Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The redhead’s eyebrows lift slightly, face open and listening, big blue eyes attentive as Jonah lays down all KINDS of science-y stuff, fa-sate and oxadaze and-hey, she didn’t know bones couldn’t burn! Look at him, all solving mysteries without even seeing the clues!

There’s a happy bit of a curve to Kara’s lips before he turns around to call out to some guys even she would have known better to pick fights with-and it widens into that cocky smirk as her head turns back to Cass, sees her furrowed brow and clear surprise.

“Pretty simple stuff-” Grey eyes flick down to her, and Kara’s smirk slashes into a troublemaking grin. “Ain’t it?”

Cass looks at her, looks at the back of Jonah’s shoulders, the deep blue dye of his clothing-then back down to Kara, a mixture of disbelief, realization, and confirmation in her eyes.

“Oh, completely.” The caravanner muttered with a disbelieving shake of her head.

"Hold on a bit until they get done - the Runners are good men to have at your back. I'll go up and check with the Ranger, meanwhile.”

“‘Specially if this here’s a trade war.” Kara agrees with a nod, her hands curling around both halves of her unzipped jacket. “Cass just closed the tab, so we’ll come with!”

~*~

“So I just start drinkin’ the milk I stole outta his fridge. I’m still hoping to grow, you know?”

Kara’s half into the story of how she ‘single handedly’ stole an entire casino, and while guarded-clearly having heard more than one of Kara’s tall tales before-Cass is paying attention, having given up pretending to take in the scenery about when Kara discovered a kitchen painted with blood-clear and obvious concern when Kara relayed how the suspected killer had come home to catch her in there.

Obviously Kara was safe, and despite herself-Cass was a little impatient to hear the rest. “Any day you’ll sprout two feet-but what did he do next?"

“He’s sizing me up for murderin’- ya know, as one does-and says something he probably thought was real scary? Blahblahblah 'tenderize' blahblahblah." The attempt at a deeper male voice was very much at odds with the rest of her speech, bordering on comical-particularly as the redhead went on a sudden, empty headed tangent.

"Mostly though, I’m busy wishing it was chocolate milk. You ever have that Chocoholic Syrupy stuff on waffles? That’s the best.”

Cass’ brow draws down, finally calling bullshit. “He didn’t actually come up while you were there, did he?”

“No he did! He totally did. So I spill the milk, right? And he goes to bullrush me, but WHOOPS! I duck aside, and the electrical wires on the floor, they zap him!”

“What? What wires?”

“The trap! I had pulled out some wires, you know, left ‘em crackling on the floor-”

“You did not.”

“Scout’s honor, there were wires and the milk connected it all together, and zapped him! Burnt him right up. Then I go down, I invite Nero and Big Sal up. They're good friends of mine you know, always hanging on my every word? I tell ‘em Clanden’s real sick up there, and can’t find a detonator to a bomb he just built...”

 

[Obuzeti]

"Kara and I were investigating Clanden's room for evidence of bombs he'd planted around the Strip," Jonah says, eyes dark as he heads up the staircase to the roof. "He attacked her before he realized I was present. I rectified his error."

The feel of Clanden's flesh under his hands, blood-slick, his hands trying to push Moray away, his feet slapping against the wet tile underneath, the drying remains of his own last murder splattered about the kitchen. Death for death. The terrible, gristly rasp as vocal cords pulled apart, and Clanden's face had opened like a loathsome flower, teeth spreading, throat parting, eyes rolling. His humanity peeling away under Moray's grasp, until he'd seized the squealing animal inside his soul and murdered it.

He comes up the staircase, and the sunlight makes Moray blink. He inhales - exhales.

Ranger Ghost is already looking their way, and has sat up on her little perch, her hat and sunglasses blocking the vast majority of her face. What skin there is to be seen is ghostly pale, and the rest of her body is wrapped up to prevent the harsh sunlight of the Mojave from burning her skin.

"Jonah," she says, flat. "Howdy."

"Ghost," he says, by way of greeting. "Mind passing on some news for me?"

"Spill," she says with a shrug.

"I had a disagreement with the Legion over Nipton," Jonah replies. "It's gone. I got out who I could. Vulpes lead the deployment there. He's dead now. I also shot up Cottonwood Cove about four days ago, dumped radioactive waste all over it. It's probably still empty if the NCR wants to put guns on the ridge over it, keep the ferry blocked."

Ranger Ghost's dark sunglasses stare up at him. Her mouth purses.

"Wow," she says. "Okay. Thanks."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"-Tried- to attack me.". Kara chimes in, seemingly buoyed by his sudden contribution. Hilariously, nothing Jonah just said necessarily contradicts the bullshit she’s laying down, and even strengthens some of it-that Clanden DID come up, and that there totally WAS a butchery thing going on in there, right next to his fruit and cereal.

"He missed ‘cause of all that milk I spilled-you remember the milk, how it wasn’t chocolate? ANYWAY, it turned all cotton candied colored after that. STRAWBERRY milk, but I don’t LIKE strawberries-”

“You discover a kitchen full of dressed and gutted hookers, have the murderer come up behind you, and you’re trying to tell me you were busy thinking about what color the spilled milk was? That THAT’S what you find pertinent?”

Pretending to focus on and relaying shit that didn’t matter was JUST to get that frowny look out of Cass, and Kara wonders if some part of Cass knew it, too-because the disapproval written all over her face was comedy gold.

Instead of falling into a fit of giggles Kara pulls off a perfectly surprised, innocent look, just a dash of confusion. “Well, yeah Cass.” And then her face splits into an eyebrow wiggling grin as she drops all pretense of vulnerability and hurt. “I have my priorities straight!”

That she’d slashed his side and laughed her Raider laugh smack in his face, rejected his notions of power and threat-Kara doesn’t bother with that. She doesn’t bother with how Jonah ‘resolved’ the situation. She doesn’t even elaborate on the bombs that woulda turned New Vegas into a graveyard.

She only cares about making it funny.

~*~

She doesn’t know if she should demand more details or write this off. Suppose at the end of the day, no matter which way Kara told it-she’s just glad the redhead hadn’t been added to the fucker’s ledger. No one deserves to go out that way, no sir.

“So yeah, then we went and fired the head of the family and his sidekick, since they were such rude hosts and all.”

“Uh huh, I’m sure you di-wait.” Maybe it’s the booze that muddled it, but she’s heard something about this, she thinks. About a power struggle in one of the Three Families, a casino switching hands.

And she’s heard the name Moray, goddammit-

Her eyes snap to Kara, and her lips part to ask her if that really had been them, because no way, right?

And then she tunes in to what the big man is telling the soldier, and all the rumors and snippets she’d been hearing over the past three days knit together and crystalize into a complete picture.

Vulpes? He took down Vulpes Inculta, the mastermind left hand of Caesar? Took the Omertas for a spin, shot up and irradiated the Cove?

Cass gets out her map and gives it a surreptitious glance. That was smack next to where Ceasar has been holed up and lying in wait. Close enough to spit on the Fort, even.

What in the hell was Kara doing tagging along with this guy? He’s like to get himself killed or arrested going about the way he is, pissing off the bull, House, and flouting NCR regulations even if he WAS pointing himself at the bad guys. And here he is about to help her investigate her burned out caravans?

“This uh, investigation feels like it ought to be beneath you, all of a sudden.” Cass notes as she slowly re-pockets her map. Maybe it’s as he said-he was interested enough in the trade routes to do something about it. Apparently had ties with the Gun Runners. Maybe some kind of payday in there somewhere, but…

Something’s amiss here, and Cass isn’t real sure what it is. He had to have more important business than this, but yet she can't find the angle he might be playing. Couple of drinking games and one long ago conned defense of his girlfriend hardly measure up, so what is it?

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah shakes his head. "I'd have done this my next circuit anyways," he says. "Nobody should be fucking with the caravans or the roads. There's enough stuff out in the Mojave trying to kill us all without worrying about whether the next caravan is going to have enough iodine, antiseptic, food, or bullets."

If trade and travel isn't safe then the system is breaking down. He's been distracted with Kara and political bullshit for a moment, and already shit like this is happening where he's not looking; entire caravans are being vaporized on the road, and she's acting like this shouldn't concern him? After all the work he's done to make the Mojave less of a shrieking wasteland?

Jonah's eye almost begins to twitch, but the manic energy of Kara beside him calms his agitation down. Not everyone knows his rep, and far, far fewer know why he does the things he does; he'd never bothered with explanations before, and conversations had been extremely sparse, if and when he had even bothered with dialogue.

Ghost sits up; purses her lips and gives Jonah a direct look. She's on the short list of professionals in the Mojave that he respects, so when her next question is, "You taking up with House?", he doesn't brush it off immediately. Instead, he turns and raises an eyebrow at Kara. Granted, her desire to badger the old man with questions about Pre-War seem like a strong enough motivation that they're going to stick, and the stability of the Mojave is something they both want, so . . .

"Close enough," he says with a shrug. "Long-term retainer."

Ghost lets out a long, low whistle. "Might be a conflict of interest with the Runners."

"We'll need to talk," Jonah concedes.

The Runners are tied into the military complex of the NCR deeply, supplying them with almost all their guns and hardware. When he was just a mercenary, trading with him was just good politics, but if political pressure gets put on the Runners, the local supply branch he buys from might well dry up. It's not something he's looking forward to, but since the Gun Runners don't really have a chain of command, there's a chance they might not give a shit at all; it all depends on how the local branch swings it.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"I'd have done this my next circuit anyways. Nobody should be fucking with the caravans or the roads. There's enough stuff out in the Mojave trying to kill us all without worrying about whether the next caravan is going to have enough iodine, antiseptic, food, or bullets."

“Jonah likes things nice and neat.” Kara adds, her usual smirk softening into a more genuine curve of her lips. “Goes around playing the big stick, you know. And somebody dusting traders? Needs a big stick.”

Cass accepts the explanation with a thoughtful nod, though it doesn’t entirely explain why he’s letting her tag along. Still, it’s appreciated to know someone gives enough of a damn to take care of business, and effectively.

As for her-she wants to know what happened, who’s responsible, if this was indeed some sort of conspiracy instead of a random attack in the wild. She’s no charity case, though-she’ll make it worth their while they find trouble along the way-she’s a good shot.

Killer of Vulpes and more skirts than she’d bother counting, she doubts he needs much help-but the more guns pointed at the bad guys, the better.

~*~

Jonah raises a brow at her at Ghost’s question, and while Kara preferred the left hand not know what the right’s doing, she backs him up. Well, sort of.

“He has a snowglobe collection.” The courier affirms, suddenly serious. It throws the contemplative Cass for a loop and draws a blink and stare.

“A what?”

“Snowglobes! I saw it when we talked to him-or him at us anyway. There was one for the Grand Canyon, and Mount Rush-a-More, and D.C.-and oh yeah!-” Cass’ staring is hilarious. This was hilarious. “He’s the ‘people’ I was talkin’ bout, that I thought you should get in contact with!”

“Through you?”

“Well sure! We could be your people getting in touch with his people, which’d also be us, don’t see why not-I talk to myself all the time.”

Cass, for once, believes her. To be fair though, it was one of the first times she’s ever been almost sorta straight with the other woman.

“You got your fingers in some awful big pies these days Kara, criminey.”

“Blueberry ones! Maybe apple…?”

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

A Good Many Miles Later:

Overall, it was a fairly companionable trip. Since Cass wasn’t the captive audience Vanessa had been, and Kara wasn’t going to ignore Jonah the whole way besides-there was some good conversation to be had between the three caravanners about weapon types and armor (with occasional input from Jonah of course) though Cass’ knowledge mainly pertained to rifles. Kara even got to provide something on the topic(soaking up their knowledge in the meanwhile)-thrusting her ‘super cool’ railgun into Damien’s hands and boasting how Jonah had fixed it so it worked more than once. Of course, the train whistle was her own brilliant idea-but copyrighted, so if they stole it they’d supposedly have to pay her royalty fees.

An overnight campfire brought about the (mostly straight) retelling of a time the two women had gotten into a drunken fistfight with a smelly rancher who just couldn’t catch a hint, and how Kara had hit him broadside with some other guy’s guitar. It’d broken into an all out bar brawl, one they’d escaped out of just to watch the other participants get arrested from the bar across the street.

Cass had some moonshine recipe she taught to Damien, chicken scratch instructions written out on a piece of dusty paper, some minor improvements the man thought could give it extra punch. A watch schedule got itself worked out (Kara weaseled out of it due to a supposed claim of narcolepsy and obvious ADD, as well as a claim that Hrolf would take her shift for her), and in the morning Cass proved she could make some good french toast out of canned bread and cartoned eggs. She was in much better spirits than her drunken sour mood the day before, but no less formidable seeming-even if she seemed to take some pride in making the party breakfast. They got on the road again, Kara with the most bounce in her step-always thrilled to be hoofing it.

~*~

“Not too far from the first site now.” Cass noted, a little more grim than before-this had been a good man who’d died working for her, and she hadn’t forgotten it.

“Okie doke, assumin’ it’s not still smoldering, guess we’ll keep our eyes peeled for ash piles?” Kara mused aloud, lacking both tact and respect-something Cass doesn’t bat an eye at, but also doesn’t make a crack in response.

The mongrels had kept some distance from the group per usual (maybe a little more due to strangers?)-but suddenly Hrolf slips up on Kara’s right, and Lupa only a step or two behind him, slightly diagonal.

“Ha, wondered if you’d say hi!” Kara says with delight, a hand leaving the lapel of her jacket to scratch the shaggy dog’s behind the ear, shake up his scruffy mane. He’s a big dog, but also a sneaky one, the best spy puppy.

Lupa too-she turns her head to look back at the older girl, but those yellow eyes are focused on the path ahead and a click of Kara’s tongue elicits no response. Well, Lupa could be a little standoffish sometimes-her bow looks fantabulous, though!

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah glances over as the wolfhounds come forward, ears perked and silent in their tread. He's long since learned that Hrolf has much better senses than him, so he squints at the surrounding wastes, looking for anything that could be setting the dogs on edge.

And then he sees it - a brief flicker of goggles through the broken corner of a window in a ruined building beside the road, peeking quick before ducking back - goggles, the kind that the Fiends wear. Jonah's head tilts, just like Hrolf's, and he draws his sidearm, looses the safety, and then wings a round off a metal pan on the shelf behind where he'd seen the motion. The bullet ricochets off to somewhere he can't see, the angle impossible to control, but the startling racket it creates provokes a foul oath out of the figure he'd seen, who scrambles away and deeper into cover. It's covered in leather armor with a makeshift gasmask on, which just confirms his suspicion: Fiends. They don't use laser weaponry, but they are definitely a threat, which is why his sidearm barks a second time and buries a round in the figure's side. The distance is too far for much penetration, but he's out of the action nonetheless - he immediately starts screaming that he's hit, and the rest of his crew boil out of cover.

It's probably about two dozen, with the average mix of popguns, varmint rifles, and melee weaponry, and even if Jonah had been by himself he would have been confident in pulling this off. The two Gun Runners, on the other hand, immediately wheel to their Brahmin, yank a heavy iron contraption off apiece, and slap the ox on the rear, sending it running for cover.

The devices, looking like nothing so much as a scrunched stool, are tossed to the ground and yanked on, unfolding them into something like a knocked-over triangle that the two men immediately crouch behind for cover - little notches cut in the sides for the barrels of their rifles. The sequence takes only a couple seconds, and then they're firing measured shots from their carbines, picking off the lead elements of the approaching gang.

Jonah, by comparison, draws his sawed-off shotgun Hew and unloads both barrels in a massive shot that simply blow away the closest Fiend's forward leg, a bruiser wielding full metal gear and twin machetes.

Then, already reaching for another set of shells, he charges them back, the remaining three in the disordered charge hauling ass for his domineering figure.

The rest are back in the ruins, sending scattered and disorganized fire their way, but at least two have rifles worth something, their booming reports much louder and more threatening, and one is even toting a gatling gun that immediately jams when he tries to start it up, to his sulfurous swearing.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara catches the motion as he performs it, and while her head stays down and her face remains turned towards Hrolf-those bright blue eyes of hers flick to the man in a sidelong glance before the first shot’s even fired.

And then the corner of her mouth hikes up after it, lips parting as the redhead skips long past her usual cocky smirk and straight to the jarringly manic grin.

“Shithead addicts-” Cass bites off as she drops into a crouch and pulls her rifle. “Dogs probably smelled the Jet from here-Kara, do you think-”

She glances to where the courier JUST was-and God damn it all, she’s looking at empty air. Not much of a surprise, but still-but she’s too busy to be irritated, it’s shithead hunting season. The four of them should be able to handle things just fine.

Cass fires a shot through the shoulder of one of the advancing men before choosing cover behind a rusted out car. Ducked down she reloads, then pops up and rests her elbows against the hood to pick off some more. She hears those rival rifles-and she’s looking for them.

~*~

Under the cover of her stealth boy Kara hauls ass up and over the pile of rubble heaped up against a shelled out brick building. Mount Invest, as she’s already decided to dub it! If Jonah wasn’t down there she’d plant a flag, that’d be funny-but no time for that now, there’s an ambush goin’ on! And it looks like there’s a good vintage point up there, on the corner of the building that isn’t all caved in and part of a mountain now.

‘Mount Invest’ slopes off just short and to the left of the remaining roof, but Kara jumps it easy, throwing a hand out to catch at the lip of the building. For a moment the courier was suddenly visible as she made contact with the brickwork, swinging to throw a leg over the brickwork and haul herself over it in a fluid rolling motion, railgun slipped from her shoulder to her chest in an almost hug as she turns to lay it out up there.

Three stories up, Kara had indeed found an excellent ‘vintage’ point-there’s a plethora of unsuspecting targets for the courier to choose from in both the ruins below and across the street. She wastes little time in doing so-she hadn’t been lugging this thing around for nothing after all, and just look at the scope Jonah'd put on it!

“Pasta la kiester, baby-”

~*~

A railway spike just about amputates the Fiend wielding the gatling gun-the spike punches into his upper arm to sever muscle, pulverize bone, and staple it into his side as it buries four or five inches of thick rusted metal into his side and lung. He goes down pretty hard sure, but the next guy gets stuck to a wall. The third Kara misses but spooks, the spike striking through concrete just behind his head.

A loud, short two bursts of a train whistle sound as Kara reloads, and with a deep breath-an even more obnoxious, louder one before more spikes fire down on the disorganized raiders. They don’t always strike true, but hell if they weren’t some serious (and odd) bits of suppression fire.

 

[Obuzeti]

The first man within Jonah's line of sight is running headlong, an admittedly pretty nasty fire axe slung over one shoulder ready for a disemboweling swing as soon as he gets in range. The raider has one of those garbage pail helmets, but a shotgun shell to the faceplate still throws him nearly from his feet. He staggers backwards, past his compatriots, one with facepaint and a baseball bat with nails in it, and another swinging a golf club wildly.

Golfer #3 catches the second shell to his unarmored midsection, gutting him outright and knocking his feet out from under him. Jonah glides to that man's side, slinging the shotgun again and seizing the falling raider's forearm just long enough to jerk his mutilated form up into the way of the other raider's baseball bat, swinging for the fences. It hits the mortally wounded man's back and sticks, the nails digging deep, drawing a strangled scream from the beleaguered Fiend. Jonah promptly shoves betrayer and betrayed into each other, in a heap, and instead bolts for the axe-wielder, who is turning his faceplate back forward.

The shots heading Jonah's way slackens as he closes - friendly fire is a good way to get knifed in the night with the Fiends, even if they can't stand each other personally. It's an advantage he'll take.

Axe-Man turns his helmet straight just in time to spot Jonah coming in full-bore. He hastily swings the axe in an awkward, horizontal arc, which forces the mercenary to slide low, almost dropkicking the other man in the knees. Something gives and the Fiend collapses sideways, but he hardly stops for the pain, instead screaming some adrenaline-fueled bellow and swinging again down at Jonah with that axe, but the angle is too bad and he's falling away at the same time - it misses completely as its user collapses backwards.

Moray rolls forward, catches the Fiend's hands as he tries to bring the axe back around for another swipe, slips his knife out from his chest sheathe, and buries it up under the faceplate and into the raving psychopath's neck, then jerks the blade sideways. Blood gushes, and there's a wet, gasping gluck as the Fiend tries to scream at him, still jerking on the axe handle.

Moray stabs him through the wrist, next, and when he slides that up right between the man's fingers, bisecting his hand and crushing delicate metacarpal bones, that's when he finally consents to release his weapon. The mercenary stands with his captured prize, kicks Axe-Man in the head again to drop him back down after he tries to rise with Moray, and then turns to face the baseball bat Fiend, who'd only just managed to extract himself from his dying friend. That's when the two Gun Runners shoot him down with a double tap of controlled fire, blowing holes in his chest from behind.

Moray's mouth twitches, a corner rising. He hefts the axe, slick with a dying man's blood, and turns to start booking it for the ruins the rest of the Fiends are sheltered in, only to have to throw himself down again as a flicker of bright green precedes a plasma bolt sailing through where his chest had been. Another, distantly-heard whine presages a second bolt, and the dying axe-murderer seizes onto Jonah's wrist as he drags himself up the other man's form.

Practical, Moray goes with what works and turns to sling the mortally-wounded, would-be axe murderer into the second plasma bolt as cover. It turns him into swiftly-scattering ash, and Moray scuttles to the closest piece of cover through the clogging ash.

"SNIPER!" One of the Gun Runners call, already searching for the target, but there's not even the glint of a scope to pinpoint their hidden assailants.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara doesn't much like messes. Her eyes gloss right on over them most of the time, even when (especially?) she's the one making them. Used to be she didn’t make all that many messes? The bloody kind, she means. Lot of explodey and graffiti kind of messes, PRANKS sure! But not paint the town red messes.

Lately though? Well gosh, this was the seventieth shoot out this month or something! That’s wars for ya-

Kara tries to have a little fun at the very least-she targets and manages to shoot the left toe of a skinny Fiend’s boot and foot, pinning him in place before he fell flat on his face in a flail of limbs. She huffs a laugh and moves on to find another fun target, not real concerned about the whole thing given who all her and Jonah had in tow-until a bright bolt of GREEN cuts through, RIGHT where Jonah had just been standing.

Kara jerks away from the scope of the railgun with a wide eyed look of surprise, pulls herself closer to the building’s edge before catching sight of Jonah again-only for another bolt to fire down the street and into the random schmo shield guy he’d held up for cover.

Kara ducks back down as soon as he finds proper cover, frowning internally but grinning her cheshire grin despite no one being able to see her.

Somebody thought they could put on a big ole laser show eh? Thought they could maybe be more noisy and more distractin’ than she was? Well NO ONE’S noisier and more distracting than she was! She’s got THEIR number right here, right now!

Kara pops up on her knees while her hand rockets into her jacket, grabs hold of a stick of dynamite sheathed in the lining of the trademark garment. Taped around it were some little druggie bags of VERY sparkly glitter, and Kara’s gleeful as she reached across her body for the same slingshot she’d offered Pacer.

Dynamite briefly held in the crook of her neck and shoulder, Kara struck a match and lit the fuse, then slid the explosive into the duct taped projectile pocket of the slingshot. She took aim at a pile of broken concrete in the middle-ish of the road a good distance away from Jonah-and fired with a blared “BOMB’S AWAY!”

The stick of boom flies as good as an arrow-for a minute. Then it kinda wobbles before spinning end over end, hitting the road and rolling the few feet it’d fallen short for the concrete.

Kara had dropped down but not quite out of sight, was excitedly watching for the boom...but nothing happens. She moved back to her hands and knees with a frown, fingers on the building’s edge before-

“Air probably blew it out.”

Kara jumped with a start, then ducked back away from the edge before twisting around to see the owner of the casually idle, deep man’s voice. Her look of surprise melded into a flirtatious smile nearly on instinct, and it was a handy reflex-because crouched a dozen feet behind her was a tall, well built man in his early forties-Duke.
Duke was here, with the same grey blond buzzcut and the same vaguely military-ish body armor, the dark red kneepads and bloodied steel toed boots she’d first seen in him. It’s been a while. Nelphi had said he’d been looking for her.

Duke smiled back at her, thin lipped and with just a smidgen of mirth-mirth that didn’t really reach his eyes.

Kara doesn’t know why he’s here.

“Duke ole’ pal! All this time I thought you were still cuffed to your headboard, but look at you all dressed up and on the move.” Kara cheerily greeted before gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb. “Love to catch up sometime, but I said bomb’s away, and I didn’t mean it lightly neither.”

Kara turned to drag her pack closer and rummage around in it, but she’s got him in her peripheral vision. His hands are empty and his smile’s a little more at easy-but he’s watching her right back.

She yanks two whole grenades out of her pack, sets down one near the railgun while loading her slingshot with the other, thumb pulling the pin so that the ring spiraled down the digit. Tongue touching the corner of her lips as she lines up her shot, Kara turns her head to him a moment, holding her fire. “Those ain’t your guys down there, are they?”

“No. Motor-Runner hired them out.”

Without even looking back Kara released the grenade, and Duke issues a low laugh as it rockets through the air and into the pile of concrete.

“To who?”

“Van Gruffs.” Boy, Jonah had sure called that one. “Eliminating competition. Moray was a bonus, and they weren’t going to ignore Cassidy herself wandering down here.”

“Oh. Almost feel bad for ‘em to be honest.”

“Don’t. They were talking about ‘finally giving it to the redhead’.”

“Well yeah, Gloria and I are bestest gal pals.”

“Not Gloria. Fiends.”

“Well gee, some friends they are!”

The grenade goes off on the word, blowing the fuck up-noisy and rubble-y and dust everywhere, a second explosion following the first near instantaneously. THIS one causes a plume of sparkly glitter, a whooshing cloud of it that was only somewhat melted in parts. Kara doesn't really pay attention, she's already digging around for a confetti pop, sticking a firecracker to it with her piece of gum. “Guessing that has to do with Cook-Cook, Vi, and Nelphi?”

“Sneaking through the vault without saying hi also pissed him off. Killed Davey over it.”

“Was pretty rude of me.” Kara agrees with a sigh of false regret-popping back up to fire the confetti pop before sliding back down to regard him a moment, rolling to one side and propping her head up on one hand. It’s not the best position for a quick draw, but Duke probably wasn’t here to off her. He could have done that already, no problem. He wants something, and Kara’s not keen on asking him what it is, not yet. He’ll get around to it.

The man tips his head back, scratches at the underside of his chin while he idly mulls something over. “You’ve been burning some bridges lately. Not like you. Course, with that efficient one man army in tow, you can afford to make some big moves. Surprised to see you getting serious, is all.”

“Moray’s been a good influence.”

“Influence, or insurance? You’ve got him wrapped around your little finger Kara, don’t pretend. Even I’m impressed.”

Kara winked, but it makes her feel a little dirty even pretending Jonah was some kind of tool. She loves Jonah. She’s pretty sure love was nothing Duke would know anything about, but she loves him. Up here alone on a roof though, it was probably best not to be declaring that to the guy she’s pretty sure would like to usurp what he views as Moray’s ‘position’. She’s everybody’s best friend after all, when said best friend’s asking.

“So, long term planning...”

“C’mon Duke, I don’t plan much of anything past next week, you know that! Or tomorrow. Heck, even tonight I’m open to surprises!”

“You sold me on something before, Kara. Gave me ideas, and they were ideas I liked.”

“Snrk-yeah?” Kara lifts off her hand to peek at the street again-and Duke slips a few feet closer. It discourages her from taking aim down there again, turning her back. “C’mon Duke, I like the games I’m playing right now, and Moray just so happens to be fun to play them with. Raider Queen, Pit Boss Kara will have to wait-Big Sal and Nero just got dumb and I didn’t trust them anymore, that’s all. I’m not any more ‘serious’ than I’ve been. I mean, the cut’s good, but politics aren’t really my thing.”

“Making too many waves for that to be true, Kara. Like I said-burning bridges, getting serious with your skillset.”

“Yeah yeah, you sound like a broken record.” Kara waves the assertion away, finally dropping her attentive, cheerful act for empty headed boredom, seemingly ready for her next distraction. “This has been a good talk Duke, really it has-we’ll definitely have to reunion-ize again sometime.”

“A lot of bridges. But I’d think long and hard about burning this one, Kara.” He slides a little closer, smile twisting into something more lethal, his eyes more than a little predatory.

Kara shifts into a kneel and tugs her railgun closer, but it’s aimed the wrong way. Still, she’s not letting him get any closer. Edging sideways towards ‘Mount Invest’, Kara’s mouth widens into its aggressively manic, insane smile, her raider smile. “Why, think I might want to cross it sometime? Play with my ole buddy, my ole pal Duke instead of Moray?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Axe in hand, Jonah scuttled into the broken cover the Fiends had fortified themselves in. A broken wall was his first choice of cover, but a sizzling bolt of plasma slagged the cinderblock wall inches away from where he slid in - the residual heat searing his skin from how close that bolt had gotten. He scrambles to the side, but the second shot doesn't come. Instead, there's a muted shout of pain somewhere in the distance.

"Shooter dropped!" One of the Gun Runners calls, smug, and then has to duck behind his prefab cover as the other sniper takes exception and starts firing back at the merchants, snapping off a shot both at the Runners and one at Cass's car, though their cover is solid enough and the projectiles slow enough to make it a futile effort.

With the fire support cornered, Jonah rolls to his feet, peeks over the edge of his slagged cover, and immediately ducks back as a leveled pistol almost buries a bullet in his eye. The Fiend holding it lunges forward to follow him, but doesn't think about how hot the concrete slag must be - he lands with his bare armpit on top of thousand-degree, partially-liquidized wall, and screams immediately, contorting for an instant of unimaginable pain.

Moray cuts that off with an overhand swing of his axe, neatly decapitating his victim. That leaves three that he can hear, and a glance around the back, non-boiling end of his cover proves that - two still shooting at Cass, for some reason, while the third unloads an SMG at his cover. The mercenary waits until the pin clicks on empty, then rounds the ruined wall and comes at the one trying to pin him down. On the way he snags a brick and wings it sidearm at the Fiend's hands as he tries to reload; his foe dodges, but his feet and hands both tangle in the adrenaline-fueled effort and he stumbles against a wall, then tries to block the incoming axe with his upraised gun.

Instead, Moray just glides the axeblade underneath, smooth as silk, and opens the man's neck all the way to his spine with a ghostly flick. The returning backswing as the Fiend collapses to his knees, on the other hand, caves his skull completely in.

The other two Fiends don't even hear him coming, deafened by their shitty, automatic weapons, and then he trots out in the direction of the last sniper, pinning him down with covering fire from a purloined Fiend weapon while he carries the axe in his other hand, readied for use.

He might keep this thing, come to think of it. A knife just doesn't have the stopping power.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Don’t go getting your dander up.” The raider tells her, soft. “I’m not looking to burn any bridges either. But yes, you just might.”

His eyes almost lazily follow the curve of Kara’s slashed grin, then languidly trail down the curve of her waist and the bend of her stocking’d leg before resting on her painted candy knife. “After all-you’ve made it so you have to have muscle, now.”

“Snrk. Got by on girl power before, what makes you think I need a harem?” He’s looking at Kara but he’s not looking at her. No, the raider isn’t distracted by the things he’s long since learned the redhead wasn’t selling.

He’s sizing up her weapons, and Kara realizes this only when the lazy, trailing gaze sharpens and suddenly flicks to her left hand, then the holstered gun opposite.

The old bastard’s actually considering making a move!

A trill of sharp laughter before she snaps the gate of her teeth closed again, infinitely amused and utterly unconcerned about any potential danger. In fact, the courier’s still grinning her unhinged grin-almost daring.

“Aside from the recent tear, Moray’s efficiency is nothing new. He’s got a reputation, after all.”

“Arm candy’s a whirlwind of violence, what can I say?” Kara interrupts, vivid blue eyes widening a fraction before she laughs at some secret joke. “But ya can’t fault the guy for his passions!”

“People talk about it same as they always have.” Duke continues on unabated. He’s used to dealing with drug addled jumping freaks after all-the Fiends have formed his power base for a long while. He’s cut his teeth on the worst of them, took the cream of the crop and left the rest to their squalor while he bided his time. No, Kara’s brand of crazy doesn’t throw him off-she too had been biding her time. She’s cut from the same cloth he is, she just wears it better. “But people also been talking about your surprisingly high level of participation right along with him. No one will ever believe you’re harmless again, Kara. Not after Nipton or Gomorrah, the political moves you’ve made here and there, finally bold enough people can connect them together. Your ruse is up, and you and I both know you can’t pack enough heat against the beasts out there, not alone.”

“You’re such a bummer, Duke.”

“I appreciate the plentiful options you currently have, but they’ll narrow down soon enough.”

A shot rings out over the others, strikes the edge of the half collapsed, protruding roof access smack next to Duke’s right arm. He slips smoothly back and out of sight, lips quirking into a wry smile.

“I’ll be waiting when they do.”

Kara yanked her railgun close to her body and rolled over the roof’s edge, landing on her feet enough to slide down Mount Invest with only a bit of a wobble, a near spill before she hops off and is forced to take a running step or two before she can slow up and stop. She twists to look back up at the roof, but Duke’s probably making tracks on the other side of the building, exactly where she’s not going to be going.

Cass waves her over to her cover, briefly alarmed despite the waning battle. Kara just doesn’t seem to think sometimes, standing out in the open like that-

“Who the hell was that?” She wants to know as the redhead slides in close, slings that godawful train whistle gun on her back.

“Phonebook salesman! Thank goodness you shot at him, he was trying to sell me a whole stack-”

“Wha-goddammit Kara, not another Snakeoil Sam story.” Cass peered over the hood of the car and then back at the roof, a worried frown. “You alright?”

He’d been cleaner far as she could tell, but he’d looked like one of these drugged out assholes. Must have snuck up on her. Cass had only noticed because Kara’s antics had come to a sudden stop-and then she’d glanced over and there some asshole was, having snuck up behind her or something.

...she hopes. Moray was not a man anyone ought to two time.

“I’m fiiine. It was just a dude who’s house I broke into once, no big deal.”

That almost sounded truthful, but doesn’t have her worrying any less. Kara was a magnet for trouble, she swears.

“Well. Glad you’re okay, anyway. Fucker looked big.” Cass peeked again, then dropped back to jerk her head to their right. “C’mon, think we’ve killed just about all of ‘em. Let’s slip over this way, catch up to Moray.”

“Good idea! He might want a phonebook, I’m not sure-you ever see one of them strongman posters, dude tearing three in half?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray's caught up to the snipers by the time the rest of the group's caught up. One is already dead, the one the Runners had winged; the bullet hadn't been lethal, though it had punched through the man's shoulder. On the other hand, the giant divot in his skull from an axe, presumably, was far more lethal in application.

The other guy looks chilled but resolute, staring the big mercenary in the eyes, even as his own swim with tears of pain. His left leg is bent the wrong way at the joint, dislocated it looks like, and Moray is rolling the axe's shaft in one hand, testing its weight and with that peculiar dolls-eye look he gets when he contemplates the prospect of cold-blooded murder.

"Didn't decide to take the other one prisoner?" Damien says as he catches up, not quite breathing heavily but definitely warmed up. Good shots and great gunsmiths the Runners are, but they carry too much iron to make good on their name.

"He pulled a sidearm," Moray replies, absently. "This one did, too, but I had more time."

The pistol in question has been hacked almost in half, the mangled remains laying off to the side - a laser model, making it much more deadly than some peashooter, but as its ruptured battery proves, much less robust.

"Just get it over with," the sniper hisses, defiant even now with a pitiless man standing over him with a bloody axe. "I ain't telling you shit."

Moray says nothing. He just looks at him.

"FUCK YOU!" the sniper shouts, trying to provoke Moray into doing something, but he still just watches him, like a crow looking at something shiny.

"Unfortunately," the bigger man says, low and soft, "Your cooperation is required. The rest of you may want to give me some space to work."

He's settling into that cold place where pain is a byproduct of his existence when the unforgettable snuffling of a Yao Guai draws his attention instead, and that drops him to a crouch immediately - you can't intimidate a Yao Guai by being meaner than it, because that's impossible. Like Deathclaws, you either kill it before it knows you're there, or experience all the joys of being hunted. The big, scarred body breaches the hill line behind where the sniper had sat and ambles their way, lanky and brutally intimidating.

Fortunately, this one doesn't seem to be terribly interested in any of them, which is bizarre for a Yao Guai within smelling range of anything that's at least a mouthful. Instead, it ambles up and looks at him from maybe a dozen feet away, blinking blearily against the bright desert heat and the sun behind him.

This is already closer than he ever wanted to be to one of these things. Then, of course, he recognizes it.

He sighs and pulls his beef jerky ration out of his thigh pocket, the bear's beady little eyes following the smelly snack, and then he tosses it towards the beast. It's head snaps around and a big, big mouth opens up and closes around the snack with a sound like an empty bucket slammed into the ground.

The Yao Guai licks its chops, and ambles on its way past Jonah, only pausing long enough to butt its head against him hard enough to make him stagger a step back before it meanders towards Kara, ignoring everyone else completely.

Jonah glances back at the sniper, and immediately notices the man has gone ghost white and is barely even breathing, staring at the big animal.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Cass whistles as she closes in on the dead sniper, seemingly considering it a job well done. She’s far enough back not to intrude, but close enough she can easily inspect the damage.

For her part, Kara doesn’t bother with much more than an idle glance at the man’s armor. She doesn’t like to linger on messes, and usually doesn’t hold much against anybody-but this fucker tried to ash Jonah. It makes things a hell of a lot more personal than she would have otherwise found them. Less the usual ‘us or them’ thing and more a ‘them, cause fuck ‘em’ sentiment.

“Definitely VanGruff’s.” Kara’s not really talking to anyone in particular, just a cheerful statement out into the rubble. “Jonah guessed at it, and a semi reliable birdie done confirmed it for me.”

Pleasantly distracted, the courier slips the toe of her boot under the stock of the dead man’s laser rifle, lifts it slightly with a considering expression-and then shakes her head and lets it drop.

Turning her attention to what little she can see of the surviving sniper around Moray, Kara takes a step in that direction despite that quiet tone she’d just heard. She figured she could at least try to convince Mister Tough to make things easier on himself before Moray has to get to work-when Jonah goes suddenly tight, and then drops.

Her brain catches up to the snuffling sounds she’d just heard, belatedly connects them, sorta-and then there’s another one of them werewolf bears-

“Holy fuckballs.” Cass hisses, raising the rifle she’d been holding loosely at her side-but Kara makes a protesting noise and shoves the barrel sideways faster than Cass felt the courier ought to be able to move, those big blue eyes widening with delighted recognition-and surprise.

“It’s Matilda!”

“It’s who?”

Kara’s too distracted, doesn’t even see Cass’ disbelieving expression or cutting glance-she’s busy watching Jonah throw the bear a treat, almost holding her breath she’s so excited-and the big ole bear catches it.

“You guys aren’t really feeding yaoguai’s as a regular thing-no way.”

“But Cass it’s Matilda!” Kara released the barrel of the rifle and started patting herself down for Hrolf and Lupa’s dog treat bags, she’s got them somewhere in her jacket, the littler ones for on the go doggie snacking- “I gave her a stealth boy once, and she went and ate up a bunch of redskirts for Jonah ‘n me! You shoulda seen her-well, you wouldn’t have seen her cause, you know, stealth boy-”

Matilda butts up against Jonah in thanks, is so big and fluffy and probably going to eat so many dead guys~!

“Aw, she remembers you!” Kara chirps, the words laced with laughter. “She remembers me!”

Cass half looked like she wanted to haul Kara off to a loony bin, but mostly seemed inclined to grab the redhead and hightail it out of there. She’d have to move towards the murder machine to do it though, and Kara seems dead set on getting eaten-so she backs off slowly instead, rifle lowered but not put away, eyes rooted to the thing.

“I don’t think you should eat any of these Fiends Matilda-they’re usually pretty hopped up, and you shouldn’t do drugs. Not in the middle of the day.” Despite the comical size difference, Kara’s completely at ease and already raising a hand to pet the beast behind one ear, still rifling around for treats in her jacket.

She finds one and turns it upside down into one hand, offers it up. The bear snuffles her nose around and against her gloved palm, knocks most all of them to the ground where she then lowers her head and eats them. She’s content to let Kara pet the scruff behind her massive head, step slightly around to check over the healed knife wound from their last meeting.

Aside from Jonah, no one there can quite believe what the hell they're looking at.

 

[Obuzeti]

Damien, being the survival-oriented sort, has already retreated twenty paces back with his partner. Rather than make any loud noises, he's just throwing his arms out at the Yao Guai and then gesticulating at Jonah. Unshakeable up to this point, the milquetoast predator has put religion in him - the whites of his eyes are clearly visible even at that distance, and his partner is peeking around one of the ruined cinderblock walls that make up the hollowed-out building the Fiends had been hiding in.

Meanwhile, Jonah just sighs, and turns to Kara's next prospective mark, who looks awfully close to pissing himself.

"Friend of hers," he says, with the tired mien of a man who puts up with too much. Granted, it's more often applied to troublesome kids than flaky midgets with murderbeast adoption tendencies, but there's some common ground there. "Helped us kill some Legionnaires down at Cottonwood Cove."

The sniper doesn't respond because his teeth are too busy chattering.

"Yeah, look, you can see where one of their grunts stabbed her in the shoulder," Jonah points out, indicating the recently-healed knife wound. "Didn't really slow her down much. She mauled four people in about ten seconds. With those claws, you see?"

The Yao Guai's claws are about four inches long, not the glittering foot-long talons that a Deathclaw might sport, but with much more muscle packed into the arms and hulking shoulders. The scattered patches of fur do nothing to hide a musculature designed to rend apart squealing prey and reave the remains into small, edible chunks.

Jonah makes eye contact with the other sniper, calm and a little amused, and the other man is both incapable of denying his reaction or offering more defiance. Whatever happened to this guy in the past, he's terrified of the mutant bears down to the bone.

"You should probably start talking," Jonah says, mild, and he does.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Trade wars.” The man says, visibly sweating and in no small amount of misery, between his fucked leg and fear of the Yao Gaui that was somehow under his target’s sway.

“We’re-that is, the Vangruffs-our whole outfit’s been working with the local Crimson chapter. They use us to outmuscle competition, maybe knock a few zeros off a rival’s selling price so McAfferty can buy them on the cheap.”

“Son of a bitch.” Cass hisses, but she’s too wary of the beast to do much more than that. She’s not sure Kara’s going not going to get her hand ate off, that bear loses its shit.

“McAfferty sent an errand boy to Outpost after we ashed a few wagons. Cassidy still wouldn’t sell, and I think it was McAfferty’s intent to try again in a day or two-but when word got back about her heading south herself, about her linking up with you and some Gun Runners-well, that was too good of a target for Gloria VanGruff. McAfferty signed off on it too, Crimson and the Runners’ history-but it was Gloria and her brother with the hard on for you and Walker.”

“We’re bestest gal pals.” Kara cheerily notes, but she’s distracted-she’s telegraphing her movements and trying to get Matilda to follow her in a circle, girl and bear seemingly teaching each other some secret, hidden language of cooperation.

The sniper doesn’t know how to respond to that. If the redhead was dumb enough to think Gloria VanGruff a friend-well. “They wanted Cass and you dead, and the Runners either eliminated or taken prisoner.”

“What about me? What kinda prize was I supposed to get?” The courier wants to know, now leading the bear along side by side, one hand up on the side of her shoulder. She’s still cheerful, and seemingly genuinely curious.

“...part of getting the Fiends cheap, other than providing some drugs they’re not getting from the Khans anymore, was their wanting to hold an...an ‘after party’, and Gloria said that was fine.” He rocked forward a little, a quick and spittled addition as the Yao Gaui's shadow joined the mercenary's. “Partner and I would have faded out before then of course. Unprofessional.”

Kara's unfazed, and not just because Duke had made an allusions to similar sentiments. "Snrk, no fun."

Cass doesn't take that in quite the same stride, her face contorting in disgust.
“Jesus Christ, fuckin’ raiders.”

She finally decides to shoulder her rifle, but she’s hot under the collar. “I’m going to kill both of these bitches, doin’ me and whoever else so goddamned dirty. Shit."

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray's head tilts, some deep emotion rippling beneath the surface. A single rictus twitch, like a muscular spasm, rolls across his face. "Professional," he says, and it's not a question or a compliment or anything that requires a response, the word hanging empty and naked in the air.

The hired gunman turns back to look at Moray, and his head explodes as Jonah decapitates him with a single ringing blast from his shotgun. The headless body slumps down, gore scattered across the wasteland behind it, and the big mercenary reloads a shell into the shotgun's break, eyes narrowed the slightest bit as he holsters the weapon again and slings the newly-acquired axe across his back.

Without further comment, he just turns to the other two women in his group. "I find that the continued existence of the Van Graffs is unnecessary," he says, as mild as if he's commenting on the weather. "I'm going to kill them all and burn their store to the ground, probably. You can come along if you like."

Damien, who's leaned back a little from the spray of freshly-deceased sniper, shakes his head. "This was deniable, but I don't want to be seen waging open war on competitors, even if they're shitheads. Me and my partner will accompany you to Freeside, but after that I've got to head to the warehouse and get those backed-up shipments organized. We've lost a lot of caps waiting on the NCR to get its shit in order."

Jonah just nods at him. "Fair enough. Pleasure working with you, Damien."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Freeside

“You sure about this? What’s to stop them from just nabbing you ‘fore we can do anything?” Cass was squinting at the front entrance of Silver Rush with a furrowed brow, peering at it from behind a pile of refuse the three of them had stopped at to hear Kara’s harebrained plan. Well, her portion of ‘the plan’ anyway.

It hadn’t taken them terribly long to finish their trip to Freeside-once Matilda had been convinced away that was. Kara didn’t want her getting shot, so best to shoo her off early in the continued trip. The Runners had split off just as they’d said they would, too.

“Ya think this is the first time I’ve stood outside redirectin’ traffic to Ralph’s? Nah, I’m going to stand right over there.” Kara gestured to a point halfway between the front door of Silver Rush and the corner, crossing her arms and offering a sagely nod of supposed wisdom. “Far outta nabbing range.”

The redhead perked up from her ‘wise’ expression with her usual energy, big blue eyes flicking to Jonah. “And if they do, plenty of room to jus’ shoot ‘em! The three of us could even see who gets the shot off first. Mostly I gotta use this, it’ll be hilarious.” She’d been carrying the broken laser pistol for the last several miles, insisting she needed it for something ‘important’. What that something was had only just now become entirely clear to her-an important prop in her shenanigans, as most things were. She stowed it away in her jacket somewhere.

“Then you know, goes well enough, maybe you use the roof hatch, I don’t know. There’s usually no one in the backroom.”

“...which you know because…?”

Kara just smirked her usual cocky smirk, giving that all too familiar pull to her jacket’s lapels.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah nods, satisfied with having Kara out of the line of fire for once; Damien had left to rejoin the rest of the Runners, arson and direct murder of the competition more the van Graff approach to business than the Runners. To be honest, he'd been expecting a lot more outgoing fire on approach; the fact they've made it to the Silver Rush's street without getting shot at gives him a grim hunch that business will not be concluded today. "Keep anyone else from complicating the situation," he asks. "I'll check out the Rush."

The main doors are chained shut, but on the outside, which makes him curious; they have to know that'd never stop him. Instead of fucking with it, he circles around to one of the barred side windows and peers inside to just behind the main - ah. There it is.

They wired a plasma mine to the inside of the door. There's a tension wire slipped through the crack and probably wrapped around some inconspicuous loop of the chain; remove it, the mine goes off, cooks right through the door, and flash-fries whoever's fucking with it. He circles back around to the front, pulls a packet of flour from inside his ration bag, and carefully blows the fine white substance behind the chain; most of it floats off to mix with the dust and be lost, but persistence reveals a fine line behind the heavy-gauge chain, which he promptly snips. That done, he skips fucking with the chain and just uses his newly-found axe to hack off the handles of the Silver Rush, bypassing them completely. They slide to the ground to be kicked aside, and he opens up the gunshop to reveal a whole lot of nothing. The interior is deserted, the racks of weaponry bare, and most of the entrances and openings have traps wired to them; the window he'd been peeking in has a grenade bouquet taped below the glass, for example.

He snorts and pulls the plasma mine off the door, extracts the firing mechanism, and flicks it away, rendering the thing mostly harmless. "Well, they're not here," he says, and passes the disarmed device over to Kara, looking like nothing more than a colorful Frisbee at this point, the plasma cartridge still glowing an eerie green, but without ignition, pretty well harmless. "Trap on every entrance, but the main floor looks clean. Gimme five to clean it up."

There's a solitary piece of paper taped to the central bar. It has a crude drawing of a middle finger on it. Cute.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

(phone post, apologies!)

Kara liked that her antics weren’t just antics-but something Jonah felt would help out. Look at her, finding a day job.

“I’ll cover from here and move in on your signal.” Cass provided with a nod, eyes still on the place. “I want my piece, don’t forget.”

“And break!” Kara declared with a tug on her jacket lapels, sauntering over to her indicated spot as Jonah continued past. Someone came around the corner just about that exact moment, and Kara had apparently found her mark.

“Wait a minute, mister guy-“ The courier interrupted his path with a stomp, wide eyed and pointing. “You aren’t going in THERE are you? They don’t sell nothing but junk.”

“I shop there all the time, what are you on about?” The stranger impatiently moved to go around but Kara only stepped right into his path again, uncomfortably close and seemingly oblivious to his attempt at shaking her off.

“Nuh uh, really? It’s a wonder nothin’s blown up! I mean just look what happened to my last piece.” And out comes the ruined laser pistol, visibly hacked in half and bearing a shelled out energy cell. Kara clucked her tongue with a disapproving shake of her head as the guy gave a glance behind him, half wondering if this was an attempt to mug him or something.

“That doesn’t look like an equipment malfunction-“ “SO THERE I WAS-“ The annoyed doubt-surety!-in his voice was all it took for Kara to launch into her full theatrics, a hand clapping to and gripping his upper arm as she waved the wrecked weapon around wildly before making a sweeping gesture into the empty air, apparently inviting him to imagine what she was about to lay down in the space her own eyes were fixed on.

“Mindin’ my own business when a DEATHCLAW, eighteen feet of lean, mean, redhead crunching MACHINE burst outta a junkpile and came straight at me!”

“Lady-“

“And all I had on me was this gun-“ Her loud proclamations dipped low for a conversational tone for just a moment; “Brand new just yesterday mornin’ actually, early birthday present-“ Before she went right back to blaring at him. “So I pull the trigger two whole times and BLAMMO, no more gun! I almost died!”

“I wish you had.” Fed up, the guy ripped his arm free and brushed the courier aside, firm but not a shove, at least. “Get out of the way.”

Kara’s gasp of indignation was impressive but overdone-and utterly unbelievable with that grin on her face. “Well EXCUSE ME for tryin’ to do you a solid an’ save you some caps ya GRUMP!”

The grin fades into a smile and a raised brow as Jonah exits and starts their way-the man slowing down a little, keeping out of the way-but turning with a frown as the big man met up with the crazy woman, tossing her what he recognized to be a plasma mine.

It doesn’t take much eavesdropping and a passing glance to realize Silver Rush is no more. Well shit, and here his dumbass had paid a deposit on a-well whatever. Maybe the redhead was right and they were hawking shoddy wares, maybe she’d been scaring off their clientele.

Guess it was Ralphie’s after all.

~*~

“This’ll be fun to play with.” Kara says about the disk, turning it over and over in her hands, curious about the green glow. She doesn’t have to ask if it’s disarmed-he wouldn’t have handed it to her without warning if it wasn’t. “So they heard we were comin’ and scrammed, huh?”

“Smart, but can’t say it’s not disappointin’.” Cass had strolled up, eyeing the mine a moment before shouldering her rifle. “Probably never actually expected Fiends and a couple of snipes to actually take you out, Moray.” The caravanner heaved a sigh before starting towards the building. “I’ll watch you work, might learn something.”

“I want the lock on the back door-I never did figure it out, that’s why the hatch.”

Once she was okay’d to go in, Kara lit on the crude drawing almost immediately, peeling it off with a laugh. “I knew she cared!” And for whatever reason, the courier folded it up-and pocketed it.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Smarter than most of the lot so far," Jonah muses, still annoyed at the panache, but he can grudgingly respect the smart move. "If their gunmen had been packing .308, I'd probably have a hole or two now - I didn't make them at all before they started firing. It's just their shit taste in weaponry that kept that from being a problem. Then again, shit taste in guns has always been a particularly van Graff problem."

He absolutely would have killed them if they had stuck around, and instead, they'd made the best of it. It's better than the half-assed "professionalism" that sniper had prattled about, trying to appeal to Jonah's well-known beliefs, only watching while Fiends gang-raped Kara and Cassie - "only". By comparison, the Van Graffs just want them dead. That's understandable. He gets that. He wants them dead too, after all, and he's no hypocrite. He doesn't really take offense at the random passerby shoving Kara either. He'd wanted to punch her in the head a lot too when they first met.

Odd, how few things make him angry these days, when he used to be little more than a boiling pit of rage. He's changed. The thought leaves him oddly buoyant, and he follows Kara back into the Silver Rush with an almost contented little quirk at the corner of his mouth.

The rest of the windows are trapped, too, and he takes an effort to show Cassie how he disarms the traps: grenade bouquets are just tripwire mechanisms springloaded to yank a whole set of pins out at once, the spoons tied down around the grenade; cutting the tape disarms the whole device, since without the spoon held down, the pin won't come out. "The way these M42s are built, the striker will actually crack in half if the pin is yanked too hard while the spoon's down," Jonah explains. "Keeps them from going off thanks to a bad fall or yank."

He flips the grenade over, and wrinkles his nose at the base-cap, which has been crudely screwed back into place. "None of these are good for anything," he says, and sets the explosive device aside. "They've tampered with the fuses. Probably set to go off as soon as the firing cap is struck."

Their lack of familiarity with ballistics is showing; he's actually surprised they didn't kill themselves setting that up.

There's another window with a plasma grenade that he doesn't fuck with; there's a wire system in place hooked directly into the grenade's internal casing and a circuit system he doesn't trust in the least. The last window is the laziest yet the most effective; the van Graffs had just left a bucket of expended plasma cores beneath it, glowing with radioactive energy.

"Crude, but it works," Jonah muses, and glances around for his partner now that the entrances and exits are covered. "Any luck with the back door, Kara?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The explanation is interesting, but it’s a little off putting how nonchalant he is about handling things designed to tear men to shreds. Unlike with Kara however, she attributes the flippancy to competence rather than suicidal psychosis.

Man knows his craft. Cass can appreciate that, and she also appreciates that he’s bothering to teach her. Not the most talkative guy, Jonah Moray-but what he does say usually has merit.

She’s glad he’s looking after Kara.

“Any luck with the back door, Kara?”

“The bolt’s just a hunk o’ metal!” The courier lodges her complaint with more emotion than any of her comments about the attempt on their lives-almost miffed!

The redhead was posted on one edge of an inwardly swinging door, tapping at the welded open deadbolt on the side. The handle on the outside seemed to still do something, offered some resistance-but no mechanism to actually open the door. Kara closed it, pointing at a simple bar and padlock that must have held it closed at some point.

“No wonder the pins never stuck right-jeez.”

“Solid kick woulda done it, though.” Cass notes, amused at the thought of Kara picking a lock not actually attached to anything.

“Well I didn’t have one with me at the time.” Kara propped her hands on her hips and nudged the door closed with the toe of her boot, offering up a shrug. “Here I thought it mighta been something cool. Oh well.”

She cast Jonah a look of interest, her supposed disappointment vanishing as quickly as it’d come. A genuine smile before she casts another glance around, tapping the steel toe against the door in time to some internal tune no doubt playing in her head.

“So now what? They know we know, now. Think they did McLaffle a solid and warned her, or was it jus’ every man for himself?”

“Yeah-McLafferty was in just as deep, you heard that asswipe.” Cass may have calmed down on the way here, but she was still out for blood.

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah snorts, amused despite himself. Alright, clearly they knew how to piss Kara off. Still, there's nothing there, so they might as well make a run on McLafferty and see what her deal was. "I doubt the van Graffs gave a shit about anyone else once they decided to book it. Let's go check out the lady's business, clean up your end, Cass."

Silver Rush has been already deserted and looted. Nothing left to do here but move on, let someone else take over the premises.

"Know of anybody that could use this kind of real estate, by the by, Cass?" he asks idly, as they head out for the New Vegas outskirts and the Crimson Caravan offices out thataway, not far from Boomer territory. He's welcome there, sort of, but it's hard to get the howitzer team to stop shooting at you long enough to be recognized as "one of those folk we don't shoot at".

~*~​

The Crimson Caravan main offices are mostly just a series of army surplus barracks tents, a brahmin pen, and a little wooden outpost that serves as the office proper. There's a loose handful of caravaneers, road hands, and mercenaries scattered around the area; he even recognizes one, Burton, who spots him too, and slides lower in his seat out of sight, sliding his hat down over his face rather than engage.

Fair enough.

There's a loose trio of guards, sporting nothing serious in terms of hardware - service rifles, though one has a caravan shotgun he notes for the future, in case things turn bad; Hew is a cut-down version of one, and he'd damn well take an extra. He ignores them all and strikes straight for the office instead, his bootheels clicking on the solid wood as he pushes the door aside.

Alice McLafferty glances up at him when he comes inside, raises her eyebrows; he's done work for her before, and they have a fair working relationship based on mutual appreciation of their efficiency. That mild pleasure sours as he steps aside to allow Kara in, and goes flat and cold as soon as Cass comes in afterward and he shuts the door after them with a very final clack.

"Ah," she says, ancient and chilled. "Competing contract, I take it."

"Something like that," Jonah murmurs, settling against the door to hold it closed, but rather than talk more just gestures at Cass. It's her party. "Went to go investigate some shot-up caravans, had a rumble with some hired fiends and a couple of van Graff sharpshooters. Heard a tale from one of 'em that Cass'd like to discuss with you."

Alice isn't a woman of action like Kara or Cass; her hands have the wrong calluses for gunwork, and she doesn't have the characteristic tan that anyone trotting under the Mojave sun for days on end does. She's a civilian through and through, but there's no hesitation in how she turns to take a gander at Cass, mouth puckered, and simply blows out a breath.

"Well?" she says, impatient. Good poker face, slightly impatient, shoulders tense and eyes narrowed.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Right of conquest, ain’t it?” Cass replies, weighing the question a moment. “I stay in business, take House up on his offer-assuming you’re not full of shit, Kara-maybe me, if you’re offerin’ it rent free.”

“You’d be a great tenant!” Kara pipes cheerfully. “And having an office here in Freeside ain’t a bad idea neither.”

“Bit more professional than the one I’ve got in Vault City.” Cass agrees.

“You mean your barstool in Tap House?”

The caravanner doesn’t deny that. There’s an amused curve to her lips that proves she’s not taking offense, and the returned crack speaks to the nature of her and Kara’s relationship. “Like you don’t know every bar between here and Junktown.”

“True!” Kara agrees before her expression turns musing. She lights up at some realization, turning to Jonah with renewed energy. “Turns out I have A LOT of ‘offices’, Jonah! Who woulda guessed?”

It gets a laugh from Cass anyway-and a pass of the flask she’d just nipped on.

~*~

It ain’t much-a forward post of sorts, maybe. Her mood had soured somewhat on the way over-the more she thought about this little conspiracy and the more she drank from that flask, the angrier she felt about it. Irene had been a good man. All of her men had been good men. Maybe they’d put up too much of a fight and that’s why they’d been killed-but Cass is decently sure their deaths had been due to cold, lazy efficiency over necessity.

How hard would it have been to dress a part, commit the crime under the guise of whatever band of raiders or tribals lingering ‘round these parts? They had to have known she didn’t have the money to replace that much inventory-or even the wagons and Brahmin and tanks it’d take to go back to trading water. Hit them in the night maybe, tie ‘em up and rob them blind, leave them in their skivvies but alive enough to report the tale?

She’s angry. Angry about the cutthroat treachery, angry she hadn’t gotten a piece of the Van Gruffs. She’s angry they’d okayed what the Fiends would have done to her and Kara, and she’s angry McLafferty had the balls to not only conspire to bankrupt her-but to send some fuckwit up with a buyout offer, try and legitimize the take over.

Fuck them. Fuck her. And as she enters the office behind her companions mere hours after the gun fight with men sent to kill them all over old and petty grudges, over better business prospects-she’s pretty sure she’s about to start another one. She doesn’t wait to unsling her rifle, but she doesn’t point the barrel either. Not yet. She just plants her feet and squares her shoulders on the other side of the old woman’s desk.

"Well?"

“You’re a cold bitch, ‘well’ing at me.” Cass says bluntly, ignoring Kara’s repressed snicker. “Van Gruff man with pissed stained pants done told me you were in on some nasty shit; against me, against some other caravans.”

"And how am I supposed to run a business in the same town as Gomorrah and the Kings, charm them with my pretty face and feminine wiles?" Alice says, dry, gesturing to the hard chin and wrinkles of tough riding and age that line her features. "I get business done. Of course I'm a cold bitch."

She leans forward, on her elbows; stares Cass down with implacable, old and cold eyes. "You didn't want to sell, well, fair ball, but I'm not into competition. I sold a merc outfit guns, and when they asked where the caravans ran I sold them the routes of my competitors too. I didn't pull any triggers or put caps in the hands of folk to do that, but I didn't have to, and I knew more like than not people would catch bullets over it."

Alice leans back in her chair, eyes narrowed. "Considering you're here with a merc outfit with their own guns, I hardly think you got room to judge. But I ain't either. Shit happens."

The statement elicits a snarl from Cass. "It ain't the same." Wasn't it, though?* Was that what it really took out in the wastes? Maybe killing Alice would leave her feeling as empty as her flask. Or maybe she'd shoot the bitch just so she didn't have to ponder the question.

Alice spits to the side in a trash can rather than reply. The saliva's dark with medicinal chew to lighten the ache of old toothaches she never had taken care of, and turns to stare Jonah down. "So what now?"

It irks Cass to be dismissed. She'd been given the goddamned floor, and now she's going to use it to splatter the bitch's brains all over the wall. Before she could lift the barrel of her rifle however-

"Terms!" Kara says with such bright and manic glee Cass briefly wondered if she'd been paying the slightest bit of attention, at all, to the grim and tense atmosphere in the room. Even Moray cuts her a side-eye.

"You can't get blood from a stone, Kara." Cass says in a flat tone.

"Yeah, exactly!"

A brief bit of confusion flickers over the caravanner's features, the tall woman half turning to frown at the courier. She's guessing Kara's never heard the idiom, and the redhead takes that as all the permission she needs to rattle on.

"She fucked you over, so now you get to ask for, uh-what's that called Jonah? Compensation for when you've been a shithead?"

"Reparations?" Jonah says, blank.

"Yeah that," Kara chirps. "Maybe McWaffles has something to offer!"

Cass offers up a sigh, the riled up nature of her blood well and gone now. The redhead had deflated it sure as she'd popped a balloon. Still-"Kara, what's going to stop this bitch from putting a bullet in my back moment we walk out of here?"

Alice laughs, a grim note. "Woman, you could shoot me."

"Had been my plan." Cass agrees-but her rifle lowers with a shake of her head. Can't she have some goddamned satisfaction? Was that so much to ask? Fuckin' Gloria, taking off like that.

Alice gestures at Moray. "He could do much, much worse. If he's on your payroll, I got better ways to set my whole enterprise on fire."

"Well he ain't." Cass says as she slides her rifle into the sling on her back. "So offer us somethin' good so he's not going home empty handed-cause I ain't got shit to pay him with, thanks to you."

"And we do like being paid." Kara agrees with an energetic nod.

 

[Obuzeti]

Alice blows out a breath, glances between Cass and Moray for a moment, then gestures at a map tacked to the far wall; it's got most of the West Coast displayed, what was once California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, and Montana. Colored strings criss-cross it, declaring trade routes and lines of commerce. The entire thing is mounted on a wooden frame, and it's probably the best illustration of trade anywhere in the NCR, to be honest.

"Get over here then, girl," she directs to Cass, and opens a drawer to pull out a set of contracts that she stacks to one side. "Well, if I'm going to give operations over to you, I'll damn well make sure you know what you're doing first."

She points a finger at the map without looking at it. "Four main trades, roughly speaking: NCR exports food from the Central and Salinas Valley, and ships that shit damn near everywhere; the manufacturing quarter in Sacramento, handled mostly by the Far Go folk and the Gun Runners; the forgeline up in Washington and the mines up there, sourcing metals; and the MT line, which is the only place we still make plasma cells, power armor components, shit like that."

Alice leans back, watches Cass through narrowed eyes. "You were doing gun runs between the NCR and Vegas, if I'm remembering right, supplying basic firearms and ammunition and some armor to most every podunk shop in the area; steady work not tied to a contract, which was my problem with you. You intend to pick that back up, you might as well take the business in full, so as I don't have to fuck around with you no more."

She fiddles with the stack of contracts and whiffles one out. "This is Easy Dan's caravan contract; he's my man for ammunition. You take him and Angela - that's this one, here - and take over the trade in this area, since House doesn't seem to give a fuck about awarding a contract to anybody for that shit and just lets 'em run wild."

She glances between Kara and Jonah with a gimlet eye. "Hell, from what I hear, your friends here might have a line to the big man himself. Work that angle."