Nick Valentine had been following this courier for a little while now, unseen or unnoticed among the crowds of Diamond City. Out in the Fens, though, she would be much more likely to notice him. At least he was armed.
But still, the old synth didn’t feel particularly happy about pulling a gun on her in a dark alley, mostly because he hadn’t observed much indication to peg her as violent. Still, considering who she’d picked up her package from... better safe than sorry.
@anotherisodope has a charon and i could not resist
“Charon made some choices that landed him in my employ.”
Augustine laughs.
She’s quick, agility as well as perception makes up for the complete lack of social skill. One arm hooks around his neck and pulls him down, slamming his head against the bar while the other pulls out a knife and plunges it into the ghouls neck, killing him instantly.
The bar is quiet as Augustine repeats the motion, nearly decapitating him before a patron pulls her off of him.
“WHAT? WHAT DID I DO? DID YOU FUCKIN- YOU HEAR HIM SAY THAT SHIT?! FUCK ALL OF YOU!!” shes screaming, as she wrestles herself away from the growing, angry, mob of bar patrons. “YOU FUCKS GIVE HIM YOUR MONEY, GET MAD AT ME FOR KILLING HIM? YOU'RE ALL FUCKING COMPLACENT. YOU SHOULD FUCKING THINK ABOUT YOUR CHOICES.”
she truly thinks that the ghouls in the bar don't know what to do, all of them stunned and confused as she vaults over the bar. Quickly and quietly she takes what she can, and, on the way out, pressing the worn paper to the chest of the bouncer.
“get outta here.” She says, before making her exit
“Well, Yer Majesty, the name’s John Hancock, and I got no idea how I ended up this far south, but I did hit the jet pretty goddamn hard on top of everything else, so who even knows.” He looked around blearily, then back at her. “Yeah, all right. Thanks.” He started strolling drunkenly that direction, wondering where the fuck he was that they actually had roads and houses in this good condition.
Ice Queen gave another soft snort, keeping a slow pace compared to her normal stride. She was used to keeping pace with smaller beings and walked to where there was a new development, construction paused in some sort of labor dispute.
Something the pirate had no trouble taking advantage of as she stopped at a completed display house. Laying down behind it and folding herself up into a dragonic loaf, closing her optics as she tried to boot up her holo-form, “How good are you with locks?”
So what would it take for Gage to leave raiding behind? A rich enough commission? A serious opportunity of some kind? Or just getting sick enough of everyone around him being,,,like that?
Based on the way he talks about other raiders and his experiences with them from when he was growing up and after he decided to be one, I think it would be a complicated mix of a bunch of different reasons
Him getting sick and tired of them would certainly be a major factor. He's been around raiders for some 30+ years at least, and he's watched pretty much every gang he's run with drive themselves into the dirt eventually despite all his efforts. 30 years is a long time to watch all your hard work repeatedly squandered, it's gotta be frustrating.
Now, for all his intelligence, he still has ambitions, and the bigger they get, the more danger he puts himself in. Like he says to the boss during his first affinity chat, the nuka world plan was bigger than anything he'd ever done before, and although it went about as smoothly as one could hope, it came at a high price: the raiders that know it was all his idea are prepared to gut him the second things go wrong, and the raiders that don't know want to gut him anyways because they think he's a useless leech.
All of the responsibility for the operation is on him.
His ambitions have turned into his own Damocles sword and he knows it. He admits that he prefers to have someone else in charge for him to manipulate so the target isn’t all on him, but in this case it doesn’t matter if he takes charge or finds someone else; this time, the danger is from within, and literally any misstep will end in the raiders hunting him down for sport.
(side note: this is also why him turning on you and going hostile if you kill the raiders is bullshit. If you do that, no matter how early, the raiders WILL kill him if they can)
Then there’s the undeniable fact that he’s getting older. He’s middle aged, and while he seems in pretty good condition ingame, he knows the raider lifestyle isn’t something he can keep up forever. Also, his hearing has got to be atrocious, like come on
Eventually he’s gonna start slowing down. He’s only got one eye, and his luck can’t hold out forever. But I don’t think he’d suddenly wake up one day and decide to call it quits.
I guess what I’m getting at is that really, it boils down to survival. Something needs to happen to him in order for him to leave the raider life behind. He needs to either get his shit wrecked, or come close enough to getting his shit wrecked that leaving becomes an option. From there, he’d have to weigh his options and possible courses of action, as well as take into account the influence the boss has had on him, whether he realizes it or not.
So ultimately, in order for Gage to leave the raider life behind, he needs to:
Be put in a life-threatening situation where leaving becomes a possible solution
Recognize that his ambitions are getting the better of him
Recognize that he’ll soon start getting too old to actually keep being a raider
Become so sick of dealing with other raiders and their self-destructive tendencies and short-sightedness that he’d seriously consider leaving
Figure out a way to survive if he did leave
Accept that that would be the best course action and follow through with it
I don’t think a shift in his morality would really happen until after he leaves the lifestyle behind, though, and can really sit back and look at raiders and what they do from a different perspective. The last time he saw raiders from an outside perspective, he was a literal child. He became a raider at 16, an age where he would still be in the process of growing and maturing, not to mention where he would still be susceptible to the influence of others. As a grown ass man with years of experience, however, seeing raiders from the outside and being exposed to non-raiders in non-hostile situations for once would almost certainly cause him to see things at least a little bit differently.
Anyways, yeah, that’s how I think a Gage redemption would go. Or start. Whichever.
Kinda want to give Gage a gecko egg to raise because...well think about it for a sec
Gage, totally not crying because the egg the boss gave him hatched: Yeah, it's alright, I guess
He keeps it on his shoulders and it climbs around his armor. Or in one of the extra pockets chained to his leg, if he's going somewhere. Probably has a bunch of dried snacks for it in another pocket
Brian had been walking the wastes for a while since his initial escape. He didn’t know how long, exactly; he could keep track of days well enough, but things like weeks and years typically weren’t important enough for him to bother doing so. Even so, he knew it had been a long time since he’d gained his freedom. His former captors still hadn’t found him, and he’d managed not to get himself killed in the meantime. He had food more often than not, and drinkable water was easy to find if you were immune to radiation. In some ways, he had an easier life than most in post-apocalyptia.
And yet, he was discontent. The one thing that hadn’t changed over his long journey was the very fact that he had to continue wandering. Staying in one place for too long caused people to wonder what he was hiding beneath his robes, and if he stayed long enough for them to find out...well, things got real bad real fast. He was just too hideous, too scary. Every time someone learned what he looked like, they turned on him.
Brian was not a wanderer because he wanted to be. Brian was a wanderer because he had yet to find a place where he could settle down without scaring anyone. He wandered because it was the only way he could live as peacefully as the wasteland allowed. It didn’t matter how lonely it was, or how long it made every road seem; picking up and moving on was the only way he had to keep people from getting hurt. And so he wandered, travelling everywhere and going nowhere.
Until one day, he heard of it. Goodneighbor. A place for the drifters with no where to go. A small town with a lot of different folks. A place that accepted all kinds, regardless of background or race. They said Goodneighbor accepted anyone who would accept anyone. It was a place for those with nowhere else to go. For most, it was just one more place on the map, just one more little town in a wide wild world.
For Brian, it was near-mythical. It was his last, best hope to find a home. If he could make it there, he could finally truly rest. He could live with a sense of security and companionship he’d never known before. And who knows? Maybe, just maybe, he could simply...relax one day. Maybe in Goodneighbor, the day would come where the robe could be a thing of the past. Maybe, eventually, he wouldn’t have to spend his life ashamed of what he was.
He very pointedly did not think about what he would do if he wasn’t accepted. Even if it was stupid, he still wanted to dream.
So it was that Brian made his way to the Commonwealth. Goodneighbor was easy enough to find once you made it to the city ruins; people would point you in the right direction after asking if you were sure you wanted to go there, and after that you just had to look for the sign. Brian lumbered up to the door, checked one last time to make sure his robe was still hiding all of his deathclawness, and then carefully squeezed his way through to the other side.
♝ and obviously the book is something Akane swiped from a vault or someplace else she shouldn't have been nosing around in...
♝ : Reading a book together
Nick had noticed her with a book in her hand, and as curious as he was had stepped over to lean down over her shoulder and take a glance over her shoulder-- some old book about local history. At least it was in good shape.
Nick was... maybe hovering a bit, a hand scratching his chin absently. “Nature trails-? That looks nice. ...Imagine if we could still go bird watching...”
