Twilight took them outside into the storm with her teleportation, not really caring hat was outside as long as she could get her injured friend to safety, having to pretty much carry here considering one of her leg as all but useless after being shot.
They stumbled through the storm until they managed to find the wreak of a truck and climbed into the back to escape the onslaught of sand. Inside were the boxes of goods that were once paid for but now was next to useless with survival.
Putting Michelle up against the wall of the trailer she slowly tried to stretch out her legs to get a look at the wound but the limb wouldn’t move that far without causing insane levels of pain on the woman.
“I’m probably going to regret this but I have to do this…” The princess stated as she looked around her pockets for a needle of Med-X but she found that everything had been removed from her vest and left her with very little she could do. “Crap… I don’t have anything.” She said in worry, carefully ripping the hole on the pants open more to free up the gunshot so she could try to help.
Bone was clearly visible behind the blood that was still pouring out and dripping down her leg and staining the pants and the rusty metal below them. Sand had gotten into the wound and got stuck to the blood like glue, she had to wash it out before anything really bad happened.
“I’ll be back.” She said to the groaning woman. “I need to get things to help you.”
“Not like I’m going anywhere…” She said in pain. “If you’re going back in there see if you can get our stuff…” She said before her head fell back, breathing heavily to try and cope with the pain.
A quick teleportation back to the old school she made sure to go back to the room she was first held in, she didn’t want to pop into a room and burst into flames immediately. And already as she came in she could smell a thick smoke in the air, burning her lungs with the ash. The smoke starting to pool on the ceiling was also a very notable thing.
A quick check around the room proved fruitless when not even the corpse she left there and the hallway remained, only the bloodstains telling that they were there in the first place. She kept moving along rooms until she saw one filled with boxes and bags, just hoping that their things were there but after longer than she liked she only found Anne’s armor and some medical supplies along with Benny’s pistol, Anne’s shotgun, her arm and A Light Shining In Darkness. She ended up having to make two trips to get everything and by the end of it her head was starting to hurt from the amount of magic she had to use to do all that.
Once she was back by her friend’s side she saw that she was very pale and there was a large puddle of blood under her. She took slow shallow breathes as she clenched her hands around the makeshift tourniquet she made from a length of the shirt she had on, and with only one arm she wasn’t able to tie a knot.
“Hey, I’m back now.” She said rushing to her side, pulling out a needle of med-x and jabbing it into her friend’s thigh, chucking the used needle to the side.
“My knee… no fixing it.” Michelle groaned, eyes looking unfocused. “Just… Stimpak to stop the bleeding… deal with damage later…”
Twilight was hesitant but did what her friend said, grabbing one of the larger needles and jabbing it into her thigh just above the broken knee and watched as the flesh grey back into blade and bone joined together with sickening sounds and from the groans Michelle made it wasn’t a pleasant experience in the slightest. But soon the knee wasn’t bleeding, covered in new scar tissue and the lumps of the badly repaired bone.
Undoing the strap around her leg Michelle chucked the length of fabric to the side, pulling her leg up with a wince of discomfort as bone rubbed against bone. “Could be worse… leg could have been shot off…” She grunted as she went limp again against the wall of the trailer.
“I found some of your things but not all of it.” Twilight stated, dragging the bundle of armor and trench coat over to the woman.
“Any ammo?”
“Crap. I knew I missed something…”
It took a long time before Anne was ready to get onto her feet, and even longer for her to be able to stay on her feet after the blood loss. After a bottle of dirty water and a bit of dry packaged cakes they started to move again, although much was hard to see with the sandstorm always raging on. But eventually Twilight spotted some familiar things but she wasn’t %100 sure quite yet considering it was hard to really get details when you could barely see. And since Anne didn’t have her helmet and Twilight didn’t have goggles or anything, they felt the full force of the wind against their faces and grinding against their skin.
But after what felt likes days of walking but was more like a number of hours they managed to get back to the place Twilight was first knocked out by the Marked Men and taken prisoner. She knew it was the right place when she found the dented shell of the Eyebot that the ghouls must have shot down with the sand filled bullet holes covering its metal shell. It was letting out beeps and sparks as it twitched on the ground like a dying animal.
“Eh, he’s looking as bad as me.” Anne yelled over the dust storm as she got a grip on the robot with her one arm and lifted it up, the cold metal chilling her fingers.
It let out a sputtering beep.
“Anyway we can fix him?” Twilight asked in concern.
“Give me a few hours and I’ll see what I can do…”
After setting up in the remains of an apartment of a collapsed sky scraper Michelle got to work fixing up the little robot and while he was able to fly again he still looked like a stiff breeze would be able to knock him around.
But after resting up they set out once more, Michelle limping along visibly and the bot doing what could only be thought of as the flying equivalent of a limp. Twilight meanwhile felt guilty that she wasn’t as bad off as her friends, her sore horn and head really being the only real thing wrong. At least it wasn’t as bad as before.
The trio walked slowly along the torn and ruined streets of the Divide, husks of homes and offices towering high into the air and casting long cold shadows on the land. The wind seemed to lessen as they got further away from the beginning of their journey.
“You dragged that bot all this way.” A familiar voice of a very dry sounding man said from the little robot, the two friends groaning as they hear him once again.
“Can you just shut it?” The princess asks with a groan of annoyance.
“Knew you'd survive... but no need to go any farther. You've brought me what I need, that machine with you, sealed in the Hopeville silo. Needed someone to unlock it, bring it home. Now the signal's strong enough, no need for you to carry it anymore. I can call your machine to me.”
Before either one could ask what the hell he was even talking about the floating bot shot out a bolt of electricity directly into Anne’s unprotected face, the woman going as still as a plank before she fell down backward to the dirt, body twitching slightly as her eyes stared straight ahead to the sky.
Twilight was in too much shock at the sudden turn of events that she didn’t prepare for a similar bolt of power to go right into her chest, everything going white and when she got her sight back her robotic eye wasn’t working and she couldn’t feel anything move and when she did it was unwanted and rather painful.
She barely noticed as the bot started to fly away quickly, little sparks coming from in between its hard metal plates covering its damaged internal workings. It was a while before she managed to get herself back up again, her headache coming back again in full force. “Asshole.” She muttered as she tapped the side of her head, trying to get her eye to turn itself back on.
It turned on suddenly after a few taps, blinding her with the sudden vision before she shook her head to clear it up. Looking over at Michelle she saw that she was laid down on the ground, arm over her eyes as she groaned softly in discomfort. “He could have just knocked me and I would have gone down…” She muttered.
“I wonder what he wants the eyebot for…” Twilight stated.
“Oh, that’s Ed-e by the way.” Anne stated.
“No it isn’t, he’s back in the Mojave.”
“Didn’t I tell you? Apparently the pod we found the bot in got a signal from Ed-e and copied everything on him onto the new shell… Now there are two of our flying little balls…”
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“Cause I forgot.”
The massive door slid open with a hiss as the two made it to the entrance of a bunker, this door so much bigger and thicker than others they had seen. Inside was a massive hall, the roof just rough rock but the floors and wall were flat concrete, in better quality than much of the other bunkers they saw. One thing that wasn’t in the others were the dozen of warheads that were just scattered around along with half a dozen ICBMs that were in their tubes and the metal hatches above them open and letting the bright light of the outside shine down onto their white surfaces. One was by far the biggest though, which was right in the middle of the far end of the launch bay, thick as a car is long and towering out of the ground even with so much of it hidden in the ground below.
A man stood in front of the biggest one, hair braded into dreadlocks, filter mask over his mouth with his sunken in eyes looking at them. He was wearing a duster with the arms removed to the shoulder, his bare forearms crossed over his chest.
“Your city, Vegas, lies in the other direction... with the rest of its slaves. Or is it just, you, Courier, without the lights and ghosts.” He stated, this was Ulises. “Judging by your shadow... maybe you can't let your machine go. Doesn't matter now. Either way, the Divide giants are awakening. The missiles here, on their way home. There is no way to stop them.”
“There’s no excusing what I did but I didn’t do it out of hatred or malice… what you’re doing is madness.” Michelle stated as she had her sore arm down on the hip of her holster of the .45 pistol engraved with old time writing.
“No, now there is purpose. I believe you when you say you were... careless. The Divide... the Chip... the machine you brought here... Many messages can be taken from that, intended or not. What I do now is an act of conviction.”
“You blame me for the Divide, and you have every right to. But don’t hurt other people because of me.”
He let out a soft chuckle through his rebreather. “Blame you? No, learned from you. Both the weapon to kill a nation, and the strength to do it. You showed me a road, a way to carry my message. You've already answered for what you've done. Now the flag you follow will answer for it.”
Before anyone could say anything else a gunshot echoed out in the massive hall, everyone whipping to look at the large amount of Marked Men with their guns trained on the four and a very scarred woman grinning as she pointed her very large pistol at them.
“Hello again sis!”