Nuka Girl, Nuka'd World

Taking the Castle

Like lambs to the slaughter.

Vanessa was sitting on a wall, dipping the spiked toes of her shoes into the irradiated sea below. It splashed up against the sea wall, spraying against her bare stomach. Goosebumps prickle up across her skin from the cold water and the tension buzzing in the air.

You could almost taste it. It felt the same as the fizzing energy in the atmosphere right before a storm.

She rubbed at her arms with the palms of her hands, warming herself up a little, smearing a streak of blood from her recent experimentation with Med-X.

The Overboss needs Med-X to calm the side effects she suffers with thanks to the Psycho and Overdrive. The Med-X soothes the shakes and fits of rage and paranoia.

Well, soothes is a bit of a push. More like it numbs her to noticing the hallucinations and shakes which are beginning to become noticeable to those around her, including her husband.

His heavy footsteps announce his presence before he even opens his mouth, sliding to sit besides her onto the ground with a grunt.

The two share a cigarette in silence.

He may have one eye but even he can see how her hands shudder and tremble, and her eyes with blown out pupils lurch around nervously. How she twitches and jerks towards every sound like her life is being controlled by her paranoia.

He can see how out of control she's become. How on their way here she cleared out more settlements in days than they had done in months. How she carved her way through people who used to be her allies, who used to be her people, who used to look up at her.

Porter Gage doesn't have a bleeding heart, and he doesn't care about the wastelanders of the Commonwealth, but he does care about the fact his Overboss has been downright bloodthirsty as of late. It's put him a little on edge. Her actions are wild and unpredictable and fuelled by some kind of invisible rage he can't quite pinpoint.

He's never been one for healthily getting out his emotions, but he assumed she'd calm down once she'd avenged her family, and gotten the damn robot child. But here they were, and she was still continuing her frenzied assault on the people of Boston.

And now she's decided to take the fight directly to the Minutemen. She was taking over the Castle herself. Launching an assault herself. By her own volition, Vanessa was on the frontlines for the second time in a matter of weeks.

She stubbed the cigarette out on her knee, feeling the warmth spread through the fabric. Then she leaned against Gage, her hands pressed between her thighs in an attempt to keep the shaking to a minimum. He keeps himself bolt upright, casual affection is still weird to him, especially in public, but he allows himself to rest a hand on her thigh.

"You ready to get things started? Raiders are ready when you are."

She doesn't respond. He listens to the sound of her breathing. It's shaky. Nervous.

Gage looks up to the sky, "storm'll break any minute now. Doesn't look like it'll be a rad storm, but you'd best take some Rad-X anyway, jus' t'be on the safe side."

Vanessa tilts her head back, following his gaze. It seemed the energy in the atmosphere wasn't just the pre-battle tension, there truly was a storm brewing. Gage always seemed to have some sort of uncanny ability to predict storms.

"I'd say let's put it off for another day, but a storm feels oddly fittin', don't y'think?"

Vanessa giggles, "are you inside my... head? Gage?"