188 was gone. It wasn't just decimated. It was... gone. There weren't even bodies this time, just piles of plasma goo with footsteps trailing through them casually. Boone, who'd she'd collected on her way to get Veronica, was just as lost as she, and he was the Goddamn veteran. They looked around in mute horror, shock palpable between them.
“Not another one,” Cross whispered painfully as she and Charon walked up, having trailed back as she and Boone raced to comb through the ruins. They had known all along what they would find. Even the courier had known... she just couldn't accept it.
“It's... it's not possible. It's just not fucking possible...What could they have done, what could they have possibly done to deserve this?” She muttered to herself as she looked around, frantically moving through junk, trying to assure herself that there were no burnt set of scribe robes amidst the rubble. Trying to assure herself that the strange little boy that had guided her before would have known this was coming and gotten himself to safety.
There had been no time, no time to help them...
She never found the scribe's robes.
The trip from there to the Hidden Valley Bunker was silent, strained. The pace was strenuous, even for the experienced, and nigh unstoppable courier. No one said what was on everyone's mind, no matter how hard she made them move through that unforgiving desert. Without a word, she forbid them to speak.
Veronica could NOT be dead. She wouldn't allow it. She fucking refused for that to be the case. The courier shaped her own destiny, and she shaped her own course. She was the courier who carved roads into the world. Veronica was under her protection, one of her personal friends. She would NOT let that evil bastard take her friends from her. She would not let him take the Mojave from her, either. It was hers first, and she'd done so much to get it back on it's feet.
This was her damn desert. He could go crawling back to the Capital Wasteland.
This game he'd played with her, for the past few weeks, taking Nelson, reactivating Helios One, fortifying Cottonwood Cove, wiping out the Boomers, infiltrating the NCR camps, rearming the very Goddamn bomb for the Monorail that she'd taken out... She hadn't even been back to the Strip yet and the bastard was running her ragged as she scrambled to clean up his mess. It was all taking a serious toll on her, and she'd never even seen him.
When they reached the Bunker, she was all but sprinting the last of the way inside the chain-linked fence surrounding the mounds she knew so well. She could see black tufts of smoke rising from the sandstorm vents, and apprehension prickled along her short hairs. She actually left Boone, Cross and Charon to navigate for themselves as she ran ahead. They were all tired, but she never slowed, even as she approached the one dune where the Brotherhood hid themselves.
Bad Moon Rising Pt. 8/?
Not. Fucking. Human.
188 was gone. It wasn't just decimated. It was... gone. There weren't even bodies this time, just piles of plasma goo with footsteps trailing through them casually. Boone, who'd she'd collected on her way to get Veronica, was just as lost as she, and he was the Goddamn veteran. They looked around in mute horror, shock palpable between them.
“Not another one,” Cross whispered painfully as she and Charon walked up, having trailed back as she and Boone raced to comb through the ruins. They had known all along what they would find. Even the courier had known... she just couldn't accept it.
“It's... it's not possible. It's just not fucking possible...What could they have done, what could they have possibly done to deserve this?” She muttered to herself as she looked around, frantically moving through junk, trying to assure herself that there were no burnt set of scribe robes amidst the rubble. Trying to assure herself that the strange little boy that had guided her before would have known this was coming and gotten himself to safety.
There had been no time, no time to help them...
She never found the scribe's robes.
The trip from there to the Hidden Valley Bunker was silent, strained. The pace was strenuous, even for the experienced, and nigh unstoppable courier. No one said what was on everyone's mind, no matter how hard she made them move through that unforgiving desert. Without a word, she forbid them to speak.
Veronica could NOT be dead. She wouldn't allow it. She fucking refused for that to be the case. The courier shaped her own destiny, and she shaped her own course. She was the courier who carved roads into the world. Veronica was under her protection, one of her personal friends. She would NOT let that evil bastard take her friends from her. She would not let him take the Mojave from her, either. It was hers first, and she'd done so much to get it back on it's feet.
This was her damn desert. He could go crawling back to the Capital Wasteland.
This game he'd played with her, for the past few weeks, taking Nelson, reactivating Helios One, fortifying Cottonwood Cove, wiping out the Boomers, infiltrating the NCR camps, rearming the very Goddamn bomb for the Monorail that she'd taken out... She hadn't even been back to the Strip yet and the bastard was running her ragged as she scrambled to clean up his mess. It was all taking a serious toll on her, and she'd never even seen him.
When they reached the Bunker, she was all but sprinting the last of the way inside the chain-linked fence surrounding the mounds she knew so well. She could see black tufts of smoke rising from the sandstorm vents, and apprehension prickled along her short hairs. She actually left Boone, Cross and Charon to navigate for themselves as she ran ahead. They were all tired, but she never slowed, even as she approached the one dune where the Brotherhood hid themselves.