aaaaaaaagh_sky | Voodoo

Voodoo - Salamank

There used to be forests hereabouts, and farm country to some degree, but that was a long damn time ago. These days whatever grows expends a great deal of effort to do so and looks as unappealing as possible in an attempt to avoid being eaten. As for the farming, well... Voodoo may at some point catch sight of a few creatures in the distance that look familiar. There were critters like that down in Point Lookout. Not a whole lot of vegetable farming to be seen, though, not around here.

Maybe it's that it's October.

Maybe not.

Either way, this is a place where you have to work damned hard to get anything out of the land at all, and not everybody necessarily appreciates that. Some people would rather just take what other people raise up. There's always somebody like that.

It's been a mighty quiet journey south towards Salamank. That wisp of smoke up ahead in the distance has a nasty, heavy, greasy look to it that doesn't exactly promise more quiet.

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If the truth is told, number five is waiting for his emergency combat chems to kick in, because nothing says 'I can totally defend myself against an unseen opponent' like a stimulant that makes you vibrate at speeds a tuning fork would envy.

He's just gonna scootch his rifle out with a baseball cap over the end in the hopes that it takes the shot for him before he tries to aim.

Chems: not even once.

Not. Even. Once.

Voodoo's insulted, Nameless Raider #3. If he could get away with it, you'd be taking one to the nuts for that.

Instead, he shakes his head, grunting in disapproval.

"Uh-uh. Gotta show me some skin, first."

Well, damn. What if he- no, no, there's nothing white left to be seen anywhere-

It feels like the Jet's kicked in. Maybe if he puts both his hands up he'll be fast enough to grab his rifle again and fire on whoever it is once he spots them?

An adequate plan. Not a great one, not by any means, but...adequate.

Well, it would be, if Voodoo was in a prisoner-taking mood.

BANG.

Turns out he's not. Ain't that some shit?

It's a cruel world and Geneva was repudiated more than two hundred years ago anyway. Things happen.

It's quiet. Somewhere in the distance, a dog howls.

He's still for a few minutes, listening.

Then, with a grunt, he digs into the carton on his vest and reloads. Four kills, one incapacitation. Not bad.

He slings Patience over his shoulder and gets all his gear back on. It's quite a hike down to the highway, but it's not like he doesn't have time.

He nods to the prisoners as comes onto the road, touching the brim of his helmet as he moves toward them. "Afternoon. How you folks doin'?"

"Just fine, thanks for asking," says a woman with a face like fifty years of sunburn all caught up with her at once. "Since none of us are dead at the moment, anyway."

The younger woman she's tied to is a little too busy staring at the mess that used to be Hazmat Hood to answer.

"Damn it, I think my husband's blanked out- Thomas? Thomas." She jerks her arm away from the third prisoner, who doesn't respond. "He gets these flashes sometimes when things go poorly, I'm afraid."

Voodoo grunts as he takes his multitool off his vest. "I can work with that."

The rope cuffing them isn't the thickest or strongest - a few seconds with his pocketknife for each of them and it's a done duck. Voodoo moves over to Thomas, waving a hand in front of his face.

"C'mon, pal, show's over." A few quick snaps with his fingers. "Wakey-wakey."

Thomas shudders and shakes his head, hard, before looking up with a decidedly dazed expression.

"He'll be all right in a bit," comes his wife's voice. "It usually takes him about a minute or so to come out of being all confused."

Another grunt as Voodoo stands up, surveying the scene. There's a big blood trail leading off into the distance - he definitely got that one raider somewhere important.

"If any of you can shoot worth a shit, I'd suggest grabbing what you like off these guys. They're not gonna need it anymore."

He nods to the younger woman, tapping her on the shoulder.

"That includes you, miss."

He holds his carbine at low ready, walking along the beginning of the blood trail before looking over his shoulder at them.

"You guys see where the one I got in the leg went off to?"

"Afraid not," says the older woman, but the younger one is scrabbling for the closest gun she can find. Once she's got her hands on a respectable-looking assault rifle, she points a little ways off down the blood trail.

He grunts and sets off down the trail, measuring every step. It wouldn't do to get wasted by the last one standing, oh no. For a brief moment, he considers calling her out - but what's the point, really?

He's got a feeling this is gonna go down the hard way.

The trail leads down a small slope towards a sizable cluster of bushes. From the look of things it probably gets wider in there- it can't have been easy for the raider to have shoved herself in among the undergrowth- but for a day with so little wind, there's an awful lot of branches rustling against each other.

-yeah, no, Voodoo's not that stupid.

He sighs, raising his carbine.

"Come out with your hands up and I won't blow you outta your fuckin' boots."

"Yeah right," the concealed woman yells back. "Who the fuck plugs all my guys and then leaves me alive? I don't think so."

Another sigh.

"Yeah, well, what you think don't really matter right now, now do it?"

He shifts on his feet.

"Lemme put it this way. I'm gonna count down from ten. By the time I reach one, you're gonna be out here reachin' for the sky, or I'm gonna toss a frag your way and move on. Ten. Nine. Eight-"

"All right, all right, I'm coming, keep your pants on."

This has not been her day so far. It is not getting any better now. Perhaps she should have invested in tougher leather and fewer spikes when she put this outfit together; there'd be less torn skin, anyway.

Perhaps. Either way, it's not Voodoo's problem.

He jerks his head back toward the road, keeping his carbine trained on her.

"To the highway. Keep your hands up and move until I tell you to stop."

She glares at him and makes the rudest gesture she can possibly manage with both hands up in the air before turning to comply.

On the other hand, they're both still up in the air, so there's that.

It's the little things, truly.

Voodoo doesn't even react to the gesture as he marches her back out onto the road. To her credit, she's doing a respectable speed for someone who took a thirty-aught-six to the leg not ten minutes ago.

Once they're back on the road, they keep going until they reach the newly released prisoners.

"Stop. Get on your knees and put your hands on your head."

The raider glances from the stony expression on her former prisoner's face to the rifle in her hands, and then to Voodoo. "Are you shitting me?"

"I said-"

He lets his carbine hang by its sling as he grabs the raider's arms, wrenching them behind her back as he delivers a solid kick to the back of her knees, staggering her.

"-get on your fucking knees-"

He drives her to the ground, keeping her upper body pinned with his torso as he pins her legs with his shin.

"-and put your hands on your fucking head."

"Fuck-"

She grimaces, but just barely manages to pull her arms upward.

"Least I get to leave a good looking corpse," she mutters.

"Yeah, you wish."

He stands up, giving her a brief patdown. It doesn't reveal much - some chems, an empty stripper clip or two, what looks to be a pre-War penny. All of it gets tossed to the four winds behind her.

He stands up, glancing over at the young girl with the rifle. He shakes his head at her.

"Get up," he says to the raider. "Armor off. You'll be givin' it to these people."

The raider opens her mouth to object, looks at the guns trained on her, sighs, and wobbles to her feet. As she nearly falls over she notes, "Like they'll even put this stuff on. I know their type. They're too soft."

The older woman's expression doesn't change, but she makes a gesture that's enough to cause the raider to blanch.

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