Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

[Obuzeti]

"Accurate," Jonah murmurs, his eyes closed as he leans into Kara's touch - her fingers, then her lips, unable to remain distant from each other. "But the Mojave can go fuck itself. I have that which I desire."

Union.

They're still faintly soaked with sweat, though it slides easily on damp skin. Jonah sighs and presses another gentle kiss on Kara, and pushes up from the bed. "Let's get cleaned up and get to sleep. Then we can go deal with all these idiots that won't leave us alone."

He pauses as he sits up. His hand, still linked with Kara's, brings her up to press a kiss across her knuckles. "Thank you. I needed this."

Moray still hates people, he knows. Their frustrating inconsistency, their fumbling dishonesty, the fidgeting, the way they crumble in silence and time. It all wastes his patience, and all he can hear sometimes is the screech of blood in vein, pumping along strained pipelines and winding up these clocks that won't stop ticking. Humans are something other to him. He doesn't feel anything more when he looks at a man's face than a rabbit's.

It's just that Kara is in under the tortoise shell, wrapped up warm with his heart, and he knows to listen to her. People have value, and she can see that in ways he can't. He trusts her to guide him in this world of shrieking eggshell.

But here in private, he can feel the cool dampness on his skin, and the curves of his mouth when he smiles. The numbness is gone.

He really does need it, in ways he hadn't known before.

~*~

It's the next morning. The cuts are rewrapped, and Moray is back to fighting shape as he slips the fatigues back on. He looks out of place as fuck in the casino, and anywhere on the Strip in general, but it's not like anyone has the guts to confront him about it - and he does have a passport, anyways.

"What's the plan?" he asks, pulling the climbing piton out of the floor and sliding it back into a discrete holster. On closer inspection, it's nothing like a normal one - the end is a circle with rubber grips, clearly made for holding. It probably doubles as some kind of gruesome dagger / shovel. "Interrogate the local schmucks, then make our way over to the Tops? Your play, Kara."

His breath is steady and his gaze firm - the jagged, teetering friction is gone. There's still some passive homicidal potential lurking in the back of Jonah's eyes, but it's not a looming threat anymore either.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara had disappeared into her closet after another bath (her third since they’d gotten here!) , but the firebomb redhead had ultimately ended up donning fairly simple attire, at least for her.

Sporting a dusty green mechanic’s outfit for the day, Kara was working at rolling the pantcuffs up rather than tucking them into her high laced boots-probably had something to do with the knife she always kept sheathed in the left one. She’d turned one over at the front desk-but of course had had a back up in the room. She hadn’t bothered zipping the jumpsuit up all the way-it was open from navel to collarbone, another painted tanktop on underneath. This time her ‘art’ was just a flashy, comic book style ‘Pow!’ black markered against a spiky red and white background that’d been spray painted.

She was tucking various things into her pockets, the ones on the outside and the ones stitched on the inside. Craftier, ‘more important’ things, of course.

“Well, we hit the bar, first thing’s first.” Kara’s entirely too cheerful. Not enough for it to be suspicious, or the same as yesterday’s cover for her concern about him-but the usual flippant glee she normally had, that endlessly amused smirk. “You can’t expect me to scheme with a dry throat.”

She turns to face him, hands planted on her hips.

“That’d just be bad luck!” Vivid blue eyes sparkle in a way they wouldn’t have with someone else, and her smirk curves into more of a sharing smile. Jonah was, for good or ill, roped in on her japes and jokes now, for as long as he’d tolerate them.

And to hear him tell it, he’d ‘tolerate’ them and her for a long, long time.

She sauntered over, considered him a moment- then lightly tapped against the bird pin. “Not that we’re lacking in the good stuff, mind you.”

Kara gives a nod of approval, starts to pull on those unique gloves of hers-fingerless save for her thumb and forefinger, the pads of which bore small plates of metal for shorting circuits. “But yeah-we see if anyone’s heard anything about House or Benny, and then maybe we visit Benny’s bar too. Neighborly thing to do.”

Kara considers.

"I still think Benny and his cronies was working that one on his own though-not the Chairmen as a whole. Best bet to know one way or another would be Swank, once we do head over to The Tops."

 

[Obuzeti]

"I could hope for scheming sober, perhaps, but clearly intoxication is a powerful and necessary part of the ideation process," Jonah says, rolling his shoulders. He has less weapons stashed away than Kara, but also needs them less, by his estimation. After what he'd done to the White Gloves, he really doubted any of the other gangs were going to get aggressive with him.

He nods and opens the door for Kara, ignoring the slight squeak as the door bumps over the rent in the carpet where he'd driven the climbing piton through. "It's a decent idea. Let's just avoid the Ultra-Luxe if we can. Not that much is left."

The White Gloves probably put on a good show still, but he'd killed over two dozen people and gutted the service corridors and underground caverns that laid underneath the casino proper. That's before infighting over the new leadership came into play, too. He was honestly curious to see if the White Gloves still ran it at all.

He steps out into the hall after her, and nods towards the main area of Gomorrah proper. "I don't particularly trust this Cachino. Have any other informants in the area, or do you just start seeing who you can liquor up?"

Probably the best thing he can do here is lurk out of sight, to be honest. Or serve drinks. He can mix a few.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara grins at his response, sailing through the door and into the hallway to wait for him, a single bounce on the balls of her feet. She’s gonna take the stairs. It’d be funny to burst through the side door down there.

“Let's just avoid the Ultra-Luxe if we can. Not that much is left."

“Like I said-anywhere you’re not welcome and not wantin’ to visit, I ain’t interested either. They always did creep me out-toldja I never slept there.”

Eating people...blech!

“Whaddya mean? Cachino is just a sterling man of character-practically a priest.” The courier’s full of it and sounds full of it, that typical dramatic flourish as she starts towards the stairwell, an idle glance to what had been the empty suite next to hers-but there’s a light on in there, she can just barely see it through the peephole.

“But nah-your instincts are good. He’s a scumbag. Only reason he plays nice with me is cause I got dirt on him.” She shrugs, voice lowering as a stroke of serious filters through.

“I honestly would have squealed and gotten him gone months ago, but I didn’t want someone less pathetic replacin’ him, someone I ain’t got nothing on.” Someone who might resume Cachino’s previous...activities. It’s hard to think of him in that way-he was just a sweaty, dickless nervous nellie to her, scared shitless she’d turn in that ledger. But then, the bastard had never had that kind of power over her. That’s why she’d done him like that in the first place-he HAD had that kind of power over the women here-even Joanna. And nobody should have that over Joanna.

The drugs are the only way anyone managed it, by Kara’s figuring. She pops the door to the backstairs open and swells back up to her full, if diminutive height, a cocky gesture of thumb to chest.

“He’s resigned to dealing with me, but that doesn’t always make him much fun. Liquoring people up, now that’s fun.”

And down she goes, taking the stairs two at a time on yet another adventure. She bursts out onto the mainfloor and nearly takes out a passing goon-who just shoots her a glare. Kara had taken them down to the ‘exclusive’ Zoara club, a smoky, less bright room than the main area of the Casino. There were a few slot machines against the far wall, but for the most part small pairs and groups of men sat along the low tables lining a long, open stage where a woman was dancing listlessly, eyes glazed over.

Overhead was the landing to Big Sal’s and Nero’s offices-the latter of which she nearly got executed in, once. That’d been a big day! She can see the lights on in Nero’s, which the big boss and his second were in there working on something or other.

“Whiskey sours please, bartender!” Kara bursts over the music, slapping a handful of caps down on the counter top. The man in question rolls his eyes, slides the money over to himself-and gives it a glance to make sure they’re not slugs before he pours the requested booze-Kara sweeping hers up and downing it in one go. She’s already on her performance, on ‘the case’-whatever the addled woman would call the case, anyway.

Kara gives an approving smack of her lips and clinks the glass down, rummaging in her pocket a moment-before she slaps down another little pile of caps and holds her hand out for the bottle.

“Pleasure doing business!” She chirps through a smirk, lifting the bottle to her lips and taking a swig-but no more than that. It’s more funny to her than anything-she’s not here to actually get drunk.

...well, today.

She cuts across the corner of the room, stopping at a table to refill a glass of a baffled looking NCR soldier on leave-and then continues right on through the double doors that lead to the courtyard.

The air was filled with the charcoal scent of bonfires and incense, music pumping through strategically placed speakers hanging from the upper level balcony. Blue eyes follow the trail of cabanas lining the path all around the rectangular pool of water at the courtyard’s center. Kara knew the pool to only be about a foot deep-she’d gone splashing in it, once.

Scantily clad women move about, some already talking to the johns they’d no doubt be leading back to their tents, some dancing by the water, others carrying around and serving drinks. A few of Cachino’s thugs roam the balconies, more posted along the wall down here, keeping an eye on things.

“Everytime I come here,” Kara murmurs once Moray joined her in the courtyard, lifting the bottle of whiskey to her lips for a final, thoughtful swig. “There’s a slew of new girls.” Always.

Kara shrugged, offering up the bottle. “I’m gonna find some pals. Gal pals. C’mon, ‘less you wanted to go shopping.”

And she’s off again, not quite as fast as she’d been on the stairs or in Zoara but still fairly pepped-that familiarly buoyant, lazy saunter of hers. Men wandered around, drinking and screwing up the courage to approach their flights of fancy-tourists or soldiers on leave. Locals didn’t come to Vegas in groups, and they didn’t fret about rejections from whores. They came alone, and they knew what they wanted when they did. As evidenced by a man in an old world suit currently striding towards a cabana Kara suspected was familiar to him-and taking the girl at the entrance by the elbow before passing through the canvas flaps into a low lit, cushioned interior. Not so much as a hello.

Kara always had suspected she’d be entirely too chatty for a whore.

There were three girls clustered around a fourth at the edge of one tent, a shaved blonde with heavy eyeliner Kara didn’t recognize. New. Newer than new-only one of her arms had any track marks, and not a whole lot besides.

She wouldn’t know any better not to waste time with her-perfect.

“Oooh, you guys swapping stories?” Kara inquired as she turned on her heel and stepped over-the four girls going silent with surprise. It was a strange picture-four scantily clad, black leather sporting women in collars stood grouped together and a little wide eyed on one side of the open cabana entrance, and the brightly grinning, confident ‘mechanic’ swinging a whiskey bottle on the other side, not a care in the world.

A brunette no taller than Kara gave a slight tug on the wrist of the taller new girl, and an older raven haired one on the other side a slight nudge on her shoulder.

The newbie spoke up. “100 c-caps. No kissing, no rough stuff-or it’s double, for girls.”

Kara’s laughed. “What? No discount?! I was gonna charge you for-eh, nevermind about that. It just looked like you guys were having fun. Thought I’d offer a drink.”

Kara stepped across the open entrance and right into their confused cluster, pressing the bottle of amber liquid into the chest of the shaved blonde. With a glance to the others she accepted it, a nervous sip.

“How’d you do your makeup? That’s darker than the smudges most people manage…”

“Charcoal with lube instead of water.” The brunette piped up-bringing a deep red blush to the girl and making Kara laugh. “Well shit, if it works it works-” The courier replied, causing a spark of pride in the woman before Kara took and passed the bottle to someone else.

“So you’re new then? New new? Like first night new?”

“Just in the courtyard...I was hired in as a dancer two days ago. I’m Dazzle.”

“Courtney.” Kara lied for no reason-or maybe one, she doesn’t know. The raven haired woman frowned slightly, though Kara didn’t recognize her. That only made it funnier-besides, did they really expect her to believe Dazzle was a real name?

“Ruby.” Said the brunette. “That’s Bloom, and Lucy.” Bloom nodded, but Lucy-apparently the older raven haired woman-simply stepped away and trailed off. Kara pretended not to watch her go, but she noted it.

“Ruby, Bloom, and Dazzle. Whatcha guys up to then? Talking shop? Giving tips? How much do ya charge for advice and horoscopes? Never got my fortune read by a whore before-” Ruby had been mid swig when Kara dropped that one, inhaling whiskey and choke laughing on it. Bloom smacked her on the back a few times and Kara stood looking pleased with herself, though Dazzle remained mildly mystified, if not unfriendly, towards the red head. Bloom shook her head and Ruby looked rueful, seemingly trying to decide if Kara wanted anything or not, or was legitimately there to make friends.

“I mean...I could read your palm if you WANT your fortune read by a whore.” Ruby offered, a little tentatively buying into Kara’s brand of entertainment.

“I do! And then I’ll read yours-what’s that good for you think?”

“Thirty caps.” Ruby joked, but she was suddenly unsure if Kara WAS playing a game-the redhead was rooting around in the pockets of her jumpsuit, looking serious as she haggled back. “I said I’d read yours back, ain’t that trade enough?”

Dazzle and Bloom froze, the latter shooting Ruby a glare. Too much hustling could get them all in trouble-Gomorrah had rules about pricing, how much they’d take off the top, how much you could get away with.

“Um…”

“Nah, you’re probably right-all fortunes ain’t created equal. Thirty caps it is. And I’ll throw in that bottle of booze too, you got any blow job tips.”

The three relaxed, and Ruby seemed surprised Kara actually forked over the money-the look on her face was a mixture of surprise and satisfaction, clearly thinking she had actually hustled ‘Courtney’.

Kara meanwhile-had only said the last bit to try and get a rise out of Moray-evident by the look she flashed him.

It made one wonder just how many levels of entertainment Kara was getting out of the interaction.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Perhaps a Catholic one," Jonah concedes. There's something about the placid stillness of his face that makes it come off as less than a compliment.

He follows her down the stairs at a stride, his long steps keeping up with her despite Kara nearly jogging, and responds to the thug eyeballing her ass as she moves past by tapping the man's eyelid with a knife that he produces from an inner pocket. He flinches back, swearing, and Moray pockets it and moves on. He doesn't take any of the whiskey, either, not in a room full of morally-compromised gangsters of dubious loyalty. Instead Jonah just keeps following Kara, out into the courtyard, where a wide variety of prostitutes ply their trade and lure their marks back into tents. The music blocks out the moans still faintly heard from the tents, but neither can distract Moray from the bent shoulders and crimping steps Moray sees in so many of the women here, sometimes swapped for open, clueless intoxication. It's a menagerie of addicts, here. He can smell the Med-X soaked into the fabrics, into the bodies. This is an opium paradise.

"High turnover," Moray murmurs back. By overdose or withdrawal, death comes from a needle here.

He lets Kara work her magic, and turns back to lean against a pillar in the sideground, blending in as only security can - one more looming suit, scanning the crowd. Granted, none of the Omertas have either his size or his military-esque gear, and nothing can dull the confidence that comes out clearer than anything else. Kara's panache comes out in her words, but Moray's certainty is eight inches behind the viewer's head. He never doubts he could walk right through anyone if he wanted to.

"Your mouth gets me in enough trouble without involving my dick in it," Jonah says, like he's discussing the weather. "But far be it from me to limit your oral repertoire."

This particular brand of humor is about as close as he gets to playful. He's looking at Kara, though, out of the corner of his eye, and there's a faint rumble back in his chest, like half a cough repressed.

Another dark-haired whore comes down the stairs, shapely and in much better health than most of the waifs littering this place, then spots the duo, making her way over. She blinks up at Moray, disbelieving. "Jonah Moray? What are you doing here?"

The mercenary glances over at the newcomer and offers a single nod before glancing back. "Joana. Trying to keep my partner out of trouble. Mostly failing."

"How's she going to top you?" she says, wincing a little at some half-remembered thought, and slips herself in besides Kara and the other girls, who make room for her without thinking. Joana walks like the sexiest woman in the room, and at the very least the other working girls here believe it - they orient to and around her like sunflowers to the morning. Even the goons watch as she settles in, though they're mostly watching her thighs and ass. She's got swing and sway in her walk that comes natural.

Moray, eternal exception to the rule, stares over Kara's head like a tired parent instead.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"How's she going to top you?"

Kara took in the exchange curiously, along with Joana herself. She always looks pretty good, but today she’s less...tired? Less something, anyway. Kara’s smirk is on her lips as she abandons all thoughts of palm readings-because if anyone had information to share, it’d be the experienced sex pot. The joke paled in comparison to exasperating-or trying to exasperate-her bestest of buddies, as of two seconds ago.

“Now see, that’s something I just might take personally. Enough to maybe start two cabana fires.”

Joana doesn’t respond to that, just raises a brow. She’s tougher stuff than most-Kara’s yet to get under her skin, really get a reaction, because Joana played the game nearly as well as she did.

“Maybe dump a slot machine in the pool? Oooh, no, I got it! Fireworks. Fireworks in every third tent on a timer. That’d liven things up.” The other girls were starting to exchange glances, no doubt thinking this ‘Courtney’ was a little off. Joana just returns a flat look to Moray.

Maybe she hired him? She could probably afford a contract with him, assuming she didn’t always blow her caps on stupid pranks, gambling. She had never heard of Kara toting around muscle, though. Especially not muscle like Jonah Moray. She usually liked to talk her way out of things, didn’t she? It was still a mystery how she had managed to walk out of Nero’s office, after landing herself in the trouble she did.

And hadn’t he said partners?

“I promised him good times on the town.” Joana glanced down. That could mean anything, coming from Kara-but then the red head winked, her smirk widening into a grin as she placed her hands on her hips, a self satisfied puff.

“Bullshit.” He was gay or something, wasn’t he? He didn’t so much as look at her, but- “Honey, I work to look like sex on legs. You just dump out a cabinet and wear it.”

“Jus’ proves I can make anything look good-and nope! For once I’m being straight with you.” Kara had been cocky before-now she was plain unbearable. She’s finally won. She can’t decide if Joana was shocked at the ‘conquest’ or just horrified to learn crazy Kara had so lethal a man at her beck and call-maybe both, and that’s what made it funny-buy she’d gotten a rise, finally.

Course, she doesn’t ‘keep’ Jonah for either thing. They’re keeping each other. Kara twisted to look back at him, and victory or not, she’s happy rather than scheming-genuinely amused. “I mean, I’d get with me too, don’t get me wrong-but he was cute and had a dog.”

Then she twists back and it’s back to her bullshitting, now that she’s found the chip in Joana’s armor. Kara pretends to buff her nails on the front of the unzipped jumpsuit, smirking again. “I could get anybody, ‘course, without even havin’ to pad my bra! But yep-cute and he had a furbaby. And now we’re on the town.”

Joana can’t decide if she’s irritated or impressed. Maybe jealous. Kara already did whatever the fuck she wanted where she wanted, never seemed to have to suffer consequences for any of the trouble she was constantly causing. She walked and talked and ran most anybody over. And now to compliment that mouth and ridiculous luck, she had Jonah Moray to back her up. If Kara ever managed to focus, she could own the Strip-he’d already helped to nearly take down one family, what was to stop him from two more? Kara could probably con even House.

And if she had been worried about affording to hire Kara before, she was doubly so now-the redhead had no doubt jacked her fees up. Joana composed herself, giving a glance to her accompanying girls.

She needs help. She’s not about to plea for it, not from Kara-but she doesn’t know who else she could trust to help her, if the courier wouldn’t. Maybe it was a mistake to even go that far-Nero and Big Sal had ears everywhere. For all she knew, Kara might even be in their pocket.

But she doubted it. Kara was too unwieldy a tool for anyone to want on a steady payroll. She behaved herself-what passed for behaving-because she knew how tenuous her place with the Omertas really was. Push the envelope too much, and Nero might decide old debts hadn’t been paid up after all.

Her expression shifts to something more sultry, a slight sway of her hips and shoulders, a tempting display-for anyone else, anyway. Kara didn’t seem to lean that way, for all her flirting. Too bad-thing’s would be a lot easier if she did.

“Well, do you want what you had the last time?” Dazzle’s eyes widened a fraction, seemingly surprised-but Ruby wasn’t. She took her arm and guided her away-seemed the cabana was about to be occupied.

Kara continued to smirk, eyes narrowing a fraction as if remembering a ‘last time’. There hadn’t been one, but the courier caught her meaning-and seemed curious. “Hm...maybe.” Kara returned in a similarly sensual fashion, if colored crass in tone. “Is Jonah invited?”

“Couples cost extra. Fifty caps if he wants to watch, double if he wants to play with us. I’ll take good care of you both. You know I will.”

Kara knew full well Joana wasn’t talking business, but business. She had another job or maybe some information to sell, something. She turned back to Jonah again, wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I did say I’d show you a good time, didn’t I?” She’s flirty and all, playing along-but clued him in with a steady look, no mischief this time.

Bloom moved away to a corner of the Cabana, where she could make sure none of the patrolling goons could sneak up to eavesdrop.

 

[Obuzeti]

"What Kara has promised me is not yours to give," Jonah says, mild. He doesn't really look at Joana, but his tolerance of her and the barbs she's trading with Kara is fairly permissive in and of itself; he's not glancing her over for weapons or watching her shoulders for aggressive motion anymore, either, just going back to scanning the area. So stringently coded, Moray is, that his best tells are always in the automatic changes, the permissions and privileges he awards to those around him without so much as a mention.

Joana has, if not his respect, at least his tolerance, for making the best of what she's got and not scrabbling for every advantage. In her own way, she's learned discipline, and in a place where even your own body isn't yours, it's an impressive trait.

"Dog. Singular, previously," he notes, the sum total of his contribution to the conversation.

The horde of canines that follow them around now has the potential to be very irritating, but to be fair Hrolf had spent years watching him run over every human in his way; he had proved intelligent enough to osmose some of that talent through observation, likely. It was inevitable in that regard.

The sudden business turn in the conversation interests him, but not in the typical sense: Kara, deeply possessive of herself, would never hire a prostitute. She's also not interested in women that he's ever seen, and she has enough trouble keeping eyes off him when she's in the mood that Jonah would know the tells. She magnetizes to eyes, her breath grows short, and some forgotten prey reflex freezes her in place as she surrenders. For her, intimacy is synonymous with trust, and she's still cracking enough jokes to prove the thorns are out.

So instead, he levers himself away from the pillar he's posted himself at, and grants Kara a short nod. "On your six."

A potbellied Omerta goon nearby breaks down into incredulous giggles at his response, nearly bent double at the waist as something about it tickles his funnybone. Moray just looks at him, blank-faced. That makes it worse, and the mook turns away and cradles his face in his hand, helplessly snorting.

Jonah doesn't get it. He shrugs and turns back to Kara and Joana, hooking his thumbs back into his pockets, and looks impatient.

Joana, herself, just leverages an eyebrow at Moray, and then cracks her own smile, turning away and leading the freewheeling pair to her own cabana, noticeably larger and better appointed than the others. "Still a people person, aren't you Moray?" she asks with a wry acknowledgement of his quirks.

"Thus: Kara," the man himself replies. The irritation that normally seeps out of this terse, bite-sized responses is absent. If anything, he looks like a cat with a wand in front of it, trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or take a chunk out of it; an almost sleepy indifference.

Joana's mouth purses when she glances back again, though she's watching Moray's eyes when it happens. He's still staring over their heads. She checks, and yes, her ass is still hanging out of that tight leather, curvaceous and full. Everyone else is still watching, except Moray.

Moray is scanning the balconies for other Omerta goons, and apparently counting roof tiles.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"On your six."

Snrk!

Kara glances back at him raised eyebrows-but he wasn’t making a crack at all, it’s another display of innocence, though he looks flat rather than adorable at the moment. She can’t decide if that makes it funnier or not. She would have made a crass mocking crack a year ago, but not now. She just turns back to follow Joana into the cabana with a slight shake of her head, genuinely amused.

Joana seems put out he’s not looking her over, but no surprises there. Kara vaguely remembers feeling kinda insulted when Devon accused her of fucking him to get in his good graces-that he thought she’d have to take that step to do it, and that he thought Moray was one of those men who thought with his dick. That, as he’d argued, would be unprofessional.

She supposes she can’t blame Joana for finding it off putting-she was used to being salivated over. People liked to think about getting into her pants too-and sometimes those false hopes came in handy, she had to admit.

Bloom pulled the tassel to release the curtains, then slipped back out to keep watch.

With the sun coming in through the yellow orange canvas, the lighting was suddenly intimate, and the spruced up space more appealing. That said-she’s not sitting on any of these cushions.

“Whatcha got, my bestest gal pal? Need something lifted from somewheres?” Kara had retrieved a file from one of the jumpsuit’s pockets, was fiddling with it in her dexterous fingers.

“No.” Joana looked serious again, voice lowered and a glance between the mismatched pair, the closed curtains. “Some girls have gone missing.”

“Well we didn’t take ‘em.” Kara responded with her usual flippant disregard-spinning the thing piece of metal, watching the way it caught the bits of sunlight shining through. “Not sure what that’d have to do with me. Maybe they got smart and got out of here. Took a risk like Carlito.”

That earns her a sharp glance, the woman’s lips tightening. “You’ve seen him?”

“You haven’t?”

Joana didn’t answer that. He snuck in sometimes...she didn’t want him to, it was dangerous and she was terrified he’d be recognized, murdered-but he always managed to get in and get out again without being discovered. Kara continued to play with the file, a beat of silence before her eyes cut to her again, slightly more careful and with a less flippant inquiry.

“Cachino?”

“I don’t...I don’t think so. He’s sick, don’t get me wrong, but he’s stayed away from us. Whatever you did or whatever you ended up getting on him-it must have been good.”

“Oh it was.” Kara’s cocky smirk, another spin on the file-this time balancing it on the metal tipped pad of her index finger. “So if it’s not an extension of that previously paid for job, are you wanting me to find ‘em or something? Cause to be honest, we’ve got other stuff going on. They probably OD’d and got cleaned up before you guys noticed.”

“No...we’d notice.” The woman’s gaze became distant, briefly lost in memory-probably friends she HAD found OD’d in their tents. Kara pretends not to see it. She pretends really, really hard, because Joana was tough, and knew how things worked-and shouldn’t think about things she can’t do anything about in the first place. They had things to do. Missing whores really had to take a backseat so she could get that stupid chip back, get it delivered before House-if it was for House- knew she’d lost it in the first place.

“Kara, something’s going on. I’ve tried to get help, but no one is listening to me, no one cares. No one seems surprised.”

Ominous. Kara chews on that a minute, then shrugs. “There probably is. Maybe Nero’s started trafficking girls to slavers or something, ones who don’t bring much in.” That’d break House’s contract though. Or maybe they were turning a blind eye to someone’s recreational activities…? Some seriously fucked up clientele with enough pull the Omertas were willing to turn a blind eye? That’d be against the house rules though. It’s part of what she’s got on Cachino-the shit he was doing with the women, with Joana, and then those side hustles of his, the ones he’d been dumb enough to keep ledgers on. And if the third most powerful person in the family couldn’t get away with treating the girls that bad, who the hell could get away with absconding or killing them?

...so what was going on? Something had to be going on. And how many girls were going to keep going missing until that something was over?

Dammit, she’s going to end up taking this job no matter what the fuck Joana can afford to pay. Shit.

“That kinda knowledge would be dangerous, if I found it.” Kara says casually, back to business, back to making caps spin. “Which’d mean hazard pay.”

“You’re carting him around.” Joana pointed out with a nod towards Moray. Kara has to know. Kara’s too nosey not to know. Hell, maybe he told her about it himself.

“Good point, I am part of a twofer now.” Kara nods, a salacious grin. “And my partner’s time is just as expensive as mine.”

Joana’s keeping composed, but she’s starting to feel anxious. She needs to keep Kara interested, say the right things to get her on board. But Kara’s good at wheeling and dealing, just as good, maybe better than she was. And Kara liked to make caps just as much as she did-a resource she barely had any of with the Omertas taking their cut.

“I don’t have a lot of caps.” Joana conceded after a moment, a shake of her head. “But I do have some Med-X.”

Kara’s attention was slightly perked as she pocketed the file, but it had little to do with the ‘payment’-she was surreptitiously glancing at the other woman’s arms. “And I doubt you’d be able to hold onto much without injecting half of it.”

“I’ve been clean for two months. Me and a few others, some of which are gone, now. The higher ups don’t know about it, yet. I’m sure they don’t.”

“Well what am -I- going to do with a bunch of Med-X?! I don’t touch the stuff.”

“You could sell it.”

“Now you want me to deal drugs?” Kara pretended to be incredulous, but she clearly found the vein of conversation hilarious.

“Look, it’s what I got, you can offload it somewhere else.”

“Oh that’s real tempting-sending me on a chore to get my caps.” Kara rolled her eyes and generally acted put out. “How much Med X we talking? Enough to even be worth the time?”

“36 syringes in a steel case.”

“That’s really all you got? 36 syringes of painkillers?”

“Maybe fifty, sixty caps.” Joana added carefully.

“Aw hell, just keep it-I know a junkie that’ll pay premium for the stuff-he’s always too fucked up to go get his own.”

Joana shifted, but didn’t protest it. “What you do with it after I pay you isn’t my business-but something’s happening to my girls, and I want to know what it is.” Kara was still mutter grumbling to herself, long suffering.

“I’m sure anything else you two find out will be worth something to someone.”

“Assumin’ Moray’s even going to work for a measly half of whatever caps thirty six syringes net us.” Kara sighed, a pat to one of his arms.

In truth she doesn’t really give a fuck. Life as a Gomorrah prostitute sucks enough-but potentially getting murdered or sold off made it no safer than the streets. The shitty trade of freedom for safety wasn’t even there, and that was bullshit.

She’s going to figure out was going on, and then she’s going to rat ‘em out to either Nero or one of House’s securitrons, depending how far it went.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray thinks about it. Thinks about these girls, with the needle tracks and the shaking hands, their bodies on sale and their brains boiled out with Med-X. It doesn't really - bother him, to be honest. He doesn't care. People die all the time, and suffering is omnipresent. It's never really touched him.

But then he remembers Devon, all the way back in Tenderheart, remembers his sneering contempt, the way his eyes had stared everywhere but back at Kara's own, like everything she had to offer him were holes to fuck and a body to abuse. He remembers the heavy clank of the slave collar as he'd set it on the table, and flatly asked him to sign away a woman's life for caps - not just her death, which wouldn't have bothered him, but to consign her to misery and the limited graces of Devon's mercy. The look of Kara by the campfire, before they'd really known each other, immediately followed by Devon's ugly sneer, bartering whores, threatening to make Kara one, vicious and petty and weak.

The contempt rises in his gorge, and Moray's hackles rise, his shoulders rolling and squaring. His jaw tenses.

Jonah's eyes flick over to Kara, for a beat of silence, and then he exhales and relaxes again, forcibly. The clacking tension that had started to curl him inwards, baring teeth, is gone, and he instead leans back against one of the tentpoles and closes his eyes.

"Fuck Cachino," he says. "Fuck Devon. Fuck all men like them."

Devon, and Cachino, and Elijah, and Dean, and the Legion - these little, heinous men, scurrilous and petty and sadistic, devoid of mercy or duty, flailing and weak and vicious. All these things he can't stand, grinding against his temper, because they'd had the caps to pay and all he knew was the fair deal and the transaction.

Maybe fair doesn't mean what he thinks it means. Maybe fair has more meaning than a balance sheet and the clink of caps he doesn't need, has never needed. For someone as acquainted with death as he is, coin has always poured into his hands.

He'll find out by looking. He knows what Joana's side is - he can see the whores, where they stay, what their lives are like. It's the petty men who hide their trash, pretend their shit doesn't stink. He'll look and see them for what they are, and then he'll decide what fair means.

"Where should we start looking?" Moray asks without opening his eyes.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Is that an instruction for necrophilia? Cause I’d really rather not.”

Kara knows damned well that’s not at all what he meant, but it’s what comes out of her mouth anyway. Her eyes are trained on his face, the man’s closed eyes, the forced recession of what had definitely been one of those...pending homicidal sorta looks. Zero to sixty this guy, sometimes. Like the world wasn’t full of this shit, everywhere.

“He’s right.” Joana says, her voice quiet but steady, a sort of strength to it as she cuts through Kara’s flippancy. “Men like that don’t deserve the air they breathe, the space they take up. But that’s who rules this hellscape, like it or not.”

It’s too serious.

“That’s just what they want you to think.” Kara decides, and-lacking her jacket-she gives a sharp tug on the front of her jumpsuit, that familiar gesture of finality. “We’re going to go shake down Cachino, unless you got another lead.”

Joana shook her head no, an empty handed gesture.

“Then bestest buddy it is. Congrats on cleaning up, Joana-that’s no small feat.” Kara actually sounded sincere about that, and it throws Joana off a moment, the woman clearly waiting for the backhanded insult, some sort of crack. It doesn’t come.

Kara ruffles her own hair up and walks out adjusting her clothes, as if she’d just dressed. It leaves Joana briefly alone with Moray.

“...if you find whoever it is that’s done...whatever’s been done-don’t let Kara let them off. I know I’m not paying for an assassin’s wage, but I’m sure I could come up with something.”

Outside the tent, Kara’s mostly trying not to think too hard. Of course the rotten fucks of the world run things-that’s not new. It’s stupid of Joana to care about anyone, in a place like this. The only defense in life was to laugh, to be in on the joke and the meaninglessness of it all-or be even more ruthless than they were, she doesn’t know. Always somebody stronger, you go that route.

Maybe she shouldn’t judge too harsh-she’d fucked up too. Remembering how cold she had felt, thinking of Jonah, thinking of how, suddenly, she didn’t want to die, that stolen time wasn’t enough time-well, hell. She doesn’t even know what the hell she’s on about, now.

Hypocrisy, mostly. She doesn’t even know these missing girls, and she’s fucking worried about them. They were most certainly dead. Or enslaved somewhere, which made them just about as good as dead. It’s hard to be flippant when shit was right in front of you.

And Moray’s back on edge, maybe worse-and depending on what they find out, Kara’s not so sure they’re leaving Gomorrah on any kind of good terms. He doesn’t like stuff like this-slave collars and shit, slavery and servitude. He’s got principles, rules he holds himself to.

But they can’t have House and all three Families coming down on them, she doesn’t care how tough he is. So they do this job, and then they get the hell out of here. Nice and clean. Sneaky.

“We can offload the stuff.” Kara says, justifying nothing to no one-he doesn’t care. She could have probably agreed to do it for free and he wouldn’t have cared-but she compulsively says it anyway.

She’s looking for Cachino, and she doubts they’ll find him out here. Now that he’s essentially barred from the girls-unless he wants her spilling what she knows to the bosses-he was usually in Brimstone, drinking and watching tables.

Despite what Joana said, Kara’s not sure it wasn’t related to the pudgy enforcer. She wouldn’t have thought he’d have the guts to off his conquests, but...you never know. “I don’t want a bunch of trouble, not with these guys.” She adds, distracted. “So let me just...see what’s up, here, you know-talking. My way.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Inside the tent, with Joana, Moray is silent. He looks at her finally - eyes considering. Looks not at her tits, or the unconscious cock of her hip, but her strong, straight cheeklines without worry fades, and the lack of shadows around her eyes, and the steady set of her shoulders, without hunching in.

These are things he can respect. And that these other, pitiful men do not - it makes him want to hurt them. Strength, the real kind, not just the will and capacity to hurt someone else, is so rare, in all his travels. Petty cruelty breaks it down, crumbles and corrrodes it. Weak men can't stand its presence, because it might oppose them. They have no confidence, and no tolerance, and no respect.

They are not merely unprofessional; they are contemptible.

"I have caps," Morays says, quiet. He never has to talk loud. He speaks so that people have to listen. "I have painkillers. I do this not because you can pay me, but because but for the twist of chance Kara would be someplace like this, subject to the same whimsy of pitiful men that you are. I find myself with increasing intolerance: of this place, of the breed of man it encourages, and the poison it pumps in its veins."

He looks into Joana's eyes. His voice is firm and sure.

"I'm doing this because of the person I become when I decide to do it. By this I know my measure. There is no price upon this."

Joana's mouth moves in response. It's not words, because she doesn't know what to say. It's more than she's ever heard Moray say at all, more than she's ever heard anyone talk about - an entire monologue of ideals and philosophy, and just mental ideological bullshit she'd never have believed coming out of the mouth of a stone-cold killer like Moray, the wanderer of the wastes. What? What?

" . . . I don't know what to make of that," Joana admits, finally, and falls back on the reliable, a crook appearing at the corner of her mouth. She gives her shoulders a shake and bounce, her firm chest jiggling in the black leather. "You know you don't need to, like, impress me to fuck me, right? You could just ask for that."

Jonah's eyes roll a little. He gets up. "Goodbye."

"What is with you?" Joana says, frustrated, still psyched out from the whole conversation, but Moray doesn't answer. He just leaves, returning to Kara's side.

She can't help but be a little jealous.

~*~

Kara's still worrying about being paid, and the appearance of being paid. She's still caught on the transactions that justify what they're doing, but the caps have never really mattered. They're a means to the end, always have been, and Jonah knows to what ends they have chosen to go.

Freedom. Everything else is a means.

"If you're worried about money, we can just take the stuff of whoever I kill," he offers idly, when Kara falls silent. "It worked for Devon."

Running an entire hotel probably leaves the Omertas with considerable financial capital, and while they're a little better equipped than the Gloves were, he's also nastier than he was when he ripped the heart out of the Ultra-Luxe. He feels faster, stronger. Compared to the other settlers and scavengers Moray's talked to, aches and pains just never really set in the way they do for others. He's never thought about it much. Might be worth visiting the Followers at some point to figure that out.

That's a thing for later, though.

"You get the talking," Jonah promises, his shoulder brushing against the back of Kara's as he falls in line behind her, steady and solid at her six. "I am here as the hammer and the final option. Remember: we don't lose. I just finally choose to stop not killing everyone in our way."

A pause.

"It sounds dark," he admits.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Well see, there’s an idea.” Kara nods sagely, some part of her settling. See? Obviously she had had the idea to make up the difference with whatever their culprit(culprits?) were carrying in their pockets. If they found one, that was.

“So long as we don’t kill people for their stuff, I’m not above scavenging.” The distinction seemed to be important to her, which made sense. There’s a reason she didn’t want to be a raider.

His shoulder brushes hers as he falls into step just behind her, solid ‘at her six’-promising they’d at least start out her way. Come to think of it, she really didn’t have a hell of a lot to worry about here, did she? She’d rather not piss the big boys off, end up back on their shit list-but they’d be hard pressed to do much about it if she did, now that Jonah and her were partnered up.

She’s not used to back up, or having that kind of firepower. Still, he’s not bullet proof, and that’s not why she wants him around-no, she’d play it as close to her usual as she could, she’d already decided that a while ago.

“It sounds dark.”

“Naaaah. Optimistic. I woulda argued that losing wasn’t a thing anyway-” Kara pipes up, resuming her saunter even as her eyes roam Zoara’s, the near lazy casualness suddenly somewhat ominous, somehow. It’s her shoulders that do it. A faint, near unnoticeable tell, but they’re a little tense. “‘Cause I only really believed in minor setbacks, before? But you know what? We really do got enough talents between us to make for an entire crew just by ourselves, you’re super right. We can play just about anything six ways to Sunday. S’new.”

Options. Options she hadn’t had before.

And with Joana off of drugs…

She spots Cachino before he spots her. He looks a little haggard-he probably didn’t sleep much last night. He probably wouldn’t either, least until she moved on. She’s fuckin’ glad, because Moray had been right-fuck him. And ESPECIALLY fuck him if he was really touching any of the girls again-shit, she might shank him herself if he was, and deal with the fallout after. Claim she had just found out about his side hustles, maybe? Nero and Big Sal would accept that as a favor.

~*~

“Cachino my friend!”

His shoulders jumped and he did a solid five count before he turned around-her manically cheerful voice left no doubt, and the flash of dark red hair he caught first only furthered the unmistakable identification of the little bitch who had him by the balls.

She slapped him on the arm and left her hand there, grinning aggressively. Lurking just a step or two behind her was Jonah Moray, a man he’s heard about, everyone’s heard about-and how Kara had him at his beck and call was an alarming mystery. Couldn’t be blackmail. You don’t blackmail a man like Moray.

So what did that make him?

“Walker.” He returned, eyes dropping back down to her large blue ones. She wants something-the push on his arm confirms it. He’s half surprised she didn’t link arms with him and skip, Christ. “Moray.”

She strolled him down into the little sidehall where defunct payphones and the dingy bathrooms were located-away from the noise of everything. It’s not private enough, not if she was going to needle him.

Another slap to his arm before she stepped back, hands on her hips, puffed up to her full height and still aggressively friendly. He steels himself for whatever it is she might want.

“I heard some girls ghosted on you guys! That’s kinda new, isn’t it?”

He felt a chill wash over him. “I ain’t touched a one of ‘em. Ask anybody. Ask Joana-” He darted a glance to Moray, then the hall itself-he’s boxed in. That couldn’t have been an accident. Still, Kara was mostly harmless-she’s got dirt on him, but she wasn’t a killer.

The same did not go for her apparent friend.

“See, that is what I heard.” Kara nodded approvingly, an overly acted expression of thoughtful satisfaction. And then her eyes cut to him, narrowed a fraction-and the deceptively innocent look they normally lent her face vanished.

“Or maybe you just decided to start cleaning up those kind of messes. Everyone answers to you before they do Big Sal and Nero.”

“Not everyone-” He’s sweating. He’s never seen her look this way, seen her look...angry? Not a crack or a smirk to be had.

It’s because of Moray. She doesn’t have to play it that way, the usual emasculating laughter and the glittering, triumphant knowledge of just how easily she could ruin him on a whim. She’s got lethality on her side. They might not have weapons (then again, he had let them in without a patdown, a decision he now regretted) but he was getting too old to brawl with expert killers. He doesn’t really want to kill Kara anyway, not if he can help it-she’s a cocky little bitch with dirt on him, but so far she hadn’t used it for much-and it’d raise questions, dangerous sort of questions with the Boss. She was useful every once in a while.

“There’s a guy I’m supposed to leave alone. Me and the boys-name’s Clandon. Not sure why the warning-he’s a dickless lazy fuck. All he seems to do is get high and veg in the corner of Zoara-but he’s working with The Boss on something...something I haven’t been able to figure out.”

Kara watched him. “No idea, huh?”

“Kara, the fuck would I lie to you? You got enough to sink me as it is, what would a charge of blabbing do on top of that?”

She seemed to accept the logic of that, hands coming off her hips, her weight shifting from the balls of her feet to her heels, losing the hostility but not picking the aggressive friendliness back up. It’s the most genuine he’s ever seen her look. “He here often?”

“He lives here. Upstairs, the suite across from yours. I’m not saying he -is- guilty of anything, I’m just saying he could...might be getting away with something.” He mops at his forehead with a wrinkled handkerchief. “I’ll even get you a key, if you want. Bosses are in Nero’s office, I just saw Clandon head into Zoara’s. No one would see you, you want to check it out.”

Risky-if she stole anything, she’d be the first suspect by far. He had an interest in Kara staying out of trouble-he had no doubt she’d sell him out to save her own skin.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray isn't in full scary-man mode, but he stands there and looms while Kara talks. His ideological arguments, his trained philosophy, is at a loss here - Cachino doesn't care about any of that, and honestly, Moray doesn't care to share. Kara's got a crowbar in his brain, cracking it wide open. He can just watch the gangster sweat and wiggle and say nothing.

On the other hand, he hears body language before words. Moray can see the way the working girls make long circles around Cachino, staying out of the reach of his hands, shying away from his eyes. Being an Omerta lieutenant should have made him an attractive mark, easy to squeeze little perks and creature comforts out of. Instead, there's no one on his arm, or looking his way. There's something there, but what it is remains unclear. Possibly, he's just a creep.

The name Clanden, though, that rings a bell.

"Bombmaker," Moray says, blinking. "Good one. Ex-Boomer. Has contacts back at the Airfield. Done business with him before."

He'd worked with Clanden a couple of times before, setting up traps to clear out what they could of the Quarry. They never managed to really empty it - the Matriarch stayed in her caverns, and the Deathclaws that pushed to the surface were just population overflow - but the minefields they'd set up at the passes out of the Junction kept them from wandering out in search of food. Memorably, Clanden loved a custom mine type he'd found somewhere. Triggered, it'd bounce up about two feet then detonate in midair, tearing the legs off whatever it hit. He'd sit and watch whatever it hit die, for hours.

"Sadist," Moray says, finally.

There's sufficient work for demolitions out in the Mojave, between the Powder Gangers, the Boomers, and all the hellacious wildlife littered over the ruined wasteland, but here on the Strip it's a little more ominous, particularly that they've given him a permanent room instead of just a temporary suite.

He glances over at Kara, eyes dark, and jerks his head up at the stairs leading to where the suites were at.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara turns to look at him, a slight tilt of her head. She knows some of the Boomers-they were crazy, but she liked them. Possibly why she likes them. Their mural and ‘history’ lessons, their hopes for that plane, their training simulators-there wasn’t another faction like them anywhere. And given what she had seen and read in the vault their forebears had abandoned-well, they had had the sense and the luck to get the fuck out when they had. No wonder they were so xenophobic-any gang would be, sitting on that kind of ordinance.

She hasn’t been in a while, and had mostly stuck with the kids or the elders. Stories in exchange for various parts they had sent her off to find...she hadn’t honestly been back since they’d run dry. She did score a cool vault suit for those capacitors, once-but mostly stories.

She hopes they never actually fix that bomber, given how they wanted to drop said ordinance on the 'savages' out there.

She doesn’t remember a Clandon, but that doesn’t really mean anything-coulda been out before she’d even arrived in the Mojave. They’d been around some fifty years or so.

"Sadist.”

A flicker of concern flashes through those big blue eyes, the beginnings of a frown as she gives a returned nod-and then her grinning mask returns with an audible click of teeth, head swiveling back to Cachino. “Well shit, that sounds like some kind of heist in the works! That’s something we’d wanna be a part of, ain’t it Moray?”

She doesn’t glance back at him, and the sudden shift in gears doesn’t really make sense.

Cachino a little thrown. He then leans even further back on his heels, wary in the face of Kara’s returned manic friendliness, that tone of voice. “...I can’t get you in on something I don’t know nothing about.”

“You just leave that to me, bestest buddy. I’ll let you know when I wanna talk to the Bossmen-in the meantime, I’m gonna scope Clandon’s place out.”

“The girls, still?”

“Oh, right!” Her ADD had seemingly kicked in, the women not so important anymore-as if she’d only been mad he might’ve been doing what she had told him not to. “I mean, can’t do much if the boss men need him, right?” Kara says with a flippant shrug. It’s convincing.

“I just wanna see if there’s something I can gain on him. Something to “convince” him to vouch for us. Maybe just me. Moray doesn’t really need vouchin’ for.”

Cachino nods in agreement with that, visibly relaxing. Hell, maybe they would loop Kara in whatever plot they had brewing. “You want that key?”

“Pfft, keys.” Kara spun on her heel, calling back at him as she strode down the hallway.

“Well if you AIN’T gonna let me play at least a LITTLE cards, I ain’t stayin’!”

It really did come off, at least to anyone who hadn’t been right there, as if she’d pulled him aside to try and bribe her way back to the tables. Kara flounces out of the little side hall, looking a mixture of haughty and put out as she rounds the corner and heads for the stairs. She had said all of that to keep their options open, obscure her real aims as usual, but really-her heart was pumping a little fast in her chest. A bomb making sadist was not only on payroll but apparently bunking here, and he was given carte blanche to do whatever the fuck he wanted with a commodity they usually at least sorta protected from mistreatment-unless it was slave trafficking after all, maybe using that money to fund...whatever it was.

If it was hushed up enough Cachino wasn’t even privy to it, it must be a big job. Maybe they were moving on one of the other Families. Maybe they had found something they wanted to crack. Maybe they were moving on House, a bid for the strip?

That would be serious balls, and she doubts they could hold the place down long enough, unless they already had the Chairmen and whatever Moray had left of the White Glove Society on board.

 

[Obuzeti]

Actually, it doesn't, because Kara isn't a fan of democratically-awarded violence like Clanden and Moray are. It's not even particularly attractive to him, either; it's the personal, immediate flavor of killing he prefers, and Clanden likes to makes things suffer. He can't imagine Kara sitting around, sipping a Nuka-Cola, and watching the sort of aftermath the psycho bombmaker is likely to leave behind.

But she's got a better nose for this sort of thing than he does, so he just grants a single nod and follows after his partner, playing the part of silent muscle; which he had been, up until recently, so it was believable enough that most eyes just glanced off of him. They made it to the staircase leading up to the suite level, and then Jonah bumped Kara with his shoulder lightly.

"Be cautious," he says. "He might have trapped his room. This ain't his place. He wouldn't care about losing it."

Clanden's not a personal threat - Moray could put him down, ten times out of ten, probably without a scratch - but he could wire diabolical traps, give him that much. With a room he's had days to tinker with, no telling how much of it was a deathtrap. He's not losing Kara to a tripwire.

"Might be better not to use the door at all, look for another access route," Moray muses further. "Unless we can catch him out and take his key. Thoughts?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

She turns around immediately, already on the stairs, one foot on stair number three and the other on number two. It about puts them at eye level. It’s quiet in here, the sound of slots and roar of conversation muffled by the single door separating the stairwell from the casino proper. She’d burst through it earlier with near glee, earlier-now she’s wading into a possible conspiracy with dead or trafficked women as a by product.

“That’s a good call.” She agrees with a nod, thinking. “I could probably climb out a window in my place...the north wall’d be shared, and it’s brick.” She’s climbed worse things, didn’t fear heights in the least.

“If you stand watch in the hall, I could let you in then, after checking for anything nasty on the other side of the door... Or we just pick the lock and open it real careful like-he’s got to be able to undo it somehow so he can get in.” She doesn’t see how lifting the key itself would do them much good compared to lock picks. It’d be more fun, but she’s really not in the mood. She dragged a hand through her hair, loose ringlets slipping through her fingers as she thought, distracted.

“I lied.” Kara says, which wasn’t a big surprise-maybe just that she was admitting it, for once. Her eyes flick to his, focusing. “If Clandon’s killing Joana’s girls-” and they were Joana’s, “Then I don’t give a fuck about blackmailing him-he’s just gotta go.” And then what? How would she explain that to Nero?

Well...they just won’t be here when it gets found out. Or maybe they make HIM disappear without a trace? No, an accident! Yeah, make it look like he died in some hilariously gruesome way-that’d at least cheer her again, and it’s not like Cachino would dare to rat her out. He knows that if she goes, HE goes.

Though...what exactly did Nero need him for so bad anyway? Might be something worth looking into, if only to satisfy her curiosity. Kara shakes the thought off to the back of her mind. First things first-make sure Clandon isn’t killing people, or at least soon won’t be.

“We can make it look like an accident.” She says conversationally, turning to climb the stairs again. “Something funny-like he accidentally blew himself up, or stuck a fork in a toaster-” The possibilities! What a great idea that is-even greater, they can make out like they have no idea what happened, to Joana. Bullshit that it was happenstance-she won't believe them, but that's what made it hilarious.

Course, Jonah might spoil it, but that'd be funny too.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray grunts an acknowledgement, and pulls a cloth bundle out of his heavy backpack, handing it over. Within are the climbing pitons he always seems to find a use for, along with a compact little hammer, each bracketed with sheepskin to keep them separated and from clanking about on the move. "I don't disagree. He's indiscriminate. And it's -"

He struggles to find a word for it. Unprofessional isn't quite what comes to mind anymore, and it's not like he doesn't understand the killing impulse. Moray restrains himself though, keeps his viciousness leashed until a proper target comes along. He doesn't just carve his way through the local populace, no matter how much they irritate him.

" - tasteless?" Jonah offers, a little dubious. Not quite what he's looking for, but it has the sentiment. He shrugs.

"He plays with bombs, it won't be hard to make it look like an accident. Drop a grenade on the corpse and call it a day," Moray notes. "Go ahead in through the window, keep your eyes open. I'll guard the door until you get it open, then we'll sweep the place, look for anything we can use."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara considers what he says, nods to the instructions-and makes short work of the stairs, warming up some for the climb-more sidling, actually-but still. Tasteless…Kara’s not sure what to make of that. Sounded like a class thing-was usually used like that, wasn’t it? Like...tacky.

Maybe the usage makes sense, here. A craftsmen considering a fellow enthusiast’s craft, but disliking the materials, the method-the man. Jonah wasn’t one of those. Come to think of it, he was kind of making a habit of killing men like that...Devon, Elijah, Vulpes, Clandon, if Clandon was guilty. Suppose she had actually killed Elijah, but that’d only been possible because he was wrestling with the robot guy.

Super mutants for dance lessons...

She glanced back at him as she reached the landing, pushing the door open with her shoulder and holding it for him so she can shake the soundless bag a little, a smirk as they enter the hall, the four identical doors. “You know, I’d almost be insulted if it weren’t for time constraints.” She’d use them-they’d be faster and, honestly, safer-but what was the fun in that?

“Short of smoother than smooth surfaces, I can scale just about anything. Why-my grandfather was part giant ant! Or at least, for all I know he was…” She’s being ridiculous for the usual reasons-her own amusement, and nowadays-his. They were going to take care of this, finish the job to completion.

They don’t lose.

She winks as she heads for the door to their suite, a bounce to her step. Everything was exactly how they had left it. Kara shrugged out of the top half of her mechanic’s jumpsuit, letting it briefly dangle while she poked around in the sheepskin bag.

“Handy dandy-” She murmured-knotting the sleeves of her jumpsuit in front of her hips and tucking the bag into the newly fashioned ‘belt’. With a bit of effort she slid the centuries old window up, peeked out-and smirked as she started tapping in the first piton.

~*~

The door across from Kara’s pushed in a little, and something scraped against the wood. Then the clink of metal as it unlocked, Kara’s face appearing on the other side. “Shoulda taken a bet Jonah-he did have the door rigged.”

Kara stepped back to let him in-the suite was a carbon copy of hers, if a little messier, more lived in. There was a table directly to the left of the door, resting against the wall that led up to the second floor balcony. Papers and parts were strewn across the surface. The same Persian rugs cover the floor, though one had been half rolled up it looked like. Instead of the red cushions in Kara’s room, this one had a couch and some more tables, high backed butterfly chairs around a firepit. The lit wall of bubble tubes was turned off.

“I didn’t snoop around too much, yet. The bedroom looks normal enough, but it's got a safe I don't got, next to the wardrobe. Checked the carpet-” She indicated the half rolled up rug. “No bodies spilled out there either." That'd probably be too easy.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Free climbing is one of those activities in which it is unwise to improvise," Jonah reminds, as he leans back against the wall. "Gravity's hard to argue with."

It doesn't take long at all for Kara to make her way through the windows and open the door - he'd never doubted her, but giving her practical tools keeps her focused on doing the job instead of whatever insane whim pops to mind, like how many backflips she can possibly get away with in the process of climbing across the gap. He makes his way into the suite, and almost immediately his brow lowers, darkening. Bloodscent is everywhere, old and coagulated, like copper in the nostrils. His lips draw back, hackles baring. "Someone died in here," Moray says, flat, sniffing again. The foul scent of offal is absent, but that just means the abdominal cavity wasn't ruptured, or that the body was moved before rot set in. "Look for bloodstains. It's set into the carpet and fabrics somewhere and they didn't change it out. I'll get the safe."

A bombmaker's safe is a hell of a thing to tackle - there's too many ways to trap the thing, given the careful mechanisms in the door and the fact you can't see what's inside. Moray climbs to the second level, and spots his target set into the wall. Rather than tangle with the lock and try to pick it, he just kicks holes into the wall above and below the safe, then topples it out on its front. He rolls the safe over again with a heavy clunk, then pulls a pocket blowtorch out. The mountings that held the safe into the wall, predictably, are joined with the main safe, and poorly welded into place. The strain of holding the safe in place has stressed the steel here, making it easy to heat and break. That done, the entire back of the safe comes off with an application of force.

Moray can't pick a lock to save his life, but apparently everyone used this stupid fucking brand of safe, and the back half of it was about as secure as an offering plate.

"Give me five minutes," he calls down, and then sets to work.

~*~

Downstairs, the echo of the safe slamming into the floor sets dust falling from the ceiling. Clanden bolts upright as the sound echoes overhead, recognizing the origin point as his own room. His lips purse, and he checks himself over - the big, mean knife and pistol he carries, even in Gomorrah - and then heads for the elevator. It's a minute of tense anxiousness, and then he's off and down the hallway, striding for the door of his suite. It's hanging wide open.

He walks through, and glances around, eyes wide enough that the whites show through. "I thought this was my room?" he asks the empty space, hand gently ghosting over his side, where his holster is hidden. "Somebody poking around in here?"

A blowtorch is hissing upstairs, somewhere.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Someone died in here,"

“...yeah.” Kara’s breathing through her mouth. She’s not bothered, exactly. Her original Raider gang, the ones who’d traded caps for baby Kara-they’d been the heads on pikes, bloody meat bags, bodies dangling from the ceiling on hooks and chains sorta Raiders.

Maara had thankfully kept a cleaner hideout, wanted to ward against disease, keep her numbers high-people didn’t kill each other quite as often, and certainly didn’t bring any tags BACK with them. Say what you wanted, but not all Raiders wanted to live in rot like a bunch of bloody animals.

He says he’ll get the safe, and Kara gives a nod-there’s bound to be something good in there. “I’ll check the bathtub and the fridge.” She jokes-but they’re actually not bad places to look. She strides across the living space-glances to the firepit, but no bones or teeth in there-and checks the bathroom, but it was fairly clean. Nobody dismembered in here, at least.

Alright, she’ll try the kitchen after all.

Kara makes her way back towards the wall that separated this space from the kitchen-which itself was through the door right under the second floor’s balcony, the kitchen itself under that whole second floor loft, just like it was in her suite-or so she assumed anyway.

Drywall crunches in upstairs, and Kara looks up with a frown JUST as a louder, heavier thump sounds. She fails to suppress a disbelieving laugh, shaking her head. She really shouldn’t be surprised, but at the same time- “Maybe I should radio down to the Rita too, let folks know we’re in here? Make an announcement?”

She’s teasing, but still-he’s gotta be sneakier than that when robbin’ places! He probably just didn’t feel much need for it-hadn’t grown up needing to sneak to stay alive and out of trouble like she had, or at least, she doubted it. He definitely didn’t now, though she knew he could be stealthy when he wanted to be.

"Give me five minutes,"

“You got it.”

She pauses at the table near it first, slides some papers around-there’s some blueprints sure, but also a spiral notebook, open to some kind of weird.

She tilts her head, picks it up to study it closer. It’s a mess of numbers and ingredient mixtures, measurements-and then a code at the bottom, almost more doodle than anything. Kinda like...the capitals and lower case letters of a chemical name, or nickname, or whatever. Hell if she knows what they are or what the rest of the numbers entirely mean, but Jonah might. She shrugs, then flips it closed and pockets it. There’s another notebook, a book rather than the spiral bound little notepad-it’s also messily scribbled in and even harder for her to decipher, but it looks like a journal. She always likes to read through journals-but it’s not really the time, and the contents might be too fucked up even for her to care to look at.

She set it on the edge of the table with a shrug, then headed for the kitchen.

The smell of blood was suddenly overpowering as she pushed in the door, curdling what had been her amusement with Jonah’s brand of safe breaking and her curiosity over the scribbled writings of an expert bombmaker. She flicked on the light and stepped inside, her breath caught in her throat.

It’s a clear and bloody scene of slaughter, like someone had dressed a radstag in here-maybe they just about had. There’s a sticky, half dried brown pool of blood on the kitchen island, one that had dripped down the cabinet and onto the floor. A bloodied footprint was on the left of that, and a smeared and awful mess on the tile between it and the sink.

There’s fresher blood over there-somebody had fought for their life, made a grab for the knife block and knocked it into the spice rack, tried to fend off whoever with a frying pan, maybe-one of the upper cabinets was knocked in, wood splintered and bloodied where someone’s head had probably bashed in.

Best as she could tell that had slowed whoever it was down, got them slumped or pinned over the counter-there’s smeared handprints of someone trying to get up, maybe flailing-and blood drips leading to the opposite doorway, a set of bloody handprints where someone had tried to hold onto the jamb.

Kara’s seen messes. Plenty of messes! The Wasteland was a violent place full of bodies. Shit, she’s killed at least two dozen people, maybe a lot more depending how that supermarket fire had gone, back East. It was just the way things were, sometimes. You or them, don’t be stupid.

But never anything quite like this, not really. Someone had been fucking terrified in here. There’s handprints on the opposite doorway, not much larger than her own.

Her eyes slid to the refrigerator. Still not quite feeling anything about the mess of blood, she almost absently reaches for the handle, pauses-and then pulls it open.

No folded up or dismembered women inside. There’s a bowl of grapes, half of a neatly made sandwich on a plastic wrapped plate, and a half gallon of milk. It’s rather innocuous given the state of the rest of the kitchen.

He’s a sick fuck, killing or maiming somebody next to where he keeps his fucking cereal-

"I thought this was my room?"

Kara froze, back still to the wider space outside the kitchen, hand holding the swinging door open as she stood in the doorway. She’s not wearing her jacket, which meant most of her toys and Lil Devil were in the next room over, conveniently tossed over the bed. That left her in a mechanic’s jumpsuit she’s only half wearing, and the white wifebeater she’d painted a comic book ‘POW!’ on.

"Somebody poking around in here?"

Welp, she’s been in worse situations-with a final glance at the bloody mess, Kara reached into the fridge and grabbed the gallon of milk, flicking off the light. An easy, cocky smile curves her lips in reflex, a vague air of empty headed-but not manic-amusement that settles in as naturally as breathing.

She twisted the cap off and stepped back into the main room, turning around to let the door swing closed, almost. The milk is funny, or would have been-but not today. No, today it’s just a weapon, though not the conventional kind. That’s the thing people don’t understand when they think of ‘crazy Kara’, or when strangers are encountering her for the first time.

See, it’s that sometimes, sometimes crazy can take you places.

She doesn’t let the door completely close, starts talking at the same time it hits the heel of her trailing boot-ready to retreat in a hurry, though her body language was that of a person completely and utterly at ease.

Because she was.

“Jus’ admiring your handiwork, hotshot. Not that it was really my business in the first place.”

He was slow in turning to face her after an initial jerk of his head-but she could just see his tunnel vision snap into place, the moment something fell into place in that primate brain of his-the intruder was just some woman, and a small one at that.

She pretended not to think anything of it when he closed the door her dumbass had left wide open, attention shifting to the half jug of milk in her hand. No, she absolutely didn’t notice, just lifted the gallon of milk to her lips and tipped her head back, dark red hair slipping off her shoulders, torso briefly taut and the wifebeater tanktop drawing tight against the swell of her chest. She can feel his eyes rake down over her curves-but sure, let him look. He is going to die soon, after all.

He locks the door.

“Nero send you here?”

Kara took several gulps of the milk and gave a sound of affirmation. No one looks good gulping anything, but he can’t exactly be bothered when meat was rude, could he?

Her body was slightly angled away from him, a hip and shoulder he can’t see, the one nearest the door. That hand, the hand still holding the milk cap-it catches at the switchblade she’d slipped into her waistband earlier today. She’s not sure if she’ll actually need it. Probably, because Clanden sure as shit wasn’t interested in talking.

She lowers the gallon again with a satisfied smack of her lips, as empty headed and flippant as ever, totally unaware of the grave danger Clanden clearly believed she was in.

“Something about parts you needed, some chemicals? I wasn’t really listening- but he knows I’m good at finding stuff, so here I am handsome, just for you.” She smirks her cocky smirk, and finally turns her eyes on him.

“Is that what he told you?” There’s anger building in the words, his body-and Kara immediately knows that he didn’t buy it. No...that wasn’t it. He bought it alright, he just thought that SHE had bought something first.

From Nero, who wasn’t just turning a blind eye-he was sending this asshole girls.

Kara felt heat climbing the back of her neck, and she’s never wanted to shank anybody as much as did Clanden. But instead she tilted her head with a wary, confused frown. “He said-”

“I’m going to enjoy tenderizing you, little girl.”

Her eyes widened in believable alarm, a sudden lowering of the milk jug-

Just as he charged her.

Of course, Kara wasn’t surprised at all. She leaned back into the swinging door and half stepped, half fell in with it, the jug of milk thrown aside to gush out all over the bloodied tile floor, and she laughed. Sharp, sudden, and a little manic, the sound and the sudden grin on her face threw him off slightly-and that barest bit of hesitation was really all Kara needed as he barreled into the room, closest hand swiping at her-which Kara ducked, slashing at his side with her switchblade as he twisted to face her again, maybe not even realizing he’d been cut.

He hit the spilled milk and slipped-crashing hard on his side and maybe still sliding a ways in there, Kara didn’t know-because her ass was already out of the kitchen, having left him in the dark. She didn’t glance up at the balcony overhead-her eyes are trained on the door, still smiling the raider smile that had went with that sudden, sharp laugh.

 

[Obuzeti]

Over the hiss of the blowtorch Moray hears voices downstairs. For a moment, he assumes it's Kara running interference, and almost leaves her to it, but then she laughs, that crazy-raider laugh she belts out in defiance of the fear of death, and there's a crash and rattle like someone just crashed to the floor, and Moray is up and moving before he can really think about it, blowtorch clattering to the floor and clicking off as his finger leaves the stud. He mounts the railing on the balcony so fast part of it comes loose in his grip, and it crashes down with him in a mess right behind where Kara is standing.

Clanden, dragging himself out of the milk puddle with a strong grip on the kitchen bar, looks up and makes eye contact with the Reaper, and the blood fury in the other man's eyes doesn't quite make sense at first. "Moray?" he says, blinking as some of the blank cruelty drains out of his eyes.

Jonah stalks forward, smooth and silent like oil gliding over the floor. He isn't blinking.

Clanden gets one foot under him and starts to stand up. "So is this a shakedown? Nero not read me in on something?"

Moray gets a better look at the kitchen - at the blood splattered all over the floor, the walls, the cabinets - a running fight, not a kill, a murder. The kind of thing that used to keep him awake at night, make his mouth dry. The soul-quenching coolness of someone's last gasp escaping into the night. Taking it. Taking all of them, and leaving nothing.

Clanden had meant to do that to Kara, and leave him with nothing.

Moray accelerates. His big hand slaps over Clanden's face, drives it around and down, cracking it against the bar of the kitchen the other man had been bracing against. He gasps in pain, hands coming up defensively.

Moray's other fist comes around and slams through Clanden's mouth, destroying his teeth, knocking them out in an ivory spray splattered with blood. He chokes on the enamel as half of them are forced back into his mouth and throat.

Moray's hands shift. They take hold, one over his forehead and eyes pinning him to the bar, the other driving deep into the throat, past the shattered teeth and the blood and the writhing tongue. The big mercenary's eyes shine like empty moons and his mouth opens wide.

Moray pulls, and Clanden's bottom jaw and his throat pull away like wet tape in that brutal grasp, peeling the flesh off of his head like the skin of an orange. Blood fountains out, pouring onto the already-stained floor in great gouts. Clanden sucks air, flopping in the other man's grasp, hands twitching as he presses on Moray's shoulder. Not away, not fighting - just animal impulses to get away.

Moray stares at him for a long second - one, two, three beats of silence, wild and staring and watching the other man die.

Then the rictus fades, and Moray's face slides back into blank emptiness.

He draws his sidearm and puts a single shot through Clanden's forehead. The ruined corpse slumps to the floor, continues pumping splurts of blood out of that savaged neck and head, impossible to recognize now. He'd been mutilated so completely that his face was in separated halves.

Moray looks at the body. He breathes. In, out.

"Should have questioned him," he says eventually. "Sorry."

He walks over to the kitchen sink and starts washing what he can of the blood off his hands. They're soaked straight to the elbows in Clanden's blood.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

A clatter, and then Moray lands in front of her without rolling, just takes the impact and is moving before the broken bits of railing finish clattering behind her. Not so much as a glance or a comment-the quieter he is, the more dangerous.

Clanden’s fucking dead. Maybe he might have been able to wiggle out of it, for a minute-just a misunderstanding! Didn’t realize THIS whore was YOUR whore-but he’s in a room painted and splattered with evidence of his violence, with the consequences of his previous, other ‘intents’-and she knows he’s dead.

She can tell just by the set of his shoulders.

He doesn’t move so much as explode into action, everything of him suddenly there and present and deadly. Kara barely has time to straighten out of her crouch, glance at the locked door-before there’s a fleshy, sickening ripping sound-and while normally she tried not to look at things she didn’t want to see, let her eyes trail over gore without seeing the gore, without settling anywhere for too long-she slides her eyes back to the doorway and she looks.

Because...because if he looks at her, she didn’t want to see her eyes turned away. Or horror, or sickness, or anything other than observation, because it’s not who he is. He’s no monster. Clanden’s the fucking monster. This whole damned place was the monster. Women lured in from wherever they weren’t quite making it on their own, offered shelter, caps, drugs-and chains they didn’t realize. Ones nobody broke once they were in, not with the claws of Med-X sunk into you, Omertas ‘for life’ policies. And now they apparently didn’t even have the promise of safety as their consolation prize for freedom.

It’s bad news.

He stands there for what feels like a long time but Kara -waits-, listening for movement out in the hall and over the sound of blood spurting everywhere-it swirls where it meets the milk, spreads out into a dull shade of reddish pink.

"Should have questioned him," Vividly colored carribean blue eyes flick back to him. "Sorry."

Kara makes a snrking noise, but there’s not really any mirth behind it. “It’s me who left the door open.” It’s not flippant exactly, just words-she doesn’t make a crack, or otherwise try to detract from the gruesome scene. It’s only with Jonah that she fails to need constant, constant noise, pretending. She can just be, sometimes-Jonah doesn’t need words, and at times neither did she.

Kara steps over Clandon’s right foot, then his left-the tread of her boots picking up pink milky blood, stamp small partial footprints on the already overly painted tile. She sets her switchblade down beside the sink. It’s mother of pearl handle was mostly pristine, but drops of bright red blood are visible on the blade itself, a bit of splatter on the metal tip of the handle. She ignores it, and her fingers tug on the drawer pull beside the sink. She finds a pack of soft sponges in an opened cellophane wrapper, and she takes one. Then she picks up small bottle of dishsoap-and she squirts a line of that along his forearm, fatigues or not. Her left hand slid from the underside of his upper arm to curl around his bicep, her hip to his hip-and then she wet the sponge and started to help, as easily as washing dishes.

“He went easier than they probably did.” Kara notes, eyes flicking to the woman’s handprints on the opposite door frame. Someone had desperately tried to keep Clanden from hauling her off somewhere else, somewhere worse and to whatever further damage he did there. Gruesome a death as it was, Clandon had only had to be afraid for a minute. It was no doubt a hell of a lot more merciful a death than anything he had dealt out to his victims.

It had probably been part of his kink, inspiring fear. That’s what made men like that feel powerful, superior. The way he’d shut and locked the door, that’d been part of that. Trying to show her she was trapped, helpless. That his will was going to trump hers, and anything he wanted out of her, he could take. Or so he had thought, anyway. Because when you’re crazy enough, all you really need to win is the one perfectly timed, juvenile dick joke.

If it exasperates, if it draws pause, if it even for a minute dulls their sense of control over her, is a weird spot that just doesn’t mesh the way they think it should have-she wins. The prick might be bigger, and faster, and stronger than she is, but they were little men pretending to be big men, and they’d never beat her because she was playing a different game, she was in on the joke.

Maybe that was why Vulpes had set her nerves on edge as much as he had. He knew the joke too, but it didn’t make him laugh. Maybe a man like that could somehow cut through to the heart of you, sully the things kept locked up tight where no one should be able to steal them. Make you forget.

She doesn’t intend to ever find out.

So instead she stays focused on Jonah’s arm, what it all could mean, what the wrong here was. Little droplets of watery pink blood are splashing onto her white tanktop and blood was pooled around their feet, but she stays where she is.

“‘Sides, he said plenty.” She tells him in a low tone of voice, as if the very dead Clandon might eavesdrop. “He thought that I had been tricked into sacrificing myself, that Nero had sent me up here.”[/i]

She pauses, eyes flicking up to his face, the stirrings of horrified realization in their depths, urgency. It’s similar to her look of horror on realizing what Dean had done to Vanessa-never surprised by cruelty, but not as jaded as she should be to it, either.

“That’s how they’re paying for his services-whatever the job is, whatever he could do for them-it matters more to Nero than Omerta rules.” Not that Kara held rules sacred, but it was a blazing red flag that Nero was so willing to take the Omertas down a different road than before, gamble for some greater gain than a lucrative, well protected casino on the Strip.

It’s gotta be a power move, and her gut instinct told her to run. Warn Joana if she was feeling generous, maybe get whoever they could out through a back way or something, her conscience really wouldn’t shut up-but run. Nero wasn’t going to take this in stride, and who knew what the fuck was going on.

Except there’d just be new girls. Clanden’s death might not even be much set back for whatever they were planning…

Kara stops on remembering the notebook, wiping her hands on the pants of the jumpsuit and retrieving it from her pocket. “There’s a journal too, on that table-but look-” She flips through it to the code or chemical or whatever page, shows it to him. “I can barely read his fucking writing, I think it’s worse than mine-.” Or maybe it’s the lean of it that’s extra weird.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray stares down at his hands. He's not scrubbing hard, not reflexively recoiling from the blood - rather, making sure that it doesn't crust or collect on the hairs of his arm, or the ripples of his biceps and forearms. It looks very practiced. "We don't have time to try to balance this," he says. "And I'm disinclined to pick up his hobby."

That's all he says about it, all he cares to think about it. Clanden is dead. So is his disgusting practice. Let it stay buried. His eyes flicker as Kara comes to help, but her aid is secondary to her touch, as always, grounding him in the single thing he desires most. Kara kills almost as swiftly as he does, yet she never seems to have this sort of struggle. The thought is insidious in his head, and he rolls it off his shoulders with a shrug.

"If Nero's trading girls for bombs, he'll be planning to use them," Moray replies, and when the water stops running red dries his hands and turns to the book Kara indicated. It's written in bad cursive for the most part, which may as well be alien to most of the Mojave. Moray scans it and hits on a chemical notation - chlorine.

" . . . I think this is a gas bomb," Moray says eventually, his brows furrowed. "Chlorine. Forms a low-hanging, green cloud that turns into acid in the lungs. Bad way to go."

He searches past the mechanics - standard distributors, little canisters with a timed explosive that disperse into the recognizable fog clouds - and then he realizes how many of them there are. Clanden's made dozens of these things, enough gas the entire hotel, and Nero's ordered even more. This is not a limited operation, this is chemical warfare in the original sense.

"He's made enough of this gas to kill hundreds," Moray says eventually. "Too much. This isn't for a firefight or - anything like that. This is an extermination."

The only thing that you'd need that much gas for is humans. The Strip, the Legion's war camp, the Khans or the NCR - whatever they're gunning for, this much chlorine is intended to wipe out everything it's poured at, not just the fighters. Nero isn't planning to leave anything behind to take over.

"It'd be like the Sierra," Moray murmurs. "This much chlorine - it'd linger for years, inside and in gulleys, sewers. It'd never come all the way out."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Dead’s dead. He’s nobody’s problem anymore.” Practical. Come to think of it, Kara tended to drop ‘them or me’ in such situations, when they did arise.

"If Nero's trading girls for bombs, he'll be planning to use them,"

Kara’s dying to know where and what Nero’s planning to hit. But her usual curiosity was tempered by the cost of it-a heist built on a string of cruel serial murders isn’t anything she wants to be a part of. Whatever it is Nero is hoping to steal, she hopes he chokes on it-but she can hear all about it somewhere else from someBODY else, because they’re out of here.

Kara’s decides on that fairly easily. She doesn’t need a reason to trust her instincts-they’ve never steered her wrong before. She’s considering just how confusing she wants their exit to be, whether she’s even in the mood for one. Then again, there’s no doubt this would probably be the last time she’d ever set foot in here, because Nero was going to be piiiissed-

“Acid in…damn.” Kara frowns, because what the fuck? That sounds like Sierra Madre, that caustic red fog that corroded everything, hurt and choked to breathe in where it was too thick. That sounds nasty-and unique. They better make off with one of those, if only for shits and giggles.

"He's made enough of this gas to kill hundreds,"

Kara’s eyes flick to him, and without the need for a mask it was obvious to see that this information troubled the courier.

Well, that explained the impulse to get out of here. They could take this somewhere, she guesses. She’s not sure where, just yet, but somebody should know about it. Somebody important, somebody who could do something. But what exactly would she say? She doesn’t know anything beyond the fact Nero had some seriously nasty firepower.

“Maybe it’s for House. Gearing up for war.” Kara suggests with a shrug, but it’s eating at her. Could turn air to acid inside a person’s lungs, and would stick around for years? People would die, and then the target would be little more than the empty waste Sierra was. She runs through potential targets, but there’s no real knowing, and suddenly it’s not really curiosity but urgency that has her running through scenarios.

She doesn’t like the NCR, but that doesn’t mean she wants the soldiers following orders to fuckin’ die horribly. Ceasar’s Legion? Ehhhh-but the Sierra fog was still around after two hundred years. Their stupid Fort wasn’t that far, and what if it spread further? What if it wasn’t just a graveyard, but a spreading disease across the Mojave, picked up and rained out somewhere else? What if-what if someone saw how effective such a thing was, and people started producing and lobbing them wherever the fuck they pleased?

Wasn’t that what had ended the world in the first place, weapons no one shoulda had and yet kept stockpiled?

And those weren’t, arguably, the only enemies, or at least rival factions to the Strip, to House’s Three Families. The Khans, the Boomers, Freeside-fuck, who knows. Who knows what the target is.

Shit, what if it’s not even for House? What if it is a power move?

Her eyes snap to Jonah’s, and Kara shifts gears. “We gotta know who.” She tells him, swiping up her switchblade as she exits the kitchen for Clanden’s table, shuffling things back around-but she really can’t make a lot of sense of his writing. It doesn’t matter anyway-Nero can’t be allowed to use them.

“We gotta stop him from using ‘em.” She gives up on the table and wipes the bloodied blade on her pantleg, retracts the blade into it’s pearlescent handle. She’s thinking, the handle turned and turned in her deft little fingers, over and over.

“Okay...okay, so-we tell Cachino. We tell him, and then I make him talk to Nero and Sal, get us that meeting. They’re up each other’s asses. One’s as bad as the other, so Sal’s gotta know about this too.” She still remembered some of the shit they’d threatened her with, the assholes. Water under the bridge now, but still.

“They know me-I’m nosy, I like to know things, I like caps. But that’s not the stuff they’re going to give a shit about, and under normal circumstances they’d only let me in there to see what kind of liability I am. Just annoying, crazy Kara-but you, you’re Jonah Moray. I’ll act like I’m your talent agent or something, some song and dance-and we find out what their plan is.”

She casts a glance back into the kitchen. Then the table of shuffled papers.

“And whatever it is, we stop it, somehow. But you know what? Maybe they shouldn’t get to have Gomorrah anymore. They’re just as guilty as Clanden is. Cachino’s not going to protest if they’re out of the way-we get his help. The thugs will listen to him, then it’s less mess.”

“...probably why none of them rushed up here, after that scuffle. Cachino figures we’re busy.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray shakes his head. "House uses Securitrons. Other tribes, maybe, but then the same problem; how to prevent the robots from running them over? He's got moving parts of this plan we can't see. Some other trick. No way to know without going after the head of the snake."

He checks his sidearm and holsters it, then moves to Kara's side. "They know about Clanden's appetites, so say that he came after you when you wanted to talk to him. You're my partner, so I killed him for that. We bring the notebook back and I ask, not whether I can get in, but what areas I should restrict operations in."

Moray shrugs. "I don't ask for jobs. It'd be too suspicious. But I have a reputation for not interrupting ones that are ongoing, and if I'm not in the area I can't be hired to defend against it. We'll see if that flies. If you're curious, go ahead and ask, but I should stick to my line."

He grumbles a little, running damp fingers through his hair. There's blood spatter on his cheek that he hasn't noticed yet, just light drops sprayed out. "If you decide they need killing, same signal as before: cross your arms."

Basic plan, but that's all they need. If Moray manages to make it into the same room as Sal and Nero, he could kill the entire rest of the complex if he has to. It's just making sure those two don't get away with the detonators and the locations of the chemical caches.

"They're spiteful," he warns. "If shooting starts, make sure they're dead. They'd blow everything just to spit on us."