Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

[Obuzeti]

Moray pauses in winding the bandage, and thinks about letting Kara finish setting it - but it's basically done, and in any case it really is just a scratch. On the other hand, she looks scared to touch him, and like most of the universe he'd given a shit about, that rule left as soon as he decided to follow her. It'd be good to inform her of that particular realignment.

He winds the bandage one more time, sets it, and then steps smoothly up before Kara. This close, the heat of her body is tangible, and he simply takes her left hand and places it atop the strip of bandage; the simplest yes imaginable. "He had a stiletto, and it left me a cut maybe four inches long when my hands were otherwise occupied," Moray says, simply. "I am fine. Thank you."

In this incongruous place, he simply lets the intimacy hold for a moment: the manslayer that he is, hulking and lethal, with this little woman's hand allowed on his wound. His head dips until his forehead touches Kara's, for a breath of time.

Moray steps away, and gives the bandage one last tentative pull to check how secure it is, then nods. "He spoke of her as alive and mobile, at least. We should check some of the places he mentioned. Maybe this Vera Keyes's room? At the very least, she seemed important, so he'd have left less traps around to reduce the likelihood of her getting killed by accident."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He was so fucking weird.

And yet Kara felt a flush of color rise to her face again, that silly sense of soft somewhere. Her brain must be scrambled-well, more than she had figured it was, anyway. And while it’s great that he’s inexplicably on her side- currently, anyway- and not chopping off her limbs, it had nothing to do with anything, really. The silly softness existed outside of it.

Her right hand moved to touch his face, an amused exhale-one of those small genuine smiles of hers.

And then he steps away as easily as he’d stepped in. Kara puffs back up to her full yet diminutive height, firmly ‘in business’ again.

“I think there’s a hotel in the Casino...and Vera Keyes sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Mostly-it sounds like Vanessa got away from him. Maybe that’s why he wanted us separated-hoped you’d get busy with the mutie and I’d end up in the auto doc lacking my lovely voice."

Kara rubs the back of her head absently, fingers tender on the goose egg that’s swelled up under her hair. She’s not about to mention the mutie getting the drop on her. Her pride was sore enough over it as it was. Dude was dead now though, and Dean might be joining him if Vanessa wasn’t among the living.

She retrieves her crappy map, thinking it over some. “Dean-o McCreep-o was set up over there…” She mutters. “We’re here, and…” Kara pauses, glancing up at what can be seen from their current location, what shapes loom in the murky fog. She carelessly crumples her map up and stuffs it in her pocket, gesturing to the pins he’d already tapped into the wall while nodding towards a tower of some kind. “Let’s head towards that bell tower looking thing-I think the nightkin said something about it.” Right before she came to…maybe. It’s as good a spot as any she supposes. Her luck ought to hold-it had so far.

“I’m feeling good about it, anyway!” That damnable arrogant smirk again, and up the pinions Kara goes, leading the way.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray shrugs, apathetic. "I have come to accept your luck is as insistent a force of physics as gravity. To the bell tower we go, then."

Kara hadn't heard his exchange with Dean, then. The Auto-Doc would fix his wounds, certainly, but he'd remember. Moray gave it even odds whether he'd bring it up at all, attempt to split them from each other or just deny to himself that the event ever happened at all, blocking the inconvenient memory out. It's not relevant. They'll get Vanessa and leave, and Dean can stay in that machine until the reactors run cold.

The streets are a joke, now that Moray's aware of how unperceptive the fog freaks are. He just strides up and hacks them down, though a couple show up with fucking bear traps on their hands that he chooses to go around - that's a hell of a thing to be swinging at people. The bell tower is easy enough to follow through the constant heavy mist, and follows the main streets which the inhabitants tend to crowd their way out of. Soon enough, they make it, and Moray commences a search for any clues of someone's presence.

He finds one, though probably not the kind they wanted: blood. Red blood, which the fog freaks don't have, smeared on the white column. There's two swipes of it, probably fingers, and a reddish patch where it had collected in the palm. It looks residual - not an arterial bleed, which would kill - but still not a great sign.

"Kara," he calls, and indicates the smear. "Got a bleeder. Dean doesn't bleed, and fog freaks bleed green. Someone else here, and wounded. Probably infected."

It's been a helluva long time since the locals had cleaned any of their various bladed implements. Tetanus is a real problem here.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara’s eyes narrow on the stain. It wasn’t as old looking as the auto doc stains. Newer. Still reddish, even if dry. Her eyes move towards the double doors of the bell tower, the arched glass panes over head. Everything’s dark.

Kara’s got the bobby pin and pick in her hands before she even had to think about it. Locked doors had that effect on her-she just always had to see what was on the other side. And in this case-she’s pretty sure Vanessa might’ve come this way after all.

The lock pops and Kara lightly pushes the door open, letting her eyes adjust a moment before she fumbled for and lit her pocket flashlight-shoving it light first into the sleeve pocket so the halo of light didn’t utterly ruin their night vision.

An empty maintenance closet of some kind and a stairwell. Up they go then. Kara’s light on her feet, nearly silent were it not for her pack, seemed like. They hit open air again, that faint toxic taste-a roofed balcony that went around the top of the tower.

Kara peers over the edge first-because of course she does. She seems to contemplate something, entirely too comfortable leaning over the wall like that-and then pulling back again, attention returning to the task at hand.

There’s a locked door. She starts on it, dropping down into a crouch to be at eye level-and then a gun went off.

!

Kara had ducked down in a hurry with widened eyes, a piece of the door punched out inches above and to the left of her head. Inexplicably Kara peeked right through and into the lit room as if it wasn’t holding a trigger happy stranger. Her face lit up like Christmas-a good sign.

“Hey! You’re getting pretty good at that!” Kara blurts, reaching through to open the door from the other side-popping to her feet and lighting into the room without hesitation.

It was some kind of control room, a large bell visible through a metal grate above them and darkened panels of switches and buttons on either side of a lantern lit, small space with a spinning chair. Curled up against the opposite wall, looking a mixture of terrified and bewildered is a thin, gazelle like woman on the pretty side of plain, clearly hurting and clearly traumatized. She had dark hair and eyes, a sunken look to her-but she was relieved and confused to see Kara of all people swooping into the room.

“Look at you! Totally not dead in a gutter somewhere, that’s good, that’s great!” Kara’s entirely too cheerful. It wasn’t the over the top, manic kind she employed at times-it seemed more genuine than that, but still very misplaced given the situation and level of awful at hand.

The red head had dropped down to take the gun from Vanessa’s slack, blood stained fingers, setting it almost absently aside on the spinning chair as she took stock of the other woman. The collar, the cuts on one of her arms, the bloody slash through her ragged shirt and cargo pants at her hip, the hasty bandaging with what looked like a bandana. She’s seen worse. The scars at her throat though, that’s pretty nasty. “Can’t talk?”

The dazed woman parted her lips and tried to say something, but it was hardly a pained gasp before she closed her mouth and slowly shook her head.

“Well hell, not like I ever let you or anyone else get a word in anyway. We’ll fix you up, don’t worry.” Kara is saying, shuffling out of her jacket with a stimpack and bandages already in hand. “This here’s Moray. He’s...uh-well, he’s Moray-” Good of an explanation as any, she supposes-none. “He lopped Dean’s leg off because he’s a gentleman like that.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray's first reflex is to shove a grenade through the hole in the door, pick up Kara, and walk off. He restrains the impulse mainly because she's already up and through the broken portal talking to, presumably, the woman she was here for. Moray exhales and lets the offense go - it was unintentional, and the woman does look fairly brutalized.

Instead, he inclines his head in answer to the introduction. "I put him in the Auto-Doc," he says, mild. "I don't think any settings have changed since the last time. I imagine we'll hear a lot less out of him in the future."

In lieu of patching up the woman himself, he allows Kara to handle the VIP and posts up at the nearest window outside the room, scanning the city skyline for anything relevant - not that there is much, with their lack of ranged threats. The courtyard below does look to be something of a gathering point for the fog freaks, but he brought the LMG specifically for crowd control - with their weak, pressurized bodies, the heavy weapon will reap right through them.

"Get the collar off of her and we'll evac," Moray calls, terse. "We can cut a straight line to the Pavilion from here and -"

The bomb collar on the woman crackles with radio static, then turns into a channel. "You will do nothing. You've done quite enough already," a male voice says. Irritation laces its tones, dismissive and annoyed. "I took the liberty of a few optimizations for that crude technology. You will find it impossible to crack without causing a critical trigger failure."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Vanessa looks immediately fearful and miserable, shrinking into someplace Kara has seen on people but can’t relate to. “Says him.” Kara mutters, carefully lifting the collar off of the thin woman’s collarbone and turning it to inspect the metal housing. Unlike other collars she’s popped, this one didn’t seem to have the same cover plate, the telltale seam on the inside edge.

Small metal pick still in hand, Kara hesitates-her large blue eyes meeting Vanessa’s defeated ones.

Hell.

“...well, Big Boss, maybe we can come to an agreement. As it stands, you’ve got a dead mutant, a peg legged prissy pants locked in an autodoc I’m not about to release, and a recently muted former whore who can’t shoot straight. You might want to get into this vault I’m hearing so much about, unlock this deathtrap’s secrets, but you ain’t got shit to do it with.”

Kara winks at Vanessa-bops her fucking nose. Internally she’s more than a little dismayed. She’s got to bargain with this psychopath now? Fuck, this was a lot of trouble. So much goddamned trouble. She moves to stand, pocketing the tool. She can’t risk blowing the traumatized woman’s head off. If it was just her on the line it’d at least be funny, but the both of them-fucking tragic. And she didn’t do tragedies.

“But aren’t I a nice lady, offering to help you out with that? Maybe on the cheap too, since I’m feeling generous.” Easy. Relatively reasonable. And utterly uncaring, down right flippant about the whole mess, it seemed like. Amused. Always so damned amused.

 

[Obuzeti]

"So," the voice over the radio says. It sounds deadly unamused. "Dog and Dean are dead then, presuming it is to them that you refer. It is highly likely that you are my last resorts, in that case. Likewise, allow me to emphasize my own position in this negotiation."

The bomb collar begins to beep.

"You have five minutes before the collar goes off," their contact says. His voice is dry and factual - the same sort of matter-of-fact lethality that Moray displays, at times. "There is a console near you that can be activated with Dean's keycard, presuming you ransacked his body; I assume mercenaries do such things. It will activate the casino's opening, and the gates will open. I will grant you another hour of my time after that to locate the proper key, again presuming you pressured Dean into telling you anything. Bring that to the vault entrance, where I will be waiting."

"If you don't have any of those things, then quite frankly, I don't care. I am not interested in your dissembling and lies and negotiation. I want to open the vault. Aid my asset in this, or remove yourselves from my city after her demise. I have work to do, and you have wasted, and yet still are wasting, my time."

The radio clicks off.

"Efficient," Moray notes, face placid.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The back of Kara’s neck was turning red. This. This right here was why it was important, nay, necessary not to give a damn, about anything, ever. For fuck’s sake-how great and hilarious would it be to toss the beleaguered woman off the tower and then wait to see what the exasperated voice would say then? Keep killing off his ‘assets’ until he had to fucking ask for help-and then tell him no?

That’d be great! Fucking hilarious as hell! Super fucked up!

”Efficient.”

"Yeah, yeah, you can make out with him later." Teasing, but underneath Kara’s so angry with herself she can hardly think straight. Keycard. Casino’s opening. Key.

“...anyway, it's like you said, Moray.” Kara turns to the many, many buttons, switches, and dials on the console. “Not everything in the Mojave talks.”

And if it didn’t talk, then it had to fucking die. Her or them. Vanessa or this asshat. Same thing, just stupid bleeding heart Kara at it again for free and for fake spite at dead people! She pulls open the metal cover beneath the controls, rips out a fuse and straight connects some wires-the console and bell overhead lit up, the tower coming to life.

“Where’s this keycard?” She maintains a grin, looking for the joke that has to be here, somewhere. Mostly though-she’s going to kill this man. She doesn’t have a lot of principles, but dammit-she does not like to be told what to fucking do, and bomb collars are fucking bullshit.

And then she's taking Vanessa straight home, telling Papa Khan to get the fuck away from the stupid dam before the NCR or Legion eat them up and spit them out, and THEN she's going to drink herself into a stupor and set fire to something explode-y.

 

[Obuzeti]

"Took it from Dean earlier," Moray says, still largely unphased by the recent turn of events. He pulls it from a pocket and offers it to Kara. "I told him we could only go back to the clinic after he showed me where it was. He agreed. As it turns out, people are a lot more agreeable once you've started hacking bits of them off, at least in the short term."

The tower above them clicks and groans into action, shooting fireworks and lights everywhere, some long-delayed celebration awaiting the touch of a finger for centuries. It's loud and noisy and there's some loudspeaker braying casino propaganda, which is about as asinine a thing as Moray can imagine. It reminds him of New Vegas, and promptly gives him a headache in the bargain from the awful feedback caused by rust and rot. To soothe it, he unslings the LMG and promptly shoots the closest speaker. It explodes into shards. The sudden lack of audio assault is a blessing.

Below them, in the courtyard and surrounding streets, apparently the fog freaks do too, collecting in the dozens below, attracted by the noise and fanfare.

"Hostiles converging," Moray notes, growing a little more tense. There's a lot of them down there. "We should move. Dean said Vera's voice was the key, so we grab him or Vanessa, throw them in the Doc there, and open the Vault. Simple. Let's move."

He punctuates this statement by tossing a grenade out the window onto a growing cluster of fog freaks near one of the speakers on ground floor. The ensuing detonation is, quite simply, nasty.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara doesn’t even flinch as the speaker explodes, but Vanessa starts badly. The red headed merc slipped an arm under the dark haired ghost and hauled her up bodily. Kara’s unexpectedly kind at times, but she’s not patient. She picked up the gun and shoved it into her shell shocked companion’s hands, all energy, all movement, all cocky smirking.

“It’s just like I said before-this end goes boom, point it away from yourself, me, and Moray here and we’re golden.” For added measure, she threw her jacket around her too-she just looked cold somehow, Kara didn’t fucking know.

“Straight to the casino then-” She says to Moray, pulling Vanessa along behind her to get her going before drawing her own handy dandy Lil Devil, absently clipping the grenade she’d swiped from the jacket to her belt, now. She’s not fucking around with Dean. Bad enough she’s got to deal with the asshole probably listening in on the collar jerking her around-she’s not dealing with a one legged ghoul likely to knife her first chance he gets. She can be reasonably certain neither Vanessa or Moray were out to do the same, at least.

“C’mon girlie, it’s keep up or be fireworks-I still ain’t got a fucking watch and asshat said an hour.” Despite the harrowing situation Kara’s chipper as fuck, as if this was all just great entertaining fun.

Hell, maybe it was. Everyone knows Kara’s a little off.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray nods and leads them down the stairs - catches a fog freak on its way up them, and boots it right back down - then unloads his first shot from the LMG. It hits the suited humanoid in the right shoulder and detonates that entire quarter of its body, throwing the arm off in a spurt of gore.

"Ooh," Moray murmurs, impressed.

He steps over the twitching remains and makes his way into the ground floor of the chapel, glances out over the crowd of fog people just starting to take note of their presence, and steps back to widen his stance. The LMG comes up to rest against his hip, and he squints to reduce blindness from the muzzle flash. Then it begins to roar, a long, staccato blast of noise as he taps out shots into the crowd. Each shot almost completely dismantles the freak it hits, blowing holes eight to twelve inches wide and leaving torsos shredded and limbs loose. In about twenty seconds he completely empties the courtyard of hostiles.

Moray laughs, a barking and vicious noise, and gestures ahead as he slings the LMG up on his back. "You want some? Run faster"

The glaive comes down instead, and he starts jogging ahead, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet as the heavy polearm falls low to trace just above the ground.

They clear the street to the casino in minutes with his bloodthirsty nature coming to the fore, and by the end he's smiling again, a faint crust of greenish ichor covering the front of his fatigues from the path he's hacked and shot through the freaks with abandon.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Aw, look how happy he is.” Moray’s a psychopath. But he’s their psychopath, so hallelujah for him and his ‘girlfriend’. Can’t argue with results-and it frees her up to watch her and her escort mission’s ass. For all the distraction, Kara can still hold her own. Petite form clothed in what should have been an unflattering-but-wasn’t vault suit, that pieced together sun on her back glinting in what little light there was, she makes good use of Lil Devil, ushering Vanessa along in front of her so that the Khan was vaguely between the two mercenaries.

Kara fires a shot and through sheer luck it hits a freak in the grated mouth of its suit, an explosive rush of depressurization as she changes targets to blast another freak a few feet back through the shoulder. The stragglers coming in from the side streets simply aren’t fast enough to catch up-they lurch and jerk into the street behind them but Kara no longer bothers, following along in Moray’s destructive path, hopping over downed fungal freaks and making sure Vanessa doesn’t trip.

“Your girlfriend does good work.” Kara teases Moray, trotting up the steps to the entrance to the Casino, the dazzling lights and music. Look at this place! It's so fucking colorful, intricate spirals of metal and plaster-so much stuff to look at. As they near one of the speakers however, she becomes suddenly and belatedly aware of an incessant…beeping-and then Vanessa point blank shoots the speaker nearest them, looking a little shaky, but more with it-with a worrying hand to her collar.

Kara frowns. “Those things trigger the bomb necklace you got going on?”

A mute nod.

“Well. Good looking out, then.” And into the building Kara goes, back to being distracted. Unlike the run down and ravaged villa, the Sierra Madre was as old world as anything Kara’s ever seen. Shiny brass fixings, patterned, untrodden carpet in rich reds and browns, immensely tall ceilings-this place was a fucking palace, brand spanking new and seemingly untouched by the war. Some crazy mosaic portrait takes up an entire story of the wall, a man and a woman under a blazing banner that read 'Sierra Madre' and another underneath 'Begin Again'. Some sort of bird with a long neck perched on a massive fountain between them.

It’s a lot to take in, honestly. But...the ghost things. Kara can see them moving up ahead in the long hallway that presumably led to the casino proper, patrolling either all this time or else recently activated by the Gala event. Distressingly, she doesn’t see any of the telltale blue emitters anywhere. How the hell…

Kara holsters her gun and walks the perimeter of the grand lobby, ignoring the hall in favor of looking over the area for alternative access points. There’s a vent she can probably boost into, but…

“Ah. Here we go.” Kara’s already climbing and crawling over a brown marbled counter, a bronze sign labeled ‘coat check’. She hops off on the other side, trying the handle for a heavy wooden door just out of sight along the left wall. A little service hallway. No idea where it led, but the deeper they can get into this place the better.

“We can go on ahead and see what’s up. ‘Ness, you hunker down back there-” Rows and rows of coats, purses and bags in another side room- “And wait for me to come get you.” Then they can take out any more speakers, dangers, and pave a safe path through this crazy place.

They need to find Vera's auto doc, first thing. She waited just long enough for her charge to settle in behind a crazy furry coat-and then closed that door before heading down the narrow hallway with Moray. "Didn't much like the idea of that asshat listening in." Kara mutters, some of her cheer dimming for temper.

There's massive kitchen through one door, a breakroom of some kind through another-and up ahead a fancier looking door with a lit window above it. Promising!

 

[Obuzeti]

"She does," Moray agrees, not bothering to argue with the characterization Kara's forced on his gun at this point.

No matter how good the work his LMG does, it's probably not enough to kill whatever the fuck the blue pictures are - like movies cast into empty space, except that their shots sure as fuck aren't fake - so he's happy to follow Kara into a side area and away from the small horde of them patrolling the main entrance. He does take the liberty of pulling out a claymore, arming it, and turning it to face the door of Vera's room, where he sets up a tripwire. "If it ain't us that comes knocking, get the fuck out of the way of this thing," he recommends. "The claymore will kill it. Kara will let you know when we're back."

He doesn't bother explaining how to defuse it.

Moray catches up a few seconds later with Kara. The service corridor they're in is cramped and full of little, lethal tricks; he almost immediately has to stop and disarm a grenade bouquet, vicious in a small space like this. "Get the feeling Dean trapped this out at some point. Feels familiar. Probably didn't want anyone else getting this far either."

He opens the next door and almost gets an armful of fog freak. In so close, he can't draw either gun, so he settles for shoulder checking it into the doorway and then slamming the door on it over and over.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Was he in on whatever crew murdered each other to get his dickhead boss stuck or what? Two hundred years and not managing to crack this thing-jeesh.”

And hoooooly fuck-she barely catches a glimpse of the thing around Moray’s hallway filling self before he pounds it into oblivion a dozen times-the final slam making the ensuing silence eerie as hell.

“And how the fuck was that in here?!” Must be some back entrance or something. Shit.

“Look, there’s got to be a terminal or something controlling those ghosts.” Kara’s at the fancy door, pointing up at the lit window overhead. “If you boost me up, maybe I can find it, switch these things off or send them somewhere else."

 

[Obuzeti]

"I haven't seen any dead naturally," Moray grumbles. "Given that they seem to like dark, cramped areas, I'm not surprised they keep showing up in the fucking buildings. It's like moths and lamps, except that these moths never give the fuck up, and have knives."

He glances up at the window and nods reluctantly. After the last time he's much more wary of sending Kara off on her own, but she had murdered the super mutant just fine. "You'd do better in a spotter position anyways," the mercenary agrees. "We're getting radios after this shit's done, I swear to God. I'm tired of splitting up while latex zombies and walking commercials try to kill us."

He kneels and waits for Kara to hop on, then lifts her straight up on his shoulders to the windowsill where she can clamber over. She's surprisingly heavy, muscle corded through her lithe frame and her coat and jacket heavy with hidden aces and tools - but he knows better than to comment.

Instead, a slash of a smile curves Moray's lips as he waits for her to dismount him. "Don't think this is what Devon meant when he said I'd get between your legs."

She makes dirty jokes all the time. Why can't he?

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"We're getting radios after this shit's done, I swear to God. I'm tired of splitting up while latex zombies and walking commercials try to kill us."

“I mean, if you want to hear the hilarious jokes I make before I embarrass people, I’m down.” Kara says as she slips the pack to one arm, intending to push it through first. He kneels and Kara climbs up with the ease of someone who’s done it before, kneeling in turn on his shoulders until he stands, shifting to stand using the door jamb to help balance. The bottom of the window lifts out, giving juuuuuust enough room for one Kara sized merc to slip through, with effort.

"Don't think this is what Devon meant when he said I'd get between your legs."

Kara laughs, a surprised-but no less mirthful- glance down at him. She’s impressed, appreciative even.

“Don’t discount his psychic powers just yet, big guy.” And it’s amused rather than a fiery, crass dismissal. He’s once again adorable. Which probably says whacked out things about her brain, given she’d just watched him brain a guy with a door. Eh.

It’s not a graceful thing, climbing through that window-her lower half has to dangle just a minute as she pulls herself through, figuring her next moves on the other side. He’d see her boot catch the jamb in a good example of wily flexibility-and the view’s good before she slips entirely through the small window.

A moment later, her face pops back into view, grinning. She’s upside down over there, somehow-the locks of hair not caught in the buns trailing red. “If we can get out of here without being shot or getting Vanessa’s head blown off, it’ll have been fun~” A wink.

Except for the bossy asshat-oh right, shit, she half fucking forgot. To foiling his plans she goes!

~*~

Kara creeps along the high rafters she’s managed to scale, carefully watching the patrol patterns of the ghosts. The silence in the place is deafening-and while the floor itself was grand and all, the glitz and glamour was severely outmatched by the skeletal remains of what looked like a lot of fancily dressed guests. Some ‘treasure’, this Sierra Madre.

She slips her rope from her pack and loops it firmly near the wall, scaling down silently and activating her stealth boy-she doesn’t want to get shot full of plasma lasers, thank you very much-or snuck up on again. She’s still kind of miffed about that, even though she’d ultimately showed THAT guy.

She broke into the money cage and cracked its terminal-and as usual, lucked out.

~*~
Kara knocked on the fancy door. “Vacuum saleslady.” She offers up in amusement-then slaps a bundle of prewar cash against his chest soon as the door opens. “Found this. Also-all the ghosts down here are dealers, now?” It was true-beyond Kara was the casino, and rather than patrolling, violent ghosts there were men and women in suits at tables, ready to deal.

It’s more than a little weird.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray hasn't spent a lot of time looking at women - but, with her legs flailing in his face and her butt wriggling as she tries to squeeze through, he does have to admit, Kara has a nice ass. He's just not quite sure what to do with that fact. He's not blind to the fact they're getting closer, and Kara's an inherently sensual person. On the other hand, he's had sex all of once and found it profoundly unsatisfying.

He'll have to ask Beatrix for advice. She is, after all, a professional.

~*~

They haven't even made it to the Vault and Kara is already robbing the place blind. Taking the money and sliding it into a protective sleeve in his satchel (meant to cradle HE rounds he'd rather not have cook off right next to him, but whatever), Moray notes, "Remember we have to carry whatever you loot out of here. Restrain your kleptomania."

He leads Kara back to where they'd stashed the extra. "Even fucking pre-War science has to have an off switch. The problem is that they just never think it's important enough to use," Moray explains. He disarms the claymore and lets their VIP out, then glances around the room with his brows furrowed. "Dean said the entrance was up in the suites, but I don't know where that is."

He spends a few moments looking puzzled, then shrugs and strides up to one of the holograms. "I'm ready to put my luggage away. Where are the suites?"

The holographic dealer points to an elevator back in the central lobby proper.

"Thanks," Moray says, bemused, and turns to Kara. "Well, that makes things simpler."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Kleptomania! Hey, this is finders keepers, 200 years after the fact.” Kara is clearly amused however, her mock indignation obvious. She’d haul off half of this place if she could though, he’s right about that. “The only thing on my wishlist aside from no one getting blown up or shot is a ghost lady of my very own.” She says idly, reaching into her hip pocket and producing a black and white checkered Sierra Madre chip. “And this!” That was small enough not to weigh anybody down, and irrefutable proof to look at and know they’d been here, dammit.

She flips it, catches it in mid air, and happily pockets it again as they make their way back down the hall for Vanessa. There’s now a coat check lady. She doesn’t seem to mind they’re behind the counter.

Vanessa’s looking a little better. She smiles at them both and sticks close to Kara, actually taking an interest in their surroundings. The bomb collar was still around her neck and the past several days had been nothing short of hell on earth, but she’s confident Kara would somehow find a way to make everything right again. No matter what sort of hijinks it’d involve on the way.

“Well, can’t beat that sorta service.” Kara agrees as they head over to the elevator. “Don’t have to tip ‘em either.” Actually, holy crap-a whole labor force in the service industry you didn’t have to pay? Shit, probably good the bombs fell, nobody’d have had a job.

As grand as the casino itself had been, the VIP suites looked about as degraded as anything in the Mojave or the villa itself did. The wallpaper might’ve been burgandy and gold once, but now it’s all a faded mottled brown, and there’s red fog again, up ahead-and a ghost patrol.

!

Kara flattens herself on one side of the elevator and jerks Vanessa back with her. She’s got a mirror in her jacket somewhere, but-peering again, the ghost was walking away. Seemed like it patrolled the length of the hallway. Alright, no big deal-just tiptoe right behind it next rotation!

She held up her fingers, counting off-and then slipped out of the elevator just as the ghost had turned around. Score!

Sheer luck and the first door on the left looked to have the auto doc inside. Double score! Except for the skeleton lady sitting in here...with a lot of syringes. Huh. There’s also a speaker/receiver on the wall, a neatly made bed, and in red lipstick where the skeleton was facing, the words ‘Let Go’.

Kara beelines for the Auto Doc, firing up a machine that hadn’t seen use in centuries-but they were built to last. Vanessa eyed the machine warily, making no move to approach it. Kara chattered on as she sorted out the terminal.

“Alright. So supposedly this will fix your throat up to some other lady’s specs. I know that ain’t ideal, but it beats being blown up or never talking again.” She glanced up, caught the wary hesitation, then glanced back at the autodoc itself. She remembers the claw marks, the blood stains in the other one.

“Hey.” Kara’s voice is softer, those big blue eyes sympathetic. “I’m going to be right here, the whole time. It gets too painful or whatever, you knock on the wall, I’ll stop everything and get you right out.” She smiles, delicate right hand lifting, fingers curled in except for her smallest one. “Pinkie swear.”

It’s the most childish damned thing anybody could have offered up. But with Kara, it was fitting and somehow more sincere than any other kind of oath or vow-and Vanessa almost immediately linked pinkies. Then she allowed herself to be led right over and shut within the auto doc, despite her trepidation and no doubt new found claustrophobia-still wearing Kara's lucky jacket.

Kara started it up, intentionally not looking at Moray. He’s not going to care, anyway-just noise to him-but she's still going to pretend it didn't happen. She glances to the words on the wall, then the skeleton wearing the same dress the ghost lady was wearing at the fountain.

“...why didn’t she just climb out the window or something?” Kara wonders. “Or you know...use the freakin’ vault apparently built for her?” Just, damn. She wonders where Dean was during all this mess.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray's instinctive response is to shoot everything that moves, but he follows Kara's lead and lets her guide the group through a stealthy approach that ends with a lot less violence enacted than he's used to. It certainly has its uses against things he's not sure can be killed, at least, and the - images - certainly count. Likewise, he lets Kara talk her friend into entering the machine peacefully. Somehow, he thought that the approach he'd employed with Dean wouldn't be quite as welcome here.

The mercenary shrugs in response to her question. "The timeline isn't clear to me. She might have been trapped here - she might have OD'd after the bombs dropped - she might have taken a fatal radiation dose and chosen this over becoming a ghoul or a fog freak. Maybe the ghosts were already active and she couldn't find a safe way out. No way to tell. Hope, and perseverance, were of limited quantity at the time. A people fattened on propaganda will reject the truth when it comes."

Moray's silent for a moment, and then he asks quietly enough that their third wheel can't hear, "Is she a friend or a moral responsibility?"

He'd understand the third more than Kara probably understands. Doing things in spite of himself is (was) his entire way of life. The former he doesn't have a frame of reference for.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Friend or... moral responsibility...?!

"The types of people who buy kids for beer money don't exactly raise 'em on Bible stories." Snrk.

Kara doesn't bother speaking quietly. Everyone knows she's crazy. They resign themselves to her antics and her poor impulse control and assume her motives are as shallow as she leads them to believe-and honestly, usually are. When they get back to the Khans she'd ask for payment and hopefully, never see or hear about Vanessa again. Friends-the only one of those she'll ever need is herself. Why, she's been her own best pal for years! Not a backstab or forced fight to the death the whole time! She stacked folks like cards, and kept herself from being stacked. End of story.

"We went over this." She reminds cheerily. "It's a very hilarious spite mission." Except...what was he going to think HE was, then?

Belatedly and much, much worse, Kara realized she actually -cared- what he thought SHE thought he and whatever the hell the softness was about, and it had nothing to do with hilarity, spite, or lucrative enterprises.

Kara's amusement and the cockiness visibily fade as she thinks more on the whole mess, color coming to her face. She casts a glance over her shoulder at him and the smirk he would have just heard in her voice wasn't there anymore.

Kara looked back at the progress of the autodoc, finding nothing particularly distracting about the display. Then she turned around, because okay, maybe she has to be Playdoh after all.

"Look..." Her voice drops and she slips away from the auto doc, still listening for any indication Vanessa is hyperventilating in there, sticking to her promise-but also not wanting to leave things be with the stupid lies she tells even herself. There are realities though.

"Shit's real out there, okay? You know how it is. Give an inch here, maybe one over there-listen to enough sad stories, wear your bleeding heart on your sleeve-and next thing ya know, you're six feet under, drowning in dirt." She draws a gloved finger across her throat-the pale, delicate column already starting to bruise from her earlier mutant encounter.

"I don't know Vanessa from anybody else. She was a joke I made months ago, taking her home from Devon's stupid shithole town, and the whole escapade was -funny-." Sure she had wanted to go home, but Kara had made an adventure out of it. As one does.

But if not friends...

"...and it got her kidnapped and shipped here. I'm not trying to 'morally' do jack shit. Just..." Kara does not want to be honest. She does not want to admit to taking anything seriously, to giving a damn. If word got out-well it just can't get out.

"...just bothered me, alright?"

Her hands move to adjust her jacket and find nothing but the vault suit, briefly at a loss as she finds herself in that stupid quiet uncertainty again, except also -embarrassed-. God damn.

"So like with anything-I wanna do a thing, and I do it." She shrugs, not meeting his gaze and trying to find her flippancy again. It's somewhere around here, she's sure.

 

[Obuzeti]

There is something flat and opaque in Moray's eyes at her comment. It passes as she speaks.

"I asked again because your answer changed," he says, nevermind how he'd have known that before popping the damn question. "You care too much what other people think. Do things because they change you. Because they make you better than you are, in your eyes. If someone else is better off, that's fine, but it's not the point. It's never the point."

Moray looks at Kara, and in his eyes is a question that is already answered, buried and firm ground beneath his feet. "You should walk into all your tomorrows, satisfied with the person you were today. Until you do, you will always choke on someone else's chains."

He raises a hand and presses Kara's hands flat against her chest - the hollow in between her breasts. "You did not come here because someone tugged the leash. You came because you chose for this woman to be free, before and now; because the person that you would be without this imperative, without this determination, is no one you care to be."

"You came because you can stand no one's chains. Not her, and not mine. And I could not stand yours."

The puzzle clicks complete in Moray's mind, as he figures out Kara and himself in the same instant, this new shape they've moved into - into freedom from bondage. He nods to himself, satisfied at the resolution; at the reasons he'd discovered in himself for killing Devon. It had taken a time to come to it, but Jonah knows his own shape and his own thoughts. It would rise in time, and now it has.

This philosophical butcher besides Kara settles against the wall, content to wait, and sermon delivered.

It'd be a lot more sentimental and touching if he didn't still have freak juice splattered all over his pants from shooting them with a giant gun.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

”You care too much what other people think.”

Yeah, and it kept her alive. Her preferred state of being so long as she was free for it. She almost stubbornly tells him that too, except there’s not really any judgement there and also a whooooooole lot more of Playdoh than she was expecting.

Moray has Kara’s complete attention again, those pretty blue pools focused up on him and him only, her expression open and listening as much as it had been when he’d previously been telling her a story.

He does not cease in his surprises. They get through, she’s taking him home again.

Not that she had really doubted she would. Just that the need for showers and make outs felt a lot more imperative, now. Dazed, she heads back to the autodoc-glanced at him again, grinned, then back to the auto doc.

“Well.” Is all he’d hear her murmur to herself over there, impressed contentment.
"How about that."

~*~

It’s done. Kara knocks of all things, first-then slides the machine open-half having to steady the other woman as she stepped out. It’d clearly taken a lot for her to remain in the enclosed space. Kara can’t say she blames her.

“Well…? How do you feel? And sound?” There’s concern and there’s also a very intense curiosity-which is rewarded when Vanessa speaks.

“I don’t hurt anymore.” The smooth, velvet words of a long dead starlet seemed to surprise her slightly-but not perturb her. “And I sound...different.”

“Yeah you do. That’s gotta be weird.”

Vanessa shrugged, then started in on Kara, however tentatively. “How did you find me out here? Is Billy okay?” She slid out of her jacket, offered it back to the smaller woman.

“Luck and far as I know! We can talk after the whole...walking bomb status is negated.”

Kara wanders over to the speaker as she slides back into her lucky jacket. She’s not intending on taking Vanessa with them, once they use the ‘key’ that was now her voice. The thing still work? What was the password anyway?

“Try talking to it.”

“What should I say?”

“I dunno. Sierra Madre? ‘Let Go?’” Kara guesses, a glance at the creepy lipstick text on the wall. Her mind flashes on the mosaic. “No, ‘Begin Again!’”

“Begin...again?” Vanessa inquires, her face puzzled-and then surprised when whirring noises sound behind the wall, a panel sliding aside to reveal a rather small elevator.

“Hot dog!”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray nods as the elevator slides open. Then he pokes the radio on Vanessa's collar. "Slaver. The vault elevator is open."

The response is liberally irritated, not that any of them had heard a different tone yet. "I am a Brotherhood scribe. My means are primitive, but they define me not, and you would do well not to irritate me should -"

"You solve your problems with bomb collars and death threats. You're a slaver now, whatever your previous pretensions," Moray interrupts, already looking bored with the conversation. "The Vault door can only be opened with a specific code phrase using Vera Keyes's voice as a basis. Dean Domino had an Auto-Doc replace Vanessa's vocal cords with a copy of Vera's. She's the only way to activate the elevator, up or down, so she just became priceless to both of us. We're leaving her at our current location - the entrance - and proceeding to the Vault proper to clear the way. The only way any of us get to leave at all is if she lives."

There is a long silence from the other side of the line.

"Very well," the apparent scribe concedes. "I can see her temporary value; nothing can be extracted from the Vault without this Vanessa's continued well-being. I'm shutting down the bomb collar temporarily. If she leaves the counter-signal zone around the Sierra it will rearm and activate immediately, so I suggest she stay put for the time being. I will meet the two of you at the Vault. It is time for some final negotiations, I believe."

The line cuts. Moray glances over at Kara and rolls his eyes at the massive pile of bullshit he just shoveled. Idiot, he mouths, and moves to the elevator to wait while the two women sort out their temporary goodbyes.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Kara...I…”

“Just wish us luck, silly.” Long or short, Kara doesn’t do goodbyes. As always, she’s flippantly assured she’s coming right back, taking nothing seriously. She winks over her shoulder as she steps into the elevator. “Particularly Moray. He can always use it.”

Vanessa can’t help but smile, however weak and worried. She lifts a hand to give a small wave. “Good luck.”

And then the door slid closed, and it’s just the two of them.

Kara’s got that triumphant, cat eating the canary grin on her lips again. The one that normally made her smug cockiness downright unbearable-except for some reason she’s both impressed and even proud seeming.

“You fucking told-and got-him good.” Ah. Kara infinitely approved. She’s decently sure the Scribe turned Slaver was going to try to kill them, but that was an entire elevator ride away.

The little minx steps closer, mischief glittering in her vibrantly colored eyes. “Can always use more luck, you know.” She says, tapping against the bird pin hidden beneath his fatigues, still right where she had pinned it. He’s so damned tall.

"'Specially right before 'final negotiations' and all that."

 

[Obuzeti]

The tone of voice makes Moray mildly uneasy. It's the tone she gets right before a good prank, or some kind of joke, and their relationship functioned so far mostly based on the fact that she'd stopped aiming them at him. But - well. Things are different, now. There's some kind of relationship, nebulous as it is, and he needs to at some point trust Kara to change in response to him, as she already has.

So he huffs and rolls his eyes, but comes down to a knee so she can reach comfortably as he starts to unbutton the fatigues again. "What are you going to stick on me this time?" Moray asks, wary but willing to go along with it for the moment.