Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

Her hand rockets into and out of her jacket as her arms uncross, shooting Dog Hat's bestie in the fucking face. Her blue eyes are spark fire as she hits, Lil Devil sending a satisfying recoil thudding through her hand and wrist.

Asshole.

The redhead is uncharacteristically quiet despite the action and violence starting up, despite being dead center of a town surrounded in death and suffering. No one liners or curses, no barbs and jibes, nothing-Kara's manic smile doesn't even reappear, and that sort of seriousness was somehow -lethal-.

She gives Moray's shoulder a backhanded tap and then double times it towards the Plaza when he orders it, gun shots ringing in her ears. He's the expert here, after all-she tended to avoid giant firefights at all costs.

This one was worth it though.

She feels dozens of eyes on her and the Legionnaires that she finds there, and for all her earlier displays of empty headed flippancy, she's now twenty times more vicious in reflection-turning on her heel to drop the closest man to her without blinking, eyes narrowed and her lips pursed together. And then another, this one in the kneecap before a second bullet ruins his face.

She didn't always make the best marksman, but being this angry helps her -focus-, and that focus improves her aim.

And. Fuck. These. Bastards.

They'd kill them all and then they'd cut these people down, and at least THIS group of sociopaths wouldn't be able to hurt anyone ever again. This was the free Mojave, no one should have to put up with this shit.
 
The first Legionary is short and dark-skinned, teeth bared beneath the eagle's helm bobbing from a loose mount and getting into his line of sight; chestplate still reflective. Brand new soldier. He thrusts his gladius up at Moray's chest, weight too far forward on his front leg, lunging so that when the other man slips past he doesn't even have time to turn - he stumbles past, and when Moray's foot hooks his ankle, he falls on his face.

The second Legionary, stepping to the side to flank for his fellow soldier, hesitates for a split second as his enemy slides right past for him, and then it's too late: Moray's knife hisses from its sheathe, taps the brandished machete blade aside, shears eight inches of meat from the arm holding it in a curving cut, and then flicks through the man's throat. He chokes on the blood, and then Moray reverses momentum and slams the blade through the back of the dying Legionary's neck and hauls him forward, slinging him atop the first one that had fallen and stripping the machete mid-pass.

The machete spins in his fingers, blade laid along Jonah's forearm, and he jams it with immaculate grace into the power fist of the next Legionary to approach, through the hand bearing it. It fires as the man howls in pain, shattering the blade and irrepairably damaging the mechanism. Metal sprays, slicing grooves in his armor but not penetrating. The Legionary, on the other hand, loses his arm and has both of his legs flayed into meat by the flying shrapnel. The horrendous noise of metal shrieking as it shatters causes the next two, operating as a pair, to flinch and start. Maybe five feet away. Past them is another half dozen.

Too many. Retreat and draw out.

The hand he'd used to wield the machete drops and draws his pistol in a heartbeat, and he unloads six shots in half as many seconds, clean headshots with jaw-dropping accuracy as he shuffles backwards, knife-hand bracing the pistol against the recoil. He passes by the groaning pile of Legionary he'd left behind earlier - pauses, to put a round in the face of the first, fresh-faced Legionary he'd almost ignored earlier.

Moray manages to get off two more shots, shuffling backwards towards the plaza and Kara's covering fire, before he hears something explode off the ground behind him and the impact of something slamming into the armor and sliding through. His lower back goes numb as cold slices through, and he instinctively spikes an elbow back, but it catches on an upraised forearm and its metal guard.

Vulpes's black lenses have shattered, and his eyes peer out through their ruin. They're blue and even, perfectly unexcited. His smile is mild and cool, even now. There's a wicked, wide dagger in the arm that's still working. The other hangs loose, bleeding profusely.

Vulpes's forearm tenses, draws the dagger back and goes for another stab, but Moray's knife sweeps around and locks blades. Moray shuffles a half-step, tries to knee out the other man's leg and buckle it - Vulpes pops his hips around and throws Moray forward instead, leaps forward for Moray's back -

Moray's feet scissor on the group, sweeping Vulpes's feet, he starts to fall -

The Legion man twists mid-fall and slams the knife into Moray's thigh, grating off the femur -

Moray's other foot shoots past at the same time, and clocks Vulpes in the face with epic momentum, something audibly cracking as the steel toe connects -

Vulpes staggers backward, dazed, and Moray's pistol comes around to aim -

Vulpes throws himself onto Moray bodily to foul the shot, and instead takes the other man's knife in his ribs full-length. The dagger rises - and Moray's legs snap up and lock on the forearm wielding it, torquing it down and aside in a lock.

The two men are bleeding heavily, wrestling on the ground, but the Legionaries have recovered and are charging, barely seconds away from deciding the match for their master.
 
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Kara keeps her feet planted for another round of cover fire, working to keep the fucks off Moray-not that he exactly needs the help, he’s in death whirlwind mode. She’s not always hitting much, but the threat of it, the bullets striking sand-it keeps them from charging until he’s ready for ‘em.

Something scrapes stone and Kara catches movement to her right-and somebody on a cross croaks out a “Look out!”-and then she’s ducking a javelin, lips drawing back over her teeth for a brief snarl. Where the hell had they even-?! Whatever, doesn’t matter. Kara brings Lil Devil down on the clip she’s just pulled out of her jacket, backing up and firing off two shots at the advancing quartet’s legs. They were coming up a low rise with their shields up-one bullet striking sand and the other ricocheting off the shiny metal and in the direction of the flames. They’re coming fast, and she doesn’t have the aim to let them get that close, not with the shields and armor preventing easier torso shots.

Her eyes flit to Jonah and-Dog Hat! Dog Hat’s a fucking zombie! Shit, shit, shit- Kara swings her pistol in their direction but they’re moving so fast, knives and kicks and- she doesn’t trust the bullets to hit Vulpes and not Jonah. She lifts the gun higher and several degrees to the right-and fires at the other circling wolves.

“Profligate.” One of her closer problems snarl, sword ready behind that shield, starting to half circle her along with his carbon copy asshole brothers. Kara swings the gun back and lands a shot through the offender’s eye, but her next one glances off another man’s helmet. There’s two more on the way, and she needs to reload. “No place here.” Another growls, utterly unphased by the death of the other guy.

Kara risks a darting, worried glance back to Vulpes and Moray. Her heart hammers, but she has to pay some kind of attention to the group trying to close in on her, or she’s not going to be any good to anybody. The worry melts some of the anger as her vividly colored blue eyes cut back, and like a switch being flipped, Kara is all maliciously entertained once more, that manic, aggressive grin returning with a near audible clack of her teeth. Her right hand reaches inside her jacket again, a half step back. “Thing about that, boys-.” Her hand withdraws from her jacket and she strikes a fuse against her full pantleg.

“Is that without ME, it’s gonna be a real SAUSAGE FEST!” The men pause, eyes locked on the crazy woman holding rapidly burning down explosives- and then Kara tosses what looked for all the world like a stick of dynamite. They reeled back, eyes on the explosive-and that’s when Kara turned and twisted her stealth boy on.

The ‘dynamite’ proved to be a sparkler shoved into a painted piece of wood. A children’s toy. One of them looks up, snarl apparent-and charges forward with the others, dead set on killing the trickster.

“THERE!”

Aw hell, she was kicking sand up, moving too fast. Shit, shit, shit-she’s got to circle around, get back to Jonah pronto-this had been a terrible idea. She always has terrible ideas, fuck.

Kara darts down a side alley and into the first door she sees, thankfully unlocked. Away from the crucified, she can finally use real explosives-and then something growls in the room behind her. Kara pauses, hand still tight around the grenade she had almost pulled. She slowly turns her head-and is faced with eight Legion mongrels, all about the size of Hrolf. And growling, which is a lot better than she ought to have expected. Kara turns her stealth boy off, wide eyed and her hands lifting halfway up-but oddly not afraid. Actually, Kara looks a bit like Christmas.

“...sooo many puppies…” The dogs close their mouths and sniff at the air a moment, seemingly puzzled-and then the door burst open.

~*~

Men screamed somewhere just off the plaza, not quite the loosened wail of the terrified but the reserved, reluctant cry of the defeated dead. There was a howl-and then a chorus more of them, and then no less than nine dogs came tearing over the small rise Kara had retreated over. The red head herself was racing right along and somewhat behind the pack-with Hrolf.

“Get ‘em, puppies!”
 
Vulpes is stretched full-length across Moray's body, arm stretched out and locked by his legs, while the other, useless one is trying to fend off Moray's own knife. His elbow cracks against Moray's fingers, but with his gloves on it barely bothers him. Instead, the mercenary twists the knife until it locks between two ribs (Vulpes spasms in pain, this beyond even his endurance), rears back, and then punches the base of the knife's hilt with all the leverage he can muster. Vulpes' ribcage shatters under the assault and the knife drives a full six inches deep into his chest. Air whistles - a lung puncture.

Vulpes looks over at Moray with rapidly-fogging eyes, managing to smile through blood-soaked lips. "Redde Caesari quae sunt Caesaris, he croaks, wheezing through the vent in his chest, and manages to flip the dagger in his hand and leave one last, final cut on Moray's leg, even as his other arm goes limp.

Moray pulls the knife out and cuts the other man's throat with it, then kicks him off and turns to open fire on the advancing Legionaries, only for a horde of Legion dogs to bear them down and tear into them like the wolves of their ancestry. Moray blinks exactly once, then hears Kara hooting in the background and understands, somehow, that it's her fault.

Well, as distractions go, it's pretty good. Moray takes a moment to put a bullet in the head of the only Legionary standing, and then scans for any other threads. There's one Legionary attempting to run off, but Hrolf lopes off in pursuit with another dog on his heels. It's strange seeing dogs close to his own size, to be honest; Hrolf has always been so much bigger than any other dog he's seen.

Moray leans back against the stone steps of the plaza and exhales, then looks up at the crucified form of a prisoner beside him.

"Rough day?" he asks. It provokes a rough, wheezy chuckle, and then Jonah rolls over and shambles close enough to start cutting the man down.
 
Kara stabs her combat knife high into the back of a cross, swinging a moment before clamboring up the rest of the way. One hand wrapped around the side of the cross’s top portion, she leaned way out and was able to cut the rope holding one wrist, then reverses hands to get the other, dropping off and landing with slightly bent knees.

And then the next, and the next, seemingly making a race of it, all that wiry energy of hers and quick climbing. The first few men cut down move to help lower the others, and then growing pockets of people here and there move from cross to cross also, supporting each other on shoulders to reach, another group with a ladder someone went and got. Powder Gangers, NCR soldiers, and Nipton citizens all.

The mongrels are a little restless but not agitated, sitting in a tight group in an empty corner of the plaza, watching the going ons and movements of the Legion’s victims. They seemed to be watching Kara in particular as she worked, particularly when she was talking to a tall man who pointed off towards the West, her expression a little grim before she nodded, moved to meet back up with the much larger mercenary she’d come with.

She’s frowning over her shoulder at the flames as she approaches, already talking.

“Hey, a few folks said that-” She cuts short when she finally turns and gets a good, close up look at him, Caribbean blue eyes widening in alarm. “Oh shit, twisted creep got you good.” His leg even-Kara’s already yanking a stimpack from the inside of her jacket, and a roll of bandaging in the other. “I was gonna try shooting him, but I was afraid I’d miss, and after nearly blowing you up once…” Well. That just hadn’t seemed very prudent, was all.

“Glad he’s dead.” She mutters, all fuss, now.
 
Jonah grunts in pain, all he'll allow himself as he leans against one of the now-empty crosses. "Wrap the leg, that's the main thing," he says, breathing steady by dint of sheer will. "That was a hell of a fight. Man fought hard."

It's not quite respect in his voice, but it is something close. Professional courtesy, perhaps. Whatever goals Vulpes had pursued, he'd clawed to the bitter fucking end. He'd put that grit towards butchering people, though, so fuck him.

He spares several seconds to put patches on the other assorted cuts and stabs, and by the time he looks back up they're surrounded by dogs. Big dogs, like Hrolf, who is himself sitting idly by Kara. Not quite at attention, but definitely waiting for something. "Friends of yours?" he asks dryly, and leans forwards to brush his lips against Kara's forehead - thankful, as ever, that they'd come out of one more nasty, outnumbered brawl in relatively good condition. "The fuck did you even find them all, or get them to help us out? None of them speak English, I'd bet."

Her worries aren't worth bothering about. Kara always feels guilty about him taking hits of any kind - but of the two of them, he both takes them better, has more meat to take them on, and wears thicker armor, so on the whole Moray prefers taking the shots. Nasty and cunning as she is, his girl's not a durable one.
 
“Well, that doesn’t change the fact he’s an asshole.” It makes her skin prickle just thinking about his voice. She’s been called a lot of names and none of them with any effect, but when he’d called her a profligate, she had half felt like Death was whispering to her, somewhere. “Are they all like that?”

Shoulda been patient, shoulda hid.

She injects the stimpack and begins wrapping the bandage, uncharacteristic focus on the wound while she does so. She’s glad he let her help. She feels bad it had happened, but she’s glad he let her help.

“I don’t know how we can possibly keep everybody quiet.” She says, neatly tying off the bandage. “Gonna try. Or at least, tell ‘em you wanted to play hero or something.” She teases. Sure, she’s a lot safer these days, but she still doesn’t need some kind of reputation as a goodie two shoes getting her killed. Except also... "...actually, nevermind about that-we better bribe 'em or something, cause the Legion's gonna be pissed."

A glance at the people sorting themselves out, and then at the lone man still on the cross off by himself. Her lips purse, blue eyes glancing away again-and then at the dogs that had gathered around them.

"Friends of yours?"

“The best.” Kara beams, that childish delight sparkling in her eyes and only intensified by the soft kiss to her forehead. “I found them bunched up and bored in this house I ducked into a second, and wouldn’t you know it, I had just the cure for that. Hrolf and I got elected ringleaders, and here we are.” She looks around at the biggest dogs she’d ever seen, is a mixture of amused and fond. “And I already named them all. Gonna need a lot of snack bags...Hrolf shouldn't have to share his."
 
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"Most centurions," Jonah agrees with a stilted breath as he puts weight on the wounded leg. It'll hold, but he's not doing any sprints with it until the stimpak has time to mend him some more. There's a dangerous flexing deep in his thigh that means a muscle probably was shorn through. It's a sensation he hasn't felt in awhile. "Haven't met anyone higher up - they're all back in the camp 'cross the river - but the higher you go, the harder they believe. Maybe the top's different. Who knows what Caesar thinks?"

He shakes his head at her worrying about his reputation. "I do business with them, but I've never pretended to impartiality," the merc says. "If they're burning towns like this, I'll kill every one I lay hands on. If having a contact in the Legion's that important to you, I'll claim that it was a conflict in contracts - something about the mayor - but really."

Moray nods out at the stacked, burning bodies, the lines of crosses. Disgust crosses his face, not just the new morality he's learning from Kara, but old and professional disdain. "Sloppy. Resources, wasted. A catspaw, annihilated. For what? One more horror story? Weak."

He deliberately turns away from it all and instead leans down to look at the mongrels with Hrolf. Most of them have padded off, but the way three have arranged themselves to flank the big wolf's sides, he's got his own crew going. Hrolf himself is, for once, completely paying attention to them, instead of looking off somewhere else.

Moray doesn't know Latin, or the commands. Instead, he pulls a strip of beef jerky from a fatigue pocket, and takes a moment to rip off the Legion strip from the shoulderpatch of a fallen warrior nearby. He stacks them on top of each other - vaguely sticky with blood - and hands them over to Kara.

"Go on," he says, and gives Kara a light push towards the mongrels. "They're waiting on you."
 
Most centurions. Yeah, shit-she knew the Legion was bad news, but if they had a bunch of fighters the likes of Moray-who was the most violent whirlwind of death she’s ever seen in her life-she extra wants to steer clear. Let the NCR chase ‘em out, something.

“I don’t want a contact. I don’t want nothin’, not with them.” That uncharacteristic seriousness again. She teeters on her heels a minute, thinking over the fact he’d taken jobs with them. You couldn’t always pick the work, but-well, no more of that, not with her in tow.

"Sloppy. Resources, wasted. A catspaw, annihilated. For what? One more horror story? Weak."

“Yeah.” Kara says, the tingling feelings of danger as she remembers Dog Hat’s calm, easy expression, even as his voice turned somehow lethal. Most centurions...how many did they have? And if they were really pushing in like this, what were the independents gonna do? Hop in bed with the NCR and hope for the best? “A mess where there didn’t have to be any.” Shit like this was exactly why she wasn’t a raider. She couldn’t do this to people. Hell, she wasn’t even going to let the mayor go out that way, if the townsfolk wanted to impeach him from ya know, life.

She’s quiet, eyes on empty crosses and the flames beyond them-when he mosies around out of the corner of her eye, and she turns to see what he’s doing.

“Oooh, dog snack-wich.” She accepts the snack, coming to life again as her nose wrinkles up a little, holding the treat between her metal tipped thumb and forefinger. “Gross.” Snrk.

"They're waiting on you."[/I] Kara lights back up, full speed ahead and up to her usual antics-cheering herself up with her new favorite best friends.

“My people! Mi hombres!” She says with great amusement and flair before a lowered, less manically happy and more genuine tone; “Stalwart puppy dogs.”

She drops on down to her knees despite them all being so big, sitting back on her calves as close as Hrolf cared to ever let her get-respecting his space, being patient.

Most people wouldn’t want to be shorter than the hulking beasts, face at teeth level-but Kara wasn’t most people. Her body language is relaxed and easy, genuinely friendly in a way she almost never is with people. No real gambit, open and transparent. They’d already eaten the bad guys, after all-now she just wants to be friends.

“I just want to give each of you all the ear scritches in the world. You are very good boys.” Maybe girls too? Oh, that might kinda affect her names, now that she thinks of it.

She sighs, tapping the treat against her thigh, considering Hrolf. “You’re going to help keep these guys liberated, right Hrolf? We can’t let the Legion have ‘em back, not now that they've come to their senses.”
 
Hrolf comes forward, half a step - closer than he's ever been to the mismatched pair and sniffs Kara carefully. Looks up at Moray; huffs. Then the big mongrel pushes his cold, wet nose against Kara's cheek.

Behind her, Jonah lets out a choked cough of amusement. "I think he likes you," he says, breath still bouncing in that way he does when he's trying not to laugh. "Better than me, anyway, not that it's such a feat."

Permission given, the other mongrels rise and circle 'round the little redhead, sniffing and committing her scent to memory.
 
!

Kara made a delighted noise that was half gasp and half squeal, spine popping straight with a laugh. She had been patient, so very, very, very patient, and now the cold noseprint was the best reward anybody’d ever got anywhere.

"I think he likes you,"

“Well good because I -love- him. I’ll put in a good word, I got an in, now.” Kara had weeks of pent up dog pets stored up, and now she was getting to pet all the dogs, even more dogs than Old Lady Gibson had in her junkyard. She was in heaven, to say the least.

Hrolf had alot of scruff and fur, probably so other dogs and animals couldn’t get at his throat too easily. She’s glad he trusted her enough to let her pet him, and she’s glad all these poor fur babies weren’t going to have to deal with Legion asswipes anymore. “This one’s Charlie, and that one’s Professor Woof, and this here’s Holden-just like the book!-and-”

She had honest to God named them all. When, the run over? Or was she making them up on the fly? With Kara, who knew.

She gave one last ear scratch to Hrolf, and then finally popped back to her feet in a single sprightly movement, ruffling a hand through her own red hair. Vibrant eyes survey the empty crosses, the dead Legionnaires, the mongrels, and the people helping each other regardless of affiliation. Considering the hand dealt at the start, it was a decent take. Nothing to be done for the dead, but that was just the way it was, sometimes.

She kicked off with one boot to turn sharply on the other, spinning around to face Jonah again. She gives a tug on the front of her trusty jacket, the familiar gesture of finality.

“Welp. We done good. I told ‘em to do what they wanted with the Steyn, but to either make it quick or cut him down. No crucifixions today."

A hulking death machine, a petite redhead in tore up and mismatched clothing, and a pack of vicious looking mongrels just about as big as the woman was-it made for a hell of a scouting party.
 
Moray feels a little odd that Hrolf would have taken to Kara before him - but accepts it. Kara doesn't demean or condescend to the big mongrel, and thus doesn't challenge his place in the pack. Any relationship between himself and Hrolf would, just by necessity of their mutual similiarities, involve solving who's in charge. Kara is an acceptable substitute, and honestly - he's not that big on petting things anyways.

He has a brief, faintly frightening vision of Kara, surrounded by Lucky and the dogs and Hrolf and every godsdamn thing in the Mojave that don't wear boots following her around and doing her bidding, just like most of the humans do anyways. As overlords go, it's a better choice than the bull, certainly.

Getting the civilians sorted out - no more contracts, not that he's looking at the moment - takes another hour or so, and at the end of that he's pretty fucking tired of people again and just lets Kara take over it. When they start heading towards Goodsprings, he pulls his own map, this one actually legible and without the shitty color splats of his partner's. He glances over it. "We got enough time left in the day to make some good distance. Where to next, Kara?"
 
Kara feels great. Sure, there's some heavy stuff still coming down the pipes, but she hasn't let anything hanging too cloudy over her head since she left the Capital Wasteland, 'cept maybe Vanessa for a minute. Fuck no, she's basking in sunshine.

She's got a whole pile of dogs, Hrolf liked her enough to share pets, Jonah was in tow-and here she is hoofing it with the whole lot of them, and a Brahmin besides. And nobody had even had to he crucified! A good day, and that didn't even count the morning's tumble.

Her absent smile shifts to that familiar smirk as she pulls her own crappy map out, pretending to adjust a monocle over her right eye.

"Welp, we ought to angle for New Vegas, I s'pect.". Her finger taps on a little pawprint scrawl along the way. Actually, there were several pawprints scattered across the shitty, mostly illegible depiction of the Mojave. One beneath a crown that had to be Freeside, one under a doctor symbol roughly where Good Springs was, one in the South Vegas ruins-a few more here and there. It looked like Kara had all the dogs she knew mapped out, because of course she fucking did, of all the information to fucking scrawl on there. One can half imagine her drawing these things by a campfire somewhere...or in the flat dark given the unproportional distances and messiness.

"I want to take these doggies to Old Lady Gibson first, see if they like hers. She's got a whole junkyard.".

Kara turns her map sideways. "And then Camp McCarren. We gotta report that shit. Not everything but just what we saw, that Nipton's in flames and just-damn. Legion moving like that. I know they know they're on the move, but I mean-"

Kara shakes her head, letting it roll right off her again.

"Anyway. Major Dhatri's there last I knew. Best man to tell. He doesn't like me much 'cause he suspects I'm a Fiend or at least friendly with 'em, but he'll make use of the info.".

Kara folds the map back up in its usual crumpled fold-never the same way, which explained the amount of fold lines in the first place. Her smirk returns, and those large blue eyes flick back up to his, her lazy pepped saunter gaining a little more bounce to it.

"He puts up with me cause I come in handy every once in a while. Gave him coords to a hiding place or two for my usual realtors fee. 'Course, that just means I know where some of their best toys are."

Kara laughs, even if Jonah might not find that as funny as she clearly did. Charging for places she didn't have use for anyway, and then skimming if she felt like it? Scam artist with no professional courtesies in the least.

...he might REALLY think it's not funny. "Ahem. At least I don't spill the beans to other peeps, right? Counts." She gives a tug on the front of her jacket, a nod.
 
Moray looks at the map. There are many dog prints on it. His face turns first to confusion, then droll disbelief. "Of course, your map has dogs instead of place. Why not?"

"That'll be someplace new for me," he notes, touching the mark over the next pawprint she had indicated. He hasn't met Gibson herself yet, though the scrapyard is mildly known as a place to go for salvage and parts. That's not really his wheelhouse; Moray does his own armor, and buys his gun parts from the Runners. Mechanical know-how's been a distant priority all his life. Closest he's gotten is rigging a turret, once, and even then he never fucked with the chip or wiring, just the gun itself.

Camp MacCarran, though, he's more familiar with. "I know Dhatri," he says, and his face lightens to the neutrality that denoted as close as he'd gotten to friendship before Kara. "Runs bounties, targets of value. I do a lot of work with him. A good man."

Fair negotiators are a hard breed to find, usually taking a fat share of the reward for arranging matters with the bullet dispensers, and when they're hooked up with the outfit proper it gets even worse because the faction dislikes sharing even more. Dhatri's about as generous as they come, though, which keeps his ready supply of gun hands fresh and his ears on the ground sensitive. If there's a man better connected than the Chief to what's going on in the Mojave at the ground floor, Jonah can't think of him.

"Don't cheat him," Jonah says, with something hovering between amused tolerance and repressed annoyance. "At least not when I'm with you. That's a valuable source of contracts for me, and for contacts in general. I'd like to keep that valve open."
 
“A good man.”

Kara studies him a moment, expression thoughtful-and then she looks back out at the desert while she mulls that over. Well, maybe he was, she doesn’t know. If Jonah thought so, it carried more merit than she’d have otherwise figured on.

Her hand almost absently finds his, her fingers threading through his thicker ones.

“He is more tolerable than most NCR bores...actually does some thinkin’ for himself. He makes things happen where they need to happen, sometimes. Or stops them from happening, when it counts.”

She doesn’t like the NCR much, but him-well, he’s alright enough, she guesses.

"Don't cheat him,"

Kara chokes on a laugh, catching it just in time behind her closed lips and teeth. He was so deadpan about it, half resigned and half disapproving-utterly unsurprised.

“Alright, fiiiine.” She sighs dramatically before giving his captured hand a swing, her brightly lit, mischievous blue eyes flicking back up to his face. “So long as you know I totally could, if’n I felt like it.” There should have been a cocky smirk there, but instead she’s just happy, an entertained and amused grin on her face.

Kara seemed to just like knowing things. Delighted with the secrets and tidbits she squirreled away in that cluttered brain of hers, acquiring and storing them up like some sort of red feathered magpie.

“I didn’t wanna end up on the NCR’s shit list again anyway. It was funny the first time, but I got it good with 'em now. Which is the better joke, if you ask me.” Yeah it was, snrk.
 
"I don't care that he's NCR," Jonah says, patient. "That has nothing to do with it. Cheat the NCR all you want. Just not him."

Factions mean less than nothing to him. The Gun Runners he's affable and even allied with, but that's because professionalism, firepower, and neutrality are all bywords for their organization, and each is a quality he values himself. He's yet to meet a Gun Runner that's a true waste of skin, which probably says something about how picky they are about who joins, rather than just scooping everyone they can up - like the Legion, or the NCR.

He looks over at her for a moment: dirt still smeared on her forehead from the scramble of the fight just minutes ago, flaming hair, and smiling happily at all her dogs. She's just gotten him into a brawl with the Legion that's likely to land them a mortal enemy, and she's on the route to getting him into a fight with one of the three tribes that run the Strip in its entirety. He's no doubt that she'll manage to piss House off in some way too, since she can't stand anyone trying to get one over on her.

Jonah raises Kara's hand to his lips and kisses her knuckles, soft. "I love you," he says, apropos of nothing. All the hard lines in his face fade, and he just looks at her, like she's everything.

He closes his eyes, and when he reopens them the armor settles and he's flat-faced and bland again, but he doesn't let go even then. Instead, Jonah jerks his head at the open path leading out of town. "Come on, let's get rolling. I don't fancy checking out the accomodations here post-Legion. Chances are they're shitty."

Behind them, Hrolf organizes his troops and leads them to where the red-coated dicks had been making jerky, and promptly eats all their food.
 
Some crack had been coming on the heels of what he says, a mixture of consent and intention to do just that given the mischievous, mirthful glitter in those vividly colored eyes.

But it trips up when he kisses her hand, and states his heart right on the heels of her trouble. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth and a faint blush of color blooms across the tops of her cheekbones as Kara’s cocky, quirked smirk shifts to a more symmetrical, soft curve of her lips.

He does, too. And for free.

She doesn’t always know quite what to do when things hit her all of a sudden. Her chest is warm and her heart skitters, eyes a little hot at the edges somewhere, where somebody else mighta-

She swallows and that softer, genuine smile remains, a cock of her head one way, then the other, that warm bubbling happiness in her chest, more real than anything she’s ever known before.

“And I jus’ adore you.” And it’s almost embarrassing, but it’s true, and it was so easy to adore him, to love him, to want to protect him. Hers, hers, hers, hers-it’s a sing songy jingle that rolls around in her heart.

And he knows she wouldn’t pull a fast one on Dhatri, just because he asked her not to. Asked. Didn’t tell. He knew, no, he trusted that she’d honor his request just because he had made it. Because he knows she loves him, too.

She thinks about the relief and the end of the fight in Good Springs. When she’d confessed her concussed worries. He hadn’t believed for a moment she’d have bolted on him. It’s a humbling thing to be trusted. They knew what the world was like, out there. They knew.

Gosh. He has her doing all kinds of thinking, lately. Damned sparkling...beautiful geodes...

His armor returns and Kara likewise resets, a deep inhalation and that familiar swell to her chest, the vivacious pop to her lazy saunter. She's all sass and too much life again.

“Ain’t no time like the present-and fuck no, I didn’t like sleeping here before it was a giant barbeque.” Adventure was out there, and her luck held fast and true-she’s made out with way more than she’d ponied up in the first place, as usual.

“Old Lady Gibson! I love her dogs to pieces, too. That’s how I fixed Rex, you know-” Kara reveals. “See, Rex needed a new brain and I promised The King I’d keep my eye out. Gibson’s sweet girl Nora passed away, and bam-married the two together, good as new. He still don’t like hats though.”
 
Jonah watches the glitter of Kara's eyes as she swallows, and the faintest hint of a curve lifts one corner of his mouth. He enjoys making her happy in such a simple, intrinsic way he can't recall anything else that comes close. It's far from the completion of decency and professionalism he's lived cloaked by, and completely overwhelming - it makes the insides of his nerves tremble and his heart accelerate. He no longer imagines futures without her. They are discarded. He chooses this and nothing and no one else.

"Up until recently, I imagine you viewed time sleeping as time wasted not accomplishing shenanigans," Jonah comments with a shrug. His hand stays wrapped around hers, content with the contact. "Also, why would a dog need a hat in the first place?"

He has a brief vision of he, the terrible mercenary, followed around by Kara and her band of dashing dogs, each with the latest and most daring hats. Top hats, bowlers, bearskin, porkpies, even a miter. He doesn't know how he'll compensate for so much canine fashion.

Involuntarily, Jonah coughs. His mouth twitches, and he glances away to cover his face with his hand.

When he looks back, he's placid again.

"Alright, let's go," he says, and moves to a stride as much to leave that thought behind as this place itself.
 
The junkyard was its own wonderland even to a seasoned scavenger like Kara-there was no telling what might be left to discover in one of these piles, no small amount of mystery to them. The husband and wife team had been prolific finders of things in their heyday, and even now the old woman had tales tall enough to hold even Kara spellbound.

“Just gotta introduce everybody, see if they like it here.” Kara was saying, her left hand riding along on the top of Holden’s head as the large mongrel kept pace with her, seemingly content with the arrangement. “No fighting.” A scritch to Holden’s ear and a glance to Hrolf and three others. “These are very good boys too.”

Kara twisted around to see where the rest of the dogs were-just over the ridge there, looked like. Well, they’d come over when they felt like it.

She stepped up to the fence, then gave a sharp whistle. A bark sounded from somewhere in the junkyard, sharp and clear on the night air-then another further in, also in the open-and one muffled by four walls and a roof.

A door blew open on the small service station and a grey blue furred animal loped out towards the fence, tail and ears up, excited. The cattle dog had a sleek, well maintained coat and a leather collar-a treasured pet. As were the two that trotted up shortly after, all three of them shoving their snouts through the chain links and pawing at it, panting and whining at an old friend-seemingly oblivious to the crew she’d brought with her.

Two older looking dogs of the same breed meandered up, a slow wag of their tails-but they were more patient than the dogs currently being pet through the fence-and slightly more wary of the strange scent on the shaggy large dogs that’d been brought along.

“This is Basura, and Reina, and Colmillo…” Given the slightly more dignified sounding names, Kara clearly hadn’t titled these dogs. But she knew their names-of course she did. “Rey and Fiel back there-don’t you boys want any pets?-and then Audaz…” Kara had dropped down to the metal kneepad on her stocking’d leg, reaching her small hands through to pet the crowding canines, slender wrists bumping against the top edge of those links when the mutts nudged her hands. Reina and Colmillo both have those two colored eyes.”

A shadow moved behind the boarded up screen door of the service station and an elderly woman poked her head out, squinting in their direction. “I shoulda known it’d be you.” She calls in a disapproving but fond manner. “I hope you’re not feeding them any more of those darned Potato Crisps.”

She let the door swing shut behind her as she started out towards the cluster of dogs on her side of the fence, the presumed Audaz following just a pace or two out at her side. This was the one dog that hadn’t left his post at Kara’s whistle-and the one most leery of the newcomers.

The old woman reached for the heavy padlock hanging from the chained gate, blinking as her eyes adjusted-and pausing.

“Heavens, Kara-are those wolves?”

No[/i], they’re puppies.” Kara said brightly and without concern, a final ruffling of ears and fur before she popped back to her feet. “We found ‘em and I thought they could stay here with you. Start a sled team.”

"Lord, they're Legion dogs."

"Legion deserter dogs. C'mon Lady, you know you want to meet 'em. They'll be good. And look-" Kara jerked her thumb to Moray. "I brought a people friend too!"
 
The most recent anomaly of Jonah's lifestyle was that now everything smelled like dog, since Kara couldn't keep her hands off them, and after that anything else in the vicinity. They also were all over everything and cooking food ensured that you'd have a half-dozen wet noses poking you while you tried not to burn it. But it was the happiest he's ever seen Kara, so . . .

Now surrounded by dogs from both directions, he's honestly about done with being crowded by living things. Jonah meanders a few steps down the fence from Kara, puts his back against it, and carefully looks straight up at the sky rather than listen to the cacophony of panting from the eight large dogs surrounding them. The older woman draws his attention, and he gladly focuses on her instead. "Ex-Legion," he corrects, meticulous. "The group they were attached to has been disposed of."

Gibson is weathered and tough in that particular way that tells him she'd die snarling. She's determined to go down with as big a bite of life as she can take out of it, which is worth his acknowledgement at minimum. It takes a certain breed of recalcitrance to get Kara to really like someone, as opposed to just enjoying their discomfort.

Jonah pushes himself off the fence with a shoulder and offers the lady a nod. "Jonah Moray. I'm Kara's partner."

It's as close a summary of their relationship as he cares to give anyone else.

"Nipton got hit by a double-strength raiding party. It's gone, but we got some people out, and the Legionaries are dead. On the way to let the NCR know."
 
Old Lady Gibson took this information in and scowled, a softer eye on the mongrels sniffing at her own junkyard pack. “They’re not fit to have dogs, those mooks.” She mutters, dropping the unlocked padlock against the fence and pulling it open with surprising strength. “And partners? You and this fool girl?”

“He shoots at things and I talk to things.” Kara provides cheerfully, attention on the suddenly skittish heelers and the seemingly oblivious mongrels-who shuffled in to poke around, mostly ignoring the other dogs. “It’s a very solid business model.”

Gibson gives him a brief look of scrutiny. “Well, he looks like he comes from bigger stock than you do, anyhow." She says before addressing Jonah again. "The flatterers and charmers out here call me Old Lady Gibson.” She doesn’t offer a hand to shake, just straightens up and eyes him a moment. “Well now, Mister Moray. I sure hope you have more sense than that one does. Wasn’t even a year ago she sent a horde of feral ghouls into space.”

“They weren’t all feral Lady, geez.”

“Well you lie enough I wouldn’t be sure which way it was even if I did remember.”

“Which is what makes it funny.”

Gibson shakes her head, the banter soothing some part of her somehow. “The Mister and I were scavengers back before he was dead and I was an old lady.” She gestures to the junkyard. “Most of what was left of Repconn’s in there. The hovel ain’t much, but it’s home and open to friends of Kara’s.”

She gives a glance to the trailing mongrels in the distance. “Ones in and out of shoes. C’mon then.” And she left the gate open and moved back towards the service station. “And just what made you think of here, Kara?”

“I thought you might want some more puppies.”

“So the Legion can come looking me up instead of you?”

“Aw, c’mon-aren’t they just the biggest dogs you’ve ever seen? And they’re homeless now Lady, it’s very sad. Hrolf and I would love to keep charge of ‘em, but we’re very busy people.”

“Hrolf?”

"Moray's fur baby."
 
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"Noted," Moray replies to Gibson. "I'm sure you preferred the ghouls here for their scintillating conversational skills."

He looks at the scrapyard and wonders if this is what the aftermath of love looks like. It doesn't seem horrible. She even stuck with dogs instead of cats. Automatic improvement.

Hrolf trots up beside Kara at the sound of his name. He's always been intelligent enough to recognize it, but just never cared enough to come when Moray said it. Kara, of course, is a more important matter. He's visibly bigger than the other mongrels, almost waist-high on Kara where they hit mid-thigh, and much quieter. The other mongrels fan out in a loose formation behind him, instinctively. Moray recognizes it as the pattern that Legion dogs attack in, this arrowhead charge, and briefly the hairs on the back of his neck raise.

But it's Hrolf, and they're not coming after anyone. The sight just made him bristle for a moment, so soon after the last fight. He shakes it off and follows after Kara and Gibson inside the compound. Her dogs give him a wide berth, aside from a brief sniff. There's too much blood and gunpowder still in his clothes for them to take a liking to him.

Come to think of it, that may be why Hrolf likes Kara more - she doesn't have his battlefield stink. He considers the merits of deodorant, and decides that popularity contests aren't his thing anyways.

"Led his patrol to me years ago, then stood around and watched me kill them. Followed me around after that, ate my food. Adopted Kara when she showed up," Moray lists, succinct. The muted disgust in his voice is given lie by the quirk of his mouth, so often the most he'll ever let himself smile. "Dog-Czar over here won't stop collecting them now."
 
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They’re best friends.” Kara relays in a stage whisper, down to cupping her small hands around her mouth. “The best.

“Sounds like you did Hrolf a solid favor.” Gibson says to Jonah approvingly, mostly ignoring Kara’s teasing of the man. She’s used to the redhead, begrudgingly fond, and altogether unwilling to be entertainment. “He’s a handsome dog, and it just goes to show how atrocious the Legion is-not even their dogs can stand to be loyal if there’s any other option.”

Kara sombers up, her face darkening into a brief, serious scowl-before she plops down on a double stack of tires, a curt nod. “I hate those guys.” She says bluntly. No need for rhetoric here. There were a lot of reasons to hate on Caesar, and Gibson was no more fond than she was.

Kara watched as the aging scavenger lowered down onto that ‘O’ taken from a sign somewhere, her ‘favorite chair’. Lady settled back, smiled at Hrolf-and looked out the open gate and into the desert and visible ruins from where they were. “Bothersome, red shirts moving on Nipton like that. Particularly with NCR soldiers frequenting.” She frowned. “You said it was gone? Christ, Novac itself is little more than a hotel and a plastic dinosaur.”

“Closer to New Vegas, though.” Kara muses.

“House.” Gibson agrees with a nod. “If you ask me, shadowman is just waiting to see how much those two will kill of each other before he bothers booting anybody. I’ll be glad when something decisive happens-all this tension and brewing war gets my arthritis up.”

“I don’t like the NCR much either. People here in the thick of things hafta take orders from people who’ve never been here and don’t know jack shit about the Mojave or it’s denizens.”

“Majority rule not your thing Kara?”

“Rule in general ain’t my thing.” The red head responded with a stretch, as unconcerned about political going ons as could be. "I'm not in anybody's corner but mine and Jonah's."

This confirmed what Gibson had already figured on, and she muses on that a moment. "So long as you're at least that." The old woman turned her gaze on Jonah. “And you? You have your hat in any of these races?”
 
Moray shakes his head, even as he offers Kara a response in the form of a solid poke to her ribs. There's actual meat there, now, since he cooks on a regular basis now and has a concept of nutrition. She'd been a little scrawny before, for all her attractiveness, but now she was really filling out to star-struck levels of beauty. "Recon sniper has a nest up in that dinosaur, and Novac's never taken Legion custom," he says. "Harder target. That said, if they bothered to come in numbers worth anything it'd crumble.

He doesn't sit, but he does drop to a knee beside Kara, still habitually scanning the area. The bit about House he doesn't care about, because honestly House's forces are so irregular and unreliable that in pitched combat they'd be as likely to shoot one another as the enemy. The Securitrons are another matter, but he doesn't trust their ability to distinguish humans from one another. No, if House takes the field, Moray's finding someplace else to be. He has better things to do then take a bullet in the back from some cocksucker White Glove.

Gibson's question demands his attention, so he glances over long enough to cock an eyebrow. "Fuck 'em," he says. Then he flicks the eagle pin and glances over at Kara. "You're caring a lot more about politics, though. Something in mind?"

Generally, Kara's only given a shit about people in the individual sense. He hasn't heard her say a word about groups, except to curse the Legion, until this last visit to Nipton. He can see where that'd worry her, but unless she's got a nuke hidden in her Batcave, killing the entirety of the Legion isn't going to be within his reach.
 
“This fool girl? She’s just out for a lark, 24/7.”

“Lady ain’t wrong.” Kara’s cocky smirk is back, a flirty wink at him.

But he’s not wrong, either. She is side eyeing this political stuff more than she normally would be, more than she ought to be. She’s fixing to go tell Dhatri about Nipton for free, matter of fact. Not even play at trading info-it was too important. And she is thinking about things. She’s been thinking about things since she waltzed into Red Rock Canyon and saw Karl the Asswipe ducking into Papa’s Longhouse.

That’d bothered her enough to do something about it. That had more to do with Vanessa than anything-just an extension of the Sierra Madre trip prep, a feeble hope the woman was still alive and would still want something good to come back to. And after? Well, that’d been part of it too, right? She’d convinced the Khans to get the hell outta dodge before something ate them up. Shit, even on the way to do it she thought it was a little crazy and not at all her usual wheelhouse. Nothing funny about it at all. Bleeding heart bullshit.

But...she doesn’t regret it. It’d been the thing to do. Whatever happened to the New Khans out there in the desert, it’d be better than what the Legion would have done to ‘em. And hopping in bed with the NCR? ...well, Kara half doubts even HER silver tongue coulda talked them into that anyway. Hell, it made her feel icky just thinking about it given what had happened in Bitter Springs.

Jonah was right-Dhatri was worth more mettle than most. That’s why he was the one to take this Nipton news to, and in a hurry. If anyone would make good and effective use of it, it’d be the Major.

She doesn’t know what she personally can do about Caesar. Nothing, really. Not like she and Jonah could waltz out to their camp and talk or shoot them out of there. No...no, this ain’t for her. Not her wheelhouse. So long as they were free, what worries did she have? Things would shake out just fine. Hopefully here in the Mojave, but if not-well, there’s other places to be.

Something gnaws at her, somewhere. She leans forward just enough to reach and tap on the pin. “You just got me thinking more than I usually bother with, is all. Regular Play-doh.”

“Play who?”

“You know, that thinking guy!” Kara lights on the subject change immediately, large blue eyes widening yet further. “He grew up in a cave or something, as an experiment!”
 
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