AN: Who the heck is still reading this? I love you.
The first half of this chapter was written by my friend and editor Blake. You may recognize him as Blake the Cowboy. You'll notice a style change, but I worked on making it coherent with the rest of the story's voice. I hope it's a nice break from the dreariness, and consistent with Fallout's quirkier side.
Tik Tik Boom
Synopsis: (Continuation of I Can't Help Falling in Love With You) Gabriel's employer accidentally starts a gang war that takes its toll; Sage's search might have hit a dead end. (T)
The Capital Wasteland, 2274.
The miles that separated Gabriel from his wife stretched dispassionately behind him. She never came for him.
When they'd arrived at the Jackalope base to collect the rest of Badaboom's winnings, she hadn't been there. The others had. He'd been forced to fight them, and Frag had been badly injured trying to protect her grenades. He never found out if she was alright.
Gabriel knew Badaboom would never return the contract to Meg, not unless he had a substantial expectation of gain for it. He also knew that there was no saving him by force — even if Meg managed to kill Badaboom, the terms of the contract required him to avenge a dead employer. Meg had no way to fulfill her promise, but the knowledge only intensified Gabriel's feelings of betrayal.
Still, Badaboom knew desperation when he saw it, so he moved out of Meg's range, to greener pastures. And DC was green — a sickly haze fell over the whole metropolis and surrounding wasteland. This place was diseased, in a way Gabriel had never seen anywhere else. Even the air itself could set off a Geiger counter — tik. tik. tik.
Gabriel stood silently in the corner of the burnt-out school's cafeteria as the raiders inhaled their rations. His stomach growled enviously, but he kept his face carefully blank.
Badaboom didn't allow Gabriel to eat with the rest of the gang, which would have been fine if he'd put any sort of effort into making sure his employee was fed at all. Living on leftovers, Gabriel found himself with the bottom of the barrel — the scraps, usually polluted, that no one else would touch.
Gabriel ate the "food" reluctantly, knowing complaining wouldn't help anything. The one time he did bring up the fact that the scant nutrition would be horrible for his health, Badaboom had spit in it.
It hadn't changed the taste much.
The one bright point of working for Badaboom was Eli. The older raider was the only member of the gang who treated Gabriel as an equal.
He claimed to be forty, though he looked far older. Gabriel guessed this was due to the stress of working for Badaboom. And his steady diet of chems and booze.
Unlike the rest of the of the raiders, Eli didn't seem to derive pleasure from pointless violence. Instead, he spent the majority of his time in the armory, admiring and repairing the group's many guns. He cared for them like a hen for her eggs. The legate had taught Gabriel a similar regard for a finely-crafted weapon, but Eli never hunted or raided, and rarely even shot them for fun.
Gabriel couldn't figure out quite why the man was even with the Raiders. He was clearly skilled with firearms and likely could have made a living as a repairman. In all likelihood, it was the chems. Eli wasn't passionate about them like he was with guns, but he rarely went without them on hand.
Whatever his reasons, Gabriel was grateful to have him around. Eli noticed how Gabriel took care of his rifle, and the men often worked together while fixing things up. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they were silent. Either way, he was the only raider Gabriel didn't disdain, and he warded off the loneliness.
Every month or so, when Badaboom was feeling bored, he'd invite the Ravager gang over to challenge his Poker skills and unfailing luck. Though they weren't in any way friendly, the two groups had never gotten into worse than non-lethal territory skirmishes. Those encounters always ended with one side conceding and going home. Usually the side with fewer guns and men.
Gabriel hated Poker night. Not only did it make the compound smell worse than usual, but it reminded him of how he'd come to be employed here. The memory was raw, even months later.
He also hated it because Badaboom forced him to stand guard at his shoulder the entire night, never speaking a word. Apparently, Poker required a bodyguard — or someone to intimidate the competition.
Most of the time, it worked. Whoever Badaboom won against (he always won) would lose their temper and throw a very unmanly tantrum, but Gabriel's presence dissuaded them from doing anything more.
Maverick wasn't so easily intimidated. Or maybe he was just stupid.
"YOU CHEATIN' MAGGOT!" the Ravager slammed his hands down on the table as he shot to his feet, scattering caps and cards onto the floor.
The entire room went silent as eyes snapped towards the table. Even the trio of trumpeters stopped playing in the corner,fizzling out as musicians do when interrupted.
Badaboom smiled coolly and slowly insinuated his hand onto the shotgun attached to the underside of the card table. "That's a serious accusation you're spewing, Mav," he smirked, not letting go of his drink. "I hope you've got something to back it up."
"No one is that lucky, Badaboom. No one." The Ravager's hand slid down to his holstered pistol.
Gabriel did the same with his weapon. "Badaboom..."
Badaboom locked eyes with the Ravager, bodyguard ignored. His eyebrow quirked up into the pickelhaube. "Question is..." the man drawled, "what are you going to do about it?"
Challenge accepted, the Ravager shouted something unintelligible and aimed to kill.
Badaboom moved his head a millimeter to the right, dodging the bullet as he fired the shotgun. The blast hit Maverick at the same time as Gabriel's shot, propelling both man and chair to the ground below.
The room erupted into chaos. Every gun was aimed, but none fired. Not yet.
Each gang backed slowly into its own leader's corner. They spat threats with wild eyes. Badaboom sat coolly dusting off his pickelhaube, seemingly unconcerned at the threatened shootout. Gabriel remained in position, knuckles white on the smoking gun.
"You just killed one of ours, Badaboom!" hollered the Ravager leader, Big T. "You think we're just gonna let that slide?"
Badaboom leisurely placed his helmet back on his head, then met Big T's eyes. "You must be blind, otherwise you'd notice he shot at me first."
"Because you cheated!"
"No proof of that." Badaboom took a swig from his bottle. "Now, I suggest you and your little posse get out of here, before you end up like Maverick." His arm swept out toward the fallen gambler.
Big T narrowed his eyes. "This ain't over. It ain't over, Badaboom." The Ravagers slowly backed out of Badaboom's compound, and the band resumed playing as raiders collected their winnings from forfeited games.
"Gabriel, clean up that mess for me."
It was night. Gabriel and Eli were swapping stories in the compound's main entrance hall as Badaboom sat quietly at his own table. Eli's eyes traveled casually toward the boss, evaluating their privacy. Apparently satisfied, he settled his cigarette in the ashtray. "So, Gabriel. If you had to use one gun for the rest of your life, what would it be?"
Gabriel scratched at his perpetually sunburned face, cursing his red hair. "I can't say. That depends on what I will be doing for the rest of my life." As long as they were fantasizing, Gabriel took the liberty to pretend his future was a million branching paths rather than a single ironbound lane, whose twists and turns he could neither predict nor control. He would use whatever gun his employer told him to, go where his employer told him to go, do what his employer told him to do. But in his mind, the one thing that hadn't been taken from him, he was free to wander.
His musing was cut short when Black Jack burst through the front door, soaked head to toe in blood.
Everyone in the room grabbed for their weapons as the doors slammed shut, searching for unseen enemies. No one moved to help Jack.
"Hey, Jack. Where's everyone else?" Badaboom asked. He was occupied playing with a grenade on the table in front of him, but stopped as Jack stumbled closer.
"Dead. We got attacked."
"Yeah. It happens. What was it, Yao guai?" Badaboom asked flippantly. Raiders died all the time; wasn't really an issue.
"It was the Ravagers, sir."
That got Badaboom's attention. He tore his eyes from the grenade and looked Jack square in the eye. "The Ravagers? You're sure of that?"
"No doubt about it. I played poker with some of those boys," Jack croaked.
Badaboom scrunched his face in anger and tapped his fingers on the armrest of his chair. "So Big T really wants to go to war over poker, huh?" he thought out loud, conveniently omitting the fact he'd shot Maverick.
"Looks that way, yeah," Jack panted, sinking to the floor.
"Well, if he wants a war then he's gonna get one!" Badaboom got up from his seat and slid his grenade in his pocket. "We're about equally matched, yeah? We've got the firepower. And once they're out of the picture, we've got new territory to scavenge." Badaboom snarled a grin, playing with possibilities in his mind. He was ranting to himself more than anyone, and Jack took it as his cue to leave and go get bandaged up before he bled out.
Badaboom continued to mumble to himself as Gabriel looked back at Eli. The older man lowered his brows. "Well. What type of gun would you use for a war?"
"COME ON, COME AND GET ME!" Badaboom yelled and fired his grenade launcher towards the ambushing Ravagers.
The explosions rocked the building beside them. The near wall fell crashing onto several raiders, spilling a portion of the roof on top of the debris.
This is pointless, Gabriel thought to himself. His automatic rifle severed an enemy's head, then fired two rounds into another's chest. Gabriel crouched down behind some ancient rubble on the road where he and Badaboom lay and reloaded.
A full-blown war. Over a card game. The foolishness astounded Gabriel every time. The war's only positive was a minor change in Gabriel's rations. Badaboom had finally realized that keeping his bodyguard in good shape boded well for himself, too. It was nice not to hold back bile every mealtime.
Badaboom sniffed impatiently and signaled with a glance for Gabriel to get back to work. Gabriel peered back over the pile long enough to spray lead into a final Ravager's back.
The raider fell to the ground, moaning wetly into the earth. Gabriel exited from cover, meaning to put him out of his misery, but Badaboom's mole rats beat him there.
The man screamed in anguish as the animals' razor incisors and shovel-like front paws tore his bullet wounds into caverns. Gabriel looked away, sickened. He was used to gore, but that didn't mean he liked to bear witness to it.
The screams weakened, then died, and Badaboom left the debris pile to pet his monsters for a job well done.
Badaboom had some kind of special connection with the creatures. They were hostile to everyone but him, and somehow the man could actually tell them who to attack. Often, when they were low on food, he'd go out and hunt a few of them. This didn't seem to change the animals' feelings towards Badaboom at all; they still would run to cuddle up at his legs before he put a bullet in their heads.
"Well done, boys, well done," he cooed, kissing their sparse, wiry hair. With a glance at Gabriel, he added, "You did alright too, I suppose."
Gabriel remained silent, not bothering with a response. He'd been the man's employee for the better part of a year, and he hated him as much as he had from the beginning. Badaboom was a mercurial, gaunt man whose focus never wasted time on anyone else's welfare. His brand of evil was nowhere as pungent as Qavrok's, or callous as Cassius's, but it held its own perils.
"Well..." Badaboom strolled over to the headless corpse of the other Ravager. "What have we here?"
The man had grenades strapped all over his body, and a pull cord that would tear the pins out of all of them at once if yanked. "Suicide bomber... interesting." Badaboom had a devious look in his eye as he took the rest of the gear from the corpses. "Alright, let's go, Red."
Gabriel frowned at the nickname. His sunburn hadn't yet gone away, despite the way the sun hid behind DC's murky green skies. His face had turned nearly as scarlet as his hair at this point.
There was a sickness to this city.
"RELEASE THE MOLE RATS OF WAR!" Badaboom thundered.
Twenty mole rats dragged themselves out of the ground, shaking and scratching with an instinctive regard for the delicate mines strapped to each of their backs. They would do whatever their master commanded, not unlike Gabriel himself.
The mole rats sprinted towards the raider encampment, where a small band of Ravagers were just waking up. The rats emerged from the dawn's silver-green mist in all different directions, ensuring that they wouldn't set off a chain reaction of rodent explosions and fail to kill any combatants. Caution abandoned, they hissed and spat in feral excitement, knowing only that blood would be spilled today — knowing only what Badaboom wanted of them.
One raider was quicker than his brethren and slammed his boot into the face of mole rat nearest to him. The explosion blew him apart, sending his remains flying into the rest of his friends.
The noise and shock were enough to rouse another raider from her drunken stupor. "Hey, what the—" she slurred, holding her head. Before she could get her bearings, a mole rat bomb leapt into her face and eradicated it.
Badaboom cackled with glee as the Ravagers panicked, unable to defend themselves without setting off the waddling, huffing explosives. Gabriel rolled his eyes, crouched behind the burnt-out husk of a car. He had spent hours yesterday carefully fastening an explosive onto each mole rat, trying his best not to blow himself up.
Though he had succeeded, his hands were now covered in nicks and scars from the creatures' tantrums. Badaboom could have done it himself — the molerats would never hurt him — but he had been occupied with important managerial activities like drinking and playing poker. Even if he'd had a clear schedule, he was a lazy man.
"Move in, boys!" Badaboom called. Gabriel marched towards the outpost with the rest of the squad. They opened fire as their cover fell away, disposing of any Ravagers whose bodies weren't already splattered across the area.
One surviving Ravager tried to raise a gun in his remaining arm, but Gabriel dispatched him and nabbed it. He looked around the leveled campsite in disgust.
Badaboom strutted into the camp's center and posed on top of a maimed Ravager, who groaned weakly. "Well, was I right or was I right?" he said with a grin. His gang responded with cheers. "I know, I know you all thought I was insane, but you can't argue with these results. All we had to do was sit back and watch!"
Yeah, sit back and watch as all of the supplies we needed were destroyed, Gabriel thought bitterly.
Badaboom was on a roll now, explaining how they'd curbstomp the rest of the Ravagers with ease if they kept this strategy up. Ignoring that their supply of explosives dwindled already, due to his obsession with blowing things up.
Gabriel tuned him out, poking at the sores in his mouth with his tongue. They'd been showing up more ferociously and in greater numbers for the past few months. At first they were nothing more than irritation caused by the food, but now Gabriel worried that his health was suffering due to poor nutrition. The wisps of red hair left on his cot when he awoke, his frequent tension headaches, and a host of other occasional symptoms — itching, fatigue, random bleeding — had him concerned.
Badaboom took no further notice of his worsening health issues, too focused on his explosive campaign against the Ravagers. But surely he couldn't ignore it forever...
The loss of Badaboom's favorite poker opponents didn't dampen his love for striking down foolhardy challengers. The war against the Ravagers was a persistent improvement to his mood. The Ravagers simply had no defense against subterranean, living bombs.
Badaboom's raiders treated him as their conquering hero, though he never went into active combat. They knew his reputation for victory at the poker table, and were unenthusiastic about going against him, but Gabriel had strongarmed them into joining the game that was now well under way. Gabriel stood guard behind his employer, more for ceremony than practicality. There was little risk of trouble from this lot.
Gabriel despised being a slave. He always had. But he'd gained an important quality in his many years of service — he liked to be useful. More accurately, he hated being useless. The chronic fatigue he'd been experiencing was on him once more, his mind restless and unoccupied.
A yawn gripped him, stretching the muscles in his face taut as he fought not to draw attention to himself. He stilled suddenly, noticing a distinct wrongness that hadn't been there before. His parched, burnt lips had cracked with the pressure, and — he reached up to inspect the peeling creases in his face, and a flurry of dead skin fluttered down among the cards and chips.
"Wh-" Badaboom fell out of his chair as he moved to get away. He turned to look at Gabriel, whose hand explored the place where the skin had fallen off.
"Sunburn," he muttered by way of explanation.
Badaboom's eyes were stark with more emotion than Gabriel had ever seen in them. He backed away from his polluted poker table. "What's happening to—" His eyes darted. "What's up with your face?"
"It's sunburn," Gabriel repeated vaguely, quieter this time.
"That isn't a sunburn, pal," Eli muttered, hunched into his hand of cards. "That ain't sunburn."
It had been nine months since Meg had gambled Gabriel into Badaboom's clutches. Six months since the sunburn had started. Four since Maverick's death. Two since Badaboom unleashed his mole rat bombs. And nearly one week since Gabriel's skin had started falling off. Life since that moment had been a blur, first of denial, then of cold, suffocating reality.
This is it, Gabriel thought dully as he crawled towards the Ravagers' factory base. They'd finally gotten them where they wanted them. It would end today, one way or another.
Badaboom had made it clear this would be Gabriel's last assignment. If he lived to see the sun rise, his contract would have a new holder before it slipped below the horizon. If he didn't... Gabriel couldn't quite gather his thoughts to feel much about either possibility.
His mind drifted lazily behind a steely glare and ragged skin, back to Nevada, to Meg, to her arms. Whatever it had been, it was his home, and he allowed himself half a moment of hope that Badaboom would seek her out to return his contract. The hope fell from his grasp as quickly as it had come — Badaboom would never go out of his way for the sake of kindness, and besides, Gabriel was no longer the husband she had known.
He shook himself gently, corralling his thoughts toward the objective. Like most raider strategies, it was simple: Badaboom and the rest of the gang would attack from the front entrance of the factory, while Gabriel was supposed to sneak in the back and wipe out any threat he found. He had no backup this time. That would have defeated the purpose.
He heard the explosions from the entrance and the shouts from inside as he stood with his back pressed against the factory wall. With a steadying breath, he kicked the door in, scanning the hallway for threats.
Nothing. Gabriel slinked along the wall of the hallway before coming to a door, hearing people inside. He cracked it slowly.
A group of four, all grabbing guns from lockers. Gabriel didn't hesitate. He walked in the room silently, shooting the nearest Ravager in the back and immediately swiveling to the next. The remaining two leapt to the ground, one kicking a card table onto its side as he returned fire wildly with an assault rifle. Gabriel went low as well, firing two rounds at the Ravager that didn't manage to get behind cover, as poker chips noisily scattered on the floor.
The assault rifle stopped firing. Gabriel heard a curse and the sound of a magazine being ejected. He marched over to the table, training his shotgun on the man — no, the boy, — trying frantically to reload.
He never got the chance.
Images of the teenager crumpling to the ground echoed in Gabriel's mind as he turned to meet two newcomers.
"There's one!" One of them shouted and fired her pistol. The other ducked back into the hallway. Gabriel quickly grabbed the boy's rifle, reloaded, and sprayed bullets towards the entryway.
He ducked back behind the table, not that the flimsy metal would offer much protection. It barely obscured his six-foot height from view, but the raiders were crouching and didn't take their advantage.
At the sound of chuckles, he peeked his head over the table right as a grenade flew through the doorway. Every neuron firing, Gabriel tried batting it away with the assault rifle. Surprisingly, it didn't explode on impact.
The blast came two seconds later, knocking Gabriel onto his back, his ears ringing. He was alive, but the fact seemed neither positive nor negative.
Disoriented, he grabbed his shotgun and destroyed the face of the first hostile who approached. The other was clearly surprised that he was alive, as she didn't have time to aim her gun before Gabriel killed her as well.
Shaking away his dizziness, Gabriel sat up. His ears were still ringing loudly, but he had his mission. He put a few more shells in the shotgun and continued his march of death.
Gabriel limped towards the front of the factory, dripping blood, covered in guts. He stumbled into what he assumed was the Ravagers' common room, right as Badaboom shoved a grenade in Big T's mouth. He spluttered against the cold metal mass on his tongue.
The Ravager leader was tied to a chair, surrounded by the bodies of his former gang. Gabriel barely noticed his gagging screams as he approached Badaboom.
Badaboom's laughter was cut short at the sight of Gabriel. He and the rest of the gang immediately backed up.
"You're... alive."
Big T exploded behind Gabriel's back, throwing another splatter of gore onto him.
"Yes."
Badaboom stared at Gabriel, eyes scanning his stained armor and going down to his shotgun, where a piece of a skull was embedded.
"That blood isn't yours, is it?"
"Not all of it."
The rest of the gang muttered as Badaboom continued to eye Gabriel, baffled.
"Well, Red. I wasn't expecting to ever see you again. But you did your job. Ordinarily, I'd put down a zombie like you, but you've been quite the asset."
Gabriel remained silent.
"I can't keep you around, obviously. I'm not turning into a corpse. And I don't know any human who'd want to buy one." Badaboom continued. "But I've heard there's a place in DC where your kind lives. Maybe we can find a buyer there."
Gabriel was returned to his closet, where Badaboom tossed him some medical supplies.
"Feels like a waste giving them to you, but if you die I'd rather not have to touch your infected corpse." He said before closing him in. The door creaked open a second later, one eye peeking through the crack. "And don't leave."
Gabriel hadn't planned to. The adrenaline crash he was experiencing compounded his illness and injury, leaving him nearly immobile. Poetic justice, he supposed, for Qavrok's years of locking people in closets.
He began to address his injuries, letting the pain wash over him without much thought. He watched the way his skin flaked at the needle's touch, wondering how he hadn't known all along what was happening to him. Great pieces would sometimes rub off now, exposing the rough, discolored layers underneath. His hair dislodged at the slightest touch. He tasted blood.
It didn't matter to Gabriel whether he lived or died. He'd been finished with life since he was barely older than a child, but it had never seemed finished with him. He didn't know at what point the legate had realized this, and quietly conditioned him to be unable to harm himself. At first, Gabriel had taken this disability as merely a natural reluctance, but when killing had become so easy, it should have been simple enough to push a blade through his own flesh, the way the needle darted in and out now.
He was just finishing up when he heard a knock from the hall.
"Hey bud. It's me," came Eli's husky voice. "Just came to... see you off, I guess."
Gabriel laid his head back on the floor.
"Not really sure what to say, man. Never been much for conversation. I, uh, I brought you a goodbye present though." Eli cracked the door open and slid in his personal shotgun. "I saw how messed up your other one was and I know they're your favorite. So... you can keep it."
Gabriel heard Eli's body come to rest against the door as the two men sat in silence together. Ten or so minutes passed by before Eli finally moved.
"Goodbye, Gabriel."
"Goodbye, Eli."
Gabriel walked through the streets of DC in a daze. The pain of his illness was becoming unbearable, but the contract compelled him forward. He hadn't slept the night before, despite several hours in a post-conscious haze of illness and dread.
Eli's shotgun held tightly in his hands, he escorted Badaboom through the ruined city. He trudged through this desolate world, aware of everything but noticing none of it.
Before he knew it, they had arrived. The skeletal remains of an animal on one side of the room, a large stuffed one on the other side. And there in the middle, with a large skull over the top, was the entrance to his new home.
Badaboom double-checked his gas mask, making sure it was fastened tightly before opening the large doors. "Keep the freaks away from me, would ya?" he said over his shoulder. Gabriel shivered with fear and illness as the hall's dim light swept over him.
Monsters stared back at them, numerous and fever-bright. Gabriel kept closely in Badaboom's wake, thoughts only on protecting him, even now. The ghouls gradually lost interest as they passed. Some shook their heads in grim recognition of the younger man's condition.
The creases of his face were now red with wear and tear as his mask of normalcy gradually peeled away. His eyes were bloodshot, possibly from radiation poisoning but probably from sleepless nights staring at nothing. Numb terror kept his thoughts torpid and brief, a zombie in an increasingly poetic sense of the word.
Badaboom's eyes darted around, watching for sudden movements as he announced, "Alright, which one of you shufflers wants to buy a ghoul? Believe me, it's a steal — I just want him outta my hands." Usually, Gabriel clarified that the contract was the thing being passed around, not he himself, but he was now faced with the reality of what he preferred to ignore — if Badaboom could do this to him, the distinction was meaningless.
A ghoul in a utility jumpsuit walked out of a backroom, alerted by confused passerby. "Hey, raider," he snapped as he approached. "We don't keep slaves here."
"Well then, you're missing out. Gabriel worked great until his flesh started rotting off," pitched Badaboom. "If it helps, you can think of him as an employee — that's what he calls himself, anyway."
Another ghoul, who also seemed to have authority in this strange town, spoke to Gabriel, not wasting his time on Badaboom. "Hey, buddy. You seem a lot stronger than this bonehead. What's keeping you around?"
Gabriel blinked, processing the request but unable to summon the words to answer it. He swallowed thickly, with a small grunt of exertion.
The first ghoul breathed heavily through his teeth. "This guy's deep in it, Quinn. He needs the Doc."
"We've gotta take him in," Quinn agreed.
Badaboom butted in, making no effort to hide his snide expression. "Gabriel works mano-ey-mano only. If there's no one willing to cough up the caps, I'll find somewhere else that needs a hired gun." He spat at the floor, forgetting that a mask blocked his face.
The ghoul in charge squinted briefly, and some dim part of Gabriel's consciousness recognized and appreciated his integrity. "Look, smoothskin, we want him here, but if it has to be that way, you'll have to ask one of the shop owners at the top of the stairs." He winced minutely. "You'll wanna check the door on the right first."
"Whatever you say, freakshow," Badaboom muttered, and took the stairs to the left.
"Badaboom," Gabriel managed weakly as he struggled up each step. "Take me to Meg. Please take me home."
Badaboom stopped a few steps above him, and turned back. His jaw was set for a moment, eyes shifting in discomfort. Then he steeled. "And have her order me dead as soon as it's signed over? No way. I'm no charity." He exhaled unhappily. "She doesn't want you anyway, Red. Look at you. If she didn't come looking when you were hot stuff, she won't take you back now."
Nausea hit, and Gabriel clutched the railing with a low whimper. Meg.
They entered the door on the left side of the landing, a dingy bar full of sulking patrons. The bartender's eyes lit up when he saw them, and he watched as they floated over.
"I'm having a premonition," the bartender mused, "that something interesting is about to happen. Am I correct?"
Badaboom grinned. "I'm told you'd be willing to pay for an extra hand."
The ghoul shook his head, tongue clicking. "I run a very tight ship here. I don't need any disruptions in my business model — trust, that's what I value, unconditional loyalty. A quality I can only find in myself, you see."
"Well, you're in luck!" chimed Badaboom. He began his pitch as Gabriel breathed laboriously on a barstool. He never sat down in public without being ordered to do so, but propriety was a dim shadow now. He was exhausted.
The bartender was looking at him, and something in the ghoul's gaze brought him back to reality. "Now that is interesting," he remarked to Badaboom. An arthritic finger pointed up, chiding. "But I won't waste money on a curiosity. A 100-cap asking price would be acceptable for a healthy employee, but that's not what we're looking at here."
Badaboom wrinkled his nose. "You're only saying that 'cuz you haven't seen what a fighter he is. Charged through a raider base yesterday with barely a scratch. He's worth all that and more."
"But, my friend, risk must be factored in." The ghoul sucked in a ragged breath. "A high risk must be matched with a high reward. He could so easily die, or go feral — and that would be quite the sunk cost for my business, you see. One in three possibilities are of any use to me — I'll give you a third the price." He nodded with finality.
"What the — thirty caps? For a whole guy?"
"If that's what you call 'whole,'" the bartender smiled, catlike. "Show me this contract."
The ghoul read the document fastidiously, taking much longer than was necessary. Badaboom ordered a drink to pass the time, and Gabriel sat against a wall trying not to expel what little he'd eaten today. Somehow he had ended up on the floor, but he couldn't remember getting there.
"Ooh." A soft laugh. "My old joints don't much like this floor."
Gabriel looked at the source of the voice, sitting a few feet away against the same wall. She was a ghoul, possibly the oldest Gabriel had ever seen. Her eyes were dark and sunken, her hair was a thin, colorless patch, and her voice cut like a rusty switchblade. And yet, she smiled pleasantly, a faded but clean summer dress stretching over her crossed legs.
"I'd bring you some food, dear, but I don't think you're feeling quite up to it," she crooned, aware of his turmoil. "The offer stands once you start feeling better. I'm Carol, you see. I run Carol's Place, across the way."
Gabriel sucked in a breath and felt marginally stronger. "I am... Gabriel. I will be employed here, if I am to recover." He looked back to the bar, where the proprietor was still perusing the one-page document, while Badaboom helped himself to another drink. He fitted the gas mask firmly back onto his face between every shot, confident of its protection from his plagued transaction partner.
"Of course you'll recover," Carol promised gently. "And we'll be eager to have you in our community once you do. We can't have children, you know, so new faces always do the town good." Her voice was so genuine, despite its raspiness, that Gabriel felt soothed. Underworld was creepy and poorly-ventilated, but it had a humble familiarity that Gabriel respected.
The bartender, however, didn't fit the scheme. "Who is he?" Gabriel asked.
"Ahzrukhal? Well, he's very polite to me and Greta, even though our businesses may compete sometimes. Not that there's much use for caps down here." She trailed off a bit, trying to think of something else to say about him. "Quite a good businessman. Um, but maybe I should let you come to your own conclusions. It's rude to gossip, you know."
Gabriel took this to mean that the ghoul had very little good to be said about him. Well, neither had most of his employers. He had bigger problems.
"I think that about does it," Ahzrukhal said from the bar. Gabriel stood cautiously, unsteadily, to see that the contract was being signed.
"Well, I'll leave you to it," Carol smiled, bashful that she had been noticed. "Come find me if you need anything, dear." She left fairly quickly, and with her absence, the dull weight settled back into Gabriel's stomach.
Between the haggling and the drinking, Badaboom had somehow managed to lose money in this transaction. He signed quickly and shoved the contract roughly across the bar. With a little salute to his former employee, he left, holding the gas mask tightly to his face.
Thus abandoned, Gabriel turned to the bartender, whose expression was hungry enough to make him freeze.
"So, I've got myself a new bouncer, eh? Well. Welcome to the Ninth Circle, er... now, what should I call you?"
"My name is Gabriel."
Ahzrukhal laughed, a grotesque noise. His small eyes refocused on his new acquisition, narrowing in satisfaction. "There are no angels in Hell, my son."
Sage was ready to run off to New York at Meg's word, but Veronica assured her she didn't want to waste her sanity on a random guess. New York was about as demolished as one might expect from a massive pre-war metropolis, not even considering the traumatic nuclear incidents from before the Great War.
They asked around the city some more. This time, the name Badaboom brought vague recognition, but no concrete information. Eventually, someone pointed them to the mayor, one Terrence G. G. Rodney.
The mayor welcomed them warmly to his office and home, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He had no police force or even hired guns, but most of the town seemed to recognize his authority.
Foot tapping nobly, the mayor nodded along to Sage's description of their quest. "Well, you came to the right place. Unfortunately, I've met the guy you're looking for. White guy, kinda short, big old helmet with a spike sticking out of it. You'll know him when you see him, for sure."
"How's a raider gotten this much name recognition?" Boone asked.
Rodney waved a hand back and forth thoughtfully, as if it were doing the talking for him. "My mistake, really. Man's a troublemaker, but he seemed harmless for a raider. His gang's mostly interested in scavving and gambling; they don't go after civilians."
"Sounds like a real stand-up guy," said Veronica.
"More like he knows what's good for 'im!" Rodney proclaimed. "We kept them around, thought they might make decent security if we played our cards right. But Badaboom always has the best hand."
"What do you mean?" Sage asked.
"He ditched town after making enemies of a mercenary band. Took a piece of my Liberty Bell with him! Nasty lowlife."
"Meg, I assume."
"No, it's the Liberty Bell, one of the most — oh, you mean the merc. Yeah, I think it was Meg-something, some loudmouthed blonde with a cape. Haven't seen her around since her run-in with Badaboom. You know her?"
"We've met," Sage said. "Tell me about their run-in."
"Well, she had her husband with her, and somehow Badaboom managed to gamble her out of everything to her name — including him. Real shame, but she agreed to the bet. Nothing I could do."
"Didn't that sound anything like slavery to you?"
"Oh, of course. But I'm a lawman, not a doctor, and I didn't see a collar on the guy. You can't break a chain if it's imaginary." Rodney nodded gravely at his own words.
Boone and Veronica shared a stoic glance at that. They had thoughts — a multitude of thoughts — about this mission, but Arcade usually did the talking when Sage's leadership caused contention, and he was back in the bird. She knew that her companions didn't share her trust in Joshua, or her familiarity with the bizarre things humans could do to each other. After everything Gabriel had been through, she hoped she could find him a happy ending.
"Where is Badaboom now?" she pressed. "I heard he'd been in the Capital Wasteland."
"Been and gone," said Rodney. "It used to be raider central until the place got a little law and order. Now the only gang left is the Tunnel Snakes, and they're more like vigilantes anyway."
"So, assuming he didn't die, where is he now?"
"You'll probably find him in Baltimore now. That's where a lot of DC's dregs ended up."
"Excellent. Thank you for your time," Sage smiled.
"Darn," said Veronica. "I'd hoped we were going to Washington."
It took some searching, a couple bribes, and a couple more bullets to find Badaboom's lair. As the Brotherhood had made its presence known on the East Coast, everyone who didn't fit with the program fled here, creating a rat's nest that the Brotherhood hadn't cared to fight through. They'd built a steady economy based on mutual robbery, arson, and bullying. The Courier felt bad for the people who'd lived here before it all, but at this point they were either gone or indistinguishable from the newcomers.
They entered the factory through the offices, assuming the gang's leader would be holed up somewhere in there. It had been owned by Fancy Freddie's Formal Attire before the war, and the raiders had left up the posters of blushing ladies in ballroom dresses as they'd made themselves at home.
It was 10:30 in the morning, so most of the gang was sleeping off last night's substance abuse. Sage expected patrols to be scarce at this hour, but, not for the first time, she was proven wrong.
"Radar's showing motion in the halls. Lots of them. Friendlies."
"For now," Boone growled. "Even if they don't attack on sight, patrols exist for a reason."
"Confidence is key," Sage muttered, then rounded the corner briskly, ignoring how her friend grit his teeth.
She stopped short, cocking her head in wonder. The others followed curiously to discover Badaboom's "patrols": Five mole rats, bedecked in top hats and bow ties from the factory's warehouse, hissing and clawing at each other in the corridor.
"Well, that's... one way to get around unionizing," Arcade remarked. "Good thing Rex isn't here."
"Are they supposed to be attacking us?" Veronica asked, reaching out to one of the guards sniffing curiously at her leg.
"Looks like whoever set up this little security system and I have something in common," said Sage. "Let's go find the boss."
The boss, as it turned out, didn't want the solitude of an office headquarters. His throne — an ancient recliner discolored to the same gray as its duct tape patchwork — was laid out directly in the center of the factory floor, surrounded by sleepy raiders, discarded food, and more dapper mole rats. Badaboom, unmistakable in his pickelhaube, seemed to be one of the few raiders awake. He was deep in conversation with a green-haired woman on a pile of deflated beanbag chairs to his right.
Upon seeing them, he stood up regally (as regally as possible from a recliner) and stepped to the ground, bathrobe flowing around his ankles.
"You shmucks walked into the wrong hideout!" he announced, simultaneously rousing all the other raiders from sleep. "Breakfast, my children!"
The mole rats snapped alert and looked around at the mention of breakfast, but none of them launched toward Sage's posse. Badaboom was still laughing hysterically when Sage interrupted.
"Can we talk now, or is there more?"
"Go!" Badaboom encouraged them. "Go, babies! Get 'em! Have at!" His eyes bulged.
"Boss," said a middle-aged man sitting on a bedroll. "I don't think they feel like going."
Badaboom stared at his hands in horror. Watched by the rest of the raiders, he marched up to a nearby molerat and nudged it with a foot. "Attack! Defenestrate! Mush, boy!"
The woman touched his arm, other hand planted on her hip. "Babe."
The mole rat, sick of being prodded, planted itself on Badaboom's bare feet and snuggled up to him, grumbling happily. The raider stared blankly at it. "Et tu, Todd?"
The woman joined the mole rat in cuddling the man, an arm around him and the shaved half of her head on his shoulder. She looked healthier than most raiders, either a new addition or one not inclined to substance abuse. Badaboom himself was strangely clear-skinned for a longtime gang boss, as well.
"What devilry is this?" he asked dejectedly. "I'm ruined, Frag. Ruined."
"Look what you did," Frag accused Sage. "And now you've psyched out our army. I hope you have a good reason."
"Look," said Arcade, "before we answer that, we're gonna need some confirmation that the sheer insanity is over."
Frag studied her stricken companion as if evaluating the state of the insanity. "Yeah," she decided. "It's over."
"Greeeeat," Sage drawled, taking in the state of the room. Most of the raiders seemed to be in business as usual, either going back to sleep, eating, or lighting up for the day. The older man from before leaned against Badaboom's recliner, mirroring Boone standing guard in the factory doorway. Mole rats pawed at the ground and gnawed at trash, leaving waste all over. "Right. Uh, we're looking for a guy named Gabriel."
Theatrics thrown aside, Frag and Badaboom made sudden eye contact. Apparently coming to a conclusion telepathically, Badaboom frowned. "Yeah, we know him. He roughed up my girl all those years ago, look." Without her permission, he turned Frag's head to the bald side, showcasing the pearly-white scar tissue, apparently from an altercation. "Well, once she got better, she came to me looking for her lost grenades. I didn't have them..." he trailed off.
"But I found something better," Frag finished for him. They held hands and kissed noisily.
"Gabriel wouldn't have happened to steal her grenades on your orders, would he?" Veronica wondered innocently.
"Yeah, so?"
"Anyway," said Sage. "I'm guessing he's not here anymore."
"You got it in one," Frag droned.
"Yeaaah..." Badaboom muttered thoughtfully. "He got hit with rad poisoning, hm... 'bout ten years ago, I guess. Yeah, he's gone."
Sage went cold. "Gone?"
"Like I said, gone. Coughed up his stomach. Sad thing."
She hesitated. "...Dead?"
Frag nodded in agreement. "Dead."
Things usually went right for Sage. The situation got dire plenty often, but her wit, her friends, her resources always carried them through. And this had been so important that she hadn't even prepared for defeat, beyond paying lip service to its possibility. She'd been thinking about how to explain everything to Gabriel, how to wrestle control from his employer without anyone getting hurt. The numb feeling of wrongness she'd felt at the beginning of the quest drifted back in, fogging her brain.
"He... okay." She sucked in a breath. "Um. We have to go." She turned and went for the door. "Thanks. For your time." Her companions followed, their steps echoing on the factory floor. Dead dead, dead dead.
"Sorry, Sage," Veronica muttered as they left the way they had come. Mole rats blinked myopically at them from under desks.
"Hey, I should be sorry," Sage said quietly. "I dragged you guys all the way out here. At least Joshua will get some closure, I guess, but I wasted your time."
"I'm not gonna complain about paid vacation time."
"Ha, right," Sage agreed slowly. "Paid."
"Come on."
"Know how much it costs just to feed you people?"
Veronica chuckled with the others, and Sage relaxed a little. The inescapable tension between boss and employee was unwelcome among them, as with any personal relationship involving money. Sage knew full well her friends deserved more than she paid them, but her treasury was also running a city — and the surrounding area, for that matter. They did alright for themselves regardless, between other sources of income and the loot they accumulated on adventures. Still, it wasn't a conversation Sage liked to have.
Veronica pressed her advantage. "Well, can we at least visit DC while we're out here? I've never been to Brotherhood-controlled territory. And I hear really good th-"
"We are not going to DC," Arcade stressed. Sage was ready to laugh again, but his sidelong eye contact was anything but flippant.
"Come on, Arcade, I've always wanted to check it out... for about five years, anyway. They've got trees!" Veronica chirped. "Call it a pilgrimage."
"Very funny. We're not going to DC."
Sage had little time to be concerned about the loss of Arcade's good humor when their path was blocked by the middle-aged raider from before. He boozed calmly as he approached them, not yet drunk but hitting the bottle with a very practiced air. He had a five o'clock shadow and his clothes hadn't been changed recently, but he appraised the group wisely and spoke with clarity.
"Heya, guys. Eli."
"Heya, Eli. Sage." She glanced quickly behind her. "Boone-Veronica-Arcade."
"Good to know. Anyway, you should hear something before you go."
"Shoot."
Eli huffed through his nose. "Either Badaboom has been lying to me for no reason, or he lied to you for no reason, and I'm having an easier time believing the second one. Guess he and Frag don't trust you much."
"Wait. What are you saying?"
"Gabriel did get sick, but as far as we know he's still alive. Boss sold his contract when he started going ghoul."
Sage rocked back on her heels, blown away. "What a day."
"Can I ask what you want with him?" Eli requested, suddenly meek. "It's only, he didn't look so good. Can't imagine he looks much better now. You'll have to get Badaboom to tell you what lowlife he pawned him off to. Just, if you can, get him someplace safe. He's a good guy."
"That's exactly what we're here to do," Sage assured him, voice low. "How do I bribe the boss?"
"Well," Eli considered, "he doesn't do chems, has no appreciation for a good weapon, and I wouldn't waste your caps on 'im either."
"Why do you follow this guy, again?" Veronica wondered mildly.
"Habit, I guess. It's the only gang around that doesn't go after women and children or whatever. Anyway, what Badaboom really wants is something interesting. Like that stupid hat."
"Interesting, huh?" said Sage. "I think I can do that."
"Oh, and if he offers to gamble for it, turn him down. Trust me, that's not a game you'll win."
Sage smiled. "I know just the thing."
The man in the pickelhaube flipped through his shiny new deck of cards, running his finger along the crisp edges and smiling at the handsome Lucky 38 logo on the backs. He'd been pleased to tell all once Sage had made the offer, and he'd launched into exposition to make it a fair trade.
"So we get to the ghoul city and it's full of ghouls — no surprise, I guess. And the guy I find is... heck, his name was like forty syllables long, but I find a guy willing to take the contract. Real sleaze. We have a drink or two and work it out — he was a barkeep, you see. So if Gabriel's alive — Big 'if'; he was lookin' bad at this point — he'll be there. Or somewhere else."
"I'm gonna guess somewhere else," Sage muttered. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Boom." She turned awkwardly to Frag. "Mrs. Boom."
"You find him, you tell him I said hi."
"Sure..." Sage said, eager to get out of here already. "Move out, troops."
Boone huffed with mirthless laughter. "Guess we're going to DC."
AN: I wonder if Todd Howard went ten years back in time to canonically murder my OC because I named the mole rat after him.
2262-
Protective Custody
2263-2265 -
2266-
January - Distance, No More
October - Power and Beauty
2267-
2268-
Ensnared
The Way Forward begins
2269-
2270-
The Way Forward ends
I Can't Help Falling in Love With You begins
2271-2273 -
2274 -
I Can't Help Falling in Love With You ends
Tik Tik Boom begins
2275-
Tik Tik Boom ends
2276-
2277-
January - Sage destroys the Divide
February - First Battle of Hoover Dam
July - The Mummy Returns
August 17 - Aniss leaves Vault 101
The Prodigal Son
September - To Set the Record Straight
November - The Burned Man Walks
2278-
April - James dies (Purity War begins)
June - Guide Her Through the Night
Bitter Springs
September - Project Purity activates
November - Human Capital
2279-
Adams Air Force Base (Purity War ends)
2280-
May - Dogmeat's Vacation
August - Boones are married
2281-
New Canaan is destroyed
October 11 - Sage is shot in the head
October 19 - Sage wakes up
2282-
ED-E, My Bud
2283-
January - Second Battle of Hoover Dam
February - To Have and To Hold
April - Awake, O Sleeper
May - Worst-Case Scenario
July - Mercury's Messenger
August - Safe Haven
September - Power and Beauty (pt. 2)/East and West begins
October - East and West ends
