Missionaries spreading the Good News

Now, Louis really thought that the woman would have let Bones off with just a beating, as she demonstrated a number of inventive ways to cause some pain to him without doing any actual harm. It wasn't any worse than what the boss did when someone fucked up mildly, actually. Probably less than what they would have gotten for failing to teach the bitch a lesson, really.

However, Bones, the utter idiot, started yelling some really, really vile shit at her and threats. Stuff that he, Louis, thought was beyond the pale, even!

He finally said, "Bones, shut the fuck up, you fucking idiot!"

But he didn't listen like he never listened. Louis didn't know precisely what the last straw for the woman was, but he could see the change in her expression. Finally, she looked at Bones with crazy girlfriend eyes and asked, "Your name is Bones? But... have you SEEN your bones?"

With that, she pulled out a dull grey stiletto and showed him.

His screams didn't last that long, as again Louis had seen the boss do a lot worse and for a lot longer. Blaze had gotten his name for his penchant for setting people on fire one limb at a time, after all, but there was something a lot more disturbing and intimate about the idea of someone fileting your finger bone out of your hand and showing it to you while you were paralyzed and couldn't move.

Louis was reminded of one evening when Blaze was burning a man to death and making the gang watch Blaze got into a philosophical debate on torture, saying torture was proven to be inefficient if you wanted to get information out of people, which was why he, Blaze, only tortured people for fun!

Louis didn't know if that was actually true, knowing Blaze it wasn't, but even if it was, what was absolutely obvious to him and Eric now was that watching someone else get tortured was very effective in making them talk!

She had just shot Bones in the head with some fancy-ass laser after that. Both he and Eric answered every question she had then. Afterwards, she looked at the two of them and said, "You know... zhere is a fine line between self-confident optimism and flat reckless stupidity, and Monsieur Bones was about a 'undred klicks on the far side of zhat line. Something to remember, yes?"

Then, she left without touching a hair on either of their heads, and a few minutes later, they could move their entire bodies again.

Eric was freaking out, "We gotta go tell Blaze, man!"

Louis was, surprisingly, pretty calm. He stayed sitting on the ground next to the wall for a moment. He already had a plan. "Go on ahead, run back to base and tell the boss everything that happened. I will take care of Bones' body."

Eric looked surprised, "Didn't even think you liked him. Alright." With that, he ran off.

After Eric was gone, Louis stood up and stretched. Then he gave Bones' body a hard kick in the balls, yelling, "You stupid motherfucker! You almost got us all killed! Fuck you!"

Louis felt like he got more intelligent watching Bones get fileted. He could tell the woman wasn't enjoying it as the boss did, and he could tell by the way she shot Bones in the head immediately afterwards that it wasn't for Bones' benefit, either.

So, if she didn't do that for herself or for Bones, then it had to be for him and Eric. She wanted them, the monkeys as she called them, to go tell the boss monkey she wasn't to be fucked with.

The only problem with all that idea was the boss monkey was fucking insane. He wasn't about to fucking tell him shit unless it was good news or at least not very bad news. Eric telling him not only that they failed, but the target killed one of his men? And the other was AWOL? Poor fucking Eric. There were even odds he will likely have his foot or hand burned off tonight, and Louis wasn't about to join in that fun.

Still, he wasn't about to NOT tell the boss either, after he figured out that was what that crazy bitch wanted. She might come back for him!

He was curious what the woman thought this would accomplish. It might stop Blaze temporarily, he might consider how best to retaliate, but within a week, he would hit back as hard as he could because he couldn't be seen to accept disrespect and not be torn apart by the gang. Heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that shit.

It didn't matter, Louis supposed. He wouldn't be around to find out what happened anyway. So sorry, Eric.

Well, he wasn't really sorry. Not really. Both Eric and Bones were kind of assholes. Everyone in this gang was an asshole except him.

Wait. His newly gained intelligence seemed to tell him that he might be an asshole too.

Whatever. He was getting the fuck out of here. Out of Megaton. His brother Jerome was still in Paradise Falls, and he could go back to raiding the stupid little villages and farms in the wastes. He just joined this gang because the Jet was real cheap, anyway.

Bye, crazy bitch. Bye, crazier boss.

---xxxxxx---

Lily walked down the streets, sort of conflicted. Had she gone too far with that fellow? She had to admit she let the things he said upset her.

At first, she was just going to give them a reason not to see her as a prey animal and send them on their way; tails tucked in between their legs. However... well, some threats she took less well than others.

Humming in thought, she considered. No, she didn't think what she did was against her morals, at least not particularly. She wouldn't hurt even an innocent animal if she could avoid it. But Monsieur Bones was hardly innocent. Lily felt that she was the instrument of karma, in this case with Bonsey.

In fact, she felt worse about the other two, given the things they and the worker foreman she talked to the other day said about their boss, this Blaze. She felt that guy was the shoot messenger type, or rather burn the messenger alive type.

She let them go because the unstated implication she gave them was she would do so if they answered her questions, but she got the feeling it would have been kinder to shoot them in the head, also.

Oh well. She can't control what this Blaze did. He did seem like a cartoonish bad guy, though. Like, way beyond the pale. Why hadn't Sheriff Timms shot his ass by now? They seemed to be a bit understaffed from what Lily saw when she visited the Sheriff to talk to him about the plan for the nuke, which he approved after he figured out she wasn't about to blow them all up.

Well, she kind of wished Grace's Grenadiers were still in town. Her little stunt would probably surprise the cartoonishly evil man briefly, but she had already been wrong about her estimation of his escalation rate once. She wasn't about to take that risk again.

She changed directions, turning to go to the better part of town where Tombs lived. It wasn't a long walk; it wasn't like Megaton was actually that big, after all.

Knocking on his door, she waited patiently for him to greet her, which he did with a big smile and pleasant words, "Doc! Nice to see you! Rare to get you out of your cave, eh? Come in, come in!"

Lily walked in and accepted his offer of a drink as hospitality, sitting down with him and his wife in their living room.

Taking a sip of the offered drink, she immediately started coughing, and she felt her eyes water, which sent Tombs into hysterics and Lady Tombs grinning. Then, blinking away tears, she lied humorously, her tone kind of gravely as the battery acid may have taken a layer of tissue off her larynx, "S-smooth."

"Well, it gets the job done. What can I help ya with today?" replied the man.

Lily told him straight out about the problems she had been having. He was aware of them for the most part, anyway. She even told him about the example she had made of Bones earlier.

"Well, that might have been kind of stupid," Tombs said amusedly, although he didn't apparently think it was a big deal either.

"What would you 'ave done, zhen?" asked Lily, testily.

Tombs shrugged, "You wanted more time? What would have really given an evil bastard like Blaze pause would have been if all three of his men disappeared without a trace. People's imaginations are always better at coming up with horrible possibilities, and a man like Blaze has to have tons of enemies. He might have spent days air boxing with some gremlin who wasn't even there."

Lily pursed her lips. That seemed plausible, actually. She sighed. She was always the worst with psychology and human interface operations. She had gotten a lot better in this new, weird life in the Wasteland, but it was clear she still had some blind spots. Well, it could be learned, like anything else.

However, she said, "Yes, but I wanted information from zhe two I let go."

Tombs looked at her like she was riding on the short bus, "So? You don't 'disappear' them until after they answer your questions. Do you really need help with the order of things?"

Lily frowned, "Zhe implication was zhat I would let them go after zhey answered zhe questions. To go against zhat would impinge on my personal 'onour; it wasn't a possibility. It would 'ave 'ad to be either or; in this case, I wanted answers."

Tombs continued to look at her like she was a very special person, "You cut this man's middle finger bone out of his finger and showed it to him. And you're saying that your what... ethics... wouldn't let you pop his two good-for-nothing friends after questioning them? You have to know what they were going to do to you, Doc."

Lily nodded, "Yes, precisely. Besides, I'd say zhey might be being Blazed right now, depending on how their boss feels about bad news at present. So I might not have done zhem any favours there."

Tombs shook his head slowly, "You know, you kind of remind me of them Mormon boys." This caused Lily to turn slack-jawed, and she replied real intelligently, "Huh??"

"Well, there's not a lot they won't do to what they consider evil-doers, but at the same time, they have a bottom line and pretty much will never lie or go back on an agreement, even if kills 'em," Tombs said simply.

Well, that did actually sound like her personal ethics, actually. However, she didn't have any problem in shading the truth, beyond the fact that she wasn't the best at it. She just quietly considered the similarities for a moment. Tombs surprised her by smacking his fist into his open palm, "That might be a solution to your problem. You said your merc friends are out of town for a couple of days? I know there's a team of six missionaries in town."

Now it was Lily's turn to stare at Tombs like he was mentally deficient. She had memories of the clean-cut, polite young men in white shirts and black ties ringing her doorbell from her past life. She said simply, "I don't want to save 'is soul, Tombs! I want to kill 'is ass!"

Mrs Tombs guffawed and piped in, "You say things that make me really curious where you grew up, little lady. Mormon missionaries are all but mercenaries in another name; they just won't take every type of job; it has to be against an evil-doer. They're one of the biggest export products of the Dominion! Moreover, they'll never fuck you over unless you lied to them about what you want them to do. As mercs go, they have a good reputation."

'Oh,' Lily thought.

"Oh, zhat might work, actually. Is zhere a way you can set up a meeting with zhem today? I don't want to wait until tomorrow, I was already wrong about zhis man's escalation rate once," Lily replied.

"Yeah, I reckon we can," Tombs nodded, standing up. He hollered, and a mini-Tombs appeared from deeper in the house. The elder Tombs talked to the boy, who nodded and ran out of the house.

"My boy will go send them a message to meet me here. It'll probably take an hour. Want to play a game of poker with the missus and me while we wait? One cap an ante?" Tombs offered.

Lily grinned. She was well equipped to dominate these flats at this game, and she could test some of her preliminary emotion-detecting software to detect bluffing.

---xxxxxx---

A little over an hour later, Lily was down sixteen caps, but she was pretty sure she just needed a few more hands to catch up. She was pretty sure Mrs Tombs had some sort of advanced espionage cyberware that allowed her to fake any emotion she wanted, so it was quite a challenge. She was starting to notice slight imperfections in some of the cards in the deck, though, so it shouldn't be much longer until she had them right where she wanted them.

However, mini-Tombs arrived through the front door, trailing two young men who must be the so-called missionaries. Tombs aborted the hand, gathering the cards as soon as his son walked through the door and before the two men could see them. 'Prohibition on gambling, perhaps?' thought Lily.

Well, they weren't wearing black ties and white shirts, but they were clean-shaven and dressed rather professionally as mercenaries went, wearing matching combat armour that Lily recognized as National Guard surplus that was so ubiquitous in the Wasteland.

They introduced themselves, being exceedingly polite towards Mrs Tombs and herself, Lily noted.

Lily wondered if Tombs would explain the whole thing, as perhaps they would take direction better from another male, but he did not. Internally, Lily shrugged and explained her issues, and the two men listened carefully.

Afterwards, one chuckled and said, "Ma'am, you could have stopped after saying he was a drug dealer; that would have been enough for us. Although, ma'am, the rest of it just makes us feel bad about accepting payment for this mission. Verily, the devil himself must be working through this Blaze." The other missionary nodded solmenly. However, Lily did notice they didn't offer to do it for free, not that she blamed them. If you do something well, don't do it for free.

"This is pretty much open-and-shut, ma'am, as long as you aren't some kind of competing drug dealer and are hiring us to get the competition out of the way?" asked the second man.

Lily tilted her head to the side, "I suppose zhat is a matter of perspective. I am planning to run zhe pharmacy in zhe hôpital that I am starting soon, where drugs will be sold, yes? While we likely won't stock purely recreational substances, many of zhe drugs with medical uses can be abused, no?"

The first man waved that off, "That's definitely not a problem, ma'am. The world would be a better place if brand new clinics with pharmacies," he made some air quotes, "out-competed the average drug dealer. So, let's get down to specifics."

Lily explained what she wanted. Mainly she wanted Blaze dead, along with at least his two lieutenants that the two men she let go told her about, "If zhose zhree men are gone, zhis gang, such as it is, will implode. It's being 'eld together by zhreats, drugs but most importantly the cult of personality from zhe leadership. Zhey're basically drug-addled murder-'obos."

The first missionary nodded his head, "That should not be a problem, ma'am, especially with the intel you provided. Now for the discussion of remuneration... we can do this mission for you for a suitable donation of five hundred caps to the cause. We should have it completed within twenty-four to forty-eight hours."

Lily internally smirked. A donation? Would she get a tax write-off? Lily considered the price. It was a little high if you only considered they needed to off three people in the slums, but since those three people were surrounded by up to thirty or forty armed minions, she thought it was quite reasonable. The long, mean-looking sniper rifle on the second man's back gave a hint to how they likely would accomplish the job, too.

Lily nodded, "Zhat would be acceptable. 'Alf now, 'alf at job completion?"

The first man nodded, "That would be fine. However, if we could possibly talk about a discount for some StimPaks in lieu of currency? That medicine is always sorely needed by missionaries and the Dominion in general."

Lily pursed her lips. She had started a StimPak breeding vat, a small one, but it wasn't producing yet. She was using mutafruits as the main biomass, presently, as they seemed to work the best out of any plant matter she had tested. Her stocks of StimPaks weren't super high, but they were certainly high enough for this, especially when she would be having her own production running soon. "Yes, that would be acceptable. I might also, in the future, be willing to sell you such things at wholesale price points."

They looked quite interested in that. However, they firmly declined her offer to assist or even for her to show them where Blaze resided; they looked very uncomfortable at the possibility of her in the line of fire.

One odd question the first missionary asked Lily was her opinion about whether or not there was a God. Lily decided to answer honestly, although it was perhaps a shading of truth, "Well, something happened to me a couple of months ago to make me seriously reevaluate my opinion on the existence of the world of the supernatural, so I can't rule it out anymore." Lily did not think Monsieur ROB was the god that spoke to Moses, though, but she would let these two missionaries come to their own conclusions about what she meant precisely.

Both men nodded gravely, as if they understood completely. The first one smiled, "It often happens like that."

Well, whatever. After that, she concluded the deal, but instead of shaking her hand, the first missionary applied a chaste kiss to the back of her hand. What a charmer, Lily thought!

They departed, and Tombs was grinning at her, "A gentleman suitor?" he asked, to which Lily loudly denied, "No! But a lady appreciates a little class, you know?"

She started to collect herself to depart, but curiousity got the better of her, "Why are zhere so many armed missionaries from zhe Dominion, anyway?"

Mr. Tombs guffawed a little, "Generally speaking, a young man in the Dominion won't be able to take a wife unless he spent a period of time doing missionary work, spreading the good news and all that, right?" He glanced at her, suddenly grinning, "Well, that's except, of course, if he tames a foreign girl and marries her and brings her back to the Holy Land. One of the reasons why they are always very polite with the ladies."

Lily narrowed her eyes, "You needn't be concerned. I don't zhink I'd thrive in zheir culture, so it is quite impossible."

Lastly, she asked Tombs why someone hadn't done what she was doing already, to which Tombs scowled, "Five hundred caps is actually quite a lot for most people. Plus, it is just like you said -- this gang will implode, but a new one will just start up sooner or later. They'll let anyone through the gate if they have enough caps -- tourism is one of the main businesses of Megaton -- and then when they lose or smoke all their money, some of them join these types of groups instead of leaving. It's going to be one of our primary outlays keeping them out of our interests until the neighbourhood can recover some."

Lily nodded; that did make sense.

With that, she left and walked back home, taking a circuitous route this time. She saw the man who was selling her the truck standing there with the truck, looking anxious to get paid.

Lily felt happy with this gang situation, even if it was probably only the first of many, probably solved. She was whistling a jaunty tune, and her Apprentice tilted her head to the side, asking, "You sure are happy to buy a truck, aren't you?"

Lily chuckled, "Happy to send a message. Zhe truck is a bonus."