Chapter III

Sentimental Over You

"Were you… asleep?" The sheer sound of doubt in Veronica's voice was almost as annoying as the fact that she had woken her up.

"What is it?" Lucy leaned on the door frame as she rubbed at her eyes, trying to force herself awake. "And I swear, if Klein tried to make another teleporter again I will-"

"It's nothing bad." Veronica shook her head, before holding up a plate of food. "Just wanted to check up on you and thought you might be-"

Lucy ripped the plate out of her hand and started devouring the eggs that Christine had no doubt prepared, they all knew that Veronica's cooking was more survivalist than gourmet, and this tasted too good to be anything less.

"I'll take the fact that you can stomach anything at all as a good sign." Veronica pushed in through the door, letting light pour in from the living room that was painfully blinding. Lucy winced in pain, but thankfully, Veronica somehow seemed to miss it.

"How long was I out?" Lucy licked the plate clean before setting it down on the small end table that was next to her bed.

"It's closer to sundown than rise." Veronica replied, turning away from the door and stepping only a few feet away from Lucy. The scribe looked over her with a critical eye for a full minute before continuing. "No offense, but you look like you just went through the Divide again."

"Gee, way to make a girl feel special." Lucy tried to roll her eyes but felt a small spike of pain as she did. She quickly covered that up by rubbing at her eyes however, hoping that her friend had somehow missed it, despite the fact she was clearly watching her.

Thankfully, Veronica didn't say anything about it. "Christine went off to check on some of the perimeter pylons to make sure that they're still working, figured I would wake you up and see if you could make a quick trip into New Vegas to grab some stuff we need. Normally I'd be encouraging you to sleep, but this is kind of urgent, and we both know that I can't make the trip myself."

That was true, since even though Veronica and Christine could theoretically use the Transdalportalponder, the new Beacons that the Think Tank had made for them still needed a bit of testing. Given how dangerous the device was, so much so that even the Think Tank didn't want to use it, Lucy was effectively the only person who could. "Bit late, don't you think?"

"That's why you drew the short straw." Veronica looked over to the handheld device that allowed Lucy to come and go as she pleased. It still left a lot to be desired, as despite the advanced technology, its range couldn't stretch much further than the Mojave without assistance from Mothership Zeta. "It's all charged up and ready to go. I even asked Klein, and between all of the self-aggrandizing I think he even said it should be a bit more accurate today because of the magnetosonic wave-emitter stabilizer that they just built… although I think he was just trying to sound smart."

Lucy swore internally. She had wanted to go back to sleep until everyone else shut in for the night in the hopes of once again using the memory pod, but sadly, it seemed that she was going to be tired come the morning.

"Yeah, I can do that." Lucy turned and moved over to her armor, stripping off the loose-fitting pajama top she had hastily thrown on last night. "You said you already adjusted the signal?"

"...I didn't say that I did, but yeah. It should drop you a few miles out from New Vegas, but a little hike won't kill you." Veronica replied. "Are you sure you're alright?."

Veronica was right, of course. Lucy's cybernetics had allowed her to do walks like that while carrying hundreds of pounds of gear, all without breaking a sweat, but at the same time, she was far from at her best, and it took her everything that she had to not visibly wince every time that her head throbbed.

"Didn't sleep well. Give me a couple minutes to get ready and I'll head out." Lucy said to get Veronica to give her some privacy.

"I'll put the list on the table." Veronica turned and left, closing the door to Lucy's room as she did, and finally giving her the privacy that she had desperately wanted.

Lucy scratched behind her ear as she stopped to look around her room. She usually placed her armor so neatly, but in her effort to not be noticed the night before, she had left the light off as she departed downstairs, and had promptly knocked right into the table she had set it down on, sending her belt and hat flying.

Usually, her eyes had built-in night vision, but with everything that had been going on, she hadn't been able to activate the setting like she usually would have. The internal switch was fine, or at least the diagnostic had said so, meaning that it was likely an issue with the eyes themselves. She also hadn't had time for the Auto-Doc to look at it, and it looked like she wouldn't have the time now either. Going without night-vision would be pretty dangerous, but the Mojave was always dangerous, and she'd lived through some pretty absurd things even with her short-sighted biological eyes.

Itching behind her ear again, Lucy finally spotted her belt. It had somehow fallen beneath her bed, and she cursed audibly as she bent over to reach for it; noticing the black liquid that covered her hand as she did. Sighing, she moved over towards a rag she had sitting on her desk. Usually, it was reserved for gun repairs, but it was all she had for now. She hadn't given it a very close look the night before, but the port in the back of her head had felt weird when she finally passed out. Clearly, she hadn't gotten away quite as injury-free as she had hoped.

Wiping the black ooze away, she stuffed the rag into her back pocket to dispose of later. For now, she had shopping to do. The list Veronica had given her was fairly comprehensive, ranging from food supplies to a few mechanical components, including some rather complex ones, meaning that the only place she could really go to get it all in one trip was New Vegas. Stepping out onto the balcony so as to not mark the floor, Lucy withdrew the teleporter and pulled the trigger.

The next moment she was surrounded by a familiar landscape, something she had seen a thousand times throughout her travels and that even now she felt the occasional draw to. The sandy wasteland of the Mojave Desert, perhaps not exactly the same spot in which she'd intended to land, but it hardly mattered which grain of sand she landed on.

"Close enough Ver-" Lucy didn't have the chance to finish her sentence before she was buckling over as she threw up. What must have been several minutes of heaving later, and she finally felt like her stomach was no longer being thrown around in a blender. Coughing, she reached up to wipe away at her mouth, and that same black ooze that had been leaking out of her uplink was dripping from her lips, and she could make out just the faintest amount of blood mixed in with the breakfast that she had eaten not fifteen minutes before. "Well… shit."

It was scary, sure, but it also wasn't the first time that she'd been confronted with an internal injury like that. A part of her considered teleporting back to the Sink and getting repairs that she probably needed, but it was drowned out by stubborn memories of having survived much worse. Besides, it would inspire Veronica to worry a lot more than she was clearly already doing, and that would make using the memory pod much harder.

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a bottle of water to help clean her mouth out. It tasted like death, and she should know, it was something that she was horrifyingly familiar with. The distant taste of blood was washed out and she finally allowed herself to breathe again.

"Ok, note to self, no more eating before teleporting." At least not while she was still experimenting with the pod and frying her cybernetics. "Now, which way to Vegas?"

Even before she could glance at her Pip-Boy, the distant glowing lights of New Vegas gave away the recognizable skyline. It wasn't too far, only about an hour's walk if she took her time. She set off without delay, only to slowly come to the realization that her body temperature modulator was, once again, broken.

The sweat that slowly worked its way through her clothes was an odd sensation, the itching and uncomfortable experience reminding her of why she had gotten the implant in the first place. The big thing that really caught her off-guard though was the smell, which somewhat resembled burning rubber, an implication that she tried to not think about.

Nearly two hours later, she found herself at the East Gate of Freeside, standing before a small heavily-fortified NCR checkpoint. With the annexation of the Vegas Strip, the area had seen a number of changes, although perhaps not as many as some people would have liked. The Kings, having finally buried the hatchet with the NCR, were standing nearby, watching the Soldiers and officials process the new arrivals to the city. It seemed that, while the King might have agreed to move on, he hadn't forgotten that the NCR's priorities were always their own citizens.

It didn't take her long to get through, between her easily recognizable armor, name, and official passport, the usually grueling experience was made a breeze. That didn't do anything for the heat however, and it was with the sun beating down on her that she finally stepped through the gates into the city proper.

It was odd really, how much things had changed, and yet looked the same. The overall city hadn't changed, at least in terms of the buildings and the general street layout, it took more than just a few years for that, but there was more care given to the welfare of it all. That might have been because of the new mayor, since The King had taken every bit of NCR funding he could get his hands on to rebuild Freeside, and it was clearly starting to pay off. Less rubble, less hopelessness, and it was all starting to finally look like the people living there had moved on past the apocalypse.

It brought a smile to Lucy's face, even if she knew it was still flawed. She had been a part of fixing things, and it was only because Caesar's Legion was gone that this was all possible to begin with. Her mood quickly turned sour, however, as the vague dryness of her throat reminded her of just how hot it was. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out another bottle of water and chugged the entire thing.

Stopping by Mick and Ralph's, she managed to get most of what was on Veronica's list at a fair price, she'd tried to haggle them down further but been unable and, given how sweaty she was, she didn't care to try too hard. She had the caps to spend anyway, so it didn't matter. Stuffing the heaviest item into her bag first, arranging the food was harder to do so without ruining it. Most of what they needed they grew at Big Mountain, but there were a few things they simply didn't have set up yet. Bread was one of those things, as were certain spices and sauces. It was mostly personal preference, since Christine and Veronica had wildly different tastes at times, despite how often they were almost feeding each other. For two people so close together, one would have thought they would have had similar taste buds.

The last thing that she needed was a bit too complex to get from Freeside, or it was if she wanted one to be intact anyways. Stepping through the now permanently open gate of The Vegas Strip, she almost felt like stepping back in time. Prostitutes were still dancing on the street corner, drunken soldiers still walked the streets. The lack of Securitrons was a little unusual, but in their place were some of the most exhausted-looking NCR MPs and Kings that she had ever seen, so the feeling remained. It was only the increase in people that really made things feel different. With the newest addition to the Republic being a hot tourist attraction, the once busy streets were now packed with new and unfamiliar faces.

It was only once you got towards the eastern end of the Strip that things truly started feeling different. Gone was the NCR's shoddy embassy, and in its place was a grand marketplace. Caravan after caravan came through the city now, bringing people, supplies, and all manner of amenities from back west. Among the various popup store fronts and stalls were a number of electronics that had been freshly made in factories in California. They were perhaps of dubious quality, but they were better than just about anything you could salvage in the wastes these days. All the good places had been picked dry following the full annexation of the region and the near avalanche of prospectors that had flooded the new 'State'.

Naturally, Lucy was going to have Veronica thoroughly investigate any electronics that they brought into Big Mountain long before they switched it on, but first, she had to actually buy them. As she rounded another stall, something caught her eye. One of the greatest things about the NCR, and Lucy would die defending this about them, was that they had started manufacturing cars again. Most people just bought the parts, working to fix up the various wreckages in the wasteland before using those, but the occasional new car could still be found. What sat before her wasn't a car, but it was most certainly new.

A red motorcycle, metal and paint shining brightly In the Mojave sun, was surrounded by a group of people all practically drooling over it. Lucy was no different as she was completely unable to take her eyes off of it. There was something so… familiar about it.

"That's right people, fresh off the line!" A salesman excitedly informed them. "The latest in the Shang-Chi line of artwork! Brought to you all the way from San Francisco!" Most of the time, she would have rolled her eyes at the exaggeration, but she couldn't deny just how beautiful it was. "Based on a prewar design, this machine is capable of driving you from here to the coast and back without ever needing a repair!"

"How much?" Someone from the crowd asked.

"A fair question sir, a fair question!" The salesman chuckled softly. "This is unfortunately the last one I have with me, since I sold most of them on the journey here. The bidding starts at seventy-five- thousand!"

Lucy swallowed, that was expensive, even for her, but the longer she started at it the more… familiar it seemed to be. Distantly, she felt a vague impression she would almost call a memory.

She raised her hand with only the briefest hesitation. "Eighty thousand."

"Eighty Thousand!" The Salesman gestured towards her. "Do I hear Eighty-one?"

"Eighty-one!" someone shouted from the crowd.

"Eighty-three!" Someone else added.

"Eighty-three Thousand!" The salesmen nodded with a wide smile, do I hear Ei-"

"Ninety Thousand!" Lucy shouted, stepping out from the crowd just enough to be seen.

It might have been a bit arrogant, but she swore she saw a few hands fall as soon as they realized who they were bidding against. Not everyone recognized her, but even the newest tourist in New Vegas had heard the tale of the Savior of the NCR, the near-mythical Courier. She heard the whispers in the crowd as the news spread, and just this once, she was okay with letting it.

"Ninety thousand!" The Salesmen looked like he was about to pull a muscle with how wide his smile was. "Going once! Twice!" He paused for a long moment, giving anyone else the chance to bid if they would, much to Lucy's annoyance. "Sold! To the woman in the Ranger Armor!"

The crowd slowly began to disperse, though more than one had the courage to stop and glare at Lucy as they were forced to walk past her new Motorcycle. She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at them, but only just.

"Now then." The salesmen stepped down from the post he had been standing on, holding the keys up for her to see. "The matter of payment. I doubt you have all of those caps on you."

Lucy didn't, obviously that many caps would be both heavy and a pain in the ass to carry around. What she did have however, was a storage safe buried in the depths of the Lucky Thirty-Eight that had a number of gold bars in it that she had salvaged from the vaults of the Sierra Madre. Caps they may not have been, but they were a hell of a lot more valuable.

"Give me half an hour, and I'll be back." Lucy was already halfway turned around before he even agreed, sprinting off in the direction of the tallest Casino.

Of all of the changes to the city, the Lucky Thirty-Eight had seen the most by far. Pretty much every floor of it had been ransacked and cleared out of any available technology for the NCR to use. The Mojave Chapter of the Brotherhood of Steel had been given a few bits and pieces as well, as part of their treaty with the NCR that had somehow held, much to everyone's relief. Lucy had taken charge of a few of the things that were probably going to start wars as well, most notably Mr. House's life-preservation technology, which the Think Tank was still dissecting.

But most of Mr. House's other technology, the terminals, Securitron spare parts, and the Vaults filled with caps in particular, had been worth a fortune. The NCR had taken the majority of it, and although she hadn't been fully paid for it, she had been at least somewhat compensated for being the reason why the NCR had any of it in the first place. In practice, however, the caps she got out of that deal were a drop in the bucket for her, since between the various pay checks she had gotten from across the NCR over the years, and the Legion coins that she and Veronica had melted down into gold bricks back at Big Mountain, not to mention the gold bars that she was now withdrawing from her personal safe procured all the way from the Sierra Madre Casino. She was possibly one of the wealthiest people in the Wasteland, so wealthy in fact, that she often was left just thinking of how to spend it all.

Until now, her purchases had been limited to necessities like food, water, and ammo, or whatever Christine and Veronica had wanted her to buy for them. The only real thing that she allowed herself the luxury to buy were books, and even then, she more often just took to liberating them from the ruins of Old World libraries. Aside from books, this was the first time in what felt like years that she had decided to buy something for no other reason than she wanted it. Returning to the salesmen, she watched with a smug satisfaction as she withdrew three gold bars. His eyes nearly popped out of his socket when she held out her hand expectantly. He handed her the keys without a second of hesitation.

"Pleasure doing business with you!" He called as she slowly moved over to her newest purchase.

Taking her bag off, she finally allowed muscles to relax. Usually, the strain wouldn't have done much to her, but with everything that had been happening lately, she must have missed the slowly mounting ache that she was now finally able to stretch out. She was still stronger than any regular human had a right to be, she could tell that simply by the power she could feel just under her skin, but it was perhaps not as much as she was used to. Just one more thing to have the Auto-Doc look at tonight once she was done with her dive.

It was also a fantastic excuse for the purchase she just made, and as she set her bag down on the rear end of the red bike, she started tying it down, feeling the oddest sense of familiarity as she did so. As she started pushing it towards the entrance of the city, she couldn't quite shrug off the feeling of leaving home, even if she hadn't called New Vegas home in years.

"Where did you…" Veronica's mouth opened and closed in disbelief. "I sent you to buy groceries!"

"My back hurt from carrying everything, so I thought I'd get something to help me carry it." Lucy shrugged softly. "I thought it made sense."

"How?!" Veronica looked between Lucy and the large backpack that was currently strapped to the body of her new motorcycle. "I've seen you carry a damn armory into a battlefield before! How was Sunday night grocery shopping too much for you?"

Because she usually had her augmentations to help her, Lucy didn't say. That would have brought with it a host of other questions she didn't want to answer, as such, she simply came up with some more nonsense. "That's for combat, totally different. Just because I can doesn't mean it doesn't suck."

"I, but you, th-" Veronica threw her arms in the air as she rambled softly to herself.

"How are you even going to get it down to the bottom floor?" Christine, as ever, focused on the more practical issue. The fact the transdalportalponder had brought her to the Sink itself was convenient, but it also meant that they now had to find a way to get her latest purchase down to the ground level if she ever wanted to use it.

"I figured I'd ask Dr. Mobius to have his robo-scorpions do it." Lucy replied, having at least thought that far ahead. While they may have been generally weak, and lacking in arms, there was something to be said about many hands, or pincers, in this case. A few of the bigger ones would be able to lift and move the motorcycle down the few stairs between where it was and the outside world. The elevators would cover most of the distance for them, so long as they could all fit alongside the motorcycle…

Christine hummed softly, nodding in satisfaction with her plan. "How much did it end up costing?"

Lucy winced softly, a fact that did not go unnoticed by either of the girls who were now watching her like hawks. "Not much, just about… Ninety-thousand."

The Sink was quiet for what felt like an eternity as they processed that. In truth, it was probably only ten seconds at most, but for them, that kind of reaction time was truly something to be worried about.

"What!?" Veronica and Christine shouted in unison, causing Lucy to wince and look away. It was an impulse buy, what more could she say? Somehow, she didn't think that excuse would fly.

Christine sighed, rubbing one hand into her forehead.

"It's brand new!" Lucy, never one to take a challenge without a fight, defended herself as best she could. "Based on some of the last designs from before the war, you can't find one in this good a shape. It's impossible!"

"Lucy… these go for like, forty thousand back west. If that." Christine informed her, causing Lucy's confidence to shatter like glass as her mouth clicked shut. "You were played."

No, Lucy shook her head, surely not. That wasn't… she was so good at bartering though! She damn near cheated on most occasions to be fair, using her augmentations to see the subtler signs people couldn't hide no matter how hard they tried. Heart rate, body language, how much they sweated when she put on the pressure, it was all made easy given the amount of metal in her body.

Lucy groaned, feeling like an idiot. She had known her cybernetics were on the fritz, and yet she hadn't even considered it a possibility. The salesman had played the whole crowd, but Lucy had been the unfortunate sucker to actually fall for it.

"I doubt they do refunds," Lucy said, looking back at what was, at least until it was moved downstairs, an overly expensive paper weight. But even if she could have taken it back, she still wouldn't have. She hadn't had it for long, and yet it already felt like something too important to give up. "Whatever, it's not like we have bills to pay anyways."

Christine chuckled, her voice doing little to calm Veronica down as the Scribe moved back towards the elevator.

"Ninety-thousand!" She didn't seem fully aware of them anymore, more focused on the general shock of what Lucy had done. "I should take away your spending privileges!" The elevator door closed before she could say anything more.

"I should probably go after her." Christine said with a roll of her eyes and a smirk, making it clear that she was more amused than anything. "I'll send Mobius a message asking him to stop by to see about moving it downstairs."

"Thanks Christine, you're the best!" Lucy smiled as brightly as she could as the woman followed after her girlfriend. When the elevator door finally closed, that smile fell away however.

She felt like an idiot, and that was something she wasn't used to. She couldn't even remember the last time someone had taken advantage of her like that, or at least gotten one over on her. She was usually a lot more perceptive than that, even before the implants, but there was something about this bike… it called to her. Obviously, she had never had this specific one before, because despite how the Salesmen had bested her, it was newly made. He had lied about the price, not the quality of his product. That fact being the only reason Lucy wasn't hunting him down at that very moment.

Still, there was something weird about the bike that made it so she couldn't take her eyes off of it. That had been more than enough distraction to keep her from thinking clearly. Shrugging that thought off, she tried to think of a name. All great things, be they places, country's, weapons, or even cars, deserved a good name. Her rifle was proof of that, her Medicine Stick having more than made up for the caps used to buy it. Somehow, she felt that this motorcycle had already done the same, despite the inflated price tag.

Big Red. Lucy thought to herself. It wasn't original by any means, it was big and it was red, but it was something that just felt… right. As if the name had been spoken to her in a dream.

Lucy smiled fondly before finally feeling all the exhaustion from her trip. Making her way into her room, she started up the shower to get ready to sleep. Veronica would wake her up for dinner, despite how mad she seemed to be for now. At which point she could bide her time to make her way down to the pod once more.