Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-5543592-20200102024533/@comment-5543592-20200121043202

Montana lay behind them. They had passed through Idaho and now camped in eastern Washington. Josey could see the Cascades in the distance.

He sat up on a boulder, taking a moment away from his power armor to breath fresh air.

Seattle wasn’t far. He’d heard about it before and was curious to see how it measured up.

It would be hard for him to appreciate it, irregardless. It was hard for him to appreciate much anymore. It wasn’t that he didn’t think about such things, it was that he was just so angry all the damn time.

His thoughts always came back to Randall and Shrike. The things they had done to him, what he would do to them in turn. Josey wasn’t someone who believed the world was fair or that everyone got what was coming to them. Hell, if that were the case, Josey deserved a fair bit of justice. But Cass had been a good person. So had Arcade. The way that they’d gone, all because of something Josey caused… it sat poorly with him. Guilt wasn’t something that clung to him easy, but he felt that. The guilt and their loss. They had been his constant companions for years and now they were gone.

He didn’t know if he had it in him to kill Shrike. What she was capable of was beyond him. A revolver and a cowboy mentality weren’t going to put her in the ground. But maybe the determination to do so would be enough.

When he thought of that moment on the roof--Cass bleeding out in his arms, Randall’s final words to him, I fucking warned you--he always. expected it to fill him with rage. It did, sometimes. But more often it reminded him of his own helplessness and powerlessness. The Courier was no one exceptional. He did have Naomi’s gifts, nor Tanner’s goodness, nor Denis’ sense of justice. He was a man consistently out of his element, who was so foreign to every situation he had been thrust into that he had managed to succeed on sheer fuckery alone. It had only taken someone more daring and more aggressive to soundly beat him at his own game. Josey’s singular talent was his ability to escalate, but it was impossible to escalate against a woman who could so securely place herself in control of whatever situation she found herself.

Washington was overwhelmingly green, the mountains and sky overwhelming blue. None of the orange haze Nevada offered. He wondered why he even bothered anymore. It wasn’t like people would really despair if he threw down his guns, or laid down and died. He only persisted to carry out his own, personal vendetta. He had no true ambition beyond that.

Shrike woke up in a ditch with something poking her face.

“Is she dead?” “She fell from outer space, Eric, of course she’s dead.”

“You idiot, if she fell from outer space she’d be a puddle. People don’t fall from outer space in one piece!”

“Oh yeah? Then why’s she wearing a spacesuit?”

Shrike’s eyes snapped out and the group of kids surrounding her leapt back with a chorus of screams.

She sat up rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Where am I?” She cast a look over the kids, who were all staring with wide eyes and gaping jaws. “Well?”

“Near Vegas, ma’am.” A boy squeaked out.

“Vegas.” Shrike stood up and they shuffled back further. “What day is it?”

The boy shrugged, but a girl piped up, “The fifth.”

The fifth. Shrike had been unconscious for days. Perhaps even comatose. She wondered how she smelled. She climbed out of the ditch and the children got out of her way as she started northwest. She’d walk until she reached a road, and then further still until she found the city.

She’d fallen from an airplane and survived intact. She was more indestructible than she’d realized. What else was she capable of that she didn’t know? She could reliably lift two ton over her head--she’d been able to tear Arcade Gannon in half when he was in a thousand pounds of gear.

Now she’d need to find where they’d gone. They’d flown north. Where? Somewhere else in NCR territory? Shrike didn’t know now, but she’d figure out. There wasn’t a place they could hide from her.

Randall lingered in subway by the canal, crouched down to dip his fingers to the water. He touched it to his lips, wetting them.

“Tepid.” He muttered. Why wasn’t good water a thing anymore? Down here, had to pour in some how.

There was a kayak paddling down to him. A voice called out to Randall in clipped, angry Japanese. Randall shouted back his response, standing up and tucking his thumbs into his belt.

“You found my way in?” Randall asked as he tied the kayak up.

The Yakuza nodded, stepping off, “Yes, Yonome. I have. And I brought what you asked.” From the kayak he pulled a bag and dropped it with a thump at Randall’s feet. From within, he pulled the the karuta helmet, staring into the vacate eyes of the Menpo. Sometime, maybe a thousand years ago, a samurai had worn this. Randall lowered it onto his head and strapped it tight.

He grinned, “Badass.”

---

Tanner’s eyes opened. He was looking up at the ceiling, in what appeared to be a hospital room.

The vision in one of his eyes was… blurry. As if he could see light and nothing else. It was bandaged as well. He touched a hand to it and that was when he knew Cable was in the room with him because the boy screamed.

“Boss!” He jumped to Tanner’s bedside. “You’re awake.”

“Where are we?” Tanner’s voice was less than a croak.

“Seattle. We flew here after Shrike attacked. She hurt you pretty bad.”

Tanner remembered that, clear as day. Thinking about it brought back flashes of the fight. How each blow sent him reeling, her holding him down and then cutting his eye out.

He thought back to how invincible he’d felt in years past. There hadn’t been one threat that Tanner couldn’t confront or overcome. After beating Hades, Tanner had been certain of that. Waking up now, he knew that was false. Shrike had pummeled him into the dirt and taken his lunch money. He had been beaten, soundly.

Not that that would stop Tanner. It was only proof that he’d gotten too complacent. He would need to come back harder, train harder, fight harder than he ever had before. When he’d fought Hades he’d been an alcoholic. Now he was a recovering alcoholic with one eye. Adversity bred character, he supposed. That was something.

The Rocky Mountains were cold, rough and unfriendly. Days of walking turned into weeks. The weather was cold, food was scarce, but Shanks' hunting of Boosin earlier that month provided enough rations for them. The mountains turned into plains, and they spent days longer walked across grassy nothing.

They came through the Cascades in late July and the city was beneath them. Seattle called a lot to mind, with it’s towers and sprawling cityscape.

The Royal Wasteland was frequently called a diamond in the rough. A shining beacon of civilization surrounded by a thousand miles of nothing. They stood on the far side of the river, separated from Mercer Island and the city proper by the river. Passing through the evergreen forest was quick, and soon they were walking down the main highway, heading for the city.