Chapter Text
The Lupa didn’t give a fuck how reluctantly her orders were obeyed. Enough had lost their precious, fragile little limbs testing her authority for the lesson to stick. There was exactly one Lupa Maxima in Caesar’s army, the Blue Devils under the command of Gun Powder, known as the Jinx. The old man had raised her harder than any of his sons, hard enough to erase her fragile, cowardly nature.
The trembling, kneeling legionary with a hand grenade stuffed in his lie hole would be good to remember how she got there.
“Sooooo,” she said with a song in her voice. Shame the Legion counted very few music lovers. “A little three-legged bird told me you heard a very exciting rumor. You know me, Aurelius- or should I say, John Galber? Whichever you prefer to have engraved on your tomb. You know I love excitement!”
She paused for full effect. The man’s wet eyes followed her as she rounded him- or more accurately, they followed the colorful piece of thread tying her hand to the grenade’s pin. He whimpered when she gave a playful tug.
“For some reason,” she continued as if discussing the weather. “You thought it would be good to make it a surprise for your superior! You didn’t tell her shit! How did you know it was my birthday- okay, stop fucking crying, you’re ruining my speech.”
He got snot everywhere on her grenade, the cute little one she made into a monkey- or at least, what she thought a monkey was. There was a shortage of both circus and monkeys, you see.
“My point,” she declared, carelessly wrapping the thread around her fist until it was a tense line between having a face to cry with- and not. “Is that you went behind my back? You know your Caesar- my dearest dad, if you need the reminder-, would have you flayed for that. It’s very unpleasant, and super gore. It lasts for hours and they just won’t stop screaming- no, really, it’s a mess. Silco says it’s effective but- eh. I’m partial to blowing up traitors, personally.”
The man was so pathetic it made her want to overthrow Silco- sorry, Caesar. Why would he ever believe men were soooo worth it? Ugh. Especially worms like the one writhing at the end of her thread.
“We need to move, Lupa,” groaned Sev’ somewhere behind her. “Our scouts have spotted NCR soldiers less than 5 miles away.”
And oh, what a specimen Sev’ was. Huge, like a super-mutant, but admirably less green. One of his arms had been lost to Caesar’s crusade and very generously replaced by Jinx herself. She knew more about the prosthetic than Sev’, but she would get through his tough-guy exterior someday. His hard eyes met her wild ones, as electrifying as testing current on a motherboard with the tip of your tongue (she would know).
“Aight, less’go,” she whistled back as she tied the thread to a throwing knife from her belt.
The traitor quickly caught on to her intention, but his yelling and whimpering fell into indifferent ears. The blue wolves of Jinx’s auxilia, by now used to maintaining a wide security perimeter, picked up their gear without so much as a look. She did not aim as much as she made a show of picking a target, sticking out her tongue and mimicking old-world baseball players before throwing the knife. It made a graceful arc in the air, during which she ducked behind a rock seconds before the gory blast. With his hair blown back by the shockwave, Sev’ looked far less amused than she was.
They started walking under the bull-standard of Caesar and the cruel Nevada sun. Her men were nervous, though careful not to express it. If the rumors were true, something real precious and potentially real dangerous hid in the cold bowels of Vault 34. Something so interesting that the Legion was ready to sacrifice its men unit to retrieve it, deep in NCR territory.
“Let’s head West,” Sev’ announced after a while. “It’s better to avoid Bitter Springs, for now. The scouts probably came from there.”
“Uh, you know you make sense sometimes? I’m pleasantly surprised,” Jinx commented, earning an annoyed sigh from her second-hand man. “What, in your great wisdom, will we find in ‘34?”
Sev’ shrugged his flesh shoulder, eyes trailed on the horizon where a few fire geckos were scrambling away from their group. “Anything that’s good enough for the Brotherhood is good enough for us.”
“Imagine what I could do with a power armor,” Jinx squealed back, the long blue feathers of her helmet bouncing cheerfully. “Silco probably won’t be mad at me if the knight dies by total accident, and if by total opportunism and luck I end up in possession of the armor, right?”
The man looked like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. He glared at Lupa, her three-apples-tall, TNT-packed frame and her neon blue hair. Sev’ would forever curse the day Caesar took in that girl.
“Ugh,” she deflated, letting her eerily pale arms dangle sadly. “You’re right, he’d be so mad at me. Even if it was an honest accident! I can’t believe he would punish me for that, can you?”
“Sure can,” he huffed, the slightest hint of a smirk tugging his lips.
“You’re such a bully,” Jinx pouted, for once acting like the teenager she was. “Anyway, I hope we don’t find something as boring as an autodoc down there, like last time.”
She did not need to look up to know that Sev’ rolled his eyes at her comment.