And here's another installment. I'm sort of experimenting with tenses, so if it flows oddly, let me know. Also, if someone would like to be my beta reader... Well, that would be incredibly helpful. I'd like someone to run the finished chapters by; Someone who may notice corrections needing to be made, or parts of the story that just... Don't really make sense. I am just getting back into the swing of writing things, after all - at least, things over five or six hundred words.
As before, reviews would be appreciated, to let me know if I should add/change things, or change the characterization of Charon up or what have you. I honestly don't have the foggiest idea of where I'm going with this story, so suggestions as far as that go would also be absolutely lovely.
Charon is lucky, as far his ghoulification is concerned. Unlike the most of the others, he still has a good deal of skin left, even if it is coarse and leathery like the flesh of someone who's spent far too much time in the sun. His eyes are still mostly blue, albeit milky behind the film that's formed over them. He hasn't had to work out since he was completely human - the radiation preserved what muscle he had, kept it from deteriorating. And he was fucking lucky that had happened, with how often he got a chance to move around; If it weren't for being a ghoul, his muscles probably would have atrophied years ago. He has more hair than everyone here, sans Carol, Greta and Snowflake; but he's pretty sure Snowflake's on the fast track to being bald as a fucking cue ball - he only showed up fifty years ago, after being kicked out of that hunk of shit called Rivet City.
All in all, he's got it pretty good, despite this stupid fucking contract and the slimy fuckhead it has him bound to. That, and the fact that all he ever gets to hear about the outside world is from the goddamn radio, with that stupid asshole Three Dog howling about 'Miss 101', the saviour of the Wastes. Charon calls bullshit on that - no fucking way is some naive little girl who crawled out of a vault in search of daddy going to be able to pull off all of this shit. No way she'd be able to haul herself out of the vault, blinking into the sun she'd obviously never seen, and manage to find a gun, let alone figure out how to use one efficiently enough that she could take out the entire population of Paradise Falls.
Yeah, he was calling bullshit on that.
The shit hits the proverbial fan the next time a smoothskin wanders into Underworld. He just hears about it at first, a whole week and four days of whispers and paranoia, but no face to blame. The fifth day of the second week, the smoothskin wanders into the Ninth Circle, and Charon can't help but quirk what's left of an eyebrow.
The smoothskin is all pale skin and beguiling smiles, with large, clear grey eyes behind the lenses of a pair of worn tortoiseshell glasses; High cheek bones and full lips seeming all the more dramatic thanks to her hair, a shade of white that he would expect of someone in their nineties, being pulled into a sloppy bun at the back of her head. She wears one of those stupid merc charmer outfits - the blue skirt and top, the torn black leggings - but she's obviously taken the boots from a set of leather armor she found in the wastes. Probably a good decision - those boots are heavy duty, require almost no upkeep to stay in good condition. What catches his eye is the heavily modified hunting shotgun she has slung on her back; She doesn't look like she has the know-how to do that. She must have picked it off a corpse, he decides.
He watches her slide over to the bar, perching herself on one of the stools - he may be more than fast enough to move from the corner to the bar before the damn smoothskin has a chance to pull the gun from her back, but he'd much rather be prepared. He hears her speak, voice smoky, something he didn`t entirely expect - but it didn't surprise him. Nothing fucking surprised him anymore.
"My name's Salinger," she all but coos, and fuck, Charon knows that she's got Ahzrukhal under her spell. That rat bastard thinks he's got a chance at bedding a smoothskin after he closes down the Ninth Circle tonight, that much is obvious. He doesn't know what they say after that; They start speaking in hushed tones and Salinger is leaning over the bar in a way that Charon's not sure if he trusts. Whatever she's said now, his employer doesn't like it - the narrowed eyes and clenched jaw project that. Charon takes a few steps forward, but a simple shake of the head is enough to return him to the corner. It's ten minutes before Charon starts scanning the rest of the bar, deciding that if the smoothskin posed a real threat, she would have done something by now.
There's that all too familiar jingle and scrape, the sound of someone gathering the caps from their pockets and pushing them across the bar. Vaguely, Charon wonders what's been purchased - beer, jet, psycho, some-fucking-thing he didn't even know Ahzrukhal kept in his inventory? Then footsteps, and he returns his eyes to the bar, only to see the fair-haired smoothskin standing before him - she's much smaller up close than he expected. Maybe five foot six to his six foot five, and looking to be roughly one hundred twenty pounds.
"Talk to Ahzr-"
"Now, now, sweetheart. Let's not be brash." She holds up a faded, crumpled sheet of paper, 'Salinger Harper' scrawled along the bottom in a messy script. "I'm your employer now."
Charon is caught off guard, rendered completely silent as he blinks down at her. He feels strangely free, knowing he's no longer under the employ of that evil bastard. "You purchased my contract from Ahzrukhal...?" Wide eyes stare back at him, and Charon bites back the urge to snap at her to keep her eyes in her fucking skull or he'll sew her eyelids together - he doesn't like being stared at. "So, I am no longer in his service. That is... Good to know. Please, wait here. I must take care of something."
He steps around the smoothskin - his employer - removing his combat shotgun from his back as he approaches his former employer. "Ah, Charon. Come to say goodbye to your old employer?" Polite as he put on the illusion of being, Ahzrukhal was still a rat bastard, and Charon was going to put an end to it. An almost feral grin crosses his features at the thought and he shrugs.
"Something like that."
Cha-CHUNG!
Cha-CHUNG!
It took two shots to all but obliterate Ahzrukhal's head and left shoulder, and earn a whole lot of fucking confusion from the smoothskin, Charon notes as he returns his shotgun to his back.
"The fuck was that?" Salinger demands, flicking a stray chunk of what had once been Ahzrukhal's face from her shoulder. It's only four months she's been out of the vault, but she's no stranger to blood and guts - she just wants to know why she's just seen someone shot in the face at close range in an otherwise civilized place.
Her questioning only earns her a shrug and a comment that she found less than helpful. "Ahzrukhal was an evil bastard. I was honour bound to serve him." With a frown tugging at her lips, Salinger turns on her heel and marches away, out the open doors of the Ninth Circle and across the concourse into Carol's. There's got to be a way out of this, somewhere in the contract. She was going to stay here for an extra day or two, scour that contract for a way to set this Charon character free. She may not always make the best decisions, but she didn't condone slavery, and whether other people agreed with her or not, Charon was, effectively, a slave.
"Carol!" she calls, grinning at the little ghoul woman she seems come running, brandishing a couple of envelopes and apologizing profusely for not being finished with her letters to Gob quite yet. Holding up her hands in mock surrender, Salinger laughs, shaking her head. "No, no! I just need a room for a couple of days - one with two beds, if the one I usually take isn't open. I know I wasn't planning on staying long, at first..."
It's only when Salinger mentions two beds that Carol takes note of the hulking ghoul behind the human girl, and her milky eyes shoot wide. "Sallie, dear, what have you gotten yourself into?"
She can't bring herself to lie to Carol, not in good conscience. Even when she'd first come to Underworld, and asked if she knew Gob... It would have been better for her to lie, leave Carol in the dark about her son's less than pleasant predicament. Instead, she had spilled the beans, and when the woman looked nothing short of horrified, she'd rushed around the counter and pulled her into a hug. "But don't you worry, Mama Carol. I'm gonna get him out." she'd told her. And now, as she grinned at the pre-war ghoul, she sighed. "I bought his contract off Ahzrukhal. Figured I'd find some way to free him if I stay here a while longer, go over his contract."
They're not even there a whole night before Three Dog started up with his goddamn howling, launching into yet another story of 'Miss 101'. Salinger scowled - no wonder Talon Company always knew where she was, the way Three Dog went on about her.
"Gooooooooood evening, listeners!" She tunes him out for the time being, frowning as she nibbles at a bowl of noodles. More of her achievements listed, like she ever needs a reminder. "Now, if you want to thank Miss 101 for your ability to hear me loud and clear all across the Capital Wasteland, you head right on over to Underworld! Ask the man in charge for 'Sallie Harper'!" Her head shoots up, eyes narrow, and she switches off the radio on her pipboy - not that it helps, there's still that damned radio on the counter, blaring what had before been just an echo of what she was already hearing. She was going to have to make a stop at the GNR building again, have a little talk with the DJ - she doesn't want to use force, hurt someone who doesn't really deserve it, but if that ends up being the only way for her to get her point across... She would have to take it.
Saying that Charon is surprised to find that this slight little girl is the saviour of the wastes is an understatement. He hasn't been surprised, truly surprised, since he was human, the day the bombs fell. Now, he's seeing his employer in a whole new light - instead of some stupid kid... Well, he still thinks he's a stupid kid, but now she's a stupid kid who managed to do more for the wasteland in four months than anyone else has managed in decades. He isn't sure how he feels about that, not really. Part of him is happy that he has an employer who's moral code matches his own more closely than Ahzrukhal's had; the other part of him is irritated that this goddamn vault kid thinks she can just march her ass in here and assume that she can free him. A lot of the terms are open to interpretation - the one clause that could completely free him, the clause stating the violence on her fault negates the contract... That comes down to what he interprets as genuine intent to arm him. He doesn't tell her this - he doesn't think she's even gotten to that part of his contract yet.