Right, well, here's another chapter, folks. I'm not entirely sure where to go in the next chapter - as I've said before, I do have a list of quests that I would like to cover in this story, but I'm just not sure which ones I'd like to do. Suggestions are appreciated, so go ahead and leave those, pretty please.
As per usual, reviews would be lovely, as would someone making some reference art for either this story or Nothing Places, Cellophane Sounds.
EDIT: My mother is currently on bed rest, so this will probably be the last chapter for a while.
"Oh, sweet goddamn Mary, mother of Jesus fucking Christ! What in the holy flying fuck is that?" Oh, God, oh, God. If that was a fucking Trog, no wonder people were terrified of them - they looked like the very definitely of devolution. Their skin was wrinkled and an angry, angry red; They didn't seem to be capable of bipedal motion, but they were more than capable of tearing the fuck out of whatever body part they could reach - she was learning that the hard way. "Ow! You nasty little fuck!" Her patience had rapidly deteriorated in the face of three Trogs, and she loosed a growl of frustration as she kicked one of them square in the chest and pulled the auto axe from where it had been slung across her back. These things may have been nothing short of absolutely fucking terrifying, but dwelling on that would do nothing but get her killed. After managing to decapitate the one in the center, she ended up spinning in place, swinging wildly until the last of the snarls died away. She dropped to her knees, wincing. There was a rather large gash on her left thigh, and she had no stimpaks, no way to heal the gash… But there was a body just a foot or so from her that looked promising. Crawling forward, she sifted through the belongings of the dead slave - there was an assault rifle, ammo for it, and two stimpaks, all of which she gladly took without feeling guilty.
Jamming the stimpak into her leg, she sighed, watching the skin of her thigh knit back together into an ugly, puckered scar as she injected herself. The other stimpak, she would save for later, because there was no doubt in her mind that she would need it. She supposed she had to count herself lucky - she had survived with only a massive gash on her thigh, where the other slave clearly had not. At least she had a gun, now; She'd be able to take the Trogs out from larger distances, something she was more grateful for than she expected. Fewer injuries, fewer stimpaks needed - and less of Charon's fussing later on. The last thing she needed when this whole thing was finished was to listen to him harp on her about hurting herself for a bunch of people she'd never met, which is exactly what he did every single time she decided to undertake some harebrained mission… That was usually for Moira. In fact, now that she thought about it, most of that survival guide had been finished with Charon's help. Same with finding Bryan Wilks a place to stay - because she would definitely have avoided the fire-breathing ants for much, much longer without him. There's a lot she probably wouldn't do without him, but she won't say that out loud, because it sounds cheesy and stupid and a hundred other negative things. Pathetic, for instance.
With a frown, she stares at the steel ingots beside the corpse she's still seated near. Those things look heavy - there's no way she'll be able to carry them around the yard, even in her makeshift pack, and she's sure that if she leaves them at the door, someone will take them, but it's looking like that's her only option. Hesitantly, she leans forward to lift one from the ground and nearly falls backward because of how much she'd been prepared to lift. This can't possibly weigh more than a pound, and it's actually much smaller than it had looked, now that she holds it in her hands. She's only been told to collect ten - that will be easy, assuming she can find them damn things.
"B-b-billy? Billy, it's me!" Oh, why does that not sound good? Roughly shoving the two ingots into her pack, she pushes herself to her feet, assault rifle in hand, and follows the sound of the voice. "Billy?" If she didn't have her hands full already, trying to keep a steady grip on the assault rifle as she emptied a few rounds into the head of a Trog cornering a slave, she probably would have… Well, she didn't know what. "That was Billy, I know it was him. It was him!" She watched with wide eyes as the slave collapsed, apparently dead. Instead of going about her business, she scrambled to pick the lock on the fence, checking for a pulse. When she did not find one, she sighed heavily and proceeded to pick through his belongings. A couple more stimpaks, and a syringe of med-x. That was good, helpful. Now she just needed to find more ingots (and maybe some more stimpaks, just to have) so she could get the hell out of this godforsaken place. This was fucking stressful and she just wanted to go home and curl up in her bed and sob, but not before she scrubbed herself as clean as she could manage. Holy sweet hell, this place was awful.
She spends the next hour and a half scouring the damn steelyard, screeching every time she runs into a group of Trogs before she kills them. Maybe she should feel guilty for killing them when they were slaves once, but she doesn't; As far as she's concerned, they're exactly like the ferals that lurk in the metro tunnels (granted, she would much rather let Charon deal with those - she generally did, they made her nervous). When she finally stumbles back into the steel mill, breathing heavily and bleeding from a handful of wounds that she decided she would deal with once she was safe, the raider in charge takes one look at her, and snorts.
"Well, look who made it back alive." he states with a dry chuckle and a roll of his eyes. "How many ingots'd you bring me?"
Only just resisting the urge to spit in his face, she manages to drop all fifteen ingots she had found onto the desk in the room with a triumphant smile. "Fifteen."
When he sees her again, she is filthy, covered in dirt and grime and god knows what else, and wearing pieced together armor that she probably picked off of a corpse. She looks drained, tired, upset - and he can see fresh scars on her legs and arms where she'd been cut or scratched or something and used a stimpak to knit the flesh back together - but pleased to have a real weapon (a combat shotgun, much like his own, from the looks of it) in her grip. And she looks determined, her jaw set, eyes hard behind the lenses of her glasses, as she approaches Spook, the raider who stands at the entrance to the Hole. He isn't sure why she's going there (that's a lie he's feeding himself to try and keep calm - he's heard the announcements about some slave being selected, he just was not prepared for it to be her), but he wants to rush in and stop her, carry her away, forget about all these fucking raiders and slaves, but he can't do that. It's against the only orders he's been given, and it'll get them both killed.
As she heads down the stairs, raiders begin to file in around the massive, fenced-off hole in the floor to watch the fighting. He elbows two of them out of the way, throws punches when they protest. Now is not the time for them to be complete assholes - he will not be kind, he will only cause pain. When the announcer begins speaking, he is silent, staring down. Three versus one is hardly fair, and in hand-to-hand, Sallie would have no chance - but he can see they've let her keep that shotgun, which means she won't be going down without a fight. The slaves probably couldn't beat her anyways, irradiated and malnourished, regardless of the fact that they have various weapons; She's better with a gun than she thinks she is, and people tend to underestimate her (he's guilty of that himself). When the barrels drop, he almost winces - almost. The radiation will make all four people down there sick, evening the playing field, but his employer has her gun and a strange air of confidence as the gates swing open a moment later. Unlike the slaves, who are ducking for cover and trying to angle shots from ten millimeter pistols at her, or trying to manage a hit with combat knives, she stands, eyes narrow, prepared. He isn't sure what's going on - he's never seen her like this in combat, so coldly appraising and coiled, ready to spring into action.
The moment one of the slaves darts forward, aiming, by the looks of it, to dig their combat knife between her ribs and puncture a lung, she simply levels her gun with his face and pulls the trigger, sending the body sprawling back a couple of feet. Charon is impressed - he's only ever seen her kill people who genuinely deserved it, to the extent of his knowledge. He's only ever seen her put down raiders and slavers and super mutants and those damned mutant ants, things that put them in real dangers; Everything else, she seemed more than capable of talking her way out of. As he watches, she turns, completely ignoring the spray of bullets peppering her arms and torso, and lands a well-aimed shot, dead center of the gun-toting slave's chest. This leaves a single opponent, a frail-looking slave with two combat knives - and happens to look like he may actually know how to use them, the way he's twirling them around and circling Sallie like a lion after prey. The girl doesn't seem the slightest bit fazed by this, continuing to trudge about the area and eye the slave. Knowing her, she's freaking the fuck out over this. When the slave lets out a shrill war cry and flings himself towards the girl, there's a bit of a scuffle - he manages to land a couple of good slashes on her arms and one across her cheekbone, the way he's swinging wildly, but the girl simply flips the gun in her grip and bashes him in the head with it before shooting him.
Charon is silently prideful as he watches the girl retreat for recovery before the next round; He doesn't know how the girl managed to put aside her dislike for killing the innocent, but she did it, and won. At that, he blinks - why is he proud? She is simply his employer, is she not? He'd hardly call her a friend, or anything of the sort, but then again, he doesn't really remember what it's like to have a friend, it's been so long. Maybe a friend is exactly what she is. Maybe that would make sense - she's done the best she can to free him without destroying his contract (he doesn't even know what would happen if she did - if he would just have some sort of meltdown or a psychotic break or what), treated him as her equal. That is more than anyone has done for him in a long time. Yes, he nods slightly at his thoughts, perhaps a friend is exactly what she is. He's a little bit uncomfortable with this revelation, but he squashes the awkward feeling by throwing his elbow back into the sternum of a raider who'd been trying to practically climb over him the entire time.
"Some people think they're halfway to Trog!"
She doesn't know why Faydra is so damn cheery about that; Trogs were fucking terrifying. If people thought that the Bear Brothers were halfway there… Well, she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted to face them, armed or not. "Fuckin' gre- Ow! Fuck!" One thing was for sure - Faydra was not gentle with the needle for the radiation removal concoction. The woman had, rather unceremoniously, stabbed the needle into Sallie's shoulder and depressed the plunger in a matter of seconds, giving the white-haired girl absolutely no warning. Rotating her arm and wincing at the shift of sore flesh, she sighs. It's now or never for this next fight; If she doesn't get it done and over with, she never will. "Wish me luck, Faydra."
As she pushes open the grating, she hears the raider loose a sharp bark of a laugh and spit out some less than savory comment. When her eyes adjust to the much dark area she's now in, she frowns and fights the urge to turn and push back through. Faydra hadn't been joking - they looked mean as all hell, and on top of that, one of them had a Deathclaw gauntlet. A fucking Deathclaw gauntlet. Those things weren't common; It took a whole metric fuckton of effort to kill a Deathclaw, and even more to cut off it's fucking hand without fucking that up. The other had a flamethrower, which she quickly decided was significantly less terrifying, probably because if she can get in a good shot on the tank, it will either blow up or rapidly run out of fuel. It's the gauntlet she's worried about now. Swallowing hard as the announcer finishes his spiel, she pushes the gate open, shaking hands trying to steady themselves as she lifts her shotgun.
The last round hadn't been too bad, in retrospect. Three not-so-well-armed, nameless slaves - she'd been able to deal with them quickly, once she had pushed back the mild sickness that threatened to rear its ugly head at the thought of murdering people who weren't even free. This round… Well, this round, if she even thought of backing out, she'd wind up as vaultie paste on the irradiated ground. And that's if she was lucky.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! These fuckers were fast - as least the one with the gauntlet was. The other one seemed to be hanging back, waiting for the opportunity to burn her to a crisp and leave her to turn into dust. There's a sharp sting at across her back, and she winces, spinning around and firing a couple of shots at the brother's shoulder. It's enough to slow him down, allow her to catch her breath for a moment before pumping more shots than necessary into his face. Touching her left hand lightly to her back, she grimaces - three gashes, at least, and man, for once, she is so fucking happy that Moira had had her do all those stupid things for the survival guide, because otherwise, the radiation wouldn't heal her; Because otherwise, she'd be a goner. May as well be, anyways, the way the remaining brother is glaring at her. He advances, leaving her scrabbling backward and trying to get a good grip on her gun - her hands are sweating like mad, and her left hand is slick with her own blood, making it difficult. As a burst of fire hits her shin, she lets out an animalistic hiss; Her hands still aren't dry, but she'll be fucked if she lets some asshole with a flamethrower be the one that takes her down.
Doing her best to steady herself as she leans back against the nearest wall, a sick grin twists her lips. "Hey, asshole!" She drags in a shaky breath, taking careful aim, "You know what they say: Never underestimate your opponent." When he falls to the ground, clutching his gut, Sallie drops to her good knee, spitting on the ground beside his head. "Sorry you got stuck with the short end of the stick." It's all she can really offer as consolation as she delivers the killing shot and pushes herself up. That fucking cure better be worth it or I am going royally fuck Wernher up. Only pausing long enough to pull the Deathclaw gauntlet off the corpse of the first brother she'd dispatched, she limped out of the Hole.
That, that had been extremely… Stressful, nerve-wracking, upsetting to watch, all sorts of things that he wasn't used to feeling. More than once, he'd very nearly shoved through the crowd and ran down the stairs to pull the girl away from the fight - she was his employer and a friend and on top of sort wanting to, he was contractually obligated to protect her. She may have given him orders, but that didn't stop the strange push-pull thing going on in his mind between the decision to listen to her and to completely disregard her orders, no matter how many times he tried to tell himself that it would be more detrimental for him to break out of the act.
Now, there's just one more of these stupid fucking matches for him to sit through, and that means they're one step closer to getting out of here. It's only taken four fucking days, shit. This part, at least, was pretty rapid-fire - fight, few minutes of recovery and getting the barrels of toxic shit back up, then back out. Lather, rinse, repeat (metaphorically speaking, because this situation wasn't like washing hair in the least). He's heard stories about Gruber, about the fact that he managed to earn his freedom and kept fucking coming back to fight, because he liked it. That's worrisome - but it's safe to assume that if Sallie's heard the stories, she won't hesitate to unload an unnecessary amount of rounds into the bastard's skull.
Instead of the fire fight he had half-hoped for, half-expected, there's several minutes of the two watching each other, trying to find a weak spot in their defenses. When there's finally the familiar sound of gunfire, it's not the powerful blasts he wants to hear - it's the annoying pop of a silenced assault rifle, barely audible over the raider shouting in his ear. For a few minutes, he thinks he's going to be stuck here for the rest of his life, clueless, confused without an employer, but then there's the sound of the shotgun, once, twice, three times, and as he peers into the Hole, he can see Sallie standing over a body and plucking a gun from it's grasp. As he moves to head down and speak to her, someone runs by, lugging an old footlocker (and he's willing to bet the only reason they're moving that fast with that thing in tow has something to do with psycho or something) after them. He's halfway down the stairs when the same raider rushes back by, empty-handed, and when he turns back to the stairwell, he is not expecting to see the vaultie (could he venture so far as to refer to her as 'his'? She was, to some extent, was she not?) standing before him, in her usual armor and her pack on her back.
"You did well, smoothskin." The grin she flashes him is startling - like she's simultaneously disgusted with herself and incredibly proud. This close, he can see the silvery-white checkmark on her left cheekbone; It's strange how much it looks like it should be there.
"Thanks, Charon. Now, c'mon, y'big lug!" Either she's completely given up on this farce, or she's feeling overconfident because she won. He'll put money on the latter. "I've got to pay Lord Ashur a little visit."
They were so close to getting out of this place, so, so close. Just get into Ashur's mansion, and snag the cure, and run like the hounds of hell are at their heels, that's all they have to do. And now, standing outside of the mansion in question, she can almost taste her freedom - freedom and some less irradiated water. None of the raiders give them odd looks when she finally works up the courage to push that door open and run up the stairs; She's surprised by that. No curiosity, no rage, no second glances, not even in Charon's direction. She's grateful, though - she'd probably crumble under their stares.
Which is what she nearly does when speaking to Lord Ashur. "I-I-I-I…No, I… I met Wernher, I'll admit that. But he seemed like bad news - I figured I should steer clear of him." The man formerly of the Brotherhood seems to eye her for a moment, trying to gauge her reaction to his question, before nodding slightly and smiling. A man with a smile that warm can't possibly be that bad, or too withholding with information, so she scrounges up what's left of her courage and speaks. "When I spoke to Wernher… He mentioned something about a cure. Is… Can I ask about that?"
"Go through that door there and turn left."
Thoroughly puzzled, she obeys, Charon following after her. There's a woman in the room she's been instructed to enter, and a baby in a small crib of the sort that she's only ever seen in old medical books. No sign of a cure - just the woman and child, a terminal which she is itching to investigate, and a first aid kit.
"I assume Ashur let you back here?"
"Yes, ma'am. I… Asked about the cure, and he sent me through here." The woman smiles warmly at that, and Sallie is sure that if this woman were a bird, she'd currently have her feathered little chest puffed out in a show of pride. She directs the vault girl to look through the terminal (which she does, greedily devouring information about Trogs, but pausing when she begins reading the entry about the cure), before looking fondly at the baby. "The cure is… the baby?"
"As you read, Marie was born with a natural immunity to the mutations here. We're working on a cure - so we can set everyone free, let the Pitt grow naturally, as it should - but we can only go so fast. She is just a baby, after all."
Standing, Sallie nods. "I understand. Thank you for your time, ma'am." As she stomps out of the building, she doesn't stop to speak to Ashur again, and it's obviously best that she didn't, with all the chaos. Raiders are running around, shooting wildly at slaves who've managed to get into the house, and it's only worse outside - but she doesn't care. She dodges fights and slaves who have obviously realized that she isn't on their side until she manages to find Midea, who looks none too pleased with her.
"So, Ashur managed to convinc-"
"Shut the fuck up, Midea!" Her voice has climbed to a high-pitched shriek by the end of the sentence, eyes mere slits as she looks at the slave woman. God, she hopes she can't call a bluff well, because right now, bluffing is all she has. "Tell me where Wernher is. I have no problem breaking your fingers one by one if you don't." She's already had her family, the sad, pathetic excuse for a family, torn apart by her father leaving; No fucking way is she letting that happen to a baby, and no way is letting Midea talk her into going back and getting the baby.
"The steelyard, he's in the steelyard, Jesus Christ!"
Oh, he is going to fucking get it.
He's decided he likes this cold, brutal side of his employer, the side that he has never seen before this trip. Never before had he seen her make threats against the innocent, shove through crowds and ignore those in need in this manner - it's intriguing. It gets better when they reach the steelyard and she doesn't seem to have calmed down yet.
"Everything's all set up, just give me the br- Where's the kid?"
Behind his mask, Charon allows a smirk to flicker over his features. Wrong time for that question, buddy. Sallie was wound up before, but dealing with someone who'd tried to pull the wool over her eyes? She was practically foaming at the mouth, she was so angry, and it was only amusing him.
CRACK!
"You son of a bitch!" He moves forward to catch his smoothskin about the waist - if he doesn't, Wernher has no chance of surviving, and she'll probably fuck up her hands. Even though he would love to watch her punch Wernher until she can't feel her hands, he can't do that; In this place, leaving the slaves be is simply the lesser of two evils, if only because the people in charge intend on freeing them. "You wanted me to kidnap a baby! A baby! You had no right, you fucking bastard! Charon, let go of me, I'll slaughter hi-"
"No." His employer pauses in her tirade to swivel her head around and stare at him like he's just grown a third head - because obviously, being a ghoul isn't the slightest bit strange. "No. Leave him here, smoothskin. You've already broken his nose," he cannot hide his amusement at that, "and if you keep going, you will break your hand. Just leave him here to be strung up by the raiders."
"He tried to get me to kidnap a baby, Charon. A baby." she repeats with a frown, as though that should justify her beating the everliving fuck out of the man. It sort of does, but why kill him when they can just leave him here to wallow in his complete inability to get anything finished on his own?
With a snort, he rolls his eyes. This is probably the most he's talked in all the time she's had his contract, but it's necessary. "Yes, he did. And you didn't, so calm down, and let's go." Letting the girl go as she stilled in his grip, he nodded.
"Just so you know, you worthless fuck," she pauses, long enough to spit at Wernher's feet, "they're working on a cure up there. You're not going to get it any fucking faster than a doctor." And with that, she allows Charon to guide her out of the building.