Know When to Fold 'Em (Closed for Obuzeti)

[Obuzeti]

A shadow passes through Silus's eyes, like the flicker of a hawk overhead. His jaw squares and thrusts out, pugnacious; he scowls at her, and the muscles in his cheek work. The resolution of logic is obvious, but it takes him a moment to work up even a verbal acceptance of it. "No more than a thorn in an enemy's foot is your foe," he barks, harsh. "The profligates waste time and men here, interrogating me, guarding me. I hear their whispers by night through the cell door. I cannot serve Caesar now, but only my death will prevent my return. The dissolutes will not bend me."

Moray is silent. He watches Silus with the still stare of an owl, waiting to be hungry.

Finally, the centurion twitches around to match that gaze. "What?" he demands.

"What have you heard?" Moray says, soft. It's that special kind of awful he has, where the motion drains from his body and teeters behind his eyes, all compressed violence and the promise of impendent brutality. The hairs on Silus's forearms raise and he pauses for a long moment before leaning back in his chair, casual and mocking.

"I don't believe I know you," Silus replies. There is no more derision in him, though.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

It’s really, really, really hard not to laugh in his face-but she manages, still pretending to be some kind of heartless Legion skank sell out or whatever. Kara keeps her eyes on him even as he turns back to Moray and barks at him too.

The soft response makes the back of her neck prickle, and she doesn’t need to look at him to know what the Centurion is seeing. Least she’s not half thinking she’s going to get strangled, this time.

But, she’s pretending!

Kara leans back on her trailing foot. It puts her just a hair behind Moray’s left shoulder, out of the way and reminiscent of a heeled dog. She continues to watch him though, letting the moment stretch out.

"I don't believe I know you,"

Kara waits half a beat more. And then she's stepping forward again, reaching into one of the jacket’s many, many pockets lining the inside of the thing-watching Moray as she did so. When nothing happens (duh, they’re pretending), she looks back at the Legionnaire, seemingly emboldened-but still with that unkind, calculating body language and expression, none of her earlier mirth or amusement. She withdrew her hand and there’s a glint of gold caught in her fingers.

“No. You don’t.” Kara placed it on the table, a light chink of metal on metal before she slides it closer to him, briefly leaning over the table as she did so. “But Vulpes Inculta does. And more importantly,”

She lifts her hand and reveals a Legion Aureus, bull side up. She’s watching him intently. “He knows you.”

And then she steps back to just behind Moray’s shoulder again, both for the act they’re performing, the pretending-and to pass the baton. She’s just the cover, after all.

 

[Obuzeti]

Silus's eyes sink to the Aureus, and remain there for a long time. Then he glances back up. The fire's gone out of him, and his voice is dull when he says, "I don't believe you."

"Only your obedience is necessary," Moray answers, still so soft. "Speak."

Silus shudders and his shoulders droop. " . . . The NCR is building forces at Hoover Dam," he says, hoarse. What defiance he had is dribbling out of him like the last drops of water from a canteen. "They're getting ready for a counteroffensive. They want to secure the Mojave before the Legion can strike again."

"Not a diplomatic approach - a conqueror's one," Moray muses, and Silus nods, his eyes rising to meet Moray's.

"The new commander of their dam is not soft."

Moray nods, and glances over at Kara. "Find out what you can about her before we leave," he says, more conversational, then refocuses on Silus. The information is useful, and his posture changes in light of that - more formal, straightened and erect as opposed to the predatory lean he'd adopted previously. "Did you succeed on your mission?"

Silus shakes his head. "We were compromised first."

Moray huffs a sharp exhalation through his nose. "And the contact point?"

"Safe."

Moray taps his fingers on the desk, his eyes tracing over the far wall of the cell. "Operational security is still intact then, at least."

Silus has no real response, still staring at the other man, caught somewhere between faint terror and the thrall of total obedience. Jonah, on the other hand, chews over what he can ask without dropping the charade. It sounds an awful lot like a mole, but he doesn't know how to ask about it without proving that he doesn't know about the specifics, which presumably a Frumentarii would. His tongue runs over his teeth as his brain spins.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Damn, was Moray sure he wouldn’t make a good spy? Least for a minute?

Kara nodded obediently at Moray’s direction-don’t laugh, don’t laugh-and turned her eyes back on the deflated Centurion. They really had him thinking they might be here to kill him. It’s hilarious-but what Moray sniffs out wasn’t.

Dhatri was going to flip his shit-a spy, here at Camp McCarran. Her mind flits through the men and women she knew and then the names of those she’s only heard of, but none of them, not really, seem like likely suspects. That didn’t mean much. Shit, she can lie with the best of them herself, pretend all sorts of things-she spins all the plates. She’s spinning plates right now.

The Fruit-a-whatsit-minotaur wouldn’t be as obvious and marked as Karl-a liar rather than a hider-or Gabban, a really dumb fuck she’d lucked out on, once. They weren’t going to stumble upon him burning and crucifying a town like Vulpes. He was one of the them-one of the NCR if he had any use.

And Kara wants to know who he is, without outing themselves as fakes. If they ‘knew’ this guy because Vulpes knew this guy, then they should know the spy, too, because Vulpes would definitely know him.

“The dead drop.” Kara ‘reminds’ Jonah, as if that was another reason they had come-not just to potentially eliminate a liability, but with some purpose for Vulpes. She fixes the Legionnaire with a scrutinizing look. “Where is it?”

 

[Obuzeti]

Silus swallows. The question looks to terrify him more than any other yet, if the paling of his sallow skin is any indication. "The girder east of the cafeteria, first joint up. The crossbar to the left of the main path, as you leave. There is a shallow indent atop to hide things within."

There is a long stillness as Moray nods, glances over to Kara, and has a silent stareoff with her, though he doesn't have a clue what that silence should be saying. It feels significant though, and he lets it draw out and just poker faces through it until he glances back at Silus. He's actively sweating now.

"What now?" he says, hoarse.

Moray watches him for a long moment, then nods. "You may yet be of use. I will return at a later date. The contact will jailbreak you and carry out one objective, and I, another. Await that time; confuse the enemy as best you can. Give false information on patrol routes and safehouses, if you can. You are of more use here as a future resource then wasting more Legionnaires."

Silus flinches and swallows. His head bows, but his shoulders square; the presence of orders, even if demeaning ones, strengthens him again. The word slave flickers through Moray's mind as he watches this career soldier broken down and rebuilt by a few terse sentences in a military bunker. There are chains on him thicker than anything the NCR can forge.

"Ave Caesar," he breathes, and his fist thumps against his chest without raising his head.

Moray nods and rises. He clicks his tongue at Kara, and then walks out the door without stopping. It swings shut behind him, and he immediately makes a left turn and heads down the empty hallway towards a storage room on that side, where he pauses and takes a deep breath, eyes closed.

"Sorry about that," he says, eventually.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Buck up, oh great and mighty teacher-could be worse.”

The bottle scrapes against the table as she collects it, it having been yet another prop of legitimacy-Legion didn’t drink or use chems she’s pretty sure, so carrying around a bottle would be part of her ‘cover’.

She follows after Moray in what she imagines is a subdued, maybe dreading fashion, as if her talking out of turn would carry a swift and unpleasant punishment. Her hand touches the door and Hrolf rises to follow her, Kara pausing a moment, a glance back at him.

“He could have had me do the deed.” A Centurion killed by a lowly slave-so demeaning! Her smirk returns to her lips, and then she’s Kara again as she throws open the door, back to her ‘act’-but really honestly unable to contain herself anymore, the smirk becoming a full grin, laughter bubbling up in her chest as she catches sight of Moray, beelines for him, Hrolf trotting alongside.

Kara giggles as she draws up on him, her face lit up with infinite amusement as she finally drops any semblance of serious behavior. Telling him to misdirect and shit, confuse the enemy? Not only had that added to the facade, but now Dhatri would know where not to worry, maybe could hit patrols and camps by process of elimination.

"Sorry about that,"

“Ha, for what? You played that so hilariously straight he really thought we might be there to off him-” A pulled, playful punch to his arm as she stops in front of him, head tipped back and delighted mischief and amusement glittering in her bright blue eyes-his are closed though, a serious expression.

“Hey, we were only pretending. We were running a scam!” Kara draws in a gasped breath, a laugh catching in her throat- “Ohmygawd I got Moray to run a scam.” And there came the laughter. Not quite as much as the time he ‘removed the middle man’, not crying-but enough it was clear she found the entire situation flat out hilarious, and whatever it was he thought she might have been bothered by-she wasn’t. She grew up with Raiders after all, where sometimes a response or the start of a conversation was a beer bottle smashing against the wall where your head had been.

He was a big secret softie, least for her-and she would make a terrible slave and they both knew it.

The crazy red head tucks the bottle under her arm and reaches into the same pocket the coin had been, pulling out a small fistful of various other things-two prewar subway tokens, casino chips, pilfered pre war commemorative coins, bobby pins-other thin, metal round shapes, medals and pins much like the ones on her jacket. “I wasn’t even sure that Aureus was what I had in hand until I plunked down-could have been almost any of these-” And bull side up! And it’d worked!

He might not find that as funny, given it was blind fucking luck and could have gone hilariously sideways if it had been this hedgehog coin or something-but she sure did.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray's lips turn upwards, but he doesn't joke much about it, not least because she doesn't really get what had bothered him. He doesn't occupy different headspaces, different motivations, as easily as Kara does, and that ice cold fatalism is deeper in his bones than he likes. It takes a moment to remember that humans are worth something. Rather, he focuses on business. "It had to happen sometime. I didn't know what to do with him in the long term so we're retaining him as a resource. Anytime we need warm bodies, there's two, and we have moles in the NCR now. No idea what to do with them, but there you are. I'll let you decide whether or not to turn that over to Dhatri."

He shrugs as if this is no big deal, and glances over the assortment of doodads she'd plucked their latest winning hand from. "I am starting to believe your luck is as physical a force as gravity. It seems to have almost as much to do with where we're going, at least."

Jonah inhales - exhales. His shoulders set, he nods, and then he turns around and heads back out into the hallway, nodding to the pair of NCR soldiers posted at the door to the interrogation room. His path takes him back to the crate Dhatri leans against, and the soldier nods to them in recognition of their swift return. "Well, you're back this fast, so either you shot him or Kara bamboozled him," he guesses with a half-smile.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“It seems to have almost as much to do with where we're going, at least.” He nods, and then he turns around to leave.

Somehow, the scam wasn’t quite so hilarious, anymore. She’d reflect on some mental comment along the lines of ‘leave it to Moray to spoil the fun’ but that’s not really how she feels, at least-not entirely. He’s probably the only thing that matters more than her amusement, and he was off, now.

Kara drops her gaze to the hodge podge of items held in her cupped hand, shrugs-and repockets most of them. She exchanges a look with Hrolf, but the Legion Deserter offers no more opinion than her partner just did.

Kara sighs and considers the bottle of amber colored liquid a moment-but she’s already had two swigs and a third probably wasn’t a good idea. She slides the bottle back into her pack and starts on after her partner.

"Well, you're back this fast, so either you shot him or Kara bamboozled him,"

“Sure did.” Kara smirks and overacts ‘casual’, flipping the hedgehog commemorative coin and catching it in her fingers out of midair, sizing the Major up. Always with the dramatics.

Moray had left it up to her what to spill-that rolls back and forth in her head a little, trying to decide which way to lean here. Two moles in the NCR, eh? Same time, he had a clear in with Dhatri and she knows Lieutenant Larson. She’s good at finding things out through use of hacking, charm, and sneaking around-and while she doubted it’d be a good idea any time soon, Moray could intimidate people into telling him plenty, they weren’t willing to be charmed.

So eh, moles-but depending on their NCR rank, a spy could be relaying all kinds of information to the asshat Legion fucks-and lots of it. Technological advances, weapon stock piles...troop movements. That could be a lot of messes. She’ll happily deny the Legion anything she can sure, and though she didn’t fancy the NCR much-that didn’t mean she wanted the regular schmo troops getting flayed alive and lashed to crosses and cut to bits.

And she’s not so sure Moray liked pretending to be Legion. Something.

“Good enough results I want 200 caps. He wasn’t so great to talk to, turns out-kinda uppity, and all.” She’s amused and she’s hustling, because that was part of the joke-as always. And all told, a fifty cap increase wasn’t much. Plausible deniability, too.

Kara could button her lip and try having him pay ‘sight unseen’ for it, but she does actually want him to know about the spy, and also-Dhatri’s a tough cookie, and that wouldn’t be any fun.

And he liked Moray.

“Your guest’s gonna ‘crack’ and start telling you stuff, but it’s false info, or oughta be. So you’ll know where things aren’t coming from, you’re welcome.” Another flip of the coin and that empty headed, wide eyed look around the place, just crazy Kara Walker giving the Major a hard time. No one’s really close enough to hear her, and she’s not getting into her noisy theatrics at the moment.

“The great Caesar has ears here that apparently belong to you and yours, Dhatri.” No one seemed super interested in them either, no more than usual glances and such. She’s curious who it is, considers waiting around to find out-but she kind of just wants to get out of here. She’s not sure if that’s boredom, pressing matters, or Moray’s brooding.

...who’s she kidding, it’s his brooding. She’s set to spirit him away from whatever’d done it, secretly fretting same as always.

“First joint up on the girder, east of the cafeteria.” Kara fucks around with the coin on a crate now, rolling it back and forth absently. It’s notable she’s dicking around the same as she had been before they left. Her own ADD fidgeting habits served as perfect camouflage. “The crossbar to the left of the main path as yer leavin’? That’s the traitor’s dead drop. Shallow indent on top, s’what he said." Kara’s eyes flick to him, the cocky smirk. “Good luck with the sting, Major, cause we got other places to be.” She winked as she flipped the coin again, caught it-and pocketed before tugging on the front of her jacket.

“Blowing this popsicle stand!" Kara announces, much louder and with a dramatic flourish. "Didn’t even do anything to it, but I guess that’s cool, this time.” Everyone's heard of stage whispers, but stage muttering?

Her lips are curved into that familiar cocky smirk before her eyes shift to Bruce, whom she had ALMOST forgotten about. She's definitively done with the place, as evidenced by her brightening expression and scooping up of the maybe thirty five, forty pound dog with a bit of an awkward stagger before she finds her footing and starts off with a bit of extra, if heavier pop to her step.

NCR troopers follow Kara with their eyes, various expressions of bemusement and a few head shakes-the red haired merc has the dog hugged to her chest and looks about as ridiculous as he does. The mutt's forepaws are curled over her arms and he has a derped, tongue lolling expression on his face, the happiest damned dog in the world even with his hind legs dangling.

"Hrolf, this is your new brother Bruce, the bull-something-dog!"

Hrolf was a Legion deserter and Bruce had quit a raider group same as she had. They'll be bestest buds, she decides.

 

[Obuzeti]

Dhatri nods, impressed by the information just as much as it dismays him. "I don't have a clue how you got that out of him, but I'll take it. I'll find the mole, but it's almost as good to be able to feed him false information through that drop. I'd say you've earned that bonus, Kara. I just figured he'd know about a safehouse or something."

He turns and offers a hand to Moray, who shakes it without hesitation. "Always a pleasure, Moray. Blow on through again sometime soon. Still on schedule?"

Moray shrugs. "I'm taking it under advisement."

Dhatri cracks a wry laugh. "I dunno about the quality of that advice. Stay sharp."

By that point, Kara's off to her next adventure, cradling the bulldog that'd followed her (Bruce, apparently), with Hrolf following around patiently at her side. They never seem to go anywhere without picking up another dog. It's getting ridiculous, and Gibson can only take care of so many. Briefly, he wonders if her Vault is just going to turn into a giant doghouse in the end.

Granted, if they survive.

He catches up to Kara with long, even strides, and paces her on the way out. "To Gomorrah now?" he asks, as much as for direction as to hear her voice. "No side trips or spontaneous rescues?"

They've given Benny about a day's head start. He'll have enough time to round up his people and their weapons, if that's the way he wants to slice it, but honestly from the drawn-out, ritualistic way Benny had set up his murder attempt on Kara, it's more likely that he's defaulted to talking his way out of it again. It's not going to work. Moray is going to tear him in half and watch him bleed out into the night.

He wants to say something. Doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know how to make casual conversation, not really. He's used to biting and sniping, and something here is too tenuous for that. He doesn't want Kara to learn how to tune him out and shut him out. Everything should be real, but at the same time he doesn't want to hurt her. Not anymore.

He defaults. Jonah reaches out and scratches Bruce's ears, then his hand hesitates and slides to Kara's opposite shoulder, drawing her into a loose embrace. They're still in view of the NCR base, but he doesn't really give a fuck about them in comparison to anything Kara. His priorities are obvious.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"It’d hardly be spontaneous if’n I was-" Kara says cheerily, though something in her feels careful, very careful-and she’s attentive when her eyes flick over to him. Had it bothered him to see her fake the guy out like that? Fake Dhatri out? Fake everybody out? Or maybe just full up on people? Or maybe he didn’t like pretending? He’d been okay with not killing Violet, she’s pretty sure-that was the only thing she’d directly-or indirectly, round about?-asked for, but maybe he felt differently. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to talk to the Legion guy. Maybe he did that because he thought she wanted him to do that.

But Kara can’t quite figure any of that, this exact second-because it doesn’t matter, what matters is he’s bothered-so she looks back ahead and launches into her usual grandiose kind of talk and antics. Talk because she’s always talking, but also trying to verbally walk him away from the camp and the Centurion as much as they were physically.

“Gomorrah IS my plan though, you’re right! We can beeline it straight there, I’ll buy you a drink and show you around-good times on the town.” Kara the tour guide! “I know all about Gomorrah, the good the bad and the ugly-mostly ugly-and a cool bubble fountain thing, every good mob run casino needs a bubble fountain thing.” Of course.

“There’s one up in my place too-I think I told you I got a whole suite, same as I do the Ultra Luxe? Not that I’d sleep in the Luxe, and DEFINITELY not now that I know they were down with eating people, holy shit- but that’s what they do you know, you win too much? Ban you from gambling but give you a place to sleep. Weird.”

She’s trying to figure on what to say about Bruce, spin a joke about former raider solidarity-when he reaches out and scratches the dog’s ears. Kara’s heart about flips upside down it got so instantly full-and then he drew her into another one armed, loose embrace after just a heartbeat of hesitation. Somehow she feels reassured, and the dramatics lessen as a result, that grin fading into a softer curve of her mouth. When she speaks next it’s not the chattering showboat voice- but the softer, more genuine one. Less blaring performance and more...real, again.

“Careful Jonah.” Kara says in a softer tone, a hint of teasing there but also some kind of...something. Appreciation? As she leans into him. “You’ll have them thinking you like me.”

Hmm…

“Maybe we ditch the crowd, have our drinks sent up instead.” And what he’d probably prefer, and maybe needed. He’d been full up on people these past several days, after all. Legion fucks to all the dogs to Gibson to Troopers to Dhatri to Fiends to MORE Legion fucks.

“Mostly, I gotta scrub this dust offa me before I get so bogged down I can’t walk. I done spoiled myself out here, keepin’ clean.”

 

[Obuzeti]

"You know, after the Sierra, it's going to really be hard for any kind of casino to impress me," Moray says, bland. It's better than the quiet undertone he'd spoken with previously. "It had laser ghosts and fungus ghosts and a robot that was almost as good as killing as me. Not much else measures up."

The memory of the Sierra fortifies him. He's already spent a hell of a lot of effort keeping Kara alive, doing the things that matter to her, because she matters to him - because she helped him find significance in any way at all. It's not so much a debt as a sharing, and from the way she leans back into his shoulder she gets that. It's not the dog that matters, it's the fact that dogs (anything loyal, hers, forever) are a part of Kara and he accepts it without question or complaint. They've agreed to unite, but those are words. The binding comes with time.

The thought of more crowds, more people, doesn't reassure him. There's dogs everywhere, and people to politic with instead of beat away with contracts or lethal stares. Having a night in a hotel room with just him and Kara - and isn't it strange that he defaults to that, now, instead of by himself? - sounds like something he needs.

"I do," he says, simply. The decision crystallizes in him. Uncertainty fades. "But I am for no one else. Their ignorance, or lack of it, is immaterial."

Jonah lets go, and nods towards the long road ahead towards Gomorrah as he sets into a traveling stride. They've got a long way to go. "Come on, then. Let's go find what we're looking for."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"The ghost people were cool, but mostly-that gilded and carved woodwork everywhere. It was as ritzy and old world as it gets, just damned pretty, ya know? I don't think I ever wanna go back, but damn if that wasn't some fancy ass digs.". She wasn't educated in either architecture or art-or anything, honestly- but it sounded like the woman had a surprising appreciation for both. Break into and crawl through enough places, and it'd be hard not to start taking note, one might suppose.

Kara half considered going in through whatever secret entrance the King had in Freeside rather than risk House’s securitrons being on the look out for her or something-but nah. He couldn’t know she wasn’t sailing in to deliver that chip, after all, right?

Maybe?

“Hrolf, you look after Bruce. Bruce, you look after Hrolf. No candy after nine o clock, and you boys wash behind your ears and look both ways before crossin’ the street.” Bruce had gotten himself carried much of the way, put down again-and then picked back up when he started trailing too far behind after a while. It wasn’t enough for her to chatter at Jonah-the crazy redhead also frequently talked to the dogs.

Because of course.

Her fake passport passed inspection as it had all the times before, and nothing was any different about the process at all. She had purposely taken them around to the opposite entrance of the place she was supposed to meet the agent and do the exchange per the delivery instructions-she’s not turning up empty handed. She’d get that damned chip from Benny, and she’d deliver it just to keep whoever off her back, and to spite him. Hopefully House, if it was House-would be none the wiser-and she’d end up with a shiny new gun, because she was totally taking his stupid gun. Hopefully shooting him with it, too.

~*~

“Ahhhh the strip. Stumbling drunkards, crestfallen gamblers, ladies of the night and the rare lucky winner likely to lose it all or get mugged on exiting-obviously this is grand society.”

Kara props her hands on her hips and lets her gaze roam over the bright lights and glitzed glamour, shiny and colorful things everywhere, marks and rubes and crafty predators roaming the streets. The Lucky 38 sign draws her gaze a beat longer than anything else, and then a quick flick to The Tops-but she maintains her dramatics even as she starts messing around with her coat, first one side, then the other-moving stuff around in a way not really visible to him or anyone else.

“Ain’t nothing like it anywhere! And we, we, my big friend, are heading for the neon sign that’s both on fire -and- has some shapely ladies on either side of it-because we are people of distinction.” She’s making fun of herself, or it, something-endlessly amused. Gomorrah was the -sketchiest- of the casinos both on the Strip and possibly in the Mojave. Kara would know-she’s been to all of them.

Seemingly satisfied with her inventory, Kara starts them on their way so they’re not standing out here in the crowd-so that Jonah wasn’t standing in the crowd. Her hand finds his at some point, and if not that, then his sleeve-the red head slipping between gathered NCR soldiers on leave easily just before they part for her much larger companion. Half naked-well, mostly naked-women dance outside the place but Kara pays them no mind-moving up the steps confidently before shoving in the door.

The lobby wasn’t much of anything-a woman in a blue dress sat behind a curved desk on their left, but otherwise they were in the casino proper, looking at a casino floor with various games in the middle, the cashier cage and bank on the left, and a brightly lit sign advertising Brimstone, the strip club lounge bar thing.

Kara steps up to the desk and the woman behind it flatlines as she chirps a “Hi Rita!”

“Kara. Weapons, please. Surprised to see you back-you know you can’t gamble here anymore.”

“I can still drink, can’t I? They gave me a suite and everything-speaking of, you got the key to that? I lost mine.” Kara drew the combat knife from her boot and plunked it down on the desk as Rita got even surlier, leaning down to pull open a drawer for the spare.

Out on the floor a balding man had turned to see them, and from the brief and fleeting expression of dismay, was not happy about Kara’s arrival. The courier had claimed the place as a good base of operations, but one might wonder if these ‘friends’ were the likes of the Powder Gangers. At the same time, the expression on his doughy face looked more like mild fear and dread than anger.

He made his way over while Kara slung her bag onto the desk, casually rolling several grenades out of it-which raised the woman’s eyesbrows but elicited no other response.

“Welp, that’s all I got!” Kara swiped the key off the desk with a flourish and smirk. “So I’ll just be-”

“Kara, we both know that is not all.”

“I lost my gun in a poker game Rita, I swear.” Kara held up two fingers and was suddenly the picture of innocence. “Scout’s honor!”

“I can see the butt of your gun!”

Kara pauses and glances down-her movement of slinging the bag back over her shoulder having upset her jacket, catching the hem and pulling it back some-and indeed exposing the pistol holstered in the curve of her waist. Kara unconvincingly feigned surprise.

“Would you look at that-I musta won it back! I was black out drunk, you know how it goes-” Rita rolled her eyes as Kara drew and plunked the gun down on the counter-and Jonah might note it was not Lil Devil at all, but the 10 mm she had picked up from the King all that time ago.

Rita doesn't look at all convinced, but she earmarks it a moment and turns her expectant gaze on Moray instead.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray posts up to the side of the counter as Kara banters with the woman posted there, The no weapons rule is honestly a problem: he carries more ordinance than Kara does, though she makes up the difference in stealth boys and lockpicks and other assorted knickknacks not immediately meant for murder. He sets down the carbine and his shotgun, pulls two separate pistols and a brace of grenades, then his heavy-bladed knife and two smaller ones sheathed in his boot and at the back of his belt, respectively. He still has a few tricks but they don't explode or shoot, which is pretty much the dress code here.

"You seem familiar with each other," he comments, while stripping off his various arms. It feels a little weird to be without all that weight in a public space, but on the other hand he's reasonably certain he could kill anyone here with his bare hands, and especially when not carrying forty pounds of gear. "Frequent visitor?"

To be honest he's not that interested in the receptionist. Her hands lack the calluses that indicate gun use, and she's too frail to use anything for personal work; a non-issue. The man taking notice of them, on the other hand, has the broad shoulders and heavy body of a laborer, a well-fed one going to seed. His knuckles are heavy and thick, his fingers meaty. He hits people for a living.

Moray stares right back at him for a long second, then turns to Kara. "Where are we staying?" he says, gruff, and stays angled so he can keep an eye on Doughboy. He doesn't know this territory, and Kara's deals have a habit of running perfect or fucking up in a hurry. The repressed frustration everyone here expresses at Kara teeters a little too close to that line for his comfort right now.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Yep! I made a fortune here! Not all at once-had to spread out the luck, ya know? Til they unfairly banned me.”

“You ended up costing us way more than you ever spent.”

“That’s weird-I remember-and don’t remember-drinking a lotta gin.”

“Not nine thousand and forty five caps worth you didn’t. What’d you do with that money, anyway? Bet it all on black in some other dive?”

“A seven, actually!” She’s all mirth and amusement, that smirk-and it’s impossible to determine if she was full of shit or not. She taps at the counter and Rita sets a key there just as Moray asks where they’re staying-maybe out of patience, Kara doesn’t know.

“They gifted me a suite on the third floor-didn’t they Rita?-so that’s where we’re headin’, you ‘n me.” She wants to get him out of here. It’s always fun to annoy people, and while she can see Cachino making his way over here-she mostly just wants to get Jonah up and out of here. She swipes the key off the counter and steps back just as the heavy set, slightly sweater man reaches the desk and steps up behind it-and Rita starts in on her again.

“Not yet you’re not-I want to see that jacket, and whatever else you have in your bag-”

“Christ Rita-” The man snaps, turning on the woman. “She’s five feet tall, let it alone. Whatever pig sticker she’s still got ain’t gonna do shit to nobody.” Rita’s lips purse but the woman nods, beginning to take Jonah’s walking armory off of the desk to lock them up, along with everything else.

“Hiya Cachino,” Kara starts, but the joke was over-she’s lost interest in antagonizing the Gomorrah denizens, at least for today. “Didn’t know if you’d still be kicking or not.” Flippantly dismissive.

“Yeah. Still kicking.” Cachino echoed distractedly while he scrutinized Moray a moment, trying to place a face and coming up empty-and then warily shifting his gaze to Kara as he mopped up the sweat beading on his balding head with a dirtied handkerchief. “Ain’t like you to have a friend.”

“Moray, this here’s Cachino-he’s an Omerta through and through. Cachino, this is Moray, and he’s-”

“I’ve heard of him.” Cachino interrupts. They both have his attention in equal measure now. “You here for business or pleasure, Kara? I told you before-”

“Relax old timer-we’re just here to crash for a few days while we tour the strip. Vacation, you know.” Kara’s getting impatient. “So send us up something, you wanna make friends.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray grants Cachino a nod. That is the sum total of attention he gets, as he turns from the man, and takes a long stride to Kara's side - blocking line of sight to her in the process with his own bulk. "I'm sure you're busy," he says, quietly. Then he turns on his heel and heads for the elevator, presuming Kara is just behind him as he goes.

Once the door closes behind them and the elevator bumps into motion, he promptly reaches into the inside lining of his fatigues, behind one of the armored plates over his chest, and draws out a slim sidearm that he cocks and brass-checks. "Smoothly played," he says. "Though I'm not surprised the desk lady doesn't like you."

Rita had looked kind of frumpy, though he wasn't an expert in female evaluation. It seemed likely that Kara drew envy and furious dislike from that sort of woman on a regular basis: exciting, cloaked in mystique, doing the things they never could and commanding respect they'd never have. Ignorant, of course, of how fucking hard Kara had played the game and fought for the space she needed to work her magic, instead of being shut down and dismissed at the outset.

The pistol slides back in. Moray glances over his companion (he still has no idea where Lil' Devil is, though he knows she has it), and nods once. "There anyone else up on this floor or is it just ours?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The escape! Kara gives a distracted wave to Cachino and the returning Rita and follows after him, not her lazy saunter but a quickened pace to keep up. He doesn’t even have to hold the elevator, she slips in right alongside him.

“Ha, Rita? We’re bestest pals, whaddya mean? She’s just a little high strung, that’s all.” She’s amused by the hold out weapon-and not at all surprised at the same time. Her eyes follow the movements of his hands, curiously dipping to the place he’d withdrawn the gun from. She approves-that was pretty slick.

“I’ve bought and sent her drinks before. She never thinks it’s as funny as I do though.” Kara met hostility with manic friendship, and enjoyed fucking with people ‘taking themselves too seriously’ immensely, as he well knew.

Rita had been a source of entertainment just about every visit she’d made to this place-and remembered the time she’d accidentally set fire to one of the gazebo tents in the courtyard. Yeah, that’d been a good-and bad-time, that.

“There’s three other suites up there. Big Sal’s and Nero’s, and then an empty one they’re probably saving for the next big winning loser.” Kara provides, bouncing on her heels a little. “Second floor’s got Cachino’s digs, few smaller rooms, and then the big offices back behind the Zoara Club, overlooking Brimstone. Everything’s pretty well insulated, you don’t hear jack through the walls-and the suites are hu-mongo, so ya know-space to kick off your shoes, do pilates, whatever.” Kara had been watching him anyway, but now her eyes flicker with a bit of teasing, though it also seemed a little testing somehow, a cautious probe.

“You look like somebody who does yogi.”

The suite was the second of the two doors on the left side of the wide hallway, and unlike their vault-wasn’t really personalized at all. It was two levels, a spacious, low ‘mood lighting’ lounge sort of space upon entering, crimson red cushioned benches and a glowing artificial firepit not currently lit on a plush, pre war carpet that had probably been expensive even then. The entire wall in front of that had tubes of bubbling water shooting up into the ceiling and cycling through, each one lit with a different color and brilliant in the dark. To their right and leading somewhere behind and above them was a staircase, and climbing that revealed a second sitting area overlooking the first. The open door to a bedroom from there, another ‘old world’ looking deal with crimson wall paper and detailed carpeting, intricate light fixtures-and a serious looking four poster bed with red drapes bound to each post with a gold braided sash-one of which had a silver capped walking stick shoved through it, of all things. There’s an open, somewhat messy closet (Kara had alot of clothes back at the vault, and apparently a whole different mess stored here on top of that) to the right of that, and a mini bar where someone had arranged the little bottles and classes into pyramids (one of which was knocked over) and a pile of cards where someone might have been building a castle with them.

It's a little incongruous in what looked like a bordello, but it didn't look like Kara spent a lot of time here, all told. Why would she? She had nicer digs elsewhere to store all her magpie'd treasures.

A painting of a woman playing the harp had been vandalized with a cartoonish pair of joke glasses and eyebrows.

 

[Obuzeti]

"A sentiment commonplace among your casual acquaintances," Jonah assesses. He follows Kara out of the elevator and into the suite, and as soon as the door closes he turns around, locks it, and then pulls a roll of thick steel wire and sets a tripwire across the base of the door, followed by a flash grenade set against the opening side. Then he rams a climbing piton into the carpet and floor about a foot past the wall, so that it can only open partway before catching on it. It's a malicious trap for what is, ostensibly, a hotel room. Then he almost falls onto one of the big, poofy benches scattered around the room and leans back until he's laid out, closing his eyes. He stays like that for several seconds.

"I," Jonah says, "Have no idea how you do all that on a regular basis. It's exhausting."

He rolls back up just enough to start unlacing his heavy boots, setting each one aside. He's still coated in the dust of the road, and he grimaces at the fine coat of it he'd left behind on the spotless bench. His compulsive nature is going to make him clean that later on.

"We set for the night?" the mercenary asks as he reaches for a sleeve and hesitates - he might have surrendered most of his arms at the door to Gomorrah, but going completely unarmed in a questionably hostile area still bothers him on a deep level. The fact the room has a second level out of line of sight of the door helps a lot, but Cachino's greasy eyeballs had left his lips curling.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara’s impressed. Less so with the trip wire-which seems a little overkill, but it’s a flash bang grenade so maybe not-more so with the climbing piton. She would have never thought of that, it’s genius. She crouches down to grasp at the top of it, but it’s firmly driven in-enough an unexpected entrance would be stopped short and the element of surprise entirely given over to them instead.

“And here I was pretending to have lost my key so there’d be one less spare.” Kara muses before her eyes flick over to watch as he fell heavily into one of the plush benches.

“Ha, that’s not even as busy as I get earning my keep or entertaining myself. Usually a lot less serious shit and a lot more funny, though.” Kara straightens up and considers him a moment, studying. She’s still trying to work out what had bothered him, and there’s...half of an apology on her tongue, rumbling through-something. But then he opens his eyes and rolls back up to start on his boots, and she’s busy unsnapping the buttons of her unique gloves at each delicate wrist, tugging them off and pocketing them.

Lil Devil is just behind the lining of her jacket, caught in a loop specifically sewn in there. She could draw it from there pretty quick if she wanted to, and having it at the small of her back kept her jacket from swinging around and revealing she had it. Normally she might not have bothered-she’s totally rolled around with no handgun before, or ones that barely worked-but she liked Lil’ Devil, and wasn’t trusting it to Rita or anybody else. And...House might be on her tail, or Benny, who knows. Stripping down to her usual bag of tricks and a switchblade hadn’t seemed like the best of ideas.

Besides, Cachino’s the head of the enforcing thugs around here, so it’s not like anybody’s watching her too close for shit like that anyway. Not that she’s really thinking about that terribly hard right now-her mind’s on Jonah.

"We set for the night?"

Her gaze rolls back over to him and she feels a little quiet-but there he is sitting in this silly suite she’s got, filling up some of the empty and looking a little more like himself, or the himself he is with her, anyway-almost. “Yeah, I think so.” Kara says as she wanders over to him, lifting her hands to the lapels of the fatigues to slide them over his shoulders. “There’s a bathtub and stuff, upstairs.” She says, voice softer than her road chatter, and leagues away from the overly cheerful, manic tone she had used downstairs.

“Water’s cold, but they flushed the pipes forever ago, so it both works and is relatively clean ‘cause of it.” Places without running water, baths are expensive-an expense she happily pays for, spoils herself on. Here there’s no waiting for a splintery tub to be filled up at least, and she’s got lotion and soap and shampoo she likes at the ready.

“We should be good here. Omertas are throat cutting gangsters, but I got dirt on Cachino and’ve done work for Big Sal and Nero before. They don’t really pay attention to what I do when I’m here and we probably won’t even see ‘em unless we go looking-it’s really just Rita on my back, I swear.”

It’d been a long few days, from Nipton to McCarren to the Strip, dogs and talking and fighting and killing and pretending to be Legion operatives, or maybe Legion operative and whore or whatever, and all of that just after getting jumped. He can relax-it’s no vault and these boys weren’t The King, but she’s got it on lockdown, she feels like.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray rolls his shoulders as the fatigues come off, guided by Kara's hands. Here, in (relative) safety, he can focus on her again as he should - delicate and smooth skin, but thick calluses on her palms and fingers from vicious fights, gun handling, path running. His head leans down to brush his nose against the back of her hand, and then he leans down to unlace her boots as well. "Feet up," he murmurs, and pulls them off.

"Bath's nice, but really I just want to get all this shit off," Jonah grumbles, sets both pairs of boots aside, and then yanks off the undershirt underneath his fatigues, leaving his chest bare. There's still a healing scar over his lower back where Vulpes had stabbed him, and a matching one on his thigh where he'd nearly cracked bone with his gladius. The upper one is reddened and angry around the cut itself, hidden over the last several days by the lack of opportunity to check it, and Moray snarls when he sees it.

"Bastard didn't clean his weapon," he says, annoyed. "Probably still had all that other blood and shit on it, killing all those other people. Gone infected."

He takes a long breath and blows it out, then reaches into an internal pocket of his fatigues and pulls out some bandages and a thin plastic wafer containing a clear liquid. "I need to wash this out," Jonah says, a little pointlessly, and checks the lower wound - it, thankfully, hasn't gone septic, probably because whatever had been crusted on the blade had gotten rubbed off in the first wound.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The ace of diamonds caught behind the laces of her right boot slips a little further down, and the stocking her pantleg covered on her left leg proved to be a sheer light pink. Mismatched, as usual, with the tore up brown nylon on her exposed leg.

Kara’s brow furrowed. “That can make you sick-saw knife fights ‘n shit all the time growing up. People got blood infections here and there, ” Fussing, a little. She’s slipping out of her jacket but not before pulling a stimpack off a loop from inside, letting the surprisingly heavy garment drop to the floor behind her.

“I should have just had us wait until they moved on or something-that’s what I would have done, by myself. What I usually do.” She always cuts Legion victims down when she finds them. Dead or alive, she cut them down.

She’s never been anywhere with that damned many, though. Christ. And that Vulpes fuck, he’d gotten him good-worse than she had thought, he’d stiff lipped it so well.

“It’s good he’s dead, but shit. Do you feel hot or anything? Dizzy?” The normally flippant merc was definitely fussing. She presses the back of her hand to his cheek and then his forehead, large blue eyes concerned and her brows furrowed. “There’s a mirror, bathroom’s just through there. You don’t want stitches, do you?” Shit she hopes not, but if he’s about to reopen the wound to clean it out-man, what a mess.

 

[Obuzeti]

Moray nods in recognition. "It takes something fierce to even get in my system in the first place," he comments, as he moves over to the mirror. His jaw squares as he starts daubing at the infection site with a bit of wet cloth, checking for any irregularities in the wound. "Opening a wound - expression - is the worst thing you can do with it. Lets all the other shit get in. Keep it closed, damp, and protected, and let the body do the work for you. Add antibiotics and honey if they're available."

He catches her look and shrugs. "I'm not a doctor, so I don't know why, but honey is fantastic for wounds. Apply directly underneath the bandage, reapply once daily. It heals much faster. There's a vial on my belt, left side. Get it for me? "

Now that he can do something about it, Jonah's a little more focused. With the infection cleaned of contaminant and wet, he leaves it alone for the moment and instead ducks to splash water over his face, taking a deep breath. The sensation of cool water itself is incredibly relaxing, and his eyes close as he takes it in, washing his face with the habit of long ritual. All the old dirt and dust in his face works its way out, and he grunts with displeasure at the evidence of a three-day shadow on his face. His chin is prickly.

"Those people wouldn't have survived," he disgrees, and shrugs. "He was setting fires. They might have lived on the crosses, but the smoke would have suffocated most of them real quick. I don't regret a cut to put down that asshole. It was a worthy trade, in my opinion."

He glances over at Kara. Jonah's brow crinkles at the traces of self-recrimination she's putting herself through, and he leans against the sink and offers a hand out to her, wordless.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Kara helps, and the helping makes her feel a little better, as does his calm explanations of things she didn’t know before. Honey? Really? That made no sense but she’s already trying to figure how that could be so. That stuff lasts forever and goes on toast, and the image of a piece of honeyed toast slapped over a cut like a band aid amuses her for a minute, somewhere-and they get him taken care of. She’d pay better attention, in the future-he probably hadn’t noticed the damned thing, hadn’t thought of it since it happened. Which was...kind of crazy, but in line with what she knew about him, before.

If SHE had taken it she probably wouldn’t have fared too well at any goddamned point-her fingers find the small of her back and rub over it absently through the ribbed material of her tanktop, the crooked painted smiley face shifting a little with the movement. Yeah, that would’ve done a lot of damage, ouch.

"I don't regret a cut to put down that asshole. It was a worthy trade, in my opinion."

“I just don’t like when you get hurt, is all.” Kara admits with a bit of a listless shrug, noting his hand and accepting it at once, coming in close. “I am glad we helped those people though, you’re right. Whole mess was fucked up. It’s good we were able to do something about it.” Which is a lot more than what she would have normally said about her motivations or the results thereof.

He’s warm.

“It’s nice you’re here. Pretty boring otherwise, rolling around up here by myself.” She hadn’t really known what to do with the place, in all honesty. Fancy digs, but nothing much to do in them, and nothing she had done anything to...what, earn? No hard work clearing it out or making it nice, like their vault. Not something she’d found or won in a poker game, like one of the dozens of little bunkers and bolt holes out in the wastes and back east. It was just...a place in a casino they wouldn’t even let her gamble in anymore, and quiet as hell without the record player going. Unlike a room in the Atomic Wrangler, where you still heard everything going on downstairs, felt the floorboards rattle when people tromped around-or other shitty dives she preferred to crash in, liking the action and the bar fights, the trouble she could start and the people she could hustle.

The quiet’s getting to her again.

“...I’m sorry you didn’t like tricking that Centurion dumbass.” She finally says, lighting on the thing she thinks went wrong, maybe. “I think it’s funny or it’s just how I get things done. I’m used to it is what I’m saying, but you don’t have to be part of that again, okay? Not worth it no matter what it is.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Jonah pulls up Kara's hand and kisses her fingers, the upset in her bothering him more than the actual cuts and infection did. Those are just - bothers. Kara visibly being upset sinks under his skin somewhere, makes his heart palpitate. "It was worthy," he says, and leaves that summary out there for her to absorb. She struggles so much with doing things that can be perceived as good; too easy to take advantage of, apparently. With him following Kara around these days, that's probably not a valid concern anymore.

"It wasn't tricking him that bothered me," Jonah continues, quiet. "It was how easy it is to - slip into that mindset. I don't want to be that kind of person, and it's very easy for me. I spent a long time trying to do everything but what was easy."

Murder and sadism, mostly. Having that centurion bent and humbled under his homicidal intent had been a little too close to ritual for him. It had felt like Dean, like that nameless Fiend he'd maimed in Doc's clinic back in Goodsprings. It's so easy it's natural, like breathing, thoughtless and pleasing in simplicity.

Jonah Moray aspires to be more than just another animal in the woods, a beast of murder and appetite. He's seen that end.

He shakes his head, and pushes off of the sink to head up for the bathtub. Cold water will work just fine. He just needs the grit off his skin and out of his suit. The hot water at Kara's base is an utter miracle duplicated almost nowhere else in the Mojave. "You want to wash up first or should I?" he calls back, already pulling off the last bits of underslung tac-web and belts, followed by his underwear, as he starts poking at the faucet. It comes on with a sputter.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Apologizing was a foreign concept all on its own, mostly because she hadn’t given a damn about anybody enough to apologize for anything she’d ever done or was doing, in all honesty. And she’d been half worried it’d only spoil things up, remind him of bad things rather than spirit him out of them-but she’d talked before she could think anymore on it.

And it works out okay, and she learns what, kinda, the deal had been.

“I don't want to be that kind of person, and it's very easy for me. I spent a long time trying to do everything but what was easy.”

The code of conduct and professionalism, the resistance to what had been bred in him. He’s not free, not like she is-but it makes her think, some, about what it is to want to be better.

For once.

His partner nods, a little solemn and a little soft, filing this away for later. No, no more ‘pretending’...or regressing? for Jonah. The fierce desire to protect him pulses in her heart-warm and full to the brim with love for him in the first place.

“Ooh, dibs!” Kara lights on immediately, already curling in to pull the tanktop over her head, ruffling her hair. She slings it into the corner, topless save for the lacy, cream colored, strapless balconette, a match to her black one. “Ladies first, right?”

 

[Obuzeti]

The flicker of warm skin is always distracting, and laughter rumbles in Jonah's chest as Kara slips by, clothes flying off as she lays first claim to the bath. He had expected as much, honestly; as annoyed as he is with the dirt, she wears more delicate things than him and her hair is pretty much a dirt mop after a duststorm. She kind of does need the first bath. "Go ahead. I need to shave in the meantime, anyways."

Rather predictably, when Moray ambles over to the sink with a slower, more roundabout walk than he ever displays in public, he brings one of his big knives instead of a razor. He rinses his face with water then starts carefully snipping the half-grown buzz on his cheeks and chin, leaving him barefaced again. He's not particularly picky about looks - no one that wanders the Mojave is, except Kara - but given the choice, clean-shaven is his preference. The beard tickles him otherwise.

The quiet sounds of splashing echo in the room as they both perform their ablutions, though Jonah is mostly quiet, on account of the possibility of stabbing himself if he gets distracted. Once he's done with the underside of his chin and neck, though, and moves onto his cheeks, it's much easier, and he asks, "You spend much time here? It's a nice room, but they're assholes. Can't imagine you sticking long."