth. Cliff had returned to his store, a look of amusement on his face, along with a trace of annoyance, probably due to the bickering of the newest inhabitants of Novac. Alice continued to play with pieces of garbage, laughing with delight as she amused herself. Smiling at Takeshi and Rei as they awkwardly spoke about yesterday's events and Rei's injuries while trying not to stare too brazenly at one another, Kohta looked around for Boone, only to find a distinct lack of red beret-wearing snipers in the courtyard. At first thinking Boone had just gone to complete some unknowable chore, Kohta looked around for Min, only to discover that the Courier was similarly absent, as was Saeko.
An hour and a half later and five miles north of Novac, the bearded traveling merchant who had run into Kohta on his way out of Novac writhed on the cracked asphalt next to his gutted pack brahmin. Try as he might, his shaking hands just couldn't pull the short spear that pinned him to the wretched sod out of his abdomen. Dispassionately watching his struggles for a moment, a vexillarius and a pair of recruit legionnaires paused for a moment, before rejoining the column of legionmen, who resumed their brisk jog southwards, towards the profligate town of Novac.
Near the Gibson Scrapyard, Min smiled as she took a small sip of water from the battered canteen she'd bought from the Dino-De-Lite gift shop. It had been amusing to watch Saeko manufacture an argument, before leaving in the confusion.
The swordswoman walked beside the Courier, her long purple hair hidden under the battered grey cap she'd bought from Cliff Barscoe back in Novac, her stained school uniform traded out in favor of a battered set of leather armor Min had looted from a Jackel a week earlier, intending to use it for spare parts. In addition to her sword, Saeko also had a backpack courtesy of Boone, which was filled with bottles of purified water, edible plants, and dried meat.
In front of the two women, Boone scanned the wastes, searching for any enemy, while keeping a special eye out for crimson splotches on the horizon. So far, he'd seen nothing, but he wasn't leaving anything up to chance. The Courier might be worth something in a fight, and her strange comrade had some potential as a close-quarters combatant, but neither understood the joys of long-distance killing like the ex-Recon sniper. He knew the Legion were out there somewhere, and when they came, he'd be ready.
Near Cottonwood Cove, Anders hung from a cross made of phone poles, and bitterly cursed Jack, Diane, the Great Khans, and the Legion with his last breaths. Blood trickled down the cross from his back, wrists and anus, staining the splintery wood a reddish brown. Stripped of clothes and skin, the merciless sun beat down on the Khan's exposed skin, slowly cooking the trapped flesh. The splinters from the cross forced themselves deeper with every breath into a back already flayed by a razor-wire whip. The rough spike jammed deep into his rectum forced its way in further with each inch of elevation Anders lost, as the weight of his body pulled against the rough hempen rope that bound his wrists and feet to the cross. Most of the skin beneath the ropes was long gone, chafed away, leaving bloody rings around his appendages. Scattered around his feet was the drug shipment he'd accepted from Diane and tried to smuggle into Arizona, an indictment of his guilt, and a symbol of the Legion's justice.