Chapter 94: Karma

Chapter 94: Karma

"Uh V?" Veronica was advancing on me, Oh, Baby! held in hand and a look of absolute murder in her face. I started backing up as quickly as I could. "What's going on?" Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emily duck back into my room and out of sight... and out of Veronica's way.

"I trusted you..." V growled through gritted teeth. "I can't believe I ever trusted you, you lying sack of shit!"

"What are you-" I backed into the wall, and was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of bowel clenching terror. Veronica rushed forward, murder in her eyes, and her super sledge raised high over her head.

I didn't have time to think, I just reacted. I ducked down as low as I could, kicked off the back wall, and just barely managed to roll out of the way just in time. The sound the super sledge made when it hit the wall was massive; it sounded more like a bomb going off than a hammer hitting a wall. Large chunks of plaster rained down on me like lumps of hail.

I pushed off the ground to get back upright and hopped back several feet, to try and put some distance between myself and Veronica. She pulled Oh, Baby! out of the wall, and the hole it left behind was absolutely massive. Hell, it was still crumbling slightly. Several of the now broken wires on the inside were shooting sparks in every direction.

"Whoa!" I yelled, holding my hands up both as an attempt at a disarming gesture, and to get in a defensive stance as quickly as possible. "V! What the fuck is going on?!" A cloud of dust from the crumbling wall billowed all around her, and she dragged the super sledge against the ground as she advanced on me again, threatening to rip up the carpet.

"When were you going to tell me?" She snarled. I kept backing up. "Were you just waiting until I was well and truly broken, you son of a bitch?"

"... tell you?" My blood ran cold. I knew exactly what she was talking about, but I didn't have time to focus. The super sledge was coming at me again. I leapt backward, the massive hammer missing my chest by inches.

"CASS!" She bellowed as she swung again, this time bringing it down like she was chopping firewood. The hammer hit the floor near my feet, shaking everything - including my teeth. "You fucked Cass! Behind my back!" She brought the hammer up and around, swinging it down diagonally, aiming for my collarbone. "She was the one good thing I had left, and you just couldn't let me have that, could you?! You just had to take her away from me!"

I never thought about it before, but that hammer must be really heavy with how much she was forced to telegraph her blows. Because of that, I managed to dodge the swing with barely inches to spare - and rushed forward to try and grab the hammer. I had to get that hammer out of her grip. If she hit me with that damn thing just once, it would turn me to paste.

"V, calm down!" I yelled, doing my best to hold onto the hammer. "I can explain, just -"

And then she head-butted me.

"EXPLAIN?!" I heard her bellow, even over the ringing in my ears from the heavy blow to my skull. "Fuck you! You can't explain this away!" Before I got a chance to open my eyes to check if I could even see straight, I felt my feet leave the ground. "I saw everything! Every video in House's files of you two! Don't even try and deny it, you piece of shit!"

I couldn't keep hold of the super sledge, and suddenly found myself sailing through the air at a great speed... right up to the moment when my back smashed into the wall. I'm sure that if it wasn't for the armor I was wearing - and the fact that I'd been catapulted almost directly into the hole she'd made earlier - that my spine would've shattered.

Of course, when I opened my eyes, the situation was still completely awful. I had a split second view of Veronica before she tackled me through the wall. The already weakened partition was scattered like leaves in the wind, and the two of us went careening through a hail of rubble, plaster, wood, and sparks. Pieces of shrapnel tore at me, and I felt the sting as a few pieces of shrapnel sliced at my face.

We crashed into the dining room, and then somersaulted into the table. In the confusion of so many moving parts flying through the air, I'd managed to bring one of my feet up under her, and I kicked against her abdomen as hard as I could. It wasn't much, but it bought me a little time. Enough to roll away, get back on my feet, and attempt to put some distance between us.

"Veronica!" I yelled over the sounds of the crumbling wall. She shook her head, kneeling amidst a pile of rubble and surrounded by a haze of dust. "It's not a denial! Just let me -"

"No!" She yelled, getting back on her feet. I looked around, trying to find something I could use as a weapon. I had plenty of guns and explosives on me, but I needed something that wouldn't be lethal. "You just couldn't let me have that one speck of happiness, could you? Could you!?" She raised her hammer again, readying to strike. "You took her away from me, just like how you took Elijah from me! And -"

She brought her hammer down, but it was stopped mid-swing - and mid-sentence - by the chair I'd picked up. I'd grabbed the back of it while she'd been talking, and shoved the chair legs up against the hammer's grip, right near her hands, keeping her from moving it any closer to me.

"Don't you try and blame me for Elijah!" I yelled, pushing up against her with all my might; it wasn't really doing much, but I had to try. "He was a genocidal madman! I had to stop him before it was too late!"

"I don't believe you!" She yelled back, clearly winning in this game of rock vs. hard place. I had to change tactics.

"Helios One!" I yelled back. I shifted my stance, and used her own strength (and the leverage offered by the chair) to wrench the hammer out of her hands. "He knew about the ARCHIMEDES weapon!" Before she could respond, I brought the chair back around, bashing it into the side of her head. "And the Red Cloud in the Madre! That's why he was there! He wanted to weaponize it!" I swung the chair again, trying to keep the pressure on before she could attack again, and ended up smashing it to pieces over her head. "He wanted to kill EVERYONE in the wasteland! Starting with the Brotherhood!"

I was going to try and hit her again with what was left of the chair, but she rallied enough to punch me straight in the middle of my chest with her power fist. Because of the Gun Runner armor, it knocked the wind out of me (to say the least) and I didn't know which way was up. All I did know was that I was flying through the air, yet again, and that when I hit the back wall, I definitely heard something crack. I'm not entirely certain if it was the armor, the wall I'd hit, or one of my ribs.

"Oh, that's rich," Veronica's power fist let out of a burst of steam, and she kicked a few pieces of splintered and broken chair out of her way. "Elijah wanting to kill the Brotherhood... like the way you killed those Paladins?" Her power fist reset with a heavy clunk.

"It was either that, or it was let Cutter's team kill us!" I braced myself against the back wall, slipping silently into VATS to help aid my reflexes. "And remind me - who beat Cutter to death in a burning building again? Oh, THAT'S right..."

"But you knew!" She yelled, readying her fists. "You knew that if I left the Brotherhood, they'd come after me! That's why you convinced me to leave, isn't it? The perfect excuse for slaughter! Just one more thing you could take away from me!" In a flash, she was leaping through the air, fist ready for the punching.

"V, listen to yourself!" I sidestepped her blow - thanks almost entirely to the focus of VATS - and deflected her arm so she ended up punching the back wall instead of me. The wall cracked and buckled at the strike. "This is crazy!" I grabbed at her hood, yanking it with all my strength, and pulling it over her eyes. I could have tried attacking her while she was distracted by the tangled mess of burlap obscuring her vision, but instead I just backed away as she fumbled.

"Crazy?" She muttered, grunting as she grabbed at the hood. "Like Elijah? Is that how you justified it?" As I kept backing up, I realized she wasn't just removing the hood - she was ripping her whole robe off. "Or was it just something fun that you knew would break me? Something else to do to me once the thrill of fucking Cass wore off?!"

Veronica tossed aside her robe, and for the first time I got a good look at the armor she wore underneath it. It was a mixture of metal plates, wires snaking around her limbs, and some kind of form-fitting bodysuit. It was obviously highly advanced - so advanced, that I couldn't figure out how it was actually powered. I didn't see any pistons or hydraulics. And that's when I realized: the 'bodysuit' under the metal plates was actually made of hundreds of cables, creating a sort of high-tech musculature that moved when she moved, the same way you'd expect muscles to.

It suddenly made a lot of sense why she kept it covered underneath the robe all the time, now I was looking at it. In any other situation, her getup would've been highly distracting for everyone involved, and more than that... it was very conspicuous. Especially the three large, extremely visible Brotherhood sigils painted on the metal bits of her armor.

"Veronica..." I said, trying not to gulp audibly. "You're my friend! We can talk about this! I don't want to fight you..."

I was stalling obviously but that's because I was weighing my options in my head. Veronica is one of the deadliest people that I've ever met in hand-to-hand combat, sure, but I had enough weapons on me to level the Strip if I wanted to. Granted, the grenades probably would be a bad idea in such close quarters, but if it really was going to come down to a simple choice of me or her... then I was going to chose me. I'd gone through too much to get killed now... But at the same time, I still didn't want to fight her. I didn't want to be forced to kill her just to save my own skin. I really didn't want to have to make that choice.

"Too fucking bad!" She yelled back. I just sighed.

"Suit yourself."

Veronica started running but not toward me. A quick glance showed me that she was heading directly for the discarded Oh, Baby! laying on the ground. I started running at the same time. She may have been faster, but I was a lot closer and, more important, it wasn't the super sledge I was aiming for. By the time she dove for the weapon on the ground, I'd reached my target: the fridge it was laying next to. I grabbed at the back edge, and pulled out and down with all my might, ripping it away from the wall and bringing it hurtling down on top of Veronica with a thundering crash.

I kept hold of the top of the fridge and slammed it down against her with all my might, again and again, to try and ensure that she stayed down. But it didn't work. I was midway through my assault with the damn thing when the fridge pushed back, knocking me completely off balance. It was so surprising, that it sent my ass sailing to the ground. The next thing I knew, the fridge was looming over me. Veronica had grabbed hold of it, rather than the super sledge, and was lifting the fucking thing over her head like a sack of potatoes.

Okay, that plan backfired.

I didn't have time to marvel or gawk at the absurdity, because she was making her intentions abundantly clear. So, I did the only thing I could think of or, at least, the only thing I thought might buy me some time.

I bolted. I pushed off against the ground with all my might and leapt toward the broken pieces of wood that used to be the dinner table. It wasn't much, but the pile of kindling was the only kind of cover I had at the moment. I knew exactly when the fridge came down, even though I didn't bother looking back as I leapt: the whole room heaved and shook like it had been hit with an earthquake... and then it just kept shaking.

Eventually, I looked back over the table just in time to see Veronica standing on top of the fridge. The damn thing was buried halfway through the floor, sticking out at an angle. Veronica's hair, which had been held in a bun at the start of the fight, was starting to unravel into a tangled mess around her face. All around us, I could hear groans and creaking floorboards. The floor was going to collapse at any moment, I just knew it.

Veronica launched herself off the top of the fridge, leaping at me fist-first. I only half a split-second to act: I kicked the largest piece of table - an end piece with two legs still intact - up into the air between us, grabbed one of the legs, and rushed to meet her with my improvised shield. Her power fist hit the corner I wasn't holding onto (thankfully), smashing it into splinters. The two of us spun in midair from the momentum of the impact, and because she refused to let up (and I refused to let go), we both lost our balance, falling backwards onto the fridge.

"But he -" I didn't hear what Veronica was going to try and say, because Cass cut her off with more yelling worthy of a drill sergeant.

"No, shut up! You don't get any more of your crazy time, because you gotta get some fucking things straight! Yeah, Sheason and I banged, I admit. And I should've told you, sure. That was a shitty thing for the two of us to do to you, fair enough. But let's ignore for a minute that it only happened the one time, and he and I were so smashed that neither of us knew which way was up. You wanna know the truth of it? I was the one who came onto him." The look of hatred on Veronica's face evaporated into thin air instantly.

"Y-you?" she asked weakly. "But..."

"Yeah," Cass said, walking over to Veronica and standing tall over her. "Me. And you know what else? Every time I've tried since, he has been the one to stop us. Why do you think he convinced me to stop drinking? I'm fuckin' horny when I get shitfaced! You know that! You want to blame anyone, fucking blame me. Does this mean you're gonna try and kill me now?" Veronica didn't say anything. She looked too stunned to speak. Boone, Arcade, and Raul all looked nervously at one another. Finding out these kinds of details was making them uncomfortable, and really? Who can blame them.

"Yeah, that's what I fucking thought. And another thing. Since I guess we're airing all our fuckin' dirty laundry in public now, then you ought to know that I never agreed to be exclusive when we started this thing. You were the one who assumed that, and if you fucking knew ANYTHING about me AT ALL, then you would've known straight off that kinda shit isn't gonna work with me!"

"B-but..." Veronica staring, wide-eyed, at nothing. She didn't seem capable of thought, much less speech.

"And YOU," Cass turned and advanced on me. "What the fuck, man! This little adolescent piss-up of your has... I mean... fucking... LOOK!" She gestured to the still crumbling carnage all around us. "You were inches away from putting a bullet in her brain! Seriously - what the fuck!"

"She 'as gonna..." I was having enormous trouble speaking. "Issat'r die..." Cass just shook her head.

"And those were your only two options? Fight or die? What happened to the Sheason who could always find a way out, hmm? The man who could get out of the most sticky fucking situations by fucking using his fucking brain and finding a fucking way out? I mean, what was it you've said before? Pulling off the impossible is what you do? Where the fuck is THAT guy?" Cass sighed. "You know, I expected better. From both of you. You're both acting like Goddamned children. So stop fighting, get yourselves cleaned up, and fucking GROW UP. I'm fucking sick of this."

Veronica and I sat there on the floor across from each other, just... staring. She didn't have murder in her eyes anymore. She wasn't struggling against the three men holding her down. Instead, she looked... broken. Cass shook her head again.

"The two of you are just... so... disappointing."

Despite the many injuries wracking my body with agonizing pain, those words of hers stung the most.

"So," Arcade said, pressing an antiseptic-soaked piece of gauze against my face; I winced involuntarily. "It seems Veronica wasn't the only one keeping secrets."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I did the same thing I told you guys not to..." I winced again. "Go ahead, laugh it up."

"Oh, it's not a laughing matter, I'm well aware of that." Arcade leaned me back, and swabbed a bruise on my chest with alcohol before sticking me with a Med-X syringe. He seemed to only be vaguely paying attention to the conversation.

"You know why I didn't tell her? Because I knew this kind of shit would happe- AGH!" For some reason, Arcade taking the syringe out hurt more than when he put it in.

"Yes, she is a rather passionate girl, isn't she." Arcade was looking down at his watch as he spoke. "Ruled by her emotions... doesn't take being lied to at all well. But, I suppose, that's one of the biggest problems with women. Too many wayward emotions. One of the many reasons I prefer the company of men. You're rather lucky."

"How's that?" I asked, confused by the abrupt shift in tone. Arcade didn't respond at first. He took out a stimpack, and injected me in roughly the same place as the Med-X.

"Your rib only has a hairline fracture, it's not completely broken. If you hadn't been wearing that armor, I fear it would have snapped completely and punctured your lung." Arcade looked up at me over his glasses. "Again. The stimpack should knit the bone shortly, so you don't need to be rushed to surgery. The bruising is probably going to remain for a while, though."

"Yeah, lucky me..." Arcade handed me an ice pack, and I held it against my forehead as he attended another one of my various wounds. "Alright, so... since this has proven the dangers of keeping secrets, you gonna tell me who you worked for before the Followers?" I pulled the cold pack away from my skull and looked at it; a red splotch was staining the cloth where it had been white before. I put it back against my head with a grimace.

"Yes," Arcade said simply. "But not now. And not here. After seeing what Veronica did to you, I don't think it's a good idea to say it aloud with her even in the same building."

"Wait, what?" I asked. Arcade looked back up at me and shrugged.

"Truth be told," he grabbed another stimpack. "I still think you did the right thing, trying to hide that from her. Even now. I mean, I absolutely understand why you kept it from her. You wanted to spare her any heartbreak, and that's very admirable. It's just too bad that it was dumb luck she found out."

I didn't say anything. I couldn't agree with him. Not now. I should have told her. Cass and I both should've told her, straight away. We should have acted like adults about the whole thing - all three of us - and talked to one another, try to work out everything that way. But instead, we kept secrets like a pack of four year olds and the whole thing blew up.

"Why are you patching me up, anyway?" I asked, trying to change the subject. "Shouldn't you be looking after Veronica?"

"Boone is taking care of her," Arcade said. "Her injuries aren't nearly as severe as yours. She only requires basic triage, so Boone can handle it."

"Not as..." I blinked several times. "I didn't think I was... am I really that bad?" Arcade paused in his work, looking at me like I'd gone insane.

"Take a look for yourself." He reached onto his medical cart and pulled out a small mirror holding it in front of - HOLY SHIT!

Okay... yeah... that's a lot worse than I thought. I thought it was pretty bad, but... fuck.

A little over an hour later, I was back on my feet. I was still sore as hell, but I was as mended as I was going to get. I'd put my armor back on after Arcade finished, and went to the floor below the suite to collect all my discarded weapons. I stepped out of the elevator, and immediately saw Veronica down here, obviously doing the same thing. We just looked at each other. Neither of us said anything... and then the two of us moved on.

After I'd collected everything from the rubble of the destroyed rooms, I went straight to the garage. I was tired, I was sore, and I really didn't want to talk to anyone. I was halfway to my car when a voice called out after me.

"Sheason!" Cass yelled, her voice and footsteps echoing against the concrete of the Lucky 38's underground car park. "The fuck do you think you're going?"

"Out," I said. It felt more like a grunt than a word.

"Wh - you're leaving?" Cass finally caught up to me, grabbing me by the shoulder and forcing me to turn and face her. "You're not even gonna try and work this out - like what you tell all of US to do whenever WE all get into stupid arguments?"

"I just..." I shifted uncomfortably, refusing to look at her. "I need some time to think. Time to be alone." I adjusted my sunglasses as I talked. It may have been pitch black outside, but the sunglasses and Shelby's cowboy hat perched on top of my head were enough to disguise my head injuries - like the massive shiner around my left eye. Besides, I already had my eyes set to nightvision anyway, so it's not like I couldn't see. I turned on my heel and started walking to my car again.

"Okay, so... you're leaving. Fine. Are you coming back?" Cass asked, following me. I opened the door on my Corvega, hung my head, and sighed.

"I... uh... maybe. I dunno," I muttered under my breath. The sound still echoed like I'd yelled it.

"That's it then?" Cass asked, incredulously. "After all that. Everything you've said. Everything you've done. Everything we've all been through. One fucking fight, and you're just going to up and LEAVE?"

"I'll be back," I said in a tone of voice I wasn't sure even I believed. "Just... don't know when." I got in the drivers seat, starting up my car with a rumble; Cass just stood there, staring at me, slowly shaking her head.

"You are such a fucking hypocrite."

I couldn't argue with her, even if I wanted to.