When Nora and Piper made it a little ways into the station, they got some good news. Two men — well, two ghouls — were discussing how a 'detective' had been taken alive, on the orders of their boss, Malone. "Cool, it's some old timey mafia honor code shit," Nora whispered to Piper, who made a frantic shushing gesture. The mobsters didn't seem too pleased with this state of affairs, wanting to have just killed the detective and be done with it. Nora stood up and bellowed, "THAT'S NOT MAFIA HONOR CODE, YOU SACKS OF SHIT!" She holstered her pistol and drew out a double barreled shotgun in one quick move, rushing forward and sending the ghouls to hell for daring to betray mafia honor code.
"Jesus, Blue, I thought we were going for subtlety!" Piper said through gritted teeth, as she leaned out from behind cover and took pot shots at the nearest ghoul.
"SUBTLETY IS NOTHING IN THE FACE OF MAFIA HONOR CODE VIOLATIONS!" Nora zigged and zagged around the gunfire, aided by the mobsters being unnerved by the crazy screaming woman, and the next barrel she unloaded made one of their heads explode. Nora flung herself behind a garbage can to get a moment to reload.
After another thirty seconds, the fight was over, and apart from a few scrapes and bruises sustained from diving to the ground, Nora was unharmed, as was Piper. Nora wasted no time in going through the pockets of the dead ones, lifting a handful of caps here, some spare ammunition there, and the occasional lunch which would go uneaten by its owner otherwise. "Ooh, a mafia hat!" Nora said, beaming, as she plucked a battered fedora off the head of one of the non-ghouls. She perched it on top of her own head and turned to Piper. "What do you think?"
"Not bad, Blue," Piper said, poking through some of the containers, looking for anything of interest. She turned back to look through a locker, then let out an abrupt indignant squawk as her own hat was suddenly lifted off her head. "Blue, what—"
She turned around just in time for Nora to plop a fedora down upon her own head. Nora stepped back a few paces and smiled. "Piper, you look really fucking good in that hat."
Piper's complaint died on her lips. "Uh, you think so?" she asked, brushing a few strands of hair back to behind her ear. She bit her lip to stop herself from smiling — didn't want Nora to think she could be THAT easily manipulated. "Uh, just let me know if you want me to try something on again, okay?"
"Hmm," Nora said, putting a finger on her cheek and a mischievous smile running free on her face. "I will definitely keep that in mind." Piper gulped and felt her internal temperature rising.
The two women had one more scare before advancing farther into the subway. Nora was poking around in the bathrooms, eliciting a wry remark from Piper: "You need something to wipe with, Blue?"
Nora waved her off. "Just looking for goodies. And doing a bit of snooping." She looked around the stall, then looked over her shoulder at Piper. "I do have to admit, one of the more fun aspects of the bombs dropping is rooting around in my neighbors' houses, other people's houses, places of business…" She moved to the next stall and opened it. "Sometimes I find good shit. Sometimes I find a teddybear in an amusing pose." She swept a hand at the stall. "And sometimes I find jack shit." Piper followed her to the next bathroom. "You know —" Nora began opening the next stall, and she felt just a hint of stiffness, followed immediately by a loud snap and the door giving way. "DOWN!" She shoved Piper into the far wall and crushed her with her body. A scant two seconds later, the crump of several explosions almost overlapping with one another shook the bathroom, and Nora hissed as she felt the bite of miniature shrapnel fragments pierce her back and legs.
Piper blinked slowly a few times until the ringing subsided from her ears. "…Holy shit, Blue, how did you know that was a trap?"
"I dunno," Nora grunted, rolling off Piper. "I think a piece of toilet stall is wedged directly up my asshole." She gingerly stood up. "A bunch of spy movies and war movies, I guess. There's a little snapping sound as the hero triggers a booby trap, and then it blows up and he miraculously escapes — typical Hollywood shit, you know?" Piper didn't know, had never seen a movie in her life, but didn't want to interrupt. "I never saw any of those movie stars have to deal with getting pelted with shrapnel in their ass, though. Hey, can you look at my ass?"
Piper took a moment to compose a response to that, then discarded the various things that came to mind and just hunkered down to look. "Well, looks like your legs have been scraped up some, but I think your butt looks fine." She went pale as she realized what she said.
Nora turned and looked down at Piper. "Well, I was gonna ask for a stimpak, but I think I feel a hell of a lot better already without one." She gave Piper an enigmatic smile.
After some cleaning of her new wounds and a shot of Med-X, and a little cursory examination of the parts of the restroom that hadn't been bombed, they ventured farther into the subway. Going down the stairs, they managed to skirt another booby trap, and after that found themselves in an area where the subway tracks lay. The entire space was covered in various amounts of debris and, of course, more mafia goons. Nora charged in, both barrels of her shotgun blazing, while Piper continued to plunk away with her pistol. After they'd all been killed, Piper looked at the corpses strewn about as Nora again pillaged everything remotely valuable in sight. "How are we doing this?" Piper asked aloud.
"Well, I think we do it by pointing guns at the bad guys, and then filling them with so much lead that they get mistaken for a toy manufactured in China," Nora said. "Not that you'd get that joke, but trust me, it's hilarious."
Piper shook her head. "No, I mean… how are we surviving this? I've been in a few shootouts before, but never with odds as lopsided as we're facing. We shouldn't be able to effortlessly face down a dozen mobsters with hardly a scratch for our troubles."
"Well, it's simple, really," Nora said, dismissive. "We're the good guys, and they're the bad guys. Besides, they've violated mafia honor code, so they're doubly cursed by God, or whatever these idiots believe in." She kicked one of the dead in his face. "Haha, idiot, you're in Double Hell now!"
Piper just rolled her eyes and kept an eye out for more mobsters while Nora methodically went through the area for goods. In one back hall, Nora found a safe. "Hey, I can take a crack at that for you, if you like," Piper offered.
"Thanks, but I got this," Nora said. She pulled a hairpin from her hair, pulled out a knife for lock-picking assistance, and proceeded to jimmy around the hairpin and the knife until there was a click from within the safe's door and it swung open. "Voila," Nora said, bowing her head.
"Hey, that was pretty good, Blue," Piper complimented.
Nora smirked at Piper. "I should demonstrate to you what else I can do with my fingers someday," she purred.
"Oh gosh," Piper muttered, stepping out of the hall and taking a few deep breaths.
They proceeded down the only subway tunnel that wasn't blocked off from decades-old cave-ins, stopping when they saw more mobsters milling about rusty old construction equipment. "Okay, Blue, how do you wanna handle this?" Piper asked, voice low. "Do you wanna try to sneak around, or charge in screaming about mafia honor code again?"
Nora gave it some serious thought. "Okay, let's try sneaking. They'll never expect us to use it."
"Yeah, that's kind of the point," Piper pointed out. They hugged the far wall as they slunk forward, keeping to the shadows. Finally, they were close enough to the mobsters that they wouldn't be able to get closer without risking being seen. Piper turned to Nora to see if she had a plan, but saw that she was already whipping out her shotgun and preparing to dart forward. "Oh fuck it," Piper whispered, before joining Nora in leaping out from the shadows.
"MAFIA HONOR CODE!" Nora bellowed, ending two lives before they had a chance to react.
"MAFIA HONOR CODE!" Piper echoed, firing wildly into the surprised mobsters. Within moments, they, too, had fallen.
Nora once again commenced with rummaging around among the dead, but stopped short. "Oh shit, Piper, this is fucking cool!" she called out.
"What?" Piper asked, having pocketed a few choice items from dead mobsters herself.
"Motherfucking cement!" Nora triumphantly held the bag over her head. "There's a shitload of it!"
"Cement?" Piper said, skeptical.
"Yeah, it's really good for construction shit!" She opened her backpack and started shoving the bags in. "Oh lord, this shit is gonna get really heavy, though," she grumbled.
"Blue…" Piper said warningly.
Nora gave Piper puppy-dog eyes. "Please, Piper? Please help me carry around a fuckton of cement?"
Piper sighed. "Blue, you better use some of this cement to build a fuckin' statue in memorial to my spine," she said, hefting up some of the bags and packing them away in her own belongings.
Nora shouldered her backpack and stood up with a mighty grunt. "Okay," she said, trying to resist the urge to huff and puff. "I think I can still move… barely."
"That makes one of us," Piper groaned. "We're gonna have to drop these things every time we get into a fight," she pointed out.
"And then pick them back up afterward," Nora said mournfully. "Well, one small bit of luck, at least." She gestured a little ways away. Mostly obscured in the shadows was the door to a vault. "One fourteen," Nora read aloud. "Let's go see what kind of fucked up science experiment this one had, shall we?" They struggled up the stairs to the control panel, which Nora connected to via her Pip Boy and started the process to open the door.
XXXXXXXXXX
Never violate Mafia honor code. (Also, never join the Mafia, but if you ignore this piece of advice, don't ignore the first one).
Lots of flirting, haha, including one of Piper's favorite, lockpicking.
Cement is great, especially for building water towers. Have I talked about those before? They're exclusive to the VR Workshops Creative Content, haha, but they're pretty good to have around as a poor man's water purifier — if memory serves, the bigger of the two water towers can put out about half as much water as the best water purifier, with a modest investment of some steel and concrete, and level 1 of Local Leader. I tried out a mod that changes all possible settlements to be pre-cleared of clutter, and it was… poorly balanced is the best way I can put it, since I was able to ring Sanctuary with something like 20 water towers, and I know for a fact there wasn't enough cement in all of Sanctuary for that many. One, MAYBE two. It was OP as F.