Stories from RhyDin & The Rings

Sergeant Major Honey "Sarge" Mills looked like Hell Itself had moved in next door and invited all of the other underworlds over to get weird with some Party Time Mentats, if not necessarily to first-time viewers of her. Her hair was immaculately brushed and meticulously styled, yet she had been leaving it down since the disappearance of her twin daughters, April and May. A few threads hung loose around the Sergeant Major rank patches at her shoulders, still untended after General Oliver signed his resignation letter with a service revolver and sealed it with his brain-matter after his shit-show efforts cost them the Hoover Dam and the Republic's foothold in the Mojave.

Somewhere on her well-worn trek through the halls, a file had made it into Sarge's hands, labeled Fitzroy, Bart Fuckin'. He had nothing at all that labeled him as an NCR citizen, but he did have a lengthy series of incident reports that ran from Baja to Redding, mostly involving a stolen jeep, Chief Hanlon, irate brahmin barons and a series of hardly cruel, but definitely unusual pacification of raiders and less-than-scrupulous law enforcement officers. A quiet snort escaped her as she thumbed through, her booted heel pointing her to find the staffer that had placed the file in her hand and beat them with it for wasting her time... until she found a marriage certificate, with the other party's singular name typed out clearly.... Coydog.


The MP officer still had his right hand loose to snatch his pistol as he kept an eye on the bespectacled weirdo seated in the chair across from Sarge's desk, yet the two seemed at least somewhat conversational. "You're tryin' to tell me that tires come from tree sap from way down south?"

"Sure am." The chair creaked against the worn floor tiles as Bart turned to better face the MP, setting a sneakered ankle on the opposite knee while his fingers laced behind his head. "I dunno if there're any rubber trees left after... y'know, the War, but... that's where folks got 'em before."

"I dunno, man. You're a weird dude. Come in here like dust doesn't exist within five feet of you... Start sayin' stuff that reminds me of when I wanted to play music as a kid..." He narrowed his eyes sidelong at Bart. "You sure you ain't a Psyker pulling a fast one on us all?"

"Uh..." Bart slid one of his hands free to slide his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "... No? I mean--"

Before Bart could attempt an explanation, Sarge Mills blew into her office, looking up from the file just long enough to glance at the MP and offer a curt, but even-tempered "Dismissed." The officer clicked his heels, saluted, and trailed out, closing the door behind him.

The office was hardly cozy. Every bit of creature comfort, from pictures to pens to paperweights, involved either the NCR seal or the two-headed bear in some fashion, though its most prominent feature was the map of the Mojave Wasteland, marked with faded blue and white pushpins connected by different makes of string. Sarge dropped the file onto her desk and stood at-ease, yet an apprehension coiled behind her eyes as she looked over her supposed 'son-in-law.' "... So..." who in the Fresh Green Hell are you?"

"Uh... Bart Fuckin' Fitzroy, ma'am. May I say that you uh... you look just like Co--"

"I'm aware. We're related." With a crease to her brow, she waved for him to continue.

Yup, Sarge was everything that Coydog had warned him about. He winced as his shoulders crept up toward his ears, his leg dropping, hands on his knees, as he piped up once more. "Uh... Yeah, I'm... married to Coydog. I think the paper says Primm, but yeaaah, we aren't... in the Mojave... or anywhere close to here."

Sarge crossed her arms and pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. "Mister Fitzroy, if you're winding up to tell me a story, I'm going to ask that you, instead, wind it the Hell down and tell me what you're doing here."

"Oh! Good. Uh..." He grinned and gave Sarge a thumbs-up. "The straight answer is that something fucked up trying to get April back to Baja, and I wound up there instead. I wanna fix that, and get my happy ass back to Coydog as soon as possible."

Sarge slowly paced toward her map, regarding it for a moment before flicking the pushpin near Rattletail. "... and I want to think you're telling the truth."

Bart leaned forward and parted his knees, leaning his elbows on them and resting steepled fingers against his chin. "If I can get you a face-to-face with Hanlon, you think you can trust his judgment of character?"

With a tightened mouth and furrowed brows, Sarge Mills ran her tongue over her teeth and sighed in resignation with a look to her office door. "... Fine. But if this turns out to be a waste of my time, you'll have a grenade suppository in your future."

Bart hopped to his feet and snapped his fingers. "Sargeant Major Mills, I might do a lotta crazy shit with time, but I sure don't waste it."

Coydog was more like her mother than she would ever, ever admit. On the outside she seemed alright, in spite of the occasional crying and/or screaming fit when she was alone, and the sadness that rasped her voice and haunted her eyes. Yet Bart Fitzroy's absence from her life had left her feeling frantic and broken and so lost that it was all that she could do not to pull her hair out by the roots and run as deep into the desert as she could possibly go.

Such madness would surely have come to pass had it not been for a few things; a hellish and ingrained determination, her son, the hope of Bart's rescue, and Elizabeth Liski.

The air in Coydog's slapdash shack was deceptively chilly despite the dangerously ancient box heater dully buzzing in a corner of the small living room. Beneath a worn comforter the blonde lay curled in a comma around Betty's ample form, relishing in the heat of skin against skin and the steady rhythm of the baker's breathing, even as her cybernetic heart was breaking.

The human condition was riddled with contradictions.

Slowly, careful not to wake Betty, she disentangled their legs. Bart had been gone for two weeks, one day, forty hours and fifty five minutes. It was how Coydog measured time now. She sat on the edge of the bed and stared groggily at the old Topper's Brand Gasoline clock ticking away on the wall. At two weeks, one day, forty one hours and six minutes, The Courier blinked back to reality and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.

"I've gotta get him back," she muttered, sad but sure into the cold night air. "Every day that he's gone just ups the chances of him being deathclaw shit or some lunatic raider's wife."

Betty shifted behind her but she didn't wake up. "I cyean't make dat lobsta sign nothin'.." came a sleep-sodden grumble, followed by a quick, sharp snore.

"You really can't," Coydog nodded her head in agreement and slowly found her feet, careful not disturb her lover's slumber. "Thank you, B-Bop." With a kiss to the woman's temple, she began searching for whatever bits of clothing she could find. From a corner of the room, curled up in his basket, Pork watched his human shaped friend get dressed. His tail thumped lackadaisical against the worn sides of his dog bed.

Tugging on her boots, The Courier locked eyes with the big brindle pooch. "I've got a call to make, Mister Stupid. Be good and watch out for Betty, yeah?"

The dog grunted, stretched and, not surprisingly, went right back to sleep.

_________________________________________________________________________

The payphone was a bit of a walk from the shack, but bundled up in her winter coat and a few pairs of pants, Coydog made it there in no time. The quarter she used had a string on it, and as soon as the phone began to ring she pulled it back and plopped it into her pocket. There was a click, and then a gruff female voice grumbled a near murderous, "What?" on the other end of the line.

Coydog, fixated slightly on a bit of graffiti marring the broken glass sticking out like giant teeth from the phone booth's frame;DON'T DRINK THE WATER. She could hear her sister's clearly annoyed breathing. She narrowed her dark green eyes on WATER. "April? It's me. I think I might know how to fix that transmitter."

The short drive from Council Hall to the ranch felt that much longer with Bart relegated to the back seat, but far be it for Sarge Mills to give the general populace the idea that some dingus (supposedly) from the Midwest Commonwealth could pilfer one of the Republican Army's precious vehicles and drive it around the capital willy-nilly. As the jeep came to a halt, she wasted no time getting out of the passenger's seat and yanking Bart from the back by his collar, sending him over the door and stumbling across the dusty road toward the ranch's fence. "I have had some excruciating journeys in my career in the NCRA, but You!!!" She leveled an index finger toward him, hooked in such a fashion that showed just how much she wished that she hadn't the wherewithal to keep from pulling her service pistol on him. "You take the cake, Mister Fucking Fitzroy, as the most annoying passenger I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with!"

Bart landed with a stumble, a rub of the back of his head, and his eyes crossing at the finger in his face from behind his glasses, seemingly oblivious, but calm as a cucumber. "Uh... yeah, sorry about that. I'm... really bad at not driving."

"No Shit! Now where's Hanlon!?" Steam would have shot from Sarge's nose with her snort as she fixed her jacket and leveled her algae-green eyes across the troops clustered at the ranch's entrance.

Both the broad-brimmed hats and gas-masked helmets of Rangers both Veteran and otherwise parted, revealing the shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, trimmed beard and worn, yet warmed eyes of the former Ranger Chief, complete with a shit-eating smirk that had crept into his repertoire since his retirement. Hanlon let out a gravely guffaw once he caught sight of both Bart and Sarge, his arms crossed casually. "Sergeant Major Honey Mills, as I live n' breathe." He grinned and pointed to the displaced gearhead with his chin. "This fella givin' you as much of a headache as I figger?"

Sarge clicked her heels and saluted the former Chief before rolling her eyes and growling in the back of her throat. "Like you wouldn't believe. He says you'll vouch for him, and his gecko-brained story about my girls disappearing."

"Well..." Hanlon scratched at his chin, side-eyeing Bart with a devilish little smirk. "... You feel like hearin' a yarn or two there, Miss Honey, or wouldja rather I--"

Sarge's jaw tightened and her eyes narrowed on Hanlon. Accordingly, he adjusted the kerchief around his neck and cleared his throat.

"Erh... since ya put it that way..." Hanlon dipped his chin with a single nod. "Our boy Bart's an odd duck, but his story checks out." He stepped to Sarge's side to speak without the mage picking up on his words. "And don't get me wrong, he's wily as a night stalker, but... I think he might be a pinch too stupid for deception."

Sarge nodded in confirmation to Hanlon's assessment, her neutral expression refusing to crack. "I've noticed... but I wanted to hear it from you, first. Well..." She stepped back and beckoned Bart over with a swift cant of her head. "Now that I have you both here, let's hear it. What're the next steps?"

"Welp, I heard some intel from the Westins that up near the Divide there's a strange rock formation out on the flats. Brahmin been vanishing around there, no raiders or rustlers or predators around, neither." Hanlon up-nodded Bart as he approached, cheeks full of a Fancy Lad cake. "I think that's what our boy's lookin' for."

Sarge stiffened at the thought of the Divide before setting arms akimbo and kicking a bit of dirt from her boot against a nearby rock. "... Not far from where April and May vanished on me..."

"Yab!" Bart chimed in, mouth still full, before swallowing down hard and wiping his mouth on his rally jacket's sleeve. "Ughm... Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for. If we can find that spot, I'm betting we can get everybody back where they need to be."

"Good." With a curt nod, Sarge began to head back to the jeep. "Hanlon... retirement's suiting you." The retired chief straightened up and adjusted his vest proudly, though his body language shifted obsequiously before she could catch sight. As Bart began to follow in behind her, she held up her hand and shook her head. "Sorry, Bart. Property of the NCR." She tapped the driver's arm, prompting him to crank the engine back into nuclear-powered life and maneuver it back onto the main roads toward Army Headquarters. "Get my girls back to me."

"Sure will!" With his hand shielding his eyes from the dust, Bart waved to Sarge as the jeep drove away, leaving him and Hanlon standing shoulder-to-shoulder. As the Rangers drifted back to their patrol, the two looked out toward the eastern sky.

"... Got some hike ahead o' ya, Bart." Hanlon simply brushed the dust from his clothes and ambled into the ranch, with the Rangers closing in behind him. "Best not leave Miss Honey waitin', now!"

"Fuck you too, Hanlon!" Bart waved warmly, offering a grin before adjusting his glasses, taking a deep sigh, and starting off on foot toward the Wastes.

Fennec John Mason fell into that tragic category marked boy genius, and his mother, not exactly the exploitative sort, still recognized this. It did not bother her to ask for help from a fourteen year old, not when she had been working since she was twelve, and besides, Fennec seemed to brighten at the prospect of pitching in for pancakes.

So it was that the early morning found a sleep deprived Coydog sitting in a cracked vinyl booth across from her son. While her bacon and eggs remained worryingly untouched, Fenn was already halfway through a massive stack of pancakes so doused in butter and syrup that Coydog felt her teeth begin to ache. As he washed a huge forkful down with some orange juice, Coydog took a sip of her coffee and finally cleared her throat. The boy paused, blinked his dark, dark eyes and reluctantly sat his fork off to the side.

"....this about that weird alien transmitter thingy, Mom?"

It was such an honest cut and dry kind of question that for a moment Coydog was struck dumb. Shaking her head, she stole another nip of coffee and relished the heat radiating off of the cup. "Can't get much by you, can I, kid?"

Fennec shook his head and motioned for her to continue, so eager was he to resume eating.

Coydog took a deep breath, one finger tap-tap-tapping against the tabletop. "Yeah. This is about the transmitter. Uh, how much do you know about that, anyway?"

The boy ran a hand through his halo of wild, black curls. "I know Bart's missing because of it and Aunt April is super miffed 'cause she can't get back home now." The look that he leveled upon his mother was inappropriately earnest for one so young. It was such a serious look that Coydog had to bite back her laughter. Fenn reached for his mother's plate, and when she didn't stop him he pulled it close. "Mom there's other fish in the sea. You can do better than Bart. Lila's dad says so, and he has a doctorate, soooo..."

The blonde probed the inside of her cheek with her tongue and uttered a Nnnnhnn. Lila was a kid that went to Fenn's school and she was notorious for running her mouth. It wasn't a secret that Lila's dad would have eaten a pound of hot coals just to sweat in Coydog's shadow. "Lila's dad can go fuck himself. He's sweaty and weird and he smells funny." After a moment of fussing around in his backpack, Fennec produced a jar full of quarters. On the front, written in black marker were the words SWEAR JAR. Without a thought, Coydog wrangled a quarter from her pocket and dropped it through the slot in the lid. "You're not getting rid of Bart that easy, Fenn. And besides, he loves you. You just won't give him a chance."

The boy looked unamused and unmoved as he secreted the jar away once again. "Yeah yeah yeah. He's a dink, Mom. Plus, he's probably deathclaw crap by now. Dad and Molly think so too."

Coydog leaned back, arms crossed at her chest and her eyes narrowed. It was best not to get her dander up; best not to give into those horribly intrusive thoughts that tried to convince her that Bart was dead. "Mm. Well in that case I'll just ask someone else to help me...." And she waited, and waited, watching as he wilted from the corner of her eye. When his shoulders visibly slumped Coydog knew she had him.

The boy heaved a sigh and begrudgingly picked up his fork. "No, Mom. I'll help you get your dumb ol' husband back. I owe you for not telling Dad I was the one who burnt down the barn."

"Okay then. I'm gonna see if I can get Dillon to find some pieces, then I'll need your help putting that transmitter back together. Clear?"

Fennec looked up from his meal and blew a wayward hank of hair from his face. "Crystal." And with that the kid went back to feeding his face.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After their breakfast was finished, Coydog - despite the boy's protestations - gave Fennec a kiss on the cheek and a hug in front of other people before walking him to school. Lila's dad was there, and he made sure to wave at her from his modest, powder blue sedan, his face eaten up with faux sympathy and very real want. The blonde looked visibly disgusted and hoofed it out of sight after flipping him the finger. Her ever faithful eyebot companion whirred and vroomed behind her, as he had since the trio had left the cafe. His little top antenna was vibrating as a tinny rendition of a supremely young Ray Stevens' Jeremiah Peabody's Polyunsaturated Quick Dissolving Fast Acting Pleasant Tasting Green and Purple Pills rattled his chassis.

"I kind of wish you were with Bart, ED-E boy. I kind of wish..."

And then it hit her. She turned on the heel of a cowboy boot to face the little robot, one hand slapping against her hip. ED-E interrupted the song with a resounding chirrup-beep-vrrrt! of happiness at seeing his fleshy friend. Unbeknownst to him, and beyond the scope of his programming, he did not recognize the scheming look on Coydog's face.

The Divide was a wound in the earth, wrought by a nation's hate and inflicted by its descendants' ignorance, that would weep, burn, and ache forever more. Insidious, humanoid creatures, called "Tunnelers" for the sake of brevity, carried its blight from beneath, slowly, steadily digging outward. The flayed, still-living shapes of soldiers persisted long after their humanity had blown away in the irradiated sandstorms, venting their everlasting pain on whatever dared to move within their scope. Most rulers of Hells would have considered these, along with the treacherous landscapes, strangling radiation and flesh-eating winds, to be enough malevolence to craft a proper realm of despair, but even then, deathclaw, the two-story-tall apex predators of the Wasteland, hunted here as well.

And so it was that Bart, bloodied, burnt, poisoned and weary, stumbled through the steel door into one of the innumerable silos that pock-marked the Divide, his featured hidden behind an eerily familiar riot helmet and a piecemeal cloak made of car seat upholstery and twisted metal. Leaving a speckled breadcrumb-trail of blood behind him, he staggered down the dreary, off-center hall, veering to the right by dint of the chunk torn out of his side and the cant that the structure had taken thanks to the seismic unrest beneath. His breath rattled and hissed as he fell through a doorway and curled into a ball, coughing and sputtering as the Divide's reach began to catch up to him.

A soft, low tremor rattled through the building, as if the Divide itself sighed in anticipation of the blazing hot soul that it would consume, to add to its now multiverse-stretching notoriety.

In Bart Fuckin' Fitzroy, it would find no satisfaction, if only because it pissed him off too much for him to die. He had, in fact, and by pure accident on his part, found his way into the eyebot assembly chamber.

With a ghoulish inhale, Bart removed his helmet, turning his spider-webbed, cracked-lensed gaze toward the pod, then to the scramble of parts around him. "... ED-E... Huh..."

Then, as a low, growling hum vibrated out from his body and through the floor, in time with the burble of another tremor, the machine began to fire up once again. Each inhale set his wounds on fire, and each outward breath he harnessed from a pained yowl into a low chant in something more primal than the spoken word.

His Will Was in Motion.

As bile and blood sputtered from his mouth and puddled in the floor, the pod sparked and crackled, forming a sphere of antennae, plasma welders, and other pre-War technologies hidden by time in the Wastes, and completely arcane to the mage's homeworld.

With a resounding, triumphant series of beeps and whirrs, the medical eyebot gave its birth cry. It was nowhere near as complex as ED-E, neither the one that followed Coydog to places elsewhere, nor the warm-hearted droid that gave its life to halt the launch sequence that would have doomed both armies during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. It was, however, a damned good transmitter. It scanned the fetal, bleeding mess of mage on the ground, its arc welder readying to deploy, before another hum reached out and rattled its circuits until it closed the sparking fork in favor of its bizarre 'healing beam'.

As the strange light washed over Bart, he continued to hock up chunks of biological 'something,' spitting out irradiated tissue as the light replaced it with Burning Hot Fresh New Body Stuff. It was enough to lull him to sleep, until he heard a familiar voice, one he had ached to hear for weeks, chirp through the machine.

"Kkkk-kt-tk--art?... Bart?? Are you there??"

He pulled his makeshift cloak around himself tighter as tremors wracked his nervous system, renewed nerves shrieking in their rebirth as a cold sweat brought a sheen to his skin. "S-sure am... Coydog..."

"Bart!!"

The bawling wails that tested the might of the newly-formed eyebot's speakers issued forth such a sense of joy and relief that even the Hell outside fell silent, if only for that moment where two souls across time and space acted as one, through ingenuity and grit, to touch from across the Void.

Fixing the transmitter had not been a particularly successful endeavor for The Courier. It had, in fact, been an absolute failure. Shocking to her, though not surprising to the rest of humanity, her fourteen year old son had not been able to put the transmitter back together again, despite the lickity-split acquirement by Dillon of the needed materials. Fennec had no frame of reference when put face to face with the transmitter's alien technology, and the boy genius' efforts to fix the damned thing had rendered any hope of future repair impossible.

Coydog was not angry at the boy. It wasn't his fault, really, but that knowledge did not stop tears of grief from trailing down her cheeks, or the frustrated, anguished scream that followed. It so startled Fennec that he dropped his backpack, sending tools scattering at his feet. His dark eyes grew wide, fixated as they were on his mother, and the color drained from his face.

"Mom, are you gonna kill me?"

A horrified look struck Coydog then, her eyes red and puffy from crying and her voice only slightly raspy. She reached a hand out to him, bidding him closer. "Fennec, no. No. I'd never hurt you. It's not your fault, baby. Please don't think it's your fault. I'm..I'm the moron that made you do this."

To her surprise he did not turn tail and run away, screaming in terror. Instead she watched those dark, dark eyes shift from side to side, as if he was unsure about moving closer. But then he did, and when he was close enough he knelt down next to her, only to be gathered into an almost cloying bear hug. He did not protest or fight. Fennec was a good child and did not like to see his mother cry.

"What are you gonna do?"

She buried her cheek against her child's head and heaved a heavy sigh. The pile of technological rubble just yards away almost seemed to taunt her. "I'll have to hope that Plan B works, Fenn."

"What's Plan B?"

The boy shifted in her embrace and she looked down into his face, her heart wracked with a storm of conflicting emotions; there was the grief and disappointment of their failure and Bart's unknown status mingling with a love for Fennec that was so big and bright that it threatened to burn her alive.

"We'll have to boost ED-E's signal and hope Bart's near a two way radio."

Fennec's features scrunched up and he shook his head like a dog dislodging a bee from its mouth. "Mom, that sounds like a long shot..."

Before he could think better of the hug, Coydog pulled him closer and began to rock back and forth. A miserable laugh tumbled from her lips. "Oh honey, life ain't nothing but a series of long shots. It'll make sense one day."

The boy stuck his tongue out. He highly doubted that. There wasn't much about his mother or her life that made sense.

Fenn wondered if that might be genetic.

So it was that the Courier and her child mapped out the location of the tallest radio tower in the area. It was hours away from the shack, but that didn't stop Coydog, the boy, and ED-E from hunting it down in its godforsaken corner of the desert. It was night time by then and already cold. Fennec tended a small campfire at the base of the massive, blinking spire, one of his mother's revolvers loaded and tucked into his backpack just in case some night-time beasty tried to make a meal of him. High above him ED-E hovered, keeping pace with Coydog as she climbed. The tower swayed slightly, screeching and groaning, its ragged beams promising tetanus should The Courier place a hand or foot where it didn't belong.

Once there at the top, shivering despite her shearling coat, Coydog whistled for ED-E. That high up even the little EyeBot shook and grew sluggish in the cloud speckled chill. Hanging from a hole drilled into his chassis was a length of frayed wire. The blonde reached out a leather gloved hand, grabbed it, and tugged it and the robot closer. Careful not to snip any live wires with some rubber handled scissors, Coydog quickly patched ED-E in. The little robot hummed, vibing as he was with the radio tower.

Coydog swung herself to the other side of the tower and followed its spire up with her eyes, all of the way to where its blinking tip disappeared into the tempestuous swirl of clouds. "Okay ED-E," she shouted, steam chasing her words. "ENGAGE BABY!"

Her eager expression was swiftly crumbling to disappointment when five minutes passed and nothing happened. But then there was a click and the hiss of radio static. Her heart went insane in her chest, fueled by that awful hope. Coydog took in a deep, trembling breath and cried into the winds.

"Bart?? Are you there??"

More static and then, "S-sure am... Coydog..."

"Bart!!" So jubilantly did she shout his name, and so full of absolute joy was she, that Coydog nearly lost her grip on the tower. A bit of fancy footwork against an eyebeam and an arm slung around another, she righted herself. Tears stung her cheeks. Bart was alive. She'd fucking known it!

"Huh... Huhur... Hahuhurhurhurhuhrhurhur.... Oh wow, man... Hey, did you turn on ED-E's little communicator thing like, a minute ago?"

She sniffled and grinned. It didn't matter if anyone else could see it. "Yeah! Uh..yeah, yeah I did. It's so good to hear your voice, Bart." Then the pained hitch in his voice really hit her and her heart suddenly froze. Her brows furrowed. "Are you okay? Are you hurt? You..you sound hurt."

"Oh, Yeah!!! I'm >gl-hlourglk!!<... Hff... I'm hurt real bad, but... I uh.... turned on this Medical ED-E like... a minute ago, so... Heyhey!! Hurhurhur."

"Medical ED-E?" There was only one ED-E that she knew of, at least since the one in the Divide had heroically sacrificed itself in a blaze of utter glory. She eyed ED-E, her ED-E, floating nearby. Had to have been another eye-bot, not that Bart would have known. "....Is Medical ED-E working on you? He should be using his little healing zap gun..thing." The tears began anew and it was all that she could not to start sobbing. "Oh Bart. I'm gonna get you home, okay? I'm gonna get you back to me."

"Blblrrrlblrlblrblrbl-Guk!!! Phew! Yeah, that's why I'm... makin' all these scary noises. This beam is really... not meant to treat Everything From the Divide all at once. Oh yeah! I'm in the Divide!!! You know I love you, right?"

"The Divide?" She howled, silently cursing the universe beneath her breath. "Oh shit. What in the hell are you...yeah. Yeah. I know you love me, but you really need to get out of there."

"Yeah, I gathered that." He spoke plainly, as if discussing weather conditions. "Anyways, I found a time travel rock in the flats west of here. Met Hanlon, n' the Sarge..."

Sarge? The woman blinked away her tears, made cold from the altitude and the desert night. Coydog hadn't laid eyes on her mother in almost ten years. She shook her head; she could ponder the chances of Bart finding Sarge later. "You met my mom? That's...one way to do it, I guess." She couldn't strike the tears from her voice, no more than she could keep them from welling up in her eyes again as she spoke, but at least there was the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. "I'm sorry." It was a weak attempt at humor.

"Aw Cakes, it's a-a-all good!" He seemed to laugh in spite of himself, though he did sniffle. "She doesn't take a lick o' shit from anybody. She'd fuckin' hate me, but she'd miss me if she got to know me."

Coydog's hands were shaking where the gripped rusted metal. "...yeah," she muttered softly, sure that the wind would carry the words away. "That sounds like Sarge alright." Then she looked over her shoulder. From where she was, she couldn't see the ground below; just the pinpoint light of Fenn's campfire in a vast sea of cloud streaked, bruised darkness. Taking a deep breath, the Courier looked up. "...can we please wax poetic about Honey some other time? I don't know how much longer this signal can hold up here. I need you to tell me where you are. Exactly where you are. Describe shit to me if you have to."

"I am in the Hopeville Missile Silo, say so on the tin. I'll get outta here. But before I go, you know anybody I can take this guy to if he needs fixin'? Your fittings are like... I ain't used to 'em for little stuff, and shit happens a lot around here!"

"Okay. So you're pretty close to the exit. Good, good, that's good. When you get through the big old blue buses, there should be a box in this heap of trash on the other side. It's a long shot, but there might be a stim-pak in there, and a pistol." Deep breath. "You'll need to find The Followers, like May's folk. You're best bet is Freeside for that. The uh, the Old Mormon Fort if they've not amscrayed. They can probably fix your, uh, ED-E, and patch you up too."

"Nice, nice... Definitely gonna need that stimpak." He had the hint of a benign scheme in his voice. "Alright. Followers in Freeside, in the Old Mormon Fort. Got it... Shit. Wait--!! Shsh.... ... ... There's more o' those skinless guys in here..."

Fuck. Coydog stayed silent, lest she alert the Marked Men to her husband's location. It was all that she could do to keep her teeth from chattering.

Then Bart's voice - tinny though it was due to time and the vast distance between them - began again. "Hey, I'm gonna go do my thing." A few low electric hums came through the transmission, cutting through in waves of static that he spoke between. "I Love-- You. See Yy-You S-Soon."

"I love you too. I love you, I love you, I love you, Bart! Magic and all! Get to the Big Empty! The satellite! Find the satel---*Click*"

And just like that Coydog was alone again, with only the beating of her heart and ED-E's steady humming to keep her company. With a sigh, she hung her head, her blonde hair falling to curtain the sides of her face.

"Well bawls."

It was innocently enough that the hulking automaton, balanced on a single wheel, outfitted with grenade launchers, gatling lasers and missile bays and a monitor screen featuring an army man's face, issued its declaration to a certain Mister Bart Fuckin' Fitzroy.

"Move along."

"You move along."

The securitron's camera, mounted across its hulking "shoulders," refocused on Bart, with his ratty canvas cloak, pauldrons made of straight-up trash, gas mask around his neck and cracked eyeglasses, defiantly leaning against the wall between Freeside and the Strip while pulling the meat from a roast gecko leg with his teeth. It had no way to quantify the sensation it felt looking at the gearhead mage, the micro-expressions that seemed to pick at its seams while simultaneously showing neither aggression nor apprehension. Eventually, it wheeled away, resuming its patrol around New Vegas' bustling slum. "Self-control is a virtue."

"Sure is, buddy." Bart followed the securitron's movement with his eyes, a brow raised, then sighed before meandering back into the tent village by the Old Mormon Fort.

Though years had passed since the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, the air around the Old Mormon Fort was thick with both stress and sadness. In spite of the relatively advanced medical devices and half of the recently-constructed tents now empty of convalescents, the Followers of the Apocalypse who operated there seemed possessed of a tension that bolstered and consumed them in equal measure. The tension was enough to get Bart to stretch out his arms and chest as he neared one of the technical research tents, spreading his hands out wiiiiiide before twisting his trunk, rolling his neck, and kicking the accrued tension out with a snap from each boot and a satisfying crackle. "Bwurghhurghurgh..."

"What on earth--?? Oh, it's you." April Martimer, Eng. D and Follower, sighed in relief, unable to fight the little smile at the corner of her lips on spotting the weird, weird (presumed) Wastelander at her tent's opening. "I've been meaning to ask you: How'd you know to bring this eyebot here?"

"Oh! Uhhhhh... heard it from uh... from a courier. Goes by Coydog..."

"Corey Dobbs, the Courier herself!?" Dr. Martimer let out a whoosh of a sigh and shook her head. "She sure gave us a lot of work to do, after the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. We were lucky to have the solar panel research she gave us and keep the lights on once all the refugees started pouring in. Speaking of..." She beckoned Bart closer to look over her shoulder at the bizarre lens that slotted in the eyebot's welding laser. "You familiar with this thing right here?"

"Uhh... yeah, it's like a.... heal-y zapper thing. It's pretty cool, but you end up puking out any dead tissue, and... kinda puts you in shock if you aren't careful, so I wouldn't use it on anything real... complicated..." He rubbed at his left flank in memory, where the skin was still Shockingly New.

"I... will...." Dr. Martimer watched Bart's movements out of the corner of her eye as she jotted on a clipboard. "... make a note on that. Are you implying we can... keep this?" She had so little experience with 'boo-boo eyes' in her life that she had no clue that she was making them.

"Aw, yeah! Sure. I figure you guys need it more n' I do. You got all kinds o' people gettin'... roughed up around here, n' if Medical ED-E's little doodad can help, then... hey." The stiff license-plate collar on his pauldrons glinted in the light as he gave her a double-thumbs-up and a little lopsided grin. "But uh..." His tone changed as he looked toward the navy blue whirring securitron rounding past the Fort's entrance. "... who's in charge o' *those* guys?"

The scientist squinted at him for a moment, her brows soon to follow inward to crease. "... Corey Dobbs... The Courier..."

"What?"

"Those securitrons are how she took the Hoover Dam and pushed both the Legion and the NCR out of New Vegas, and kicked off the Tribal Council. Most of 'em stay where they are and send representatives. The Boomers only come down when there's trouble... You're from out West, aren't you?"

Bart glanced from side to side and smirked, just a little. "Uh... could say that, yeah." From what he'd gleaned about her total lack of concern for over-sharing, he'd still managed to keep his Taxi Cab Confessional aura in the Mojave Wasteland. He rubbed the back of his head, brow creasing as his one visible eye took on a sad puppy quality that plucked the heartstrings. "Gotta admit... they're kinda scary..."

"I wouldn't worry too much about them. Arcade and a few of the other Followers have put in a de-escalation protocol that puts some flesh-and-blood mediators to shame." She sighed through her nose and looked back to the eyebot's armaments, taking what looked like a forked Philips-head screwdriver out of her kit and started undoing its mounting. "I hate to say it, but it doesn't hurt that they bring Gatling lasers and missile launchers to the negotiating table, either."

"Speak softly, but carry a big stick." He let his hands drop, crossing beneath his cloak as he nodded, warmly. "Yup... sounds like uh... Corey." He fought the snicker by covering his mouth and sliding his broken glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"You know it." She cleared her throat and glanced at the tent's opening. "Not that I mind your company, but... I can't work when I'm distracted." She smiled apologetically and flicked her eyes toward the medical tent. "I um... I think we might have some lenses for you in Check-Up..."

He smiled dumbly, then snapped to attention, scuttling backward through the opening while offering a double-finger-guns. "Oh! Crap, yeah. Thanks!"

Dr. April Martimer's lips quirked as she set back to the very precise, very dangerous work of retrieving a "Heal-y Zapper" for the Followers of the Apocalypse. It soon blossomed into a smile. "Stupid~."

Long after Fennec had went back home to his step-mom and dad, his mother set up camp at the base of the old radio tower. She was faithful and loyal after all, not unlike a cocker spaniel, and it behooved Coydog to think that Bart wouldn't be able to contact her. Somewhere in the darkened desert around her lurked her sister April. She most likely wouldn't join her youngest sister by the campfire, for while Coydog shunned civilization but enjoyed people, Ranger April Mills cared for neither. April's twin sister May, however, seemed content to share in the warmth of the fire, safe in the knowledge that should some snarly-beasty or unknempt raider inexplicably get past April, Coydog could shoot clean through a keyhole. High above them, still patched into the antenna, hummed ED-E.

Coydog lounged lazily against an old bristlecone stump, her fingers laced against her stomach and long legs stretched out in a way that kept the rubber soles of her hiking boots nice and warm. Across the fire sat May with her legs crossed and the flame catching and coddling the copper red of her bobbed hair, as prim as any victorian, her usual aloof, haughty air nowhere to be found. She couldn't quite fight through the fatigue she felt, as if her very soul ached, and her heart hurt at the thought of being separated by time and light-years from her twin.

It was these details that were lost on Coydog, who was losing her battle with sleep beneath the black Stetson cowboy hat resting on her face. This must have bothered May, who cleared her throat and barked out a loud cough.

Coydog muttered something muggy and muddled before tumbling back into the dawn of sleep with a snort. The next cough didn't register, but the dozen that followed grabbed on and slowly drug the Courier back to the waking world with a cranky, "...that cough sounds rough. Physician, you might wanna heal thyself."

On the other side of the fire May's grin grew wider. "Oh good, you're up." Not a hint of drowsiness in her voice. Damned night owls.

The blonde took a deep breath and let it out of her nostrils. "Why won't you just let me sleep, May?" She whined beneath her hat. Unseen by Coydog, the ginger rolled one shoulder into a shrug.

"Tell me something before me and April head back to hell."

In the darkness beneath the Stetson, Coydog opened one eye and then the other. Slowly she sat up, though her sore body did protest; muscles stirred and aching around the deep down tired that penetrated her bones. She eyed the redhead, resplendent in the firelight, with a distrustful, if not confused, glare.

"What?" Since she was up, much to her chagrin, Coydog removed her handy dandy mint tin from her jacket pocket. Soon she was rolling a joint. "

May did not move, aside from the sly cat curl at a corner of her mouth. "What's your deal, little sister? What makes a mailman The Courier?"

"Oh." Coydog paused mid-roll and stared down at the joint. It was far too late for such a question, but in the end it wasn't that difficult to answer at all. Huffing and puffing, and once the joint was finished and lit, toking, the woman met her sister's patient stare with her own, their eyes the same dark, dank green. "Revenge and really bad brain damage." The smoke rolled like phantoms from slightly parted lips. "At first. Then it was just realizing how all these little boys and girls hoping to be kings and queens, not even seeing that good folk were suffering. I just wanna do good. That's my deal, May, just like you. I just wanna do good."

The redhead shook her head in polite decline when offered the weed. She was high on life and still buzzed on the martinis from earlier in the night. There it was; a full-fledged smile with a lick of May's usual cocky smartassery. "Just what I thought. Absolutely tragic."

It was Coydog's turn to smile. The little speaker next to her spewed out static suddenly - also connected, somehow, to pick up ED-E's signal. It was easier than having to climb that damned tower. Coydog nearly kneed herself in the face in her scramble to grab the little box. May remained as she was, and she stayed quiet.

A man's voice, made tinny by distance and the speaker's crap quality, filled the air. ""Hey, uh... Coydog?? ED-E, is Coydog around?"

"Bart!?" Coydog spat into the static storm. "Bart!? Yeah! I'm here!"

"Oh Hey! Hurhur."

Her poor heart melted.

"Yeah, I just uh..." Bart looked to the close-up of a single, darting eye that played on loop on the ancient drive-in's screen, then to the broken satellite which projected it, from behind the lenses on his patched-up shined-up riot helmet, the wind tugging at the upholstery leather and canvas at the edges of his cloak. "... wanted to give you a shout before I went to uh... where'd you call it?"

"Big Mountain!" Coydog was just happy to hear Bart talk, and the sudden scrambling noise of the speaker finding its way to her hands soon followed. "But if you end up meeting the Think Tank? And you really wanna bother them? Call it Big MT."

In the background, May could be heard muttering a quiet "... What the fuck is Big Mountain?" in a fashion that laid out how much she didn't care about the answer.

"Yeah, I don't think I'd do so good around something called a 'Think Tank.'" He rubbed the back of his head, then threw his hands up and out. "Welp, Balls to the Wall. Love ya, Cakes. See ya soon!"

"I love you Bart! Don't die! Please!"

He reached up to the medical eyebot, turning off its transmitter, and giving its side a little pat. "Alright, bud. You know whatcha gotta do."

The eyebot made a series of electric squeals, dipping down and bobbling back up in affirmation. It turned gradually, gyroscopically lining up to south-southwest, and sped off in a straight line toward Rattletail, in what used to be Baja California.

"Good luck, Medical ED-E." Bart raised a wave in the robot's wake, then, with no small amount of jitters, hit the button to activate the satellite.


Bart felt something like an immaterial river sweeping him up in the current as the satellite transported him hundreds of miles away in a packet of inexplicable energies. He saw nothing but white, but he could feel the entire journey. Regardless of the convenience, transportation always felt far too invasive for him. As white made way to shadows, depth, and finally color, he landed in a metallic, yet strangely warm environment, and a multitude of voices all crying out at once.

"YAAAAAAAY--!! Huhh??"

Bart just stood there with his hands out, his mechanics gloves still worn in the seams from beneath the weather-beaten denim. "... Uh... Hello?"

A confusing series of voices chimed in around him, all seeming to express that he wasn't quite who they were expecting. At least one said something about putting seeds in him, and another called him a Red Menace in as much time. "Uh..." He took off his helmet, trying to sort through the voices. One in particular cut through the din, from an adjoining room.

"GET ME SOME FUCKIN' MUGS!!! GOD, I HATE MYSELF!!!"

The lights in the room turned a sultry, rosy pink while the jukebox continued a low, gravelly ramble about the exploits of a gramophone it once knew. The sink kept barking Filthy! Filthy! Filthy! at the intruder.

"Uh... aaaagh, I bet you've all got some interesting shit to say, but I'm gettin' outta here, man." He ducked through the rooms to look for an escape, only to stumble into a bedroom lined in pinup posters spanning genders and eras and loaded with firearms of varying stripes. "... Welp, found Coydog's room!" A tiny whirr and thunk brought Bart's attention over to the nightstand.

A tiny securitron, standing no taller than Bart's knee and featuring an anthropomorphic mug on its screen, slumped there, despondent as its tubular arms lie limp at its sides. "... It's pointless, isn't it?"

The mage spent a while observing the little securitron. At this juncture in his history, he had yet to discover - and get lost in - Higgs Village. However... there was a house, just off the beach, with a cyberdog, a Coydog, and a penchant for clutter. "C'mon, buddy." He cocked his shoulder and offered the robot a thumbs-up, somehow still corny in his otherwise intimidating helmet and cloak. "We're gettin' outta here."


It was at least an hour after the drop-off time, when April was meant to appear with the transportalponder that the Think Tank had gifted to Coydog, one of her only means of visiting something close to the Mojave Wasteland. Time magic offered some measure of patience, yet after commandeering his third roboscorpion and second wave of both robot arachnids, brainless berserkers and fucking skeletons in spacesuits that still screamed, Bart had about enough.

Steering the Roboscorpion Bomber Mk 7, a fast-food-colored monstrosity big enough for Bart and Muggy to sit on, the gearhead scoured the crater, looking both for a possibly-displaced NCR Veteran Ranger at her wits' end, a stray rip in space-time, anything...

... what he found was a near-pristine sedan, bench seats, classy gray paintjob, and tires you could lose a quarter in and bounce a hammer off of... falling from a hole in the sky, shaped like that mysterious rock that had sent him through the Divide in his vision. It landed intact... but roof-down. Destiny wasn't known for its finesse.

"... Fine." With one last thwack of the robo-scorpion's control panel, the automaton's violent life came to a violent end. "Well, Muggy, looks like we're takin' the long way home."

If Coydog was to be believed - and May found her trustworthiness passable- Plan B should have went off without a hitch:

* Give April the transportalponder
* Once April was there, she could give it to Bart, who would use it to get back to Rhydin.
* It would then be passed to May, who would join her sister in the Big MT and beyond that, hopefully, The Mojave Wasteland. (Goodbye flushing toilets, good food, and clean people! Hello Hell!)
* Coydog/Bart happyfuntimez

Plan B did not go that way at all:

* Give April the transportalponder
* ????????

Somewhere along the way, something went amazingly nutty with the transportalponder. No Big MT for April. Just a flash of light and boom, gone. Bart had confirmed it. The idea of her sister floating around lost filled her heart with lead, but something told May that April was where she wanted to be: Baja. That eerie connection twins had, maybe.

As for Bart? Not one hair could be found of the man. Oh boy...

At the foot of the radio tower, as ED-E zipped scrambled circles around their camp, May sat thinking by the fire, staring dead at a white spot on her thumb nail. "So, Coy? Uh, whatthefuckjusthappened?" Something told her it was best to go numb. Sadly, Coydog hadn't gotten the same memo.

Up until then Coydog had been pacing circles around the campfire, hands wringing and her teeth chattering from the cold and the bastard child of anger and despair. May's voice caused the blonde to stop dead in her tracks and spin a cowboy boot in the desert dirt to face her. Her eyes were glassy from crying, wide and wild.

"...cosmic fuckery," she snapped with such venom and conviction that May saw snippets of Sarge in her little sister. May frowned. Poor Sarge, she thought. "That's what happened, May," Coydog continued, her head falling to the side and her teeth clenched tight enough to send the muscle in her jaw to throbbing.

May sat up straighter, her frown severe, the weight of it crinkling the flesh between her eyes. Though most people seemed to gloss over it, May knew better than to underestimate Coydog's head trauma, or how it manifested under such duress. She kept her voice concise and leveled but not patronizing. "Something went wildly wrong."

"Understatement of the fucking year. Fuck!." Coydog began her circuit again, kicking the now useless speaker off into the darkness. ED-E came to rest by May, keeping a more or less steady hover behind her shoulder while his blonde bestie sank to grief and insanity. May, for her part, kept her hand on the knife she had tucked in her an old hiking boot, dusty and worn from the capricious whims of Cadentia. Just in case.

"We'll just figure out something else," she offered, loud enough for Coydog to hear. "A Plan C..."

Coydog didn't stop, continued to pace like a caged animal. "Plan C," she repeated, and without warning, she threw her head back and let loose a miserable howl that fell to manic laughter. "There...there is no Plan C!" Tears streamed down her red, dust streaked cheeks.

Something skirted the shadows that devoured the world beyond their campfire; fleet-footed and yellow eyed and sly. Only May seemed to pay the presence any mind, her head pivoting on the long, graceful stem of her neck. "Uh. Coy?"

"I fucking hate this!" Coydog cried, increasingly mad and lost in a flood of frustration and sorrow. Whatever stalked them in the darkness answered her cry with a cacophony of high pitched yelps and near otherwordly barks that made the hair on the back of May's neck stand on end. Several somethings. Her long fingers curled one by one around the blade's handle, her dark green eyes wide and worried.

"Coy...those coyotes sound really close." And she could hear them shuffling around and panting. If Coydog was concerned, she certainly didn't show it, and that only fed the cinder block of dread sitting in May's stomach. Why the creatures weren't scattering from Coydog's caterwauling was a disturbing mystery, more so than ED-E's inaction.

"ChiirrruppEEEeep!" came ED-E's two cents. At least he agreed with the Good Doctor.

Finally, when it felt as if all of the chaos would cause May's head to explode, Coydog halted in her track. When her cries ceased, the coyotes' own hellish chorus died down. May's defenses hitched to eleven as her sister prowled to stand between her and the fire. With the heat blocked by Coydog's body, May shivered in the cold.

"You're right," the blonde sniffled pitifully and looked over her shoulder, off into the devouring darkness. "I shouldn't do this. Not here. I'm gonna..I'm gonna go take a walk."

"Uh, yeah," May swallowed and nodded her head, careful not to make eye contact. "You do what you need to. It..it can be hard, losing a spouse, I should know and..."

"Yeah," came Coydog's reply, as much as May was going to get right now, and without another word the courier turned and headed away from her sister and robot and the safety and warmth of the campfire. May's disturbed concern turned to something like horrified wonder as one by one the slinky, tawny forms of the coyotes bounded from the shadows after her baby sister. Five in all if May was counting correctly, like murderous ducklings following their mother.

Eerier still, none of them made a sound, save the crunch of desert dirt under Coydog's boots and even that soon faded away, leaving May alone with ED-E.

"That was...that was fucking weird, right?"

"Bee-hee-EEEP!"

"Thought so."

Great, thought May, I can understand the damned robot now.

She cleared her throat, wrestled her nerves to get a grip on herself, and looked up at the eyebot. What happened next, the words the tumbled from her lips, was something beyond her control. Rationale and reason were like rubber bands, and every weird, unexplained happening that occurred stretched them a bit tighter, until eventually one or both snapped.

"So, you've got an okay life. You're a doctor, you're doing good... but one day, you get stuck in this weird, but pretty nice place. Toilets flush, and the booze is... It's just great! I mean, there might be actual magic, and you're pretty damned sure that lady's horns were real, but you find out your half-sister, who looks just like your mom, but younger and suffering from a few bullets to the head, lives there too. So, you bond, you get hammered... you sleep with her First Recon sniper pal who was at Bitter Springs, because it's just sssso wrrronnng... Mnh! Anyway, she gets you wrapped up because her husband's disappeared, and you've maybe met the guy once, when he drove your cab to the farmer's market. So, she takes you out to the middle of nowhere, out by a radio tower, surrounded by coyotes. And it's cold. So then, she runs of... and on the one hand, she takes the pack of coyotes with her. Why? How? Who the fuck knows. Maybe she's a witch. On the other hand, you're now out in the middle of nowhere, alone, with your little boot-knife."

"Heee-DEE-bee-BOOP!" ED-E declared, insulted.

"And you ED-E, my apologies." May took a deep, deep breath and slowly melted down in front of the log she had been perched upon. "....and what the fuck happened to April?"

There was flask of really good bourbon in her bag, something kept In Case of Emergencies. She fumbled it free and unscrewed the top. With a sigh, she lifted in a toast to the hovering robot. "Well, now's as good a time as any. Looks like it's gonna be a long night, ED-E. I appreciate your company."

(A big thanks to Bart's player for his help with this one! <3)

Through some gumption, and a dash of can-do, and an emergency double-dose of Buffout and Mentats, Bart had finally gotten the car upright, and outfitted it with a layer of roboscorpion bits that happened to still be active. For something called the Big MT, it sure was a cramped place to drive. So, he got reacquainted with the e-brake, and started drifting.

It wasn't the beautiful ballet of perfectly-choreographed near-misses, dust clouds, smug smirks to the camera and recycled footage to the tune of "Low Rider" that the alternate universe direct-to-DVD Bart Fitzroy vs. The Think Tank would have people believe. He pin-balled through a ravine full of glowing orange crystals and took out a tail light on the Y-8 Research Facility's southwest corner, but eventually, he found the right angle, and the right time, to start moving between the edges.

To Bart, it looked as if the world had developed ripples and seams, spilling out into winding roads that led to a starry expanse. To Dr. Mobius and the Think Tank, safe in their respective lairs, it looked as if this nerd in a busted car just drove into a wall, leaving behind a bunch of roboscorpion chunks still juttering, twitching, and finally exploding in a spray of truck-stop fireworks.

Over the megaphones placed across the Big MT, Dr. Mobius, Mad Scientist Brain in a Jar Supreme and creator of the robo-scorpion swarm, gave his final assessment.

"Oo~oo! I like the blue ones! And just in time for the drugs to kick in--I mean, COWER BEFORE MOBIUS!!!"


The more a conscious mind tried to pin down the Backroads that ran into the unpaved corners of Bleeds, Nexuses, Timelines and other multiversal agglomerations, the more dead ends and wrong turns jumped into said mind's path. Luckily for Bart, he had steered his Mentat high into remembering most of the B-52's early discography, which he sang to himself while navigating the fractal expanse before, behind, above, below and beside him. "~Rock Lob-sturr!~ Hurhur..."

It wasn't until the drugs started to wear off, leaving him bleary-eyed, weak, and dull-headed that he started to find his path. The ghost of Coydog's touch on his skin, the scent of gunpowder, coffee and weed, the little crease above her lip when she smiled all guided him through the splintering mess of times and places until coming upon a little blue ball, its twin satellites creeping and zipping respectively across its axis.

He met the unnamed point between laughing and bawling once that weird gray clunker made landfall, on a dirt road just west of Lake Kaiju, and a hint north of RhyDin City.


Coydog could have been a mannequin straight out of some corny Wild West tourist trap for how still she lay, limbs in disarray, across a couch in the Golden Perch Inn. Once in awhile her red, tear swollen eyes would blink, and her chest would rise and fall with a sniffle staggered breath. A deceptive front to mask the storm of awful emotions in her head and that cyborg's ticker. Neither gnome sister bothered her, aside from the occasional ferrying of tissues to the lady.

The engine that whirred wasn't... entirely familiar. It was a guttural snarl instead of a muscle car's purr or dirtbike's whine. However, the engine and light cut before the disk brakes chirped and the machine groaned into 'park.' The cloak around the figure that entered looked like a Trash Monster imitating Darth Vader after slamming himself in the face with a bowl full of gnats. The bug-encrusted riot helmet came off, reavealing a one weathered, sweaty, and exhausted Bart Fitzroy, half-way between grinning and drooling on himself as he spotted the blonde on the couch. "Huh... Hey, Cakes..."

She may not have recognized that snarl, but she recognized that voice. She blinked until tears decorated her lashes, leaving them like spider webs. Slowly she sat up, not without a tablespoon of caution, and turned to look at the man at the door. Grief gave way to confusion and her mouth fell into a frown, and not for the first time she asked, "Am I dead?"

"Nope!" His answer arrived quickly and surely as he finally shucked the cloak made of trash and seat upholstery onto the floor, waving to the gnome sisters in apology. He shot Coydog an apologetic look of his own from beneath his square-rimmed, Vault-scavenged glasses for the ensuing stupid t-shirt design: In sun-bleached and dust-blasted periwinkle, sported a disembodied human rear end with four furry limbs featuring opposable digits and a tail. A 'Butt Monkey,' as it were. "Sorry it took so long... drove as... fast as I could."

She scooched to one arm of the couch, her long legs folded beneath her. Her poor pockets were full of tissues. She looked as if she didn't know whether to cry or scream as she looked her husband over, taking her time to pick up little details...on up to that stupid fucking shirt. It was Bart alright. A breath snagged in her throat. "I...you drove? But...." She rubbed her eyes with her fists, as if that could help her understand...

... And then she was scrambling off of the couch in a flurry of blonde hair and long limbs, her robo heart thumping so wildly, so loudly in her chest that she wondered if he could hear it. The well-worn soles of her boots squeaked against the floor when she came to a stop, only for her to launch herself at him.

"Uh..." He he looked up toward the rafters and squinted, as if that corner right there had all of the answers, but it didn't produce any in time before her launch. "Whoa-hoho!" He took the impact and wrapped her up, still stumbling back a few steps, but catching her into a full-body squeeze before they could reach the door. "It's so good to be here with you. That was a shitshow."

Coydog didn't so much hug him as hold onto him, as if at any moment she feared he might blow away. He was solid and there and her's, and even as happy tears pushed their grief-born cousins out of the way she was peppering his face with kisses. A hand trailed down his arm, paused, and then drifted back up to his bicep to give a gentle squeeze. Huh. A bit more solid than before he'd left. "....did you get uh, ripped or something?"

"Uh..." He stuck out the elbow of the arm she squeezed, furrowing his brow at the deep lines of sinew cut into his arm before chuckling. "Hrhr, guess I did! Kinda lost my taste for Fancy Lad Cakes after leaving the NCR." For some reason, that just made him laugh more, his dopey chortle lulling before taking up her lips in a single, punctuating kiss. "Wanna go somewhere?"

She sat back, her hands on her shoulders but her legs still wrapped around his waist. She was grinning from ear to ear, fit to make the Cheshire cat run for the hills. "Well of course I do, Slick. I'll even ride in whatever craziness you pulled up here in."

"Coolcool." The bizarre combination of armor leaned into a corner of the coat rack on their exit, rusting and spotting and in all forms disintegrating into a pile of dust while the gnome sisters caught up on dishes.

"It's a Highwayman. I'd call it a convertible but... it just doesn't have a roof... any more..." The slate gray box around a pair of couches, fueled by a microfusion cell engine that just seemed So Damn Mad, growled to life once they hopped in, and sped them off back home.

(Partially adapted from live play with Coydog!)

Sergeant Major Honey Mills did not take leave of her own volition, but as time moved onward with no clear sign of her daughters' return, what had begun as simple shaggy edges in her presentation had deteriorated into lost hours, harsh words and the clockwork slosh of distilled liquor behind her office's closed door. The NCR military's office suffered for her absence, enough that they had assigned a detail to make sure she didn't drink herself to death in between stints of deep sleep and waiting by the radio transmitter in her home for a signal.

She could have bashed her own head in with a hammer when she finally registered the radio's crackle and the rough snarl mid-discussion from the speaker.

"--mess down here in Dayglow. Bad news is, the BoS's got some hardline raiding parties jumping on ghouls and pissing on our supply lines. Good news, is we've acquired about seven--" A loud KRAK! echoed in the background, followed by a victorious hoot in the distance. "--eight new power armors to refurbish for the grand ol' Republic of New California. Dumb bastards. Hey, you have any clue how Sargeant Major Mills is do--"

Sarge pushed through the hot hangover pain and vertigo, homing in on the microphone as her pen mug and numerous dossier files scattered to the floor. Her heart nearly burst from her chest as her knees crackled and ankles faltered, leaving her half-seated on her desk chair and holding onto the middle-most drawer for dear life. Her words' measured nature did not match her desperate demeanor. "This is Sargeant Major Mills, over."

"MOM!!! I mean--" April nearly choked on her own surprise once she heard her mother's voice. "Ah, fuck it."

Sarge Mills couldn't fight the sudden deluge of tears or the silent sobs of relief, but the sentiment still didn't touch her voice. "Watch yourself, Ranger. That's not how you address a--"

"Does that really matter right now, Mom?"

The communications officer cleared his throat before speaking. "I'll um... let you two catch up. NCR dispatch out."

Sarge sighed, cradling the microphone with a gentleness that she dare not show outside of the walls of her home. "... It's good to hear from you, April. I've been..." She went to wet her lips, yet finding her mouth dry, she chugged a bottle of purified water before continuing. "... ahh. I've been worried sick about you three. Is May there?"

"No, Sarge, she is not. I'd say it wasn't by choice, but with indoor climate control and hot running water, she went native pretty quick." A silence sat on the line for a solid minute. "We'll hear from her again, someday."

"Mm." Sarge finally made it to an actual, fully seated position at her desk, though her arm still propped her up on its surface to brace against the rhythmic thud in her temples. "And the other one?"

"Coydog's fine. Benny Gecko sure did a number on that thinker of hers. She kept saying something about a robot spine and having her brain taken out and put back in... I just humored her. Anyways, she's back to the delivery business and out of the Kicking the Bear in the Nuts business."

"Good." Sarge finished off another bottle of water in a solid chug before slamming it back onto the counter. The hangover gradually started to let up. "Mmph..." Her tone of voice quieted as the pain in her head and neck subsided. "... It's good to have you back, Ranger Mills."

"Good to be back, Sarge. Ready to make life hell for Hanlon's shitty neighbors?"

"Heh..." She didn't even bother hiding the wistful coo in her sigh. "... Copy that. Hanlon's getting a little too cozy in his retirement. I don't see an issue with taking a page from the Courier's book and ah... 'relocating' some brahmin baron's caps to the rest of the NCR. They have more than enough to share."

"Hahaah!! Copy that, Sarge. Well, I'm getting the signal. Time to go kick a few cans." April's sigh swelled through the hiss of background radio noise. Though the words never came out, her tone as she said "Veteran Ranger Mills out" could have been translated as I love you, Mom to any familiar with the pair.

"Copy that." I love you too, April.