New Vegas: Blood Ties

Yasmin kept out in front with her shades down to hide her eyes just in case someone decided to catch up. They were getting closer. Soon she’d know if he was ok and all this was just nothing but her being crazy. Or if he was…

She sunk her teeth hard into her lip to stop herself from thinking of it. He’d be fine. He was indestructible. She’d get there and he’d be as happy and gorgeous as ever. He’d have the same dark chocolate, messy hair and big bright blue eyes and nothing would have changed. Then she could hug and kiss him for a week until the sick feeling left her stomach. Maybe convince him to come back with her. Though…He was living his dream, doing what he thought was helping. She couldn’t drag him from that. She knew how to though. She’d look at him with hurt, upset eyes and ask which he loved more, her or that organisation. He’d get frustrated and possibly yell that she meant everything to him but he couldn’t just sit back and waste away his life doing nothing when the world was so fucked up. But then he’d give in. Say that there wasn’t much of a world worth protecting without….

There was no world without him. If he was dead, fuck explaining to the crew. Piss them off and let them shoot her. It’d be better than a life in a shit world knowing she’d not get to hear him talk or laugh.

She fought the sob that choked up her throat and looked back at her pipboy. So close.
 
Tom looked at Yasmin, noticing her biting her lip, the anger had passed now, Tom was back in a normal mood, "If you do it any harder you'll tear the bugger off".
 
She looked at him and raised one of her eyebrows, returning to her cool disposition and forcing away all distressing thoughts.

"Have you ever been stung by a cazador, Tom? Because trust me, it's not pleasant. Forgive me if I'm on edge now, but I really don't want to go through that pain again. Their stinger is like a stake, stabbing into you and the poison makes every inch of you feel nauseated and burn. I'd rather take on a deathclaw. If they get you, at least they just rip you apart fast."
 
"They do hurt. So painful you think you'll snap your own spine in half." Carib agreed.

Carib walked along side Yasmin, "Somehow I doubt its just cazador stings your worried about. Don't fret. Fear and worry are natural. We'll get to the prize. And even if we get there late, I am sure there will be plenty to scav."

He wasn't a mind reader, Carib honestly suspected that Yasmin was afraid that the mission was in jeopardy and that the lot was probably being picked over. After all, what else could she be worried about?
 
Tom breathed in heavily, it was obvious Yasmin was worrying about something other than the fauna. Tom decided to lighten the mood, so he chuckled, "Tell me if yer' need any help with tying your shoelaces".
 
Yasmin looked at Carib and smiled. "You're probably right. Just now with cazadors I have twice the worry." She reached out and patted him on the shoulder. "Thanks for trying to get some of this weight off my mind."

She liked him. He was the only one who both seemed normal and didn't feel the need to fight with her. She watched him out of the corner of her shades as they walked side by side. Out of the pack, if she had to take just one person with her at some point to cover her ass, it'd be him. And she wasn't sure if it was the strong, reassuring vibe she got off him or the psycho killer look his mask gave him, but Yasmin was also starting to suspect she found him alluring. Though unsure about his current status towards anything sexual, she made a note to pursue carefully if at all.
 
Carib accepted the pat and smiled beneath the mask and gave a nod, "No worries, Yasmin of the Blue Eyes. Your not a bad person. You look like you hung with a tough crowd, but these are evil times and we do things to survive. I am sure you'll find what your looking for, or at least be pointed in the right direction."

He looked at her for a brief second and caught her smile. Boosting morale helped a team survive, it took the edge off. Some figured Carib to be the silent, slick shit killer type. No doubt, he was a killer and a hunter of men, but he always found time to laugh and lighten the mood. His own father had remarked that Carib would die with a smile. His baby sister had always said he had a nice smile. Little Ilona. She was probably married now, perhaps had a little tribe of her own. In the back of his mind, he promised to go back West once Caeser was finished and see his family before migrating Eastward to his destiny.

The look Yasmin gave Carib was a curious one and Carib didn't want to read too much into it. He had a job to do first. Afterwards, well... he looked at her again. Good thing she couldn't see his face, he had a smile. Maybe who knew. Stranger things had happened. He made sure he was close enough to her. After all, she was pack leader and the pack leader would know best how to utilize the machinegun in the event they were engaging or being attacked by a hostile force.
 
Yasmin laugher at the ‘tough crowd remark’. Oh if only they knew. About Chops, about helping him kill Rufus to gain control of the raiders, the murders, the pillaging. Wiping out homesteads with baseball bats just because they got off on the crunching noise skulls made as they cracked. And worse, when meat got scarce. She doubted they’d even follow her to the doctors if they were bleeding to death.

But that was behind her now. It got taken away one afternoon in streams of fire from some armies flame throwers. Since then she’d mellowed down and had done very little unprovoked murder.

She glanced back at Carib. He’d said we do things to survive. But how would he feel about just how far she’d gone? Come to that, nobody is understanding just out of the goodness of their heart. What horrid things had he done? Was the serial killer look hiding…an actual serial killer? She’d probably never know. But the thought that he’d murdered innocent people just for the bloodlust made her lust just that stronger. There was just something about power or madness she found irresistible.

Pulling herself out of her little thought process, she looked down at her pipboy again. They’d covered a lot of ground and were almost there. Her heart started to pound.
 
Carib was a Ranger, no one didn't become a Ranger unless they were willing to sacrifice some of their soul in the name of the Republic. Many times he had been asked to wipe out raider tribes as they slept with their children. True, he hadn't been part of the NCR Task Force that did in Bitter Springs, but Carib had done his fair share of wet work. He knew sometimes the targets deserved it, and sometimes they didn't.

In his retirement, he felt should turn that darkness towards the wicked and cruel. That is why he wanted to go East, he knew evil brewed there and he had to be part of the force to remove it.

So what was he now? Mercenary? Retired Ranger? Serial Killer? Widower.

He didn't know if Yasmin would accept the things he did, and he didn't care. She was a tough woman. There was a haunted look. One that is tempered by both experience and hard and reckless living. Everyone had a past. David was guarding his like a titanic vault, and who could blame him. Out here, the past was never a nice thing; it somehow always came back to bite you in the ass.
 
Tom frowned at the up and coming sunset, breathing in heavily, pausing his pace. Tom turned around to face the group, studying each one carefully, making notes in his head, 'David, probably could trust him with my life, good friend...Carib, seems like a good chap, annoying accent, but who really cares...Mark, looks like he has seen a lot, might be in the same boat as Carib...Yasmin, fancies herself a leader, not good at keeping rule, quick tongue', Tom liked making notes in his head, it often felt like the right thing to do, just in-case.

Tom decided to get a conversation going with the group, "What are you guys going to do with the caps you make from this...if it is what it is?".
 
Yasmin narrowed her eyes. This was wearing thin. "You know, if you're so sure I'm lying, New Vegas is that way." She pointed back the way they came. "I'm getting rather sick of being openly questioned. Don't trust me if you want, but be polite enough to do it in quiet behind my back. If you insist on continuing, I'm not going to miss your presence."

She took the harsh tone out of her voice and replied, deadpan. "And I believe most of us have already answered this question."
 
Mark sighed. Back to his insides he laughed a bit. What a bunch of amateus. He thought. Still arguing like kids. Mark felt old for a second, he just hoped these "kids" knew what they were getting into. The only one he didn't felt old being around was Carib, he seemed to be protective of Yasmin, but he had changed, he didn't laughed any more, not the way he used to at least, there was something different about him, even if Mark could not really put his finger on what. Maybe he wasn't the Carib he used to know anymore, or maybe he was just being paranoid.

And while Carib was showing to be protective of Yasmin, like she was his younger sister, Mark could not openly show sympathy for anyone, he could not lower his defences around strangers, for fear of being hurt. More than once he loved and lost, his hearth felt like it was full of scars, and unwilling to be hurt again... yet longing to love once more.

Suddenly he wandered if Yas interests could be related to those of the hearth. He knew how much he suffered for and how much he had been wiling to risk, going to hell and back if necessary for the ones he loved.

But better not to think. He was in this mess already, wherever the mess took him.
 
Carib didn't get involved in Yasmin and Tom's back and forth. If she was the pack leader she'd assert her authority. As long as no harm came to himself and Mark, Carib would let Yasmin control her group. She paid the bills.

He looked at his friend Mark and gave him the thumbs up. The Ex-Ranger knew he couldn't deceive his friend. Mark was sharp and Mark probably already knew something in Carib had changed drastically after Katja died and the battle of Hoover Dam. Other events helped shape Carib, but those two events probably defined him the most.

People change. Carib looked at Yasmin's barely visible plasma burn. She had ran with a tough crowd and he surmised a tougher crowd marked her.
 
Tom looked at Yasmin and smiled, letting out a small chuckle, "Sorry, if I got you riled, i'm not here to make enemies, I just want the caps, then i'll go my own way, if you want to antagonise me, go ahead and do it, I ain't going to make a big deal about it from here on out".

"You may think i'm a prick, but I don't really carry an opinion of you, so if you want to make an impression, make it now".
 
Yasmin looked away from him and back in front. "I just want to get there." She glanced at her pipboy and her heart leaped. They were almost there.

What...what was that smell?
 
"What... are you serious? This better not be a fart joke..."

Mark allergies did not let him smell as well as others. He blows his nose so he can smell better.

"Hmm, I'm guessing decomposition, whether it is from a living being or a dead corpse is beyond me... but I could be totally wrong."

And he could, after all his sense of smell wasn't that good. But something, although faintly, smelled over there.
 
Tom had been walking for a while now, 'We must be getting close now, I can smell a bit of distinction in the air, in experience this must be around the general location, I wouldn't be surprised if I crested the next couple of ridges and there was the...bunker waiting for us'.

Tom sighed as he remembered a song him and his friends use to sing as a mood lifter, "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' forth to carry me home" with a low voice, he continued, "I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, comin' for to carry me home, a band of angels coming after me, coming for to carry me home".

It was getting dark, Tom wasn't using it as a mood lifter, he loved the song, it reminded him of the old times, the good times, the great times.
 
David walked along, still on edge after the argument and the cazadores. When Mark mentioned the smell, David sniffed, and his expression shifted to that of disdain. He ignored, assuming it was from the vegetation of the area. He slowed down and moved closer to the group, seeing as it was dark now, and he didn't want to get lost, seeing as none of them had a source of light.
 
Carib kept close to Yasmin and made sure Mark was at least in his periphery. Yasmin was the boss and knew where they needed to go. Mark was his friend, and friendship such as his couldn't have a cost, it had to be protected.

Mark may not be able to understand what Carib has become, but he was a good friend; he was the connection to Katja he had. The only connection.

Something didn't smell right. He couldn't quite place the odor but he didn't like it.
 
Yasmin began getting uncomfortable as it started nearing darkness. They moved up an incline and the smell got stronger. She looked down at her pipboy. They were there. She looked up hopefully as they reached the top of the incline and looked down at the other side.

In the heart of the small valley was a barn which no doubt covered the bunker. But that wasn’t what Yasmin was looking at. And she knew where she recognised that smell from. Rotting flesh. There were a handful of dead bodies festering around the bunker. And she recognised the armour. They were Brotherhood of Steel soldiers.

Her stomach knotted itself up and bile burnt at her throat. If she’d had any food in her, she’d have vomited. She let out an anguished scream and yelled “EVAN!!!”, holstering her gun and bolted down the hill towards the nearest dead soldier, desperately ranting to herself “Don’t be him, don’t be him…” as she grabbed them and rolled them over to look at them and snatch up their dogtags. She moved like a mad woman through the seven of them, then finally collapsed next to the last, sobbing into her hands. “He’s not here, he’s not here….It’s not him…” She wasn’t sure if it was relief that he wasn’t one of the dead, or despair that she still hadn’t found him.
 
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