Shots of Confidence

Trielle

After spending a largely sleepless night in Rivet City's common room, I'd gone straight out to the flight deck to pace as soon as the sun came up. Dumb, right? I've been walking for days, walking somewhere ever since I ran away from the only home I've ever known, and when I get stressed what do I do? Walk some more. The only thing on my mind right now to was to stay out of Doctor Li's way…and Harkness' reach. I wandered aimlessly around for an hour or so, until the rumbling in my stomach reminded me that I hadn't had anything to eat today.

I went down to the marketplace, stopping for a minute at Bannon's to see if he had anything to repair my armor with. I had been to Gary's Galley before, the only 'restaurant' in Rivet City, but I hadn't met the young blonde woman behind the counter before.

"Welcome to Gary's Galley. Dad's busy right now, so I can get you anything you want. I'm Angela Staley."

"Pleased to meet you, Angela," I said. "I'm Trielle Miraven, but you can call me Elle."

"I love your hair, Elle," she said enviously. "That's a wicked shade of purple. Is it natural?"

"Unfortunately," I grimaced. "It's genetically engineered this way."

"Cool. I wish my hair was that color."

"Funny," I said, "I always wished my hair was your color."

We had a laugh over this while I perused the menu and finally ordered a bowl of Sugarbombs with Brahmin milk. When she turned away from the counter to get my breakfast, I caught a glimpse of the paper she'd been doodling on when I walked up, which she hastily shoved in her pocket. Prominently featured was the name Diego, with hearts around it.

"So, Diego, huh?" She gave me a sheepish look. "Are you and Diego in love?"

Angela frowned. "Well, one of us is. Sometimes I'm not sure he even knows I'm there."

I rolled my eyes in commiseration. "Men, right? Sometimes you have to hit them over the head with something large and heavy to get things through their thick skulls. Have you tried telling him how you feel, maybe give him a kiss to illustrate your point?"

"Yeah, right," Angela said, dubiously. "I don't have the courage for that. I get all tongue-tied when I'm around him. I wish I had some ant pheromones. Trinnie says they would make any man lose control. One sniff of that and he'd be all over me."

"Wait a minute," I held up my hand. "You don't have to resort to chemical means just yet. If it's that hard for you, I'll go talk to Diego, sound him out a bit. You're a pretty girl; he can't have failed to notice that."

"Would you really, Elle?" Angela gave me a brilliant smile. "I'd be so grateful if you could see if he feels the same."

"No problem, Angela. I'll be back later and we'll talk some more." She brought me my cereal, and I took the bowl to the only table that wasn't completely full. A nervous looking Asian woman was sitting there, hunched over her breakfast like she expected to get shot in the back.

"Mind if I sit here?" I asked, gesturing to all the other full tables.

"Stay away from me!" she almost screamed. Okay, I thought, I know I'm a little scruffy looking, but I don't usually inspire this level of terror in people I've never met before.

"What do you want?" she continued. "Are you one of them?"

"Um, what?" I said stupidly. I really hadn't gotten enough sleep for this to make sense. Then I recalled that I was rather heavily armed, even in the middle of Rivet City, and that might be off putting to some people. Keeping my hands well away from my guns, I said, "I'm not going to hurt you." When she still looked at me like I might eat her for breakfast, I figured it wasn't my guns that were frightening her. "What are you so scared of?" I asked gently.

She gestured for me to sit down. "I suppose it doesn't matter if I tell you," she said heavily. "My name is Mei Wong. I used to be a slave, but I escaped from Allistair Tenpenny and made my way to Rivet City. I was just looking to start a new life as a free woman, and I thought I'd gotten away clean, but…" She trailed off, clearly still frightened of telling me the whole story.

"But something happened that made you think otherwise," I finished for her.

She nodded mutely. "I saw a slaver on this ship. His name is Sister, and he hangs out in the Muddy Rudder most of the time. I'm afraid he's after me."

"Don't worry," I said, reassuringly. "I would never turn in a runaway slave."

Her face brightened at this. "Really? Oh, thank you, thank you!" She grasped my hands. "You seem like a capable person. Can you help me? I've been so worried with him around. I can hardly sleep at night."

I knew just how she felt, always running, always looking over your shoulder. "Tell you what," I said, "let me finish my breakfast, then you and I will go to Flak and Shrapnel's and pick out a gun, if that would make you feel better?"

"Oh, it would. Only…I don't know how to use a gun." She looked ashamed at her lack of skill.

"I can fix that." I patted her hand. "I'll ask Harkness if there's anywhere on this boat we can get some practice, and in a few hours you'll be putting holes in tin cans from a hundred yards." Speaking of the devil, the man himself had just walked into the marketplace and sidled up to the counter at the galley. I might have been imagining it, but he didn't look like he'd gotten any more sleep than I had. I got up from the table and went over to the counter myself, careful to stay just out of arms reach of him. The Sugarbombs I'd just eaten were putting a bounce in my step that belied my few meager hours of sleep.

"Kid," he nodded at me, looking disgruntled at my seeming energy. "Caused any more trouble since I gave you that spanking?"

"No, sir, Chief Harkness, sir," I sassed, trying like hell to keep a straight face. What was it about me that I just couldn't leave well enough alone with this man? Something about him made me want to exercise the smart mouth that had always gotten me in trouble growing up in the vault.

I can only attribute lack of sleep on Harkness' part for what he said to me next. He gave me a sidelong glance and said, "It's way too early for you to be doing anything with that mouth of yours except putting it on certain parts of my anatomy not to be discussed in polite company." He looked at Angela, whose mouth had fallen open at his comment. "But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, chicken shit?"

Not wanting to give him the satisfaction of doing the same, I forgot that I was trying to stay out of his reach and patted him on the shoulder. "Maybe later, sir. Perhaps once I finish warming up on the firing range, if you'll be so kind as to direct me there." I danced back out of the way, seeing that look in his eyes that said he was about to grab me and make me pay for mouthing off to him. "But only if you can drink me under the table first," I drawled, intent on seeing just how far I could push him. I'm such a lightweight that I'd be in real trouble if he took me up on it.

"Far end of the flight deck, past the baseball field. Try not to kill anyone today." He took a key out of his pocket and tossed it to me. "This is for security's personal ammo stash. Don't use it all up, and put the empties in the barrel next to the boxes."

"Very good, sir," I gave him a cocky salute, and I swear I heard him growl under his breath. As I turned to walk away, his hand snaked out with almost inhuman speed, and I'll be goddamned if he didn't slap me on the butt again.

"That's so you know," he said, cryptically, and proceeded to laugh his ass off as I scurried away.

After spending some time going over weapons with Mei and Flak, with Shrapnel looking on, a bemused expression on his face at my enthusiasm for all things that go bang, we finally settled on a small .32 caliber pistol, since it didn't have much recoil and the ammo wasn't hard to find. I paid for it, and several boxes of ammo for later, Mei protesting that I shouldn't be spending so much money on a complete stranger. I waved off her protests with a smile. "Hey, we girls gotta look out for each other, right?

"This'll be a good gun for you," I said as we headed toward the flight deck and the promised firing range. "If you ever get a hunting rifle, you can use the same ammo in it, and it's cheap and easy to get. Plus, there's like a million of these guns running around out there, so you'll never have trouble getting parts to repair it with."

As we passed the baseball diamond on the flight deck, I was surprised to see that there were already targets set up, and they looked as though they were used regularly. "Remind me not to piss off any more Rivet City security guards." There were several boxes of rusted tin cans, and more complicated targets set up to look like a human, a super mutant, and to my delight, a mirelurk. That one would provide a real challenge, since there was only one small spot on its face where a bullet would do any measurable damage.

I ran Mei through a quick gun safety course: always assume the gun is loaded, point it in a safe direction, don't pull it unless you intend to use it, and always shoot to kill. Then I taught her the six steps of taking a shot, just like Officer Gomez had explained them to me when I was ten and practicing with my first BB gun.

By the time my stomach started growling again, we'd gone through several hundred rounds of ammo, and I was impressed by how quickly Mei learned. She had a natural talent for shooting that rivaled some of the security guards on the ship. I was all ready to call it quits for the day, but I could feel eyes on me, the same eyes that had been watching me intently for the better part of an hour. I knew exactly who it was, and I couldn't help showing off a little.

"Let me show you what you could do if you keep practicing every day," I told Mei. "Do you mind?" I held out my hand for the pistol and she gave it to me readily. I pulled several speed loaders out of my pocket, demonstrating how to use them, and strategically placed them on the ammo box next to me. I loaded five rounds into the gun, firing them off in quick succession, ejected the spent cartridges, reloaded with a speed loader, and repeated several times. When I was done, all of the tin cans had been knocked off the boxes; the mirelurk target had five holes in the 'eye,' the super mutant had two in the eyes and three in the center of the chest, forming a perfect triangle, and the human target had them…a bit lower.

"Well, I'll be damned," I heard from behind me. "So you can shoot all those guns you carry around with you."

I turned to smirk at Harkness. "Did you ever have any doubt?" I was about to take a bow, when I heard Mei gasp, followed by the unmistakable buzz of a bloatfly. Three, unless I missed my guess. There must be a nest somewhere near our shooting range and the gunfire woke them up. Pivoting on one foot, I loaded the last speed loader into the gun and fired. Two bullets apiece for the first two flies, one for the last, which wasn't quite enough to finish it off, until I heard a 10mm bullet go whizzing past my head and impact the last fly with a sickening splatter and crunch. Damn, where had he been hiding that in his formfitting armor? Holy shit, I thought, he hit it in the eye! That's the hardest place to hit something that never stops moving for more than a second. And that kind of trigger control on an SMG, to only fire one bullet out of a thirty round magazine on a gun that's fully auto…wow!

"I know what I'm having for lunch." I pulled out my boot knife and pretended to skewer one of the flies. "Only joking," I laughed when Harkness raised an eyebrow and Mei made a gagging noise and clapped a hand over her mouth. "I haven't had to eat anything this disgusting since my first day out of the vault."

Mei gave me a wide eyed look. "Trielle, you're bleeding." I glanced down at where she was pointing, and sure enough, there were a couple of spiked bloatfly larva embedded in my right arm. They hurt like a bitch once she mentioned it, but I wasn't about to let Harkness see me act like a girl about it.

"No biggie," I said, bravely. "I've had worse." I used the tip of my knife to dig the larva out, biting my lip as I did to keep from crying. When I had finished, I pulled a little bottle of rubbing alcohol out of my pocket and splashed some on my arm, then holstered my knife as nonchalantly as I could manage.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Lone Wanderer has left the building." I turned away so Harkness wouldn't see the sweat and other things on my face. "It's time for lunch," I tossed over my shoulder.

Mei came after me as I was headed to the Galley to get something for lunch. "Thank you," she said fervently. "I feel so much safer now." She gave me a quick hug on my non-injured side. "I don't have anything to give you, but tonight's my bath night and I'll put in a good word for you with the matron. If you have some Rad-X and RadAway to trade, I'm sure they'll let you have a water ration even though you don't have a ration card."

"I wasn't sure if water for baths was even available on this boat, so I've been giving myself sponge baths with bottles of dirty water I picked up."

"Anyone who's been here longer than three months gets a bath once a week and enough water to sponge off with the rest of the week. We bathe in rotation, since the water condensers that purify the water can't handle the whole boat on the same night. Bring your clothes and you can get them washed at the same time. I didn't want to say anything earlier because you had a gun in your hand, but you kinda stink," she said, and mimed holding her nose.

"Well, wandering around the waste for weeks at a time will do that to you. I've taken a couple of dunks in the river, but that's not much better than not washing at all, what with all the rads and trash in the water. It would be nice to get really clean and wear some clean clothes."

"I'll come by later when it's time and pick you up," she said. "Are you staying in the common room?"

"I was, but I'm going to splurge a little and get a room at the Weatherly," I said. "I need some serious R&R before I go back out in the waste to look for Dad." I slapped my forehead. "Speaking of the Weatherly, I need to talk to Vera about her nephew, Bryan. He needs a place to stay after those fire ants killed his father and decimated Grayditch."

"Well, I'll meet you in the marketplace after dinner and we can go back to the hotel and get your stuff," Mei said. "Bring some caps so you can buy soap and stuff."

I thanked her and continued on to the marketplace, where I bought a Salisbury steak sandwich and a Nuka Cola, and took them up to the observation deck to eat in peace. I still had the apple that Harkness had given me the previous day, and it made a fine addition to my lunch. As I was finishing my fruit and wondering how far down the Potomac River I could float an empty cola bottle, I heard the door open and an older man came out on the deck, obviously not seeing me. He walked over to the section with no railing and stood very close to the edge, looking down with a sad expression on his face. Not wanting to startle him, I got up quietly and stood next to him, ready to grab him if he looked like he was going to fall.

"Nice up here, isn't it?" I asked, making small talk. Something told me he wasn't just admiring the view.

"Yes, it's beautiful. You can see for miles from up here."

"I'm Trielle Miraven," I said, holding out my hand to shake his. "I'm new to Rivet City."

"I'm Mister Lopez," he replied, shaking my hand in a firm grip. "Don't mind me; I'm just taking up space here."

"Surely not? I've met way more people who were more of a waste of space than you are." I winked at him. "I bet you know some great stories. I can just tell."

He sighed. "No one remembers me, or if they do, they just don't care. I don't know if I even care anymore. I wish I had the courage to end it all."

"But why?" I asked. "Even though the world has gone to shit, every day the sun still comes up is worth living. Every day you wake up is worth living." Every day I get to tease Harkness until he gives me that look and says something crass is worth living, I thought. "Death is the easy way out, and you don't look like a quitter."

"I'm a worthless failure," he moaned, tears running down his face. "I let my wife and child get killed by raiders, and there wasn't anything I could do to stop it. I have nothing to live for. I wish the raiders had killed me too."

I put my arm around his thin shoulders, feeling them shake as he sobbed. "Sometimes things happen for a reason, Mister Lopez. Maybe the reason you're still here is because you still have something left to do. Someone you can save." I leaned closer to him, drawing him away from the edge as I did so. "Listen, there's this other kid I met in the common room last night, same age as me. Ted Strayer. Do you know him?"

"I've met him once or twice."

"Here's the thing. Ted doesn't know how to read, doesn't know how to do much of anything except get high and wander around Rivet City causing trouble. He could use a role model, someone to keep him from ending up like all the other assholes I've met out in the waste." I looked him square in the eye. "Someone like you, Mister Lopez." I shook him lightly. "Please don't throw your life away. There are people here who still need you."

He seemed dazed for a minute, that a perfect stranger would give a damn about whether he lived or died, but he gave me a small smile and said, "I suppose I could talk to him. He is kind of a lost boy." I let go of his shoulders and he grasped my hands. "This is the first time I've been glad to meet someone who isn't from Rivet City. Thank you stranger." I smiled back at him.

"Just call me Elle."

After going down to the Weatherly, paying for a room and moving my stuff in, I spoke to Vera Weatherly, a nice blonde woman in her late twenties. She was happy to hear that her nephew Bryan was still alive after the events in Grayditch, and said she'd be glad to give him a home with her. I promised to send him along with the next merchant caravan to come through Grayditch. I stashed my stuff in the room, which had a queen sized bed I longed to collapse into, but not until I'd had a bath and cleaned my clothes.

I headed down a deck and followed the signs to Saint Monica's church, where I had been told I would find Diego, the love of Angela Staley's life. When I entered the church, I saw a young man, perhaps a year younger than myself, lighting candles on the altar. I assumed this must be the famous Diego. I could see why Angela liked him. In addition to being handsome, he had an air of competence about him that would be attractive to any woman. He turned and nodded his head when he saw me.

"Welcome," he said. "I'm Diego, the acolyte for Saint Monica's church."

"I'm Trielle Miraven." We shook hands and chatted about the church for a minute or two. He informed me that Father Clifford, the priest of the church, would have to take any donation I wanted to make. When I thought we'd had enough idle chatter, I brought up the subject of Angela. "I'm actually here on a mission of mercy, or something like that." He looked confused, so I continued. "Angela Staley has a bit of a crush on you, and wants to know if you feel the same for her."

He gave me a startled look, but a gleam in his eyes said he wasn't displeased to know Angela had the hots for him. His next words belied the gleam I saw. "What do you mean? I'm a man of the cloth! Well, I will be as soon as Father Clifford…never mind. It doesn't matter what Angela thinks. Soon I will take vows of chastity."

I looked him in the eye and asked, "So you can honestly say you've never thought about Angela in a…less than pure way? That all you feel for her is friendship?"

"Of course I've thought about Angela. She's very sweet, and very hardworking, and very…sexy." He swallowed hard and continued. "But Father Clifford says she is my trial. My temptation. I must choose between her and the Church, and I have chosen the Church."

Well, shit. How do you argue with logic like that? I wasn't even going to try, but there had to be some way to resolve this without breaking Angela's heart or making Diego feel like he had been forced into anything.

Just then, an older man in a sweater vest walked in, and Diego motioned him over. "Miss Miraven, this is Father Clifford. Father, this is Trielle Miraven. She wants to make a donation to the church."

Father Clifford turned to me. "I do wish to make a donation, Father. May we speak in your rectory?"

"Certainly, my child."

I followed him into the back room of the church and dug out my bag of bottlecaps. "I'd like to donate a hundred caps to your church."

"Oh, child!" He was overwhelmed at the bounty I offered. "May Saint Monica bless you?"

While I counted out the caps, he scrutinized me. "My child," he said, "I sense this is not your only reason for being here. What is troubling you?"

Debating for a moment about the wisdom of telling him that his would-be acolyte was the object of lust for the local waitress, I decided it couldn't hurt to get another point of view on the subject.

"It's Diego," I said. "Angela Staley is…in love with him, and I think he returns her feelings, but he's convinced that the Church is the life for him. Now I have nothing against the Church, but he just seems so young to pass up a chance at true happiness."

Father Clifford regarded me with a smile. "Who would think that the wisdom of the ages lurks behind the face of a child?" He sighed heavily. "You have seen right to the heart of a problem that I have been wrestling with for some time. When I first met Diego, I was so impressed with his purity that I convinced myself, and him, that he was bound for a life in the Church. He came to me a few weeks ago and told me of his feelings for Angela Staley, but I brushed them off, told him that he must resist temptation. She never indicated that she returned his regard, so he made plans to take his vows, but now I think I may have made a horrible mistake. If she truly does care for him, and he for her, then this life is too short for these two lovers to spend any more time apart."

"Father," I said, "I think I know exactly how to solve our problem. I can almost guarantee that by tomorrow, Diego and Angela will be in here asking you to perform a wedding. I'm about to give Angela a shot of confidence she can't possibly go wrong with."

My stomach rumbled again, reminding me that it was time for dinner and to speak to Angela again, but first I had to stop by my hotel room to pick up a little…something. I wasn't about to give Angela ant pheromones, even though I had some. She didn't need chemicals to seduce Diego, she just needed more confidence. I dug through my knapsack and pulled out a vial of perfume I had picked up in Canterbury Commons, and added a few drops of scotch and Nuka Cola to make it look believable.

Once down in the marketplace, I found Angela sweeping dirt from the floor of the galley area, a thankless task in a waste comprised of scrubby bushes and dust.

"I talked to Diego," I said without preamble. "I think you're going to have to be a little more forward with him to get the response you're hoping for." I handed her the carefully prepared vial. "Here are the ant pheromones you asked for. Knock him dead, tiger"

Angela's face shone. "Really? Oh, thank you! I just know I can seduce Diego with this. Then he'll have to marry me. We'll be so happy!"

"I hope so," I said, giggling inside. I had no doubt that she could seduce him, and that they would be happy, but not due to any 'ant pheromones.'

"I know just where to corner him," she gushed. "I have to go get ready." She dropped the broom and hurried off. I shook my head and wandered over to the counter to order some dinner. I decided on a Brahmin steak and something called a 'punga fruit' that had been brought in by a trading boat. It looked like a yellow baseball with four spikey bits extending from the bottom. Once Gary Staley brought me my dinner, I took it to a table near the bulkhead of the ship, where I could see the whole marketplace. I had just taken a bite of my steak when a familiar set of boot steps came up to the table and two hundred and fifty pounds of pure man dropped into the chair across from me.

"Kid."

I was getting really tired of being called everything under the sun except my name. "Stop calling me 'kid,' asshole!" Harkness drew back a bit at my tone. "My name is Elle or Trielle if you can't manage that. I haven't been a 'kid' since I left a trail of dead security guards behind me on my way out of Vault 101."

"All right…Elle. No need to get your panties in a twist." He smirked.

"I don't want to talk about my panties," I said, grumpily. Just the idea of any sentence that included Harkness and my underwear made me blush. Thankfully, he didn't take it any further.

"That was real nice, what you did for Mei this morning," he said. "Course, the downside of that is that all those bloatflies you woke up decided to make their new nest in my room. Guess who got in a little extra target practice today?"

I cringed. "Did they make a big mess?"

"If you'd call bloatfly guts smeared all over my walls a big mess, then I guess so," he said, sarcastically. "I'll be staying in the Weatherly until my shit gets cleaned up."

"I'm sorry," I said, meekly. "I didn't mean to cause any more trouble…this time."

Waving off my apology, he continued, "I also heard that you talked Mister Lopez out of taking a dive off the observation deck."

"He just needed to know that someone cared," I shrugged. "I know what it's like, to be all alone in life. I hope I made him feel a little better."

"I hope he can get Ted Strayer to stop getting high and trying to rewire the lights in the Muddy Rudder. If I get one more call from Belle Bonny that the lights are flashing 'fuck you' in Morse code, I may let her throw him out the nearest porthole."

I giggled at that, and Harkness gave me a curious look.

"You've been doing nice things for people on my boat since you got here, the stolen fruit notwithstanding. Don't think that makes you any less troublesome in my book, but I would like to know how you maintain your…pleasant demeanor after all you've gone through?"

I thought about it for a moment and smiled. "I'm just a happy person, with a slightly warped sense of humor, and I like helping people." I turned serious then. "I've seen so much death and despair, a lot of it caused by me, and I hate some of the things I've had to do to get by. Three Dog keeps calling me the 'Last, Best Hope of Humanity,' but that's bullshit. I'm not a saint, and I'm not the last, best hope of anything. I'm just a girl who's looking for her dad. I can't save the whole wasteland, but I can try really hard to make my corner of it a better place. And I can also listen to Angela go on about her feelings for Diego," I said, grinning and trying to lighten the mood, which had grown unbearably heavy.

Harkness rolled his eyes in sympathy. "Better you than me. I'm no good with women, probably why I have an ex-wife, rather than a current one."

My heart leapt at his words. I guess I hadn't really considered that he might be attached to someone while I was flirting with him and thinking about him practically every waking moment. "You have an ex-wife?" I said sarcastically. "Perish the thought, that any woman would want to leave you and your cheerful personality. What was the problem, did you eat her?"

"All the time," he drawled with a cocky grin, "but it didn't seem to help our marriage any."

I flushed bright red as I realized what he meant, and I could hear the blood roaring in my ears. "No…no," I stammered. "Oh my god! I meant; was she missing any body parts when you parted ways. You know, cannibalism…never mind." I might start burping butterflies any minute, the way they were fluttering around in my stomach.

Harkness roared with laughter. "I knew what you meant. It was just too easy, way too easy. You are far too naïve to survive in the wasteland without a keeper."

I had to get back at him for that last crack. "Are you volunteering, pretty boy?" I smiled sweetly and watched the blood drain out of his face. He stood up quickly, clearly wanting to get away from the giant pile of crazy that was me.

"I know enough to know when I'm in over my head. Enjoy your dinner, beautiful," he said in a voice hot enough to melt the bulkhead behind me, and walked off, laughing that he'd gotten the last word.

Author's note: I felt like Elle needed a girlfriend, so I expanded on the relationship between her and Mei, which never really gets developed in the game. I also hated the way that the game basically has Angela date raping Diego with chemicals, and that was supposed to be the good karma option, so I changed that bit to something a little more plausible and a little less rapey.

For anyone interested in the six steps of taking a shot, check out Project Appleseed's blog at 2008/03/six-steps-of-firing-shot.