Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

“The ONE time something goes south and YOU just happen to be there-” She pretends to mutter, but the teasing she really takes in stride. It also was faaar from the first time something had gone south.

Kara smiles at Hrolf, liking that advice-and then frowns, a sniff. “I don’t think they’re in good so much as they just really hate the NCR.” Kara can’t say she blames them. That’s a whole other thing, though.

“I hope they’re not seriously considering letting him annex their whole tribe. They won’t be gaining anything but trouble if they do that. You know how they are with those of the feminine persuasion.” She hates the Legion. Hrolf probably does too. He’s a good dog like that.

“It makes me wonder if they know anything much about it, to be honest. Wouldn’t be the first time a group didn’t vet their potential allies.”

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

The Khans do seem to know Kara. Moray gets a few trailing gazes, but he looks as tough as the rest of them, and they can respect that. It was about all the Khans respected. Hrolf was keeping relatively close (for him) hoping for more of the jerky, and he too was getting glances.

She’s not up for talking to strangers for once-secretly a little too anxious, not that you’d know it looking at her. She’s hoping to see Vanessa herself or run into her brother-but as they pass the small, minimalistic dwellings and the various Khans milling about she’s growing less and less hopeful. Which wasn’t any good, as she’d had little of it to begin with.

She considers going to Regis, but on the way up the slope sees someone she doesn’t recognize heading into the Longhouse. Didn’t look like a Khan-and he saw her, but mostly, he saw Hrolf. Huh.

“C’mon, we’ll go talk to Jack.” She says easily enough, eyes on the doorway the man had finally passed through. It’s back down the slope and a ways to the bottom of a cliff, a few crappy trailers around a campfire.

Diane wasn’t around, probably inside one of the buildings. Of the two, she was definitely more clever. She was also tighter lipped. Jack, on the other hand…

“Kara the Firebrand.” He greets from his leaned back position at a picnic table, clearly on something-he’s got one arm lazily strewn across the board behind him, his eyes shifting to the Moray. “And…” He fails to come up with a nickname.

“This is my new bestie Moray-” Kara’s still using that. “But hey, I’m looking for Vanessa-she running things for you? Her and Billy?”

Jack nods sagely, slow. “Yeah...they been pretty good about things.” He rubs his chin. “Ain’t been back for a bit though.”

Kara’s easy. “No? What, they do a runner on you? Aren’t you and Billy blood brothers?”

“How long they’ve been gone, where’d you send ‘em?”

The man Kara eyes has a Legion patch on his shoulder, which is already a black mark as far as Moray is concerned, but once they make it into the circle proper she instead turns to engage one of the Khans. "Jonah Moray," he says simply, by way of introduction. "I shoot things."

All the introduction he needs.

Rather than talk to a druggie, which will expend stores of patience he doesn't have, Moray instead turns to scope out the camp. It's a long step up from the Powder Ganger's hideout, which was about two years from collapsing on itself, but this is still a people on the fringes of destitution. Suppose he can't blame them for the drug bit then.

"Big shot I put down said he slapped a collar on Vanessa, walked her into some shit deathtrap," Moray says with a terse shrug. He keeps getting stares. It's annoying. All the tension he's unwound with Kara, with the Gun Runners, with Beatrix, it's starting to coil between his shoulders again. It's rare that he likes humans and now he's remembering why that is. "Kara wanted to double-check and make sure he was full of shit."

Jack blinks and looks back to Kara, who was no longer smiling.

“...look, I just need to know if the bastard was bluffing, okay? Where were they running?”

“Down to the Fiends, maybe four... five days ago. Billy came back. Vanessa didn’t.”

Shit.

“He went to Papa Khan and then he left with two others and hasn’t been back.”

Double shit.

“Well you tell him I was here, he comes back. That I was asking.” It wouldn’t be much assurance, but it’d be something. She casts a glance back up the slope towards the Long House. “What’s with the new guy hanging around Papa Khan and Regis in there?”

“Oh, that’s Karl. Caesar sent him. He’s telling us about unifying.”

“Diane cool with that?”

Jack’s face twists itself into a thoughtful frown. “Yeah, why wouldn’t she be?”

“Women can’t be ‘business owners’ in the Legion. They’re slaves and prostitutes, period.”

Jack sits up straight, high as hell but perturbed. “No shit? Aw, she ain’t going to like that at all, Kara the Firebrand. I better go talk to Papa-” He moved to stand, wavered, then fell back into his seated position. “Well...in a few minutes…”

Kara turned around, glanced to Moray. “Guess Devon wasn’t bluffing.”

She seemed to have expected as much, but it didn’t make her any happier about it.

And it seemed like maybe ‘Karl’ was making false promises to the Khans on top of all that. The Legion was probably offering a chance for revenge and a return to their stronger days, but Kara knows there’s no legacy but Caesar’s to those guys. Individualism was not a thing. Shit, given what he’d done to all those tribals, there’s no way he planned to leave anything to Khans even if they did throw their lot in with him.

There wouldn’t be much to bring Vanessa home to if they rolled into those fucks.

Kara starts towards the Long House. From her pocket she draws a stick of bubblegum of all things, popping that past her lips and narrowing her eyes on their destination.

“Oughta greet the new guest before we go, I figure.” She says, that cocky attitude falling swiftly into place. "You just relax." She was clearly planning something, but what or why who could say.

Moray glances at the stick of bubblegum. Impossibly, his scowl deepens, and he falls in behind her. "Hell no. You're about to pick a fight. You're annoying enough just talking, add gum in and this legion dipshit will be coming over the table to strangle you. Go ahead and start the fight, but I'm coming to remove whatever he tries to lay on you."

He double-checks that heavy, forward-bladed knife, and then takes up position on her left - opposite her draw hand.

"Also, doesn't sound good," Moray - Jonah? - noted. "Fiends might pull a capture for caps, but just as likely they'd do something vile, or tell the client to piss off. Might have to check out their camp too to get a solid lead on where this girl is."

A long moment passes.

"Anyways, the Legion wouldn't survive you."

“What, me?” All innocent and for a moment, believable. It was those damned blue eyes-a shade too large for her face and crystalline clear, her widening them like that only worsened their deceptively innocent appearance.

He’d called it though. Boy, he had her number picked out, didn’t he? Kara briefly wondered if she was getting to be predictable. Maybe he was just smarter than most, she’d believe that. Either way, this went right, he wouldn’t have to finish anything. It was kinda sweet of him to want to, though. Ya know, in that horrifically violent way of his.

As for the other things-the Fiends weren’t good news. They were as openly hostile as you could get, less a tribe and more just flat out raiders living in a vault. But the Great Khans were their drug benefactors last she checked, so she kinda doubted they’d bite the hand that fed them. Then again, Vanessa was a pretty girl, raiders could be dumb as fuck, and The Fiends were hardly a step up from animals in her opinion. Billy must have said something to Papa. She’d find out what.

"Anyways, the Legion wouldn't survive you."

Kara’s blows and pops her first bubble, glancing up and over at him. “Nope.”

And the grin that curves her lips is nothing short of wicked.

~*~

The stranger didn’t seem to appreciate their entering the Long House, but Regis sure did, rising to stand from his literal right hand position next to Papa Khan.

They were invited to sit, but rather than take a posting at one of the other tables lined up perpendicular to the one the three men sat at, Kara snagged a chair and dragged it smack in the middle of the space before them, plopping down to sit in it backwards, her arms crossed over the top. Introductions were made, Karl introduced as one of Caesar’s men sent to ‘learn’ from them. Kara shared a bit of news picked up while out on the road, and got it dealt back about a few skirmishes the Fiends had had with the NCR. It was predictably banal conversation, for the most part. Establishing normalcy and familiarity before she moved in for Karl.

She blows and pops another bubble as her eyes flicker over to him, seemingly amused, smirking. “So. You get initiated yet? Best way to learn from The Khans is to BE a Khan, right?”

“Ah, no.” Karl looked about as happy to be speaking to Kara as he would have been stepping in dog shit, but he kept up appearances for the benefit of their audience. I wouldn’t wish to...over step. I’m not deserving of such an honor!” Humility that was largely believable. Politer company would have left it alone.

Kara wasn’t very polite company.

“Worried about stacking up eh?”

Karl’s neck was already starting to darken, heat rising. “Yes, very worried. Great Khans are some of the finest warriors.”

“Better than legionnaires for sure.” Kara blew another bubble, nodding along as Karl did, his left eye twitching. She’s tipping forward a little in the chair-didn’t she ever sit in one right? “I bet a Great Khan fresh outta the proving ground could even take on a centurion, easy! And a rested up Great Khan vs a Legate? Pfffft, no contest.””

“They are very strong.” He watched her blow another bubble and the color continued to climb. Moray had not been wrong. He looked like he wanted to strangle her.

“Hell, maybe two Legates! With one hand!” Wide eyed, cheerful-another blown and popped bubble.

Karl clearly found that exactly as preposterous as it was, and both Papa Khan and Regis were beginning to look a little concerned as they watched her talk, confused by the almost manic, aggressively friendly attitude, the empty headedness she was playacting. It was possible Kara didn’t know what a Legate was, making that sort of bullshit claim. It was also possible she did, and was being as ridiculous as she could get away with.

“I mean I’ve taken out three on a good day-”

“Enough! How dare you compare Caesar's finest to this tribe of savages?! The mightiest Great Khan is scarcely a match for a Legion recruit, and an infuriating Dissolute like you little more than a whore beneath our heels.” He was so angry he was spitting, rising to his feet-just as he seemed to realize what he’d said, Kara’s grin just about unbearably smug.

Mid venomous rant his face went blank, eyes cutting away from the ‘infuriating Dissolute’ and to Papa Khan, who was already coming to his feet, looking a mixture of surprised and disgusted.

“I mean, uh, that is to say-oh you little bitch.”

Kara straightened up off the chair as she popped her last bubble, tugging on the front of her jacket as Papa Khan lifted his shot gun and made a mess just as Karl turned to flee. Her ears rang with it, but she certainly didn’t feel bad.

“‘Savages.’” Papa Khan repeated, spitting on the bloody, mangled corpse. He shook his head, turned to look at a no longer grinning Kara, almost in askance.

“Yeah, and I’m sure his opinion ain’t unique in the Legion, Papa.”

The older man watched her uneasily, but that was all Kara felt like saying for now. Her gambit won, she moved on to what she was really after-she’d see about sorting this out later, if it suited her.

“Vanessa’s previous creditor said some concerning things. I was rolling through and thought I’d ask about it. Jack says Billy came to you and then left town again, something about her going missing…?”

Papa retook his seat as a few men-having rushed to the Long House at the sound of gunfire-moved to remove Karl at Papa’s indication.

“Yes. They were returning home when they were waylaid by strange attackers. They demanded names...and then she was taken.” His expression was grave. “I know not to where, Kara Walker.” This was a man with heavy weight on his shoulders. And lately, he was losing more than he was winning.

Kara just nods. She doesn’t make any promises or say what she suspects. Ducking blame, a little.

“I’m sorry to hear that...I hope Billy finds her.”

“As do I.”

And with a nod to each of the two men, Kara turned back to her larger companion and nodded her head for the door. She was done here, least today.

Moray joins her and matches pace, holding his silence until they're out of earshot. Hrolf takes a moment to piss on Karl's neck stump, then catches up with an easy trot. "It would have been kinder if you had used a gun instead of that gum," he says, mild. "I approve. Buckshot is always a good way to end a problem."

His face is completely blank as he says this.

"Where to now?" he says, glancing out back to the open desert. "This Billy might have a lead. Or we could go shoot Fiends until one coughs up something useful. I'd recommend the latter, if only because we can both eliminate a possible location and gain further information at the same time. I'd also get to shoot things."

Still blank.

“Well I ain’t kind.” Kara asserts stubbornly...while offering yet another piece of jerky to Hrolf. This shit with Vanessa was making her look bad. She needed to find a way to save face in a hurry-some fuckin’ how.

"I approve. Buckshot is always a good way to end a problem."

Kara smirks. But then he inquires about their next movements, and she’s got to think about her next steps.

“The Fiends are in a vault.” She provides, retracting her hands from Hrolf when the large dog just looked at her rather than come back in range for pets. She props her hands on her hips, looking out into the desert also. “They’re pretty dug in. Even if that weren’t the case…” Her eyes shift back to him. “I’m not looking to piss the Khans off in a hurry.” Really, The Fiends are about the only thing The Khans had for protection, right now. Kara didn’t trust any faction as far as she could throw ‘em, honestly-but she didn’t want the Khans defenseless against another NCR massacre or whatever.

She just has a thing for the underdog. More entertaining that way.

And while Moray was handy to have around, but she was still just as self sufficient as she’s ever been. She’s pretty sure that’s what she’s got to rely on her own skills more than his, for this next bit. She knows what she’s going to do. She also knows he’s probably not going to like it.

She’d cross that bridge when they get there.

“Let’s go check it out.” Kara says, that lazy, pepped saunter again as she starts off. This business with Caesar and the Khans bothers her, but she puts it out of her mind because Goddammit, nobody was paying her to think this much.

Which brings her to her companion.

“So…” She swallows her gum so he wouldn’t kill her, curious. “Jonah huh? Wasn’t that the guy who like, build a boat or something- and then some big fish up and swallowed it?”

Moray hums in acknowledgement, easing up a little bit on the predatory stalk. If they're not going to kill everyone in their way, no point in overacting the psychopath bit. He knows he has the tendency, but it's also very easy to lean into the reputation to get something done. Caricatures are easy to believe in. "Peaceful approach it is, but I don't know how you plan to pull that off. You know another Luke here?"

Ages.

"You're mixing up your Biblical references," Moray says, not particularly annoyed by it. The number of practicing Christians in the Mojave is damn near zero, let alone those that have actually read the Good Book itself. "Noah built the ark to save the animals of the world from a flood sent to cleanse the world of sinful men. Jonah was a prophet meant to warn another city destined for destruction, but ran from his duty on a ship. It was struck by a storm, and Jonah cast himself overboard to save the others, but he was swallowed by a whale and spat up three days later after praying for forgiveness."

It's probably the most consecutive words Moray has said up to this point.

"Peaceful approach it is,”

Oh good!

”But I don't know how you plan to pull that off. You know another Luke here?"

Kara scowls at him, that little crinkle of the bridge her nose, the glitter to her narrowed eyes, that near accidental pout. “No I don’t know another Lucas in there.”

Quiet a moment.

“I know a guy named Motor-Runner.” And by ‘know’, she meant loosely maybe tricked.

“...I arranged a one time deal between The Fiends and Lucas’ group where everyone only got screwed a little rather than annihilated, and I got paid.” Kara reveals, leaving out the part with the ‘ghost’ and Motor-Runner being high as hell on a downer during most of the debacle.

“I guess Lucas tried to go for round two and it didn’t work out for him. Don’t know if he got the chainsaw or not. Kiiiinda hoping not.”

She’s probably not real popular there, is what she’s saying.

"You're mixing up your Biblical references."

Probably. Kara only vaguely tries to remember the pictures in the ravaged ‘Lil’ Tots Picture Bible’ she’d found once.

"Noah built the ark to save the animals of the world from a flood sent to cleanse the world of sinful men. Jonah was a prophet meant to warn another city destined for destruction, but ran from his duty on a ship. It was struck by a storm, and Jonah cast himself overboard to save the others, but he was swallowed by a whale and spat up three days later after praying for forgiveness."

Kara’s staring at him a little. That was a lot of words all at once. She’s not sure why someone would name their kid after a coward that ran away. Did he drown after he was spit out? This was a fucked up story-she likes the one about the boat more. Then again, no one got swallowed up by a big fish in that one, so maybe she should weigh this out some more.

“Well, did he make it?" He's got her full, undivided attention again. "To warn the city I mean?”

"The category of 'guys you know' looks to dovetail nicely with the people who'd like to shoot you," Moray drones. "Especially when you explicitly admit to screwing people, as opposed to it being a passive result of conversation with you, as standard."

She's fun to needle, apparently.

"Anyways," Moray says, returning to his story with his usual vague disinterest. The fact he's even bothering to explain it is tell enough. "He did. The king put on sackcloth and ashes, and so did everyone else in the city, and God commanded the city spared. This made him angry, as he believed that God's merciful nature would naturally turn him aside from disaster."

Moray glances about at the Mojave, and gives Kara a sardonic look.

"He complains, and God tells him of mercy, that "Should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle?"

Moray shrugs. "It's a parable on the nature of mercy - teshuvah, in Judaic nomenclature, the ability to repent and be forgiven. I don't know if the thought applies as much now, given recent history."

"Yeah, yeah, people can't take a joke-" Kara’s scowl flickers, but she’s also impatient to hear the rest of the story, a small hand gesture to that effect-and a return to her attentive, listening expression once he begins again.

There’s a lot going on in it, for sure. It had to have been a joke ‘Wear sack cloth and ashes, and I won’t smite the fuck outta you.’ Jonah from the whale apparently didn’t get it. Having had to live in a whale for three days, she’s not sure how he missed God’s prank game.

Still, if he had complained about the city not being smited, he couldn’ t have been a very nice guy.

But instead of Moray revealing some grand joke or something that then happened to Jonah, the story had a lesson, a meaning. She seems to puzzle this out, surprisingly without a wisecrack or anything teasing, glancing out over the terrain. Being sorry and not getting smited. Did it still count if you were only sorry because you’d be smited otherwise? Or did you have to regret, really regret your actions for it to count, and not care if you’re smited or not?

“...so your folks liked that story, then?” Enough to name him after it, apparently. Makes her curious again, and then she impulsively says something else before he could respond.

“Shit, I’m not even sure Kara’s my real name, but at this point I’m keepin’ it. No take backs.”

Moray shrugs. "My father was fond of it. Gave me the name because I was meant to be his tesuvah, a new life and a new mark. Didn't work out, so I go by Moray these days."

He turns the barest hint of a smile on Kara. "If it makes you feel better, Moray's not my real last name either. It just sounded appropriate, so I made it mine. So yes. I do understand."

His eyes are blue and full of winter. There's a story that's peeking out, just the edges of it.

"I promise to call you nothing else," Moray says, apropos of nothing. His gaze settles on her, cool and assessing; and then he says, "You're fine as you are."

He doesn't know what Kara would be if not this fiery woman, with the jokes and the snide comments and the tall tales, but he's fine with the shape she wears today, whatever previously she was. There's a story there too, but Moray has never chased. He waits for his prey to come close. The method hasn't changed.

That sounds heavy. Kara’s not sure quite what to make of it, his father putting all that on some kid. She wonders what ‘didn’t work out’ meant. She wonders if he was a dick or not. Maybe just died early?

“I was exchanged for beer money.” It’s actually somewhat difficult to tell if she’s bullshitting or not. “I’d like to think someone thought that was as hilarious as I do.” That slanted grin, a glance to Hrolf trotting along behind.

“It just sounded appropriate, so I made it mine.”

Kara's gaze returned, watches him again. Something in that resonates with her-she clearly identified with it. She was, after all, a self made individual too. He’s on the verge of smiling there. She can see it. She’s briefly not sure where to go to broaden though, and he just casually moves on-as casual as he seemed to get anyway.

"You're fine as you are."

Kara blushes, an honest to God blush coming to that pale skin, clear surprise to her eyes. For the briefest of moments her lazy saunter stutters-and then looks away in a hurry, recovering herself with aplomb.

“Laying it on a little thick there, Moray.” She dismisses in that familiar flippant way of hers, cocky and self assured-but the color was there, plain as day.

Her heart was beating a little too fast for her liking, too. How was she supposed to have known he was a secret guy under there?! She’s never been embarrassed in her life, certainly not tongue tied, and here she was losing out to Moray.

Nobody’s ever said anything even remotely like that before. SHE threw her weight around all arrogantly thinking that, but nobody else was supposed to, that was the whole point of the joke! Right?

“You’ll only encourage me.” She teases, the pep to her step a little more apparent, slanted grin. “And then I’ll just be unbearable.”

///////////////////////////////////////////////////

Kara had led them around and behind where a bunch of Fiends were milling about in various states of unconsciousness and/or engaged in horrific violence with one another. They were a safe distance away yet, out of sight unless they peeked over the ridge. Yeah, he’s not going to like this.

“Okay. So here’s the deal-just gotta make sure Vanessa OR her brother aren’t here. Eliminate all the easy possibilities, ya know?” That, and these guys were fucking mean. “That’s it. No mess, no fuss, nothing that anybody’d ever know about.” Wait...how was that?

“I’m just slipping in and out. You and Hrolf wait here.”

Moray shrugs. "As of Tenderheart, I can confidently assure you that you are worth more than 500 caps. So I hope it was funny when whoever made that trade died of liver cancer."

His smile is spreading. God only knows why Kara's weak to flattery, men have to have been trying to get in her pants for years. Maybe it's the angle he's hitting from - she's not used to stability, and he hasn't changed in years. But no, that's not true anymore, not since they've started feeling each other out, this cautious dance of theirs. One faint token of trust, for another.

The steps are small, but he likes the rhythm.

~*~

He gives her a dull look when Kara explains her plan.

"If you have a Stealth Boy, go for it," he says simply. "Give me a time estimate so I know when things have gone tits-up and to go in and shoot everything. If you don't, then I am tying you to a rock and putting peanut butter on your face so Hrolf will do nothing but lick you for half an hour. Then I will go in and shoot everything while you are occupied with dog tongue."

“I do have a stealth boy, not that I need it.” Kara pretends to be very wounded, straightening to her full height with a wounded sniff. “I’ve been doing this since I was in practically in diapers, and without fancy chinese equipment!”

She gestures to her head. “With this hair!”

She laughs, then.

“You probably don’t even have peanut butter.” She considers. “Or rope I can’t get out of.”

A time limit! That was a very good idea. Except these guys are all psycho nutjobs, so five minutes were probably enough for things to be ugly, fast. “Eh, if I don’t come back in an hour, go ahead and write my epitaph or whatever. But the worst of them are already outside, where I won’t be.” An hour was a long time, but before much could be said on it- “Look, I might have to wait at a door or see something shiny, who knows! Gotta give me some time. This is one of the vaults I haven't gotten to fully explore, yet."

Another time, perhaps.

She shifts her backpack off her shoulders and drops it right where she stands, reaching into the inside of her jacket for the handy dandy device that would render her damned near invisible. It made sense that's where'd she have it. "If you see a bunch of them run out of there all of a sudden, assume I did something both badass and hilarious."

"Do you want to know what I'd substitute for peanut butter?" Moray says, mild. He never makes loud threats; he makes you listen to him instead. "Nevertheless. You know this area, and this is your field of expertise. If you're sure it's manageable, go ahead. We're also getting radios after this, so I don't have to rely on the sound of screaming and people running away to let me know you've fucked up."

He sets the LMG atop a large, flat rock that crowns a ridge just to the right of the vault entrance proper, and then racks the chamber with a meaty, mechanical thud. "That's my thing, anyways."

He nods up to her, and sets out the camo blanket, preparing to become some invisible rain of death as soon as something goes to hell - which, he's certain, it will. Kara likes improvising, and not so much the planning that lets it come off without a hitch. "Get going. Don't expect me to carry your loot. Be careful."

Warnings dispensed, he settles down behind his giant gun and waits.

“That I’ve decided to improvise, you mean.” Kara corrects cheerfully, chin up. Her glasses not just rose tinted, but full on opaque.

“Careful? I’m always the most careful. Little old lady crossing a minefield careful. Bunny rabbit hopping through yaoguai den careful. Just the careful-est.” She’s smirking, immensely amused with herself and his directive.

“Careful’s my middle name!” And then she was gone. Slipping down the side of the ridge without a sound, Kara swung out far-and made a near direct approach for the cave and door, skirting around passed out and arguing druggies.

~*~

This place was a mess. Kara breathed carefully, quietly through her mouth to avoid the smell of too many men in too cramped a space, death fucking everywhere. Overdoses, losing sides of fights, rabid dogs-criminy. Even their dogs were on drugs. Yikes.

She ended up on one side of the complex, a lucky guess taking her to their jail cells where an asshole she recognized as Daniel kept guard. She’d mocked him for not having his own badass but horrifying name, she remembers. He was zonked out, no body guard in sight. The cells were empty save for a dead man in a trailblazing sorta outfit. Probably a trader. For the best...Kara hadn’t discussed her plans for extracting any prisoners found, but Moray definitely wouldn’t have liked them.

Vanessa and her brother weren’t here. It was good and bad news. She’d kick Daniel awake here in a minute and make sure they hadn’t been, but she felt this only confirmed what she’d been worried about.

Sierra Madre it was.

~*~

57 minutes, exactly, had passed. Things looked unchanged down below, no evidence of ‘fuck ups’ OR ‘improvisations’-yet. At 58 minutes, she was sneaking up on the other side of the ridge. Hrolf’s tail wags lazily before Kara made an intentional scrape of her boot in the dirt. She doesn’t want to get herself shanked, even if startling him might’ve been pretty funny.

“No dice.” The reappearing redhead says with a shrug. A barbaric looking helmet was loosely held by a horn in her right hand. It was a goat skull strapped to a skull cap, a little spiral design painted on between the eye socket ridges. She tosses it to Hrolf. She’d stolen it just to fuck with them.

“And no indication they were ever there.” Kara retrieved her crappy ‘adventuring’ map from her inside pocket. How she made sense of the scribbles was beyond anybody, but apparently she could. “Might as well head home for today. If we’re going, best I go packed and suited up properly, ya know?”

She’s never actually told or taken anyone there before. It was her home turf, her secret base-somewhere she kept most of her cooler shit. She briefly considered telling him she’d meet back up with him somewhere. But...nah. “Congrats, guess I’m takin’ you home!”

Hrolf sniffs the shitty helmet. His nose wrinkles and he backs off.

Moray loads up his LMG and camo blanket with a shrug. "I'll assume you cut things close just to fuck with me. Whatever. Let's roll then."

Kara's map comes back out, and he squints at it trying to make any sense out of the thing. It looks like a mechanic's handrag after he tried to tie-dye a muffler. "Do you actually read that thing or is it a prop you hold while you try to work through your Alzheimer's?" he asks, just to be obnoxious.

At the revelation he's heading to her home base, Moray glances over at her, then nods. "I'll wipe my boots off and tell the dog not to piss in the corners. You know, gentleman shit. Lead the way."

For all of his dismissive, blase response, he falls in behind Kara without so much as a complaint, and his eyes are soft.

“What? Oh that-I don’t actually have a watch.” Kara reveals with a flippant shrug. WHY she agreed to a time frame without one who the hell could say-she just figured she’d be done by then. The woman was insane. “Just lucked out, being on time.” She taps the assortment of pins and metal emblems attached to the upper right front of her jacket, just beneath the rusty metal pauldron.

“Like most awesome things-my map is useless to everyone else, but invaluable to me.” She folds it up, taps it on the knee pad on her stocking’d leg, and tucks it back into its pocket. “‘Sides, hand drawn maps are a tradition. For all you know mapmaking goes back in my family for generations.” Hell, for all SHE knew mapmaking went back in her family for generations.

The idea is immediately amusing, particularly since hers looked so damned crappy and frequently got her lost or off the mark. Well, like she said before-her map led to adventures.

“See, I was going to ask Hrolf to wipe his paws and not let YOU piss in the corners, but I guess that works too.”

Kara actually seems a little excited. She’s never told anyone about it, but she was ridiculously proud of it, and keeping her mouth shut the past few years had been a trial. “It’s in a vault.” She chatters, leading the way south from their current position. “Not even a super fucked up one, either. Least, I don’t think.” She thinks that over. She’s been in quite a few, but this one was definitely the nicest she’s seen.

“I’ve been almost everywhere in it and had to do a lot of clearing out for the space I wanted.” Kara reveals, starting to answer how she was managing to ‘hold’ the vault. “There’s fire geckos that just won’t quit and a lot of collapsed tunnels to split it up in a very handy way, so I don’t have to worry much about say...The Fiends or anyone else taking it completely over.”

She jerks her thumb back towards Vault 3 by way of explanation. “There’s this other vault that’s almost entirely intact-I’m not sure anyone’s been in there ‘cept me.” Her cheerfulness kind of...stymies. “Hell if I’d sleep there though-it’s a creeptastic, probably haunted place. Their experiment was fucked up.” And if Kara thought so, it must have been.

“Anyway-some Powder Gangers had moved in on the first level last I checked, and they have no damned idea I’m ever there.”

"That would make perfect sense, because apparently it's as useful as anything else your family passed down to you," Moray snarks, but otherwise lets the map go.

Moray shrugs. "I've only ever been in one Vault, and it was a class act on how not to do shit. I'll take your word for it and avoid confirming for myself. I can kill just about anything alive, but whoever designed the Vaults wanted to fuck with everything inside of you. I don't plan on dying like a rat in a cage."

Dying from a gunshot or some rabid thing's claws is about what Moray expects. Te thought of getting locked in a Vault or subject to some sick scientist's whims makes his stomach turn. Liberty has always been his highest allegiance, and the bodies piled into corners and closets he'd seen in that one Vault had been enough to convince him against handing his ultimate fate over to anyone.

"You want me to kill them?" he offers, idly. Less out of a desire to do so than to annoy Kara, and keep with the theme. "I mean, you don't have the best luck with Powder Gangers. Might want to jump on that ahead of time before you do something silly like try to negotiate with them."

"That would make perfect sense, because apparently it's as useful as anything else your family passed down to you,"

That had gotten him a laugh.

His other comments made her more thoughtful than anything. Yeah, the Vaults were pretty messed up. Historically when someone has tried to twist her up, she twists them right back and then some-but the vaults had near faceless masters with obscure intentions, where your enemies could be your own friends.

Meh, three’s a crowd in Kara’s opinion-unless one’s a dog. She casts a glance over to Hrolf, and she’s instantly cheered up.

For a minute.

Kara scowls and whips around to face him, now walking backwards. “That was the one time! I swear, anybody coulda made that mistake.” Yeah! She couldn’t have known Lucas was dead! Or that McStabby Stabface would try to knife her, jeez! “But -no-, I don’t want you to kill them, because they’re driving folks away just fine.” She pulls on the front of her jacket, turns back around again with a huff.

“They’re workin’ for me and don’t even know it. I’m a very generous landlord, you know.” A smirk tossed back over her shoulder.

~*~

Kara places her hand on the top log of the simple, crappy wooden fence at the edge of the farm and vaults over it easily, Hrolf ducking through the gap between the two logs. They were heading for a stone outcropping, a narrow cave he might have to turn sideways to get through the entrance of, at least the first two feet.

Kara’s got a small flashlight that she twists on-hanging it off the button holding the upper sleeve pocket closed. It cast a halo of light that bounced off the yellow, sulfuric walls of the cavern. Kara pointed up at a small point of light filtering in through a hole in the cave’s ceiling. “That’s how I originally got around and back here.” She held her hands spaced apart in an approximation of how wide it was-barely two, three inches wider than Kara’s shoulders. “Good think I excavated that little entrance for you, eh?”

The cave was large and some sort of building on steel beams could be seen ahead, something that jutted out of the rock and looked to be six feet of armored something or other. There’s a dull green light up the stairs and to the left of a seriously looking bulkhead door-the flickering screen of a terminal.

Kara sorta hums absently to herself as she pops up the stairs. It sounded suspiciously like ‘home on the range’.

"I probably wouldn't have fit," Moray agrees, squinting up at the hole. "Camping outside doesn't much appeal either. I prefer this option."

The concept of staying in a Vault doesn't much make him comfortable, but he supposes he can take Kara's word. The mercenary ambles up the steps after her and peers over her shoulder at the screen - not that looking over it is any great accomplishment, given their relative heights. "Well, at least your lock is hard to pick," Moray muses, looking at the immense corkscrewing door that seals all Vaults. "I'd hate to see the boltcutters that could get through this."

Hrolf heels and sits behind them, his tongue hanging out.

“Oh, this?” Kara’s smug, but also oddly excited, proud. Bragging rights, after all.

She shoves the terminal aside-it’s on an extending arm. “Naw. You hack on that, it just keeps popping up a new screen, and a new screen, and a new screen…” She clearly can’t repress her amusement at the idea of someone hacking away forever, a mirthful little laugh. “I set this up like a fuckin’ pro.”

She slides a falsely doubled screwed metal plate aside to reveal a somewhat messily affixed keypad and an exposed circuit board. She deftly punches in a four digit code before tapping her thumb and forefinger together with a metallic ‘ting’ of the little finger pad plates-before she pressed them each into a certain spot on the circuit board.

The door released pressure with a hiss, pulling inwards before rolling to the left.

“Ladies first!” She tosses with a ‘fancy’ hand gesture and half bow for him to go ahead.

Once inside she turned to a big red button just off the main walkway-leaning over the metal railing to shove it in, the bulkhead rolling closed. “Lot easier getting out, ‘course.” She wouldn’t like feeling trapped, and maybe that’s why she says that.

They appeared to be in some sort of maintenance room, the metal walkway turning into a slight incline and leading to a large platform, various long dormant computer terminals and systems lining the walls. Kara hadn’t done much of anything in here. She led them through one of the doors and down a short hall lit only with emergency lights illuminating the base of the walls.

“Like I said, most of the vault’s blocked off at various points. You can’t get to the first level from down here, and vice versa. We’re in the smaller portion, but there’s spots you can’t get to from either side.”

She shrugs cheerfully. “So I cleared out most of the radscorpians and fire geckos explorin’ what I could down here in these four levels, and left most of the other side alone aside for a tour.”

Another keypad, and in what was clearly another amusing (to Kara) joke, she pressed in ALL the keys with both hands. The door slid open, lights kicked in-and revealed a cavernous dark space that led into a more comfortably, functionally lit one.

The room was partially divided by a large section of wall with a metal set of stairs on either side of it, both leading down into what someone had clearly converted into their living space. A predictably unmade bed was placed with the headboard against the dividing wall, a footlocker placed on either side of it and a green, glass shaded lamp on one.

The eastern wall had utilitarian metal shelves lined up, shelves at Kara’s eye level and below stocked full of various partially constructed weapons, prewar technologies (how many toasters did one woman need?), machine parts-various tools and crates containing all sorts of junk. It got a little more sparse over her head, which made sense-Kara wasn’t very tall.

The shelves lining the western wall contained various treasures-pointless decorative things Kara had clearly found cool or interesting in her various explorations and journeys. There were metal street and advertising signs, an impressively large crate of billiard balls, baseballs, and one swirled blue bowling ball, toy cars, some sort of mechanical horse, flags folded neatly inside of display frames, a globe, rolled posters and other artworks, Sunset Sasperilla star caps in a little glass jar, a stacked little pyramid of various canned goods, and a shelf -just- for boxes of candy. There were all sorts of metal boxes, crates and containers full of God only knew what. She even had her own rotating, metal magazine rack over there. There were all sorts of different issues-the most weathered of which were the comics, because of course.

Judging by the eastern wall alone, the assessment that Kara could ‘find you any little part you needed’ was probably an accurate one. She could have opened her own damned store.

The wall opposite the bed had a door to a surprisingly nice hygiene room with full amenities, and another that led into various other parts of the vault. And a quick getaway if she needed one.

The space looked to once be some sort of recreational area-there was a pool table, a colorful glowing jukebox and a rather comfortable looking couch with a Brotherhood of Steel flag tossed over the back. Probably some stolen prize, a reminder of an adventure. Kara had already wandered over to the messier wall of shelves, looking for a length of rope to tie a knot into and offer up to Hrolf.

“Pretty sweet digs, right?”

"I'm surprised you killed anything with that stapler you called a sidearm, but evidently it works just fine," Moray muses, glancing around the vault with interest. It's not quite a display of her personality but more of her capacity to be interested in damn near anything - the vault is a magpie's nest of stolen trophies from all over the Mojave. "You've built a home for yourself in here. I'm honestly impressed."

It's not something he says often, but the initiative to find out a place like this, clear it, dig an entrance, and then drag her loot to it from god-knows-where can't be denied. Kara had wanted this fiercely, a space all her own and all the possessions she could stack on walls, in pyramids, on shelves and on the floor if she wanted to. It's a monument to both greed and wonder - that she can have things, that she can keep them - and he wonders if she understands quite how much this reveals about herself.

But they're not really comfortable enough to speak truths to each other like this; they're still edging past the ragged holes in each other, unsure of what to say or do when they spot something so different. His religious knowledge had obviously sparked her curiosity, and it spoke a lot that she had not asked more, not indulged that fierce acquisitiveness for knowledge that she would with anyone else, Moray believes. That she understands what forms him is not merely a story, but his past.

So he returns the favor - balances the scales. Moray sets down his backpack, and pulls the one great souvenir of their time together so far out: the single, unbroken horn of the deathclaw alpha they'd hunted, long and vicious, tip wrapped in cloth to prevent it punching through the fabric. Then he sets the blunt end on the pool table and gestures at it. "Where do you want this, then?"

Some things are better than words.

“You’d be surprised how well you can do hanging from the ceiling and just picking ‘em off awhile.” A smirk. “That and grenades.”

She finds some rope, grabs a golf ball out of the crate full of various sphere objects, and sets to work trying to tie some kind of...really messy looking knot that involved wrapping the rope around her small hand, carefully sliding it off and then wrapping the lengths and golf ball together, pulling loose pieces through-it looked complicated. She was almost wholly involved with it, too.

“Definitely the biggest project I’ve ever seen all the way through. I ain’t much for permanence, but what the hell, ya know?” She camped and slept in towns more than here, but it was nice to wind down in a secret place no one knew about, all sorts of shit from various bolt holes and abandoned buildings across the Mojave and beyond. Or at least, no one had known about it.

She’s got a ball of rope now-a less than perfect monkey’s fist. She holds it by the uncut length in triumph before her eyes flit to what he’s doing-oh.

Kara pretends to think real hard on this, but her heart is beating a little quick again. “Hm...” She honestly doesn’t know. Most of the shelves are grouped in a way that only really made sense in Kara’s ADD addled brain. She doesn’t have a ‘joint adventure’ spot. All of these things are about places, not people or events for the most part.

She swings the knot like a pendulum absently before clearing one of the shelves-a flag display case to the left, and a globe to the right, several casino chips slid over. “It can have its own spot, right here!” It was right at her eye level. He might note some of the more interesting things to look at were on that plane. She stayed mostly in that spot, watching him bring it over and set it on the shelf.

For a moment, she feels very quiet.