“It was rather nice of Three Dog to include the key to that weapons cache,” Luna observed as she and Sarah cleared the entrance to the Farragut West Metro Station, the place where not many days before they had been shot at by super mutants wielding miniguns.

“I can be convincing when I want to be,” Sarah replied with a small nod.

“So long as it is not a math problem, hmm?” Luna asked her. Sarah rolled her eyes and slapped Luna’s neck playfully.

“Hey, I had to deal enough of that from Butch and the Snakes,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t start it up alright?”

Luna looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Who are Butch and Snakes?” she inquired.

“Butch is an idiot... a good hearted guy deep down, but still an idiot,” Sarah said with another roll of her eyes. “And there’s no one named ‘Snakes’ but he created a gang called the Tunnel Snakes.”

“Ah...” Luna said, a bit mystified by the concept. “Gang in this sense means a group of people who will fight for you and cause mischief on your behalf; correct?”

“Pretty much,” Sarah replied as the two walked along the cracked concrete, once more beside the brown river. “I mean... they weren’t that bad, I guess,” she continued, waving a hand in a random direction. “They weren’t anything even close to ‘raiders’ or slavers. But... they were just a bunch of idiots.”

“Most stallions are when they are younger,” Luna answered dryly. “Many continue with it long into their old age.”

“Heh, true,” Sarah agreed before a thought struck her. “Though Butch always was a bit of a momma’s boy... which is something that’s always convinced me that no matter how big of an ass he could be, there was always a bit of good in him,” she said.

“Why?” Luna asked her with a raised eyebrow.

“Because anyone who cares for their mom can’t be all bad,” Sarah replied with a shrug.

“Ah, I cannot relate,” Luna said with a slight frown. “I never met her, and she died giving birth to me... I suppose two oversized oddly formed fillies was more then her body could take...” she trailed off and looked down at the cracked asphalt, a newly despondent look on her face.

“If it makes you feel any better, we’re in the same boat,” Sarah said, patting Luna’s neck lightly. “I killed my mother too.”

Luna looked up at the woman in surprise. “Truly? I have not seen it in your dreams.”

Sarah shivered slightly at the mention of that, but wisely chose not to question it. She likely wouldn’t have understood what Luna tried to tell her anyways.

“Well, I never knew her... there’s not really much to dream about is there?” the woman asked Luna. “I don’t even have a ‘one memory’ or anything. No voice calling out to me from the beyond, no ghost touch on my cheek, none of those old cliches.”

Luna pondered that for a moment and then nodded. “I understand, truthfully... all memories of that sort are of my sister,” she said slowly before she shook her head angrily. “The arrogant nag...”

You know Luna... everything you’ve told me about her seems to paint her as a saint... And yet you say you hate her. The thought drifted through Sarah’s mind briefly and she grasped onto it for a moment. I guess... there’s more to her story... but now doesn’t seem like the time to talk about it, she thought. Might want to save it for an ‘evening’ talk.

“Anyways back to the topic of the Tunnel Snakes,” Sarah said, getting them away from what could have been a dangerous topic.

“Yes? What about them?” Luna inquired.

“I learned to fight thanks to them,” Sarah said with a smirk. “See, this one time they were making fun of my friend Amata and I couldn’t take it any more... so I kneed Butch right in the balls on the day of the G.O.A.T.”

Luna looked over at the woman with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yep, he was hobbling around the Vault for the next three days, even with an icepack... worth every stitch and lecture,” Sarah replied, chuckling at the thought. “I’m not sure if my dad was actually all that disappointed in me... see, he kept on grinning in-between telling me that ‘violence wasn’t the answer’.”

Luna snickered. “I too have found that a solid blow to the groin solves many of life’s problems,” she said with a smirk. Sarah looked over at Luna, a smirk of her own on her face.

“HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!” Sarah shouted as she looked over her shoulder at the veritable army of freaks that were chasing them.

“I HAVE NO IDEA!” Luna shouted back as she galloped beside the woman. “WHAT ARE THEY?!”

“MIRELURKS!” Sarah yelled back, a bullet biting into the ground an inch behind her foot. “I THINK!”

“YOU THINK? I THOUGHT YOU KNEW WHAT WAS HAPPENING OUT HERE!” Luna shouted above the roar of the minigun.

“DON’T BLAME ME FOR THIS!” Sarah yelled at the top of her lungs as a dozen bullets skittered over her head.

Due to the Goddess of Fate, finicky bitch that she is, their day had taken a sudden turn for the worse. They’d been walking along, and then somehow stumbled into a battle between a group of super mutants and some strange creatures that resembled crabs. One accidental kicked can later, they had an army of mutants and mutant crab creatures chasing them down the street. Apparently having put aside their differences in pursuit of their common hatred(?) of the two and deciding that it would be in everyone’s best interest to try and kill them.

Luckily, hope was on the horizon in the form of a tall building with a pair of large flagpoles set up at either side of the entrance.

“Okay! We get in there, we hole up, block the door, and hope that they go away!” Sarah shouted, pointing at the building.

“Seems appropriate!” Luna agreed as she glanced over her shoulder to see that a particularly determined mirelurk was closing with her.

Kill it! Nightmare exclaimed. It wants to carve out our hindquarters!

I’m too busy running! Luna retorted, clearly annoyed. Do it yourself!

The Nightmare had no response to that, and Luna and Sarah simply continued to run until they all but flew through the door to the tall building and slammed the door shut behind them, leaning their bodies against it.

“That was close,” Sarah gasped as she tried to catch her breath.

“Indeed it wa-” Luna was cut off as she caught sight of their surroundings, her brain temporarily dying.

“Luna, hello, Earth to Luna,” Sarah said, looking at her friend’s stunned face in confusion. Then she looked at the room as well, her mouth dropping open.

Suspended from the ceiling was jukebox, half a to let, and most shocking of all... what appeared to be two giant glowing people women making sweet, sweet love. A large heart shaped bed sat in the middle of the room beneath the ‘couple’ and beer bottles littered the floor. Two nearly naked women wearing barely enough to cover themselves lounged around in the background. One with dark skin was drinking from a bottle of beer, the other was relaxing on the couch doing nothing much in particular.

Most mystifying of all was the man striding towards them. He wore a red suit which could only be described as... scandalously fashionable. The man grinned as he looked at them, and then spoke in a suave if slightly rough accented voice.

“Oh babies! Let me get you something special! How about a Dukov Surprise; ha hah?” He asked with a lewd smile as he puffed on a cigarette. Sarah and Luna stared at him, completely stunned. “Nevermind!” he said quickly, waving his hand as if wiping away the precious sentence. “Cherry! We need some fucking booze over here!”

Sarah gathered her wits first and attempted to ask a sensible question.

“Who are you...?” she asked slowly.

“Who me? I’m Dukov and this is my place!” the man said with a grin.

Luna asked the next question.

“And what... pray tell are you doing here?”

“Eating, drinking, farting and screwing!’ Dukov answered, laughing as he did so. Luna and Sarah both stared at him, looks of varying disgust on their faces. “Out here nobody bothers me. I can do whatever I like to whenever I want!”

Sarah closed her eyes, hoping to gather some of her sanity. When she opened them, she looked back at the girls in the background, her eyes gliding over them before her cheeks reddened.

“So... umm who are the girls over there?” she asked slowly. “And... where are their clothes?”

“An excellent question,” Luna added quickly, turning away from the nearly naked women, a scarlet blush on her face.

Heheheheh, Nightmare snickered in Luna’s mind. It seems that we may have a chance with her after all, the Nightmare observed, catching sight of Sarah’s looks.

"Ha ha! They’re my party girls!” Dukov laughed loudly. “I’m too much man for just one woman, so I need two! Hahahah,” he exclaimed with another bout of laughter. “I wear them out every night! Why should they bother getting dressed when I’m just going to take it off?” the man asked with a chuckle.

Sarah stared at him, her right hand balling up into a fist. “So these girls... they’re your sex slaves?”

“No, no, no, no,” Dukov tutted, a clearly offended by the question. “They can leave whenever they want to,” he added.

“So they’re your whores then?” Luna inquired, Daybreaker beginning to inch its way out of its sheath.

“Hey! Watch your language, clown hooves!” Dukov exclaimed. “I don’t pay them. They take care of me, so I take care of them. We rub each other wrong all night long! Ha, ha!”

Then the man walked past them at the door they were currently pressed up against.

“So what brings you two beautiful ladies to Dukov’s home in the first place?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Army of mutants,” Sarah answered.

“And crabs, evil, evil looking crabs,” Luna added.

“OH! You made the muties mad?” Dukov asked them with a raised eyebrow. “And the ‘lurks?”

“Yes,” Sarah said flatly. “Is there some way to barricade this door?”

“Oh, they’ll go away eventually,” Dukov said with a laugh as he shook his head. “They always do. In the meantime, you may as well enjoy my hospitality!” he exclaimed with a grin. “Cherry, where is that damn booze!?” he turned to shout at the white woman who dragged herself to her feet and walked over to them, passing out a drink to both Sarah and Luna along with Dukov himself.

“Here,” she said with a flat tone of voice.

“That’s my girl Cherry!” Dukov exclaimed with a grin before he slapped her ass, making the woman jump a little.

“Hey, can we save it for when my clothes are actually off?” the woman asked him with a slight indignant noise.

“Sure baby, we have guests, I suppose I should know better eh?” Dukov asked, chuckling again.

Sarah glanced down at the drink in her hand and then back at the man. “If it weren’t for the army of mutants out there I’d leave right now,” she told him, clearly annoyed and disgusted by him.

“Hey! Dukov doesn’t question how you live your life! Don’t question him on how he leads his!” Dukov exclaimed before shrugging and walking over to a couch and throwing himself down beside the black woman and reaching beneath her ‘clothing’ and beginning to fondle her causing the woman to giggle like a school girl.

Sarah looked away, disgusted, though there was a crimson blush on her face, one that Luna was matching.

“Ignore it,” Cherry advised. “You’ll get used to it, even if you’re only here for a little while.”

“Umm... you don’t actually stay here because you ‘love’ him so much do you?” Sarah asked the other woman uncomfortably as she tried to tune out the increasingly frisky sounding noises from the background.

Cherry scoffed. “Fuck no, I’m only here for the caps,” she said with a shake of her head. “Who the hell would love that old fart?” she asked with a disdainful glance over her shoulder at the ‘aspiring couple’ who were rounding first base rapidly.

“She seems to be enjoying it,” Luna observed before turning away with a mixture of disgust and annoyance.

“Yeah, well Fantasia’s not exactly the sharpest knife on the belt is she?” Cherry asked in a clearly sarcastic tone.

“I guess not,” Sarah said, averting her eyes, and wishing that she had some way to block out the sounds. “Is there some place... else we can stay?”

“Yeah, follow me,” Cherry said with a sigh as she lead the two past the ‘busy’ couple, up the stairs, and into a large kitchen/bedroom. “Before you ask, we’ve fucked on every piece of furniture in here, including the carpet, so everyplace is just about as disgusting as the next.”

Luna and Sarah exchanged a pair of looks and then simultaneously decided on the couch, figuring that while it had most likely seen the most ‘use’ it would be easier for the two to gain some form of comfort from being next to each other.

“Cherry, get down here! We need a third basegirl!” Dukov shouted up, the woman sighed and turned to Sarah and Luna.

“Take whatever you want from the fridge... I’ll be busy for the next twenty minutes till he passes out,” she said with another sigh before she left Sarah and Luna alone on the couch.

“Sarah; is it bad that I want to kill him?” Luna inquired.

“I know I want to,” Sarah replied flatly. “The only reason that I’m not is that he’s paying them and they’re here voluntarily.”

“That, and he seems to have offered us asylum when he had no real reason too,” Luna mused. “You don’t think that he has somehow paid those mutants to run women into him, do you?”

“Na, I don’t think he’s that smart,” Sarah answered as she unconsciously leaned into Luna’s side, probably the only soft surface that wasn’t covered in questionable stains.

“Drat, I was hoping to kill him,” Luna said venomously.

We like him, Nightmare spoke up from within Luna’s mind.

What? How?! Luna almost shouted.

He is very... virile, Nightmare answered simply, causing Luna to groan aloud.

Sarah looked over at her friend in concern.

“Something wrong Luna?” Sarah asked her, tuning out an especially high pitched scream of ecstasy from below.

“No... my mind is just very strange sometimes,” Luna answered with a shake of her head.

“Oh,” Sarah said with a nod. “How so?”

“I’d... rather not speak of it,” Luna replied with a sigh. “So... did what Three Dog speak to you about help you much? We never had the chance to talk about it.”

Sarhan nodded. “Yeah, it di-” she was interrupted by a very loud exclamation from Dukov. “-it did,” she finished with a roll of her eyes. “I know where he went, Rivet City... I remember some of the people in Megaton talking about it, apparently it’s a giant metal ship from before the war that people have turned into a city.”

Hence the name, Nightmare stated with a roll of her metaphorical eyes. I doubt they would name a house a city

“Hence the name,” Luna said, chuckling slightly.

“Yeah,” Sarah agreed with a nod. “So... got any more stories about your past you want to tell?”

Luna frowned. “I suppose I could continue my tale if you’d like to hear it,” she mused. “Or we could check and see whether or not there’s a back exit to this wretched place,” the mare suggested with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh thank God, I thought you’d never suggest it,” Sarah said with a sigh of relief as she got off of the icky couch. Luna joined her momentarily and together the two walked out of the room, averting their eyes to the sights and sounds below. It didn’t take them very long to find a back stairway and from there, an exit to the building.

The pair exited and found that the the mutants and mirelurks were still clustered around the front of the building, not playing the least bit of attention to the rear of it. With near matching sighs of relief, the pair began to stalk away from the building. Luckily, there was a small bridge that ran across the river and they decided to take it in order to avoid any more problems from the mutants. What side of the river they were on wouldn’t really matter in the long run and the way Sarah saw it, having a river in between themselves and the mutants would be nice.

“So... that was a particularly disturbing place,” Luna stated as they walked across the crumbling concrete.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Sarah said with a frown.

“It reminded me of the brothels that the guards frequented on their nights off,” Luna continued, cracking her neck to get a kink out of it. “Though for some reason, I imagined that the whores would be more... dignified.”

“You do know what a whore is right?” Sarah asked her, raising an eyebrow at the mare.

“Well... yes, but from the way my stallions always talked about them I assumed there was an element of class to them,” Luna replied with a small frown. “I suppose that was just to keep me from inquiring too closely about their condition and whether or not I should be allowing them to see to their ‘needs’.”

“I guess,” Sarah agreed with a slight shrug. They reached the end of the bridge and continued downstream for another ten minutes or so.

BANG

“FUCK!” Sarah exclaimed, clutching her left shoulder where a rather large hole had appeared in her armor, scarlet blood leaked out of the wound and Sarah’s face was beared in pain as she fell to her knees.

BANG

“SARAH!” Luna shouted.

Another shot rang out and Sarah let out another cry of pain as a second bullet slammed into her shoulder, missing her hand by inches. The woman slumped to the ground, bleeding heavily. Luna’s eyes widened and she scanned for the shooter, finding no one.

BANG

A bullet slammed into Luna’s chest and sent her stumbling backwards as she felt the bullet cut into her abdomen and a lance of hot pain ran through her. She scanned wildly for the shooter, but couldn’t see one anywhere.

Get to cover, bring Sarah with you, Nightmare cut in, her icy voice cutting through Luna’s growing sense of panic. The shots came from the west and therefore cannot hit us if we place a layer of cover between ourselves and the shooter. Now move!

Luna needed no more instruction-

BANG

-as a bullet narrowly missed decapitating the mare, spurring her forward faster. She grabbed Sarah’s limp form in her magic and struggled behind a low concrete divider. The mare bent over Sarah who was somehow still conscious.

Sarah’s mind was alight with pain, and her brain was running on pure adrenaline, giving her a heightened sense of what was happening.

Two .308 rounds are embedded in my left shoulder. I won’t be using it. I’m behind cover. Luna doesn’t know how to treat bullet wounds. Worse. The sniper is still hidden. That means that we’re stuck here. I’m bleeding to death.

These thoughts and more flashed rapidly through the woman’s mind and she feebly used her right arm to reach down near her armored pocket in an attempt to pull out a stimpack. This attempt was made rather futile by the wave of intense pain coming from her shoulder which traveled up her entire side. Sarah’s mind realed as she glanced over at the two terrifyingly large holes in her shoulder and fought down a wave of nausea and panic, her training taking over, doing her best to fight off the effects of shock.

Luna saw the motion and Nightmare quickly chimed in.

There must be stimpacks in that pocket! Quickly! Retrieve them at once! She exclaimed.

Luna nodded and despite the pain arcing through her body managed to use her magic to pull out a pair of stimpacks. They wavered as they hovered in mid air and the mare shut her eyes to gain her focus on her magic. The pain growing in her chest was increasing rapidly with every second and tears began to leak down Luna’s face as she jabbed the stimpack into both her own chest and directly into one of the holes in Sarah’s shoulder pushing down the plunger and then withdrawing the spent syringe.

BANG

Another bullet slammed into the concrete lane divider, causing a puff of concrete to shower down on them. Sarah gritted her teeth and drew in a shallow breath.

“Good job. They’ll have to come over here to get us,” Sarah grunted. “Get me my bag,” she added with a shallow nod towards the bag on Luna’s back. Sarah’s her face was pale and despite the stimpack, her shoulder continued to bleed, though the flow of had begun to slow.

“What are you looking for?” Luna asked through gritted teeth as the bag wobbled off of her back.

“Med-X and bandages,” Sarah answered through gritted teeth she then began to rummage through the dufflebag until she came upon a small metal box. She pulled it out and then worked it open to reveal several small syringes. “Luna, get them out... and then use them like stimpacks,” the woman instructed as blood seeped down her shoulder.

“What will it do?” Luna inquired as she picked them up.

“Kill the pain for a bit,” Sarah grunted before Luna jabbed the chem into her shoulder before pressing down the plunger. Icy cold washed over her and the pain faded into the background. Meanwhile, Sarah continued to rummage through the bag until she came back up with a few pieces of gauze and some medical tape, doing as best as she could to bandage up the crippled shoulder and was only able to do so thanks to the Med-x.

Oh... this is a strange feeling... Nightmare said, sounding a bit light headed. It reminds us of opium.

Then we should be wary of it... Luna replied before shaking her head. The last thing I require is to be addicted to a substance of this nature.

“What now?” Luna asked Sarah, the woman frowned and pulled her pistol out of its holster on her side and got to her knees.

“Now? Now we wait for the bastards,” she said through gritted teeth as she maneuvered herself so that she was leaning against the right side of the divider. “Get your rifle ready and lean against the side. That way they can’t flank us.”

Luna did so, placing her shoulder against the divider.

“I may be new to this type of warfare, but wouldn’t it be easier for them to simply wait us out?” Luna inquired. “They have all the time in the world, while if we do not receive proper treatment we will surely perish from our wounds.”

“That’s true,” Sarah stated with a pant as her left arm hung limply at her side. “But I’m willing to bet that whoever it is isn’t very patient, or that good of a shot. Otherwise I’d be dead. Now be quiet.”

Luna nodded, seeing the sense in the command. They waited there in silence for a almost a minute and even with the Med-x and the stimpack, Luna felt as if she was slowly dying.

Mare up, we did not complain nearly this much when we were clawed by that Ursa Major, Nightmare scolded her. Even here where our magic is weakened and our natural resistance is lower, this piece of metal in our chest should not present this much difficulty.

Luna didn’t bother responding because it was at that moment she heard the sound of boot steps approaching their position.

“You think you got them?” a male voice asked.

“I know I killed the target, shot her twice with my fucking rifle. Don’t know about that malformed brahmin thing,” another answered.

“That thing was fucking weird looking,” the first voice stated with a scoff. “I still can’t believe they took out our other hit squad.”

“You’re telling me,” the second voice said with a snarl. “How in the hell did some punk bitch fresh out of the vault kill Buck?”

“Fuck if I know, I’m just glad she’s dead, we’ll get to split the thousand caps between us,” the first voice grunted as they came closer, they were almost on top of Sarah and Luna’s position.

Move in three seconds, two shots to the chest and a third to the head, Nightmare instructed. Luna nodded and prepared to move.

Duck out of cover, take four shots, get back in cover, Sarah went over in her mind as her pistol shook in her right hand, barely able to hold it up even with the aid of the Med-x.

Three. The pair unknowingly chanted simultaneously in their heads. Two. The voices were almost close enough to see over the divider. ONE!

Sarah leaned around cover, her gun leading the way. Time seemed to slow around her as she did so, her brain full of adrenaline. She distantly saw a pair of men clad in black talon company armour, one with a sniper rifle in his hands, the other with a combat shotgun.

Sarah only observed this in the back of her mind, the front of her mind was too busy lining up her shots. She fired once, twice, three times, four times. The first bullet flew wide, the second however slammed into the merc with the rifle’s neck while the third and fourth smashed into his jaw, destroying it in a cloud of blood and bone fragments.

At the same time, Luna leaned out of cover, allowing Nightmare to do most of the aiming before she unleashed her three shots. The first hit smack dab in the center of the merc with the sniper’s chest causing him to flinch backwards, clutching at the melted flesh beneath the armor. The next beam went wide, completely missing the merc and flying off in the distance. The third and final shot nailed the merc in the eye. To Luna’s surprised eyes, the merc disintegrated into a pile of ashes.

I had forgotten that it could do that, Nightmare observed with a mental chuckle.

Sarah let out a pant of exhaustion as she struggled to her feet, her upper left side completely dead. As she did so the woman’s vision blurred and she looked over to see that blood had begun to leak through the gauze and medical tape.

“What... now?” Luna asked slowly, her breath too coming out in pants.

“We... need to go back to Megaton... if you don’t get that bullet out of your chest, it’ll be there forever,” Sarah said through gritted teeth. “I’d take it out myself... but I only have one arm... and we’d need to get back anyways... stimpacks alone aren't going to fix this,” she gestured towards her left arm.

“Well then... we need to go there...” Luna stated, she was beginning to have trouble breathing properly. “One question... where is Megaton?”

Author's Notes:

Hope you guys enjoyed this long one :)
And yes, I know that in real life two shots from a .308 bullets in the shoulder would probably kill you or at least put you into shock immediately... but fallout logic!