Chapter 8: Edgerunners of Tomorrow
A sharp, metallic clanging echoed through the concrete cavern of the barracks, shattering my consciousness like a brick through a window. I flinched violently, my eyes snapping open as I bolted into a rigid, trembling sitting position. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped rad-roach, and my left hand instantly slapped against the center of my chest, desperately clawing at the coarse fabric of my shirt.
Nothing.
No gaping hole, no seared skin, and absolutely no missile shrapnel.
My body was entirely intact.
How?
How is that possible? I was shot down. I felt myself die, everything went black! There wasn’t even a light, like they always talked about! I mean, it was an out-of-body experience, so they got that part right. I saw my corpse.
Which, by the way, did not look great. But I’m still here. I’m still… I’m still…
“I’m alive,” I gasped, my voice sounding like gravel grinding in a blender as I stared wide-eyed at the scratchy burlap blanket over my lap. “I’m alive!”
“That’s the spirit!” Lucy’s voice burst into my ears, practically radiating rainbows and sunshine from the bunk across the narrow aisle. She was already on her feet, her initiate jumpsuit looking remarkably neat as she beamed over at me. “Every day above ground is a beautiful opportunity to build a stronger foundation, Kenny! I’m so glad you’re waking up with such a positive outlook today!”
Before I could even begin to process her terrifying level of morning enthusiasm (again), a familiar crisp line of green text flashed in the dark upper-left corner of my vision, humming quietly against the backdrop of my lingering panic.
[AUTOSAVE LOADED: SQUAD FOUR BARRACKS - 6:00 AM]
Oh.
So… that’s how I’m still alive.
I stared at the glowing pixels until they faded away, a profound, bizarre wave of gamer pragmatism instantly washing over my existential dread. It was a literal save-state. The system wasn't just a fancy interface for tracking my terrible stats and my bare minimum perks; it was an active mechanical safety net.
I had actually died in a spectacular, fiery cloud of anti-aircraft physics at midnight, and the universe had simply dropped me right back at the start of the level. Or, start of the day? Is that how Survival Mode works? Wish I knew that before. But, that’s what I get for playing the game on Easy Mode.
Definitely beats the alternative.
I rolled my head to the side, attempting a basic tactical survey of the room, and the absolute reality of the time-loop hit me like a solid block of concrete.
“Hey! Look at this! Seriously, someone look at this!” Thaddeus shouted from three bunks down, aggressively thrusting his bare foot into the air with the exact same panicked squeak from yesterday morning. Or, this morning? Fuck, that’s confusing. “I think it’s a rad-fungus. It’s taking over my big toe! It feels like it’s pulsing!”
“Nobody cares about your toe, Thaddeus,” Dane snapped right on cue, sitting on the edge of their mattress across the room. Their narrow, highly suspicious eyes were already locked onto the rest of us, watching the room with that exact same calculated, predatory intensity. “If you can’t walk on the morning run, Knight Titus is just going to leave you for the radscorpions anyway.”
A few feet away, Maximus was completely ignoring the argument. He sat perfectly still on his footlocker, holding a stiff brush and polishing the toe of his heavy leather combat boot with an intensity that looked almost religious. The rhythmic, scratchy sound of his brush was perfectly synchronized with the memory of my previous lifetime.
It was a total carbon copy. The smell of cold grease, the suffocating aroma of teenage sweat, the exact dialogue trees—it was all completely reset.
A slow, cynical smile crept onto my face as I swung my leaden legs over the edge of the primitive metal bunk. My miserable Agility stat still made the simple rotation feel like trying to turn a battleship in a bathtub, and my spine popped in three different places, but the sheer, beautiful logic of the situation was intoxicating.
I am functionally immortal, bitch!
I mean, unless it’s like a Mario thing, and I have maybe just three or four more lives. Ooh! Or a cat! Then I’d have nine. Sorry, eight, I did just die. Either way, that’s still a lot of lives! I’m feeling lucky. And I’m ready to press on that.
I still needed that Vertibird, after all. And I absolutely refuse to spend the next year of my life doing push-ups on hot asphalt or marching through the desert until my boots wore through just to get one the “right” way. So, stealing one is still the way to go.
I just need a better strategy.
You know what they say. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.
“Thaddeus, is it?” Lucy said, her camp-counselor instincts instantly triggering at full capacity as she marched straight toward the foot-squeak kid. “Don’t you worry. A community is only as strong as its foundation, and that includes your toe! We just need to implement a proper squad accountability check.”
“A what?” Thaddeus blinked, completely caught off guard.
“An accountability check!” Lucy repeated, already reaching into her pocket for her scrap of paper. “I’ve already started drafting a bunk-bed chores rotation. If we restructure the laundry triage and let you handle the—”
“The seated technical maintenance today,” I interjected, cutting her off smoothly as I stood up, stretching my arms. “We can keep your weight off that foot while still maintaining a happy family layout. Everyone pitches in, everyone feels supported.”
I always wanted to steal someone else’s lines. It feels good!
Lucy froze, her hand still hovering inside her pocket. She slowly turned her head to look at me, her eyes wide with absolute bewilderment. “Kenny… how did you know I was going to say that? I literally just wrote that down on the toilet this morning.”
“Lucky guess,” I said, offering her a brilliant, knowing smirk. That immediately faltered. “Wait, the toilet? Gross, Lucy!”
“What?” She crossed her arms, turning away with a blush, as she continued defensively. “Everyone comes up with their best ideas in the bathroom!”
“Yeah, in the shower.” I argued. “Where it’s clean. And we also don’t write things with dirty fingers!” Or much at all, to be fair. It’s too wet.
“What’s a shower?” Maximus turned away from his boots in a moment of confusion. Ha! I knew he was faking all the religious stuff.
“They weren’t dirty!” Lucy ignored the recruit’s deeply concerning question, to snap back at me. “I was just sitting on the toilet, I didn’t use it when I was coming up with the chores rotation!”
“I would hope not! Wait. Did you use it before, or after?”
“… Your honor, I would like to plead the fifth in regards to the chores rotation.”
“Seriously. What’s with you Vaulties and chores?” Dane let out a loud, mocking snort from their bunk, exactly on schedule. “Just do the work you’re assigned. Don’t try and put a spin on it… literally. We’re a militia, not a family… thing.”
“Yeah, yeah, you don't have a reference for something more positive, we know,” I sighed, waving a dismissive hand at Dane without even looking at them. I turned my gaze directly toward Maximus, who was still aggressively buffing his boot. “And hey, buddy. Before I breeze past this, a shower is what gets you a clean body. Which in my opinion, is way better than a clean boot, and way more reflective of a clean soul. Just so you know.”
Maximus stopped brushing mid-stroke. He stared up at me, his jaw slightly slack, the vacant intensity in his eyes completely replaced by sheer, unadulterated confusion. “...How did you know what the Knight told me?”
“Because I’m a psychic, Max.” I lied cheerfully, clapping a hand onto Lucy’s completely stunned shoulder. “Come on, Luce. Let’s go get our burlap on. We have a very long, very exhausting day of physical conditioning ahead of us, and I’m going to fail at least eighty percent of it.”
I strode out of the barracks door ahead of them, leaving Squad Four sitting in a puddle of stunned silence. I felt like a absolute mastermind. I had the day memorized. I had the dialogue mapped. This time, today was going to be different.
Except, it wasn't.
…
It turns out knowing exactly when a punch is coming doesn’t actually help you dodge it when your body moves with the sluggish velocity of a continental plate.
The daytime drills were a masterclass in physical humiliation. Sure, I looked like a tactical genius during the initial formation, dodging a falling supply crate because I knew the rope was going to snap at exactly ten in the morning, but the actual conditioning?
Pure torture.
I knew the drill sergeant was going to order a sudden pivot to a high-knees sprint, but knowing it was coming just meant I got to experience the preemptive dread before my leaden legs failed to lift, sending me face-first into the dirt a fraction of a second later than the first time.
Lucy, bless her violently athletic heart, spent the afternoon cheering me on with the terrifying stamina of a pre-war fitness instructor, entirely oblivious to the fact that I was dying a slow, metabolic death.
But I endured it. I pushed through the agonizing burns in my thighs and the relentless scrutiny of Dane’s scratchy pencil, because my eyes were firmly fixed on the midnight prize.
When the barracks finally devolved into a chorus of synchronized snoring, I slipped out of my bunk. I was a man with a plan. A man with an Intelligence score of nine. Getting shot down by anti-aircraft missiles on my first attempt had been a harsh lesson, but a highly educational one. You don't try to fly a Vertibird away from a military stronghold while the automated defense network is fully operational.
So the solution is simple. Make it not so fully operational.
Creeping through the shadows of the tarmac was an exercise in pure, unadulterated anxiety.
Every step required a conscious, agonizing calculation of my center of gravity, but my complete lack of baseline reflexes made me feel like an ungreased protectron navigating a minefield. Somehow, through a combination of sheer luck and timing the guard rotations perfectly based on my memory of the previous night, I managed to cross the airfield and slip inside the secondary terminal sub-station adjacent to Hangar Bay Three.
The room was dark, illuminated only by the faint, amber glow of a single computer monitor embedded in a metal housing against the back wall. I approached it like a starving man encountering a buffet. This was my domain.
I tapped the keyboard, and the monochrome green text flickered to life across the terminal screen. I braced myself for a grueling, high-level cryptographic puzzle—some complex, military-grade encryption that would require me to isolate matching hex values or cross-reference four-letter passwords.
[RECRUIT TERMINAL - GRID GATEWAY 03]
[SECURITY LEVEL: NOVICE]
I stared at the screen, a flat wave of mild insult washing over my inner tech-genius. Novice? Seriously? The grand, imposing Brotherhood of Steel left their primary automated watchtower controls on a Novice lock? I didn't even need to strain a single brain cell. I just looked at the list of words, spotted STEAL and STEEL, guessed STARE on a whim, and the entire mainframe clicked open with an incredibly unsatisfying electronic chime.
[ACCESS GRANTED]
[AUTOMATED DEFENSE NETWORK: ONLINE / ACTIVE]
[> DISENGAGE TURRET BATTERIES]
“Too easy,” I whispered, a smug, triumphant grin stretching across my face as I reached out to slam my finger onto the enter key like a bad hacker movie.
My elbow twitched. Just a fraction of an inch to the left.
It was a microscopic movement, a tiny failure of basic spatial awareness that would have been entirely inconsequential for anyone with a normal human stat distribution. But for me, it was a death sentence. My funny bone clipped the edge of a heavy, rusted iron wrench that some negligent scribe had left balancing precariously on the edge of the terminal desk.
Time seemed to slow down into agonizing, high-definition frames. I watched in absolute, paralyzed horror as the heavy piece of metal tipped over, slipped past my desperate, slow-motion grab, and dropped toward the floor.
CLANG-CLANG-CLATTER-RATTLE.
In the hollow, metallic vacuum of the concrete sub-station, the sound was deafening. It sounded like a pipe organ being dropped down a flight of stairs. The echoing vibrations hadn't even finished bouncing off the walls before the heavy, automated pneumatic seals of the hangar doors behind me let out a sharp, violent hiss.
I spun around, my heart dropping straight into my boots.
The massive metal doors slid apart, revealing a towering silhouette framed against the harsh, industrial floodlights of the corridor outside. It was a Senior Knight. He was clad in full, gleaming T-60 Power Armor, looking like a walking tank constructed entirely out of military-grade intimidation and unyielding hostility. The yellow headlamp attached to his helmet snapped toward me, pinning me in a blinding, aggressive beam of white light.
I didn't even have time to raise my hands. I didn't have time to offer a witty, self-deprecating explanation, or spin some high-Charisma lie about a midnight maintenance check.
The Knight raised his right arm, and the massive, multi-barreled assembly of a heavy Gatling Laser began to spin. The high-pitched, mechanical whine of the weapon's capacitors charging up filled the small room, a terrifying sound that resonated directly in my teeth.
“Halt, aspi—”
The Knight didn't even finish the word. A blinding, stuttering cascade of brilliant red laser fire erupted from the barrels, instantly illuminating the darkness of the sub-station in a violent, flashing crimson.
A searing, cataclysmic heat slammed into my torso, vaporizing the fabric of my initiate shirt before I could even formulate a scream.
“Fuuuuck!” I stand corrected. No, wait. I don’t.
Out of body experience, again. My “body” is currently a pile of smoldering red ash. Awesome.
“Dude!” Another Knight in T-60 Power Armor slapped my murderer on the backside of his helmet. “What the hell?”
“He moved!”
“No, he didn’t!”
“Oh… well, I thought he did.”
The world dissolved into a blinding white flash of pure energy, followed by the immediate, suffocating weight of total darkness.
“You’re a fucking idiot.” Even though that wasn’t directed at me, I can’t help but take it personally.
Cut to black.
[YOU HAVE DIED. LOADING LAST SAVE...]
…
A sharp, metallic clanging echoed through the concrete cavern of the barracks, shattering my consciousness like a brick through a window.
I flinched, my eyes snapping open as that same blinding beam of morning sunlight sliced through the high, barred window, striking me directly across the face. My left hand slapped against my chest, feeling nothing but smooth, un-vaporized fabric. No Gatling laser burns. No… ashes, I guess, which should have been obvious from the state of a chest.
All I found was the steady, infuriatingly rhythmic beating of my heart.
Still alive.
[AUTOSAVE LOADED: SQUAD FOUR BARRACKS - 0600 HOURS]
The glowing green text hummed in the corner of my eye before fading out, leaving me staring blankly at the ceiling. The initial novelty of being a functionally immortal video game protagonist was officially dead and buried. Now, it just felt like a cosmic joke. I was a rat stuck in a cage, and the universe kept hitting the reset button every time I tried to reach for the cheese.
“Good morning, Kenny!” Lucy’s voice burst into my ears, practically radiating that same unyielding, terrifying morning enthusiasm from the bunk across the aisle. “Up we get! The early bird catches the rad-worm!”
I didn't answer. I didn't even groan. I just let her pull me into a sitting position like a lifeless ragdoll, my mind already spinning with the mechanical parameters of Loop Three.
If sneaking into the sub-station at midnight was a bust because of my terrible Agility, I needed a shortcut. I needed a higher level of clearance. Specifically, I needed Knight Titus’s master keycard.
The daytime drills that afternoon were an absolute blur of physical misery, but I ignored the burning in my thighs. I waited for the perfect window during the midday equipment inspection. Titus was distracted, screaming at Thaddeus about a smudge on his holster. His heavy leather duty belt was hanging loosely from the back of a supply crate. The brass ring holding his high-level keycard was right there, practically begging to be swiped.
I made my move. I timed it perfectly with the moment Titus turned his back to spit on the floor. It was a flawless tactical insertion, ruined entirely by my complete lack of physical coordination. My fingers brushed the cold plastic of the card, but my terrible Agility caused my forearm to clip the edge of a heavy ammunition canister.
The metal box tipped over, hitting the deck with a deafening, reverberating crash.
Titus spun around instantly, his face twisting into a mask of pure, unadulterated military rage. But he wasn't the one who caught me red-handed. Dane was already standing right there, clipboard clutched to their chest, their narrow, predatory eyes locked onto my hand, which was still hovering inches from the Knight's stolen property.
“Initiate Conroy was attempting to misappropriate commanding officer property,” Dane informed Titus, their voice entirely devoid of emotion, a cold, calculated recitation of the rules. “Section four, paragraph two. Insubordination during active deployment.”
“Is that so?” Titus growled, reaching down to unholster his massive, customized 10mm pistol. He didn't ask questions. He didn't offer a trial. This was the Wasteland, and the Brotherhood of Steel didn't waste resources on rebellious recruits. He leveled the barrel directly between my eyes. “An execution sets a fine baseline parameter for the rest of the squad.”
BANG.
The sound of the gunshot hadn't even finished echoing through the hangar before the world went black.
…
A sharp, metallic clanging echoed through the concrete cavern of the barracks, shattering my consciousness like a brick through a window.
I flinched violently, my eyes snapping open as the blinding beam of morning sunlight struck me across the face. My forehead was completely intact. No bullet hole. No leaking brain matter. Just the agonizing, all too familiar stiffness of my individual vertebrae spot-welded together during the night.
If I had to reset every time I died, why couldn’t it have been to a more comfortable point?
[AUTOSAVE LOADED: SQUAD FOUR BARRACKS - 0600 HOURS]
“Good morning, Kenny!” Lucy cheered, her voice slicing through my mounting psychological exhaustion like a razor blade. Which wasn’t to say it was nice. This made… number four? Won’t lie. It’s starting to get to me. “Up we get! The early bird catches the rad-worm!”
I didn't even look at her as she hauled me upward.
I felt like a ghost walking through a museum of my own failures.
Loop Four was officially underway, and the crushing weight of depression was starting to settle deep into my bones. The physical pain of the daytime conditioning was bad enough the first time, but repeating the exact same push-ups, the exact same running drills, and hearing the exact same insults screamed into my face for the fourth consecutive day was breaking my spirit.
The repetition was a psychological meat-grinder.
By the time midnight rolled around, I was completely drained, but spite kept me moving. I slipped out of the barracks, navigating the airfield with the grim, mechanical precision of a terminal script. I bypassed the sub-station entirely this time. I didn't try to hack the terminal. Instead, I used my memory of the guard rotations to slip straight into Hangar Bay Three through a secondary ventilation shaft, bypassing the main doors entirely.
The interior of the hangar was breathtakingly quiet, the massive silhouette of the Vertibird resting in the center of the concrete floor like a dark, sleeping bird of prey. I crept toward the boarding ramp, my heart swelling with a desperate, fragile spark of hope. I had made it inside. No wrenches knocked over, no Knights alerted, no Dane writing notes.
I took three steps toward the aircraft's primary landing gear.
My low Perception stat chose that exact moment to utterly ruin my life. I was so focused on the cockpit canopy that I completely failed to notice a microscopic, pulsing red light emitted from a tiny emitter tucked neatly into the base of the structural support column.
A faint, high-pitched hum resonated through the air a fraction of a second before my shin clipped an invisible infrared beam.
[TRIPWIRE TRIGGERED]
The system notification didn't even have time to fully render in my vision before the automated claymore mine concealed beneath the supply crate detracted.
A blinding, cataclysmic wall of white-hot shrapnel and concussive force erupted from the floor, vaporizing my legs instantly and throwing the rest of my torso backward through the air like a broken ragdoll. I didn't even hit the ground before the darkness swallowed me whole.
…
A sharp, metallic clanging echoed through the concrete cavern of the barracks, shattering my consciousness like a brick through a window.
I didn't flinch this time. I didn't bolt upright. I just lay there, staring blankly at the underside of the metal bunk above me, my arms limp at my sides, my breathing shallow and hollow. The blinding morning sunlight sliced across my face, but I didn't even blink to shield my eyes.
[AUTOSAVE LOADED: SQUAD FOUR BARRACKS - 0600 HOURS]
The green text flickered and died, leaving me in a pit of absolute, unadulterated despair. The novelty was gone. The excitement of a second chance was completely obliterated. I was trapped in a hell of my own making, a loop of endless physical agony, humiliation, and violent death.
I couldn't do this.
My Intelligence score of nine was completely useless when my physical parameters were this broken. I had an Agility rating of one. I moved like an anchor dragged through thick mud. I had a Perception score that made me functionally blind to military-grade security traps.
It didn't matter how many times I memorized the guard routes or the terminal passwords; the universe would always find a loose wrench, a suspicious recruit, or a hidden tripwire to tear me to pieces.
A solo escape was mathematically impossible. The stats were stacked against me, the game was rigged, and I was completely, utterly broken.
“Good morning, Kenny!” Lucy’s voice burst into my ears, radiating that same, beautiful, infuriatingly pure sunshine from across the aisle. She was already on her feet, beaming down at me. “Up we get! The early bird catches the rad-worm!”
I didn't move. I just rolled my head to the side, staring at her with dull, lifeless eyes, completely buried beneath the suffocating weight of the grind.
…
Lucy was starting to get deeply, truly worried. It was one thing for Kenny to be a little cynical—that was just his normal, charming self—but this was entirely different. He had been lying face-down in his scratchy bunk for hours, completely unresponsive to the world around him.
He hadn't even flinched when the midday drill klaxon wailed, a total non-compliance event that had earned him an exceptionally stern mark on Dane’s ubiquitous clipboard. The rest of the squad had marched out to the tarmac, leaving Lucy behind to tend to what she was increasingly certain was a psychological emergency.
She sat on the edge of his mattress, her fingers smoothing over the coarse burlap of his initiate uniform. He looked utterly defeated, the usual bright, analytical spark in his posture completely crushed under an invisible, heavy weight. It broke her heart to see him like this.
A community was only as strong as its foundation, and right now, her favorite person in the entire world was crumbling.
“Kenny, please look at me,” Lucy coaxed, her voice overflowing with the absolute, unyielding force of her Vault-bred optimism. Though, she liked to think she inherited most of it from her mother.
She reached out, gently but firmly taking his shoulder to roll him over.
He didn't resist, turning onto his back with a dull, hollow sigh that made him look completely drained. “I know it’s hard out here. The surface world is loud, and dirty, and the Brotherhood’s structural layout isn't exactly welcoming.”
Wait.
This was supposed to be a pep-talk.
“But you can’t just give up!” Lucy switched tracks faster than someone who was just assigned Sanitation on their G.O.A.T. “You are the smartest, most incredible person I know. You escaped Vault Thirty-Three single-handedly! You saved me from those awful raiders. If you could do all of that, you can handle a little exercise!”
He could probably use it too, but she wouldn’t say that part out loud.
Kenny blinked up at her, his eyes remarkably glassy, a faint, melancholic smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. It was a start, but Lucy knew she needed to double down on her baseline encouragement parameters.
“You just have to believe in yourself, Kenny!” Lucy insisted, leaning closer, her expression brimming with the absolute earnestness of a governing board member presenting a flawless quarterly report. “Push through the darkness. The Golden Rule doesn't just apply to how we treat others; it’s about how we treat ourselves, too! We can survive absolutely anything out here, no matter how hard it gets, as long as we keep trying together. Like, a lot! You just need to keep trying, Kenny.”
The heavy, suffocating cloud of despair around him seemed to visually fracture.
Kenny stared at her for a long, silent moment, the dullness in his eyes gradually being replaced by a spark of genuine, familiar warmth. He let out a breathless, weak laugh, a sound that filled Lucy with a sudden, soaring wave of pure relief. Her pep talk had worked.
The aggressive positivity of Vault Thirty-Three had successfully triumphed over the bleak existential dread of the wasteland.
“Thank you, Lucy,” Kenny said, his voice quiet but remarkably steady as he reached up, pulling her down into a tight, fierce hug. “Really. I needed that. You're amazing.”
Lucy buried her face in his shoulder, her heart doing a frantic, joyful little dance against her ribs. He was back. He was actually back.
Kenny pulled away from the embrace, his posture suddenly shifting into something sharp and calculated. He glanced down at the Pip-Boy on his wrist, his brow furrowing as he tapped the glass interface. A strange, fleeting look of mechanical realization crossed his features, followed immediately by a flat, annoyed grimace.
He must have realized he missed the midday window.
“Alright, Luce,” Kenny said, swinging his legs over the edge of the bunk with a strange, purposeful energy. “I think I need a fresh start. A complete reset.”
“Sure! What were you thinking?” Lucy beamed, thrilled to see him taking such a proactive stance toward his emotional recovery. “Public apology? Group meeting? Therapy? Oh! We can bring back the speaking ball! You remember? When we did that back in the Vault because of that thing we saw that lonely guy do?”
“I’ve actually been actively repressing that, thanks,” Kenny said, offering a dry, perfectly normal smirk that made Lucy’s chest tighten with affection. “Anyways, I was thinking something more… primal?”
“Like what?” Lucy tilted her head, her curiosity thoroughly piqued by his uncharacteristically cryptic tone.
“Don’t worry,” Kenny said, stepping out into the narrow aisle of the barracks corridor, stretching his arms over his head as if he were simply preparing for a light morning jog. “It’ll be like this conversation never happened in a few minutes… except the parts you told me. Thank you, Lucy. Really. I love you.”
Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. Her brain temporarily short-circuited, her heart and mind entirely overwhelmed by the sudden, casual delivery of the three words she had been waiting years to hear. “I love you too! Can we get married now?!”
“Hold that thought,” Kenny said, casting a brilliant, knowing wink over his shoulder.
“Um… okay. Sure,” Lucy stammered, her cheeks burning a fierce, bright crimson as she clutched her hands together anxiously. “Not like my ovaries are on a deadline or anything…”
Kenny didn't reply.
Instead, he calmly marched down the length of the corridor, his stride filled with an absurd, untouchable confidence. Standing near the exit was a heavily armed Brotherhood Knight, clad in a massive suit of T-60 Power Armor, his assault rifle slung across his chest as he conducted a standard patrol.
Lucy watched, her romantic daydreams instantly grinding to a halt as Kenny approached the towering war machine. He didn't salute. He didn't ask for permission to speak. He simply reached out, tapped the cold, reinforced metal of the Knight’s shoulder plating, and smoothly raised his right hand, flipping the middle finger directly into the visor of the helmet.
The Knight froze. The mechanical lenses lowering as they locked onto the insubordinate recruit.
“Insolent whelp,” the Knight growled, the internal speakers of the armor distorting his voice into a terrifying, metallic roar.
With blinding, practiced military efficiency, the Knight grabbed the heavy 10mm pistol holstered at his hip, unclipped the safety, and leveled the massive barrel directly at Kenny’s face.
BANG.
The gunshot exploded through the narrow, concrete confines of the barracks like a thunderclap.
Lucy’s eyes widened into dinner plates as Kenny’s body crumpled instantly, dropping onto the floor like a sack of discarded potatoes, a horrific, dark crimson puddle immediately pooling out from beneath his head. The unprovoked, brutal execution happened so fast her brain couldn't even process the sheer, terrifying illegality of it.
The Knight simply re-holstered his weapon and continued his patrol as if he had just swatted a minor rad-roach.
“Oh my god!” Lucy screamed, her voice piercing through the sudden silence of the room in absolute, unadulterated horror as she threw her hands to her face. “They killed Kenny! You bastards!”
…
Seven loops later…
…
…
…
The grease in the Brotherhood mess hall smelled faintly of burnt hair and disappointment.
Just like it always did. This was exhausting, demeaning, and utterly unrewarding. So far. But! Whenever I feel that self-doubt kick in, I just remember Lucy’s words, and I feel better. She’s right, of course.
The only way I’m going to get through this is to keep trying. A lot. Possibly with other people.
Which is why I’m here, right now.
I sat across from Maximus, watching him violently attack a rusted piece of T-60 shoulder plating with a wire brush. The man was a machine of pure, unadulterated angst. Over the last seven lifetimes—of which timelines I’d either been stabbed, shot, or reported to the High Cleric for heresy—I had systematically mapped out this guy’s psychological flaws.
My Charisma stat was a mediocre five.
Even with my prized, pre-war aviator sunglasses pushed up my nose to grant me that sweet ten-percent mercantile discount and a slight confidence boost to a happy Charisma 7, I couldn’t just sweet-talk my way past his brainwashing.
On Loop Six, I tried mocking the Brotherhood’s ridiculous pseudo-religious propaganda. Max had pulled a combat knife on me before I could finish the sentence. On Loop Seven, I tried playing the hardened, cynical Wasteland badass. He just stared through me like I was a transparent piece of dirty Plexiglas.
On Loop Nine, I tried bribing him with a pristine pack of Sugar Bombs I’d pinched from the supply depot. He immediately reported me for unauthorized possession of sugar, which led to a very uncool summary execution via firing squad.
But Loop Twelve? Loop Twelve was the charm. I finally had the exact, optimal dialogue tree memorized. I knew exactly which buttons to press to crack open the shell of this heavily traumatized, highly weaponized hall monitor.
“You’re going to take the metal right off the frame if you keep scrubbing like that, Max,” I said, leaning back and resting my elbows on the dented metal table.
Maximus didn’t stop. The wire brush squeaked aggressively against the iron. “A Knight’s armor must be flawless. The Knight demands it. The Codex demands it.”
“Right. The Codex,” I replied, forcing my voice to drop into a smooth, hyper-earnest pitch that felt entirely unnatural to my tongue. It was the exact tone of a Vault-Tec instructional video—pure, unfiltered, weaponized sincerity.
Lucy would be proud.
“Because it’s all about the armor, isn’t it? It’s about the hierarchy. The titles. The big, shiny metal suits.”
He paused, the brush hovering an inch above the plating. His brow furrowed, his wide, somewhat vacant eyes locking onto mine with a sudden, defensive intensity. “The armor protects the innocent. It represents the order of the world.”
“Does it?” I asked, tilting my head. I took a slow breath, channeling every ounce of dramatic theater I could muster, entirely burying my usual dry cynicism. “Because from where I’m standing, the Knights spend a lot of time protecting their own reputations. They look at the dirt, and they just see dirt. But guys like you? You know what it’s actually like down there. You remember what it’s like to be helpless. To have nothing but the sky over your head and a target on your back.”
Maximus went entirely still. The wire brush lowered to the table.
I could practically hear the gears grinding in his head, shifting heavily under the weight of an actual emotional payload. He was a textbook case of a kid who joined a cult because the cult had big guns and promised him he’d never have to feel afraid again.
“I want to be a Knight,” Maximus muttered, though his voice lacked its usual rehearsed vigor. He looked down at his calloused hands. “To bring order.”
“You don't want to just be a Knight, Max. You want to be a hero,” I said, hitting him with the exact phrase I’d spent three loops refining. Still a little cringe, but as stated, my Charisma wasn’t peak.
I’ll work on it.
Maybe.
“And I’m not talking about the Silver Shroud.” I continued. “No, man. You want to become the shield for those left in the dust. The people the Elders forget about while they're busy hoarding pre-war tech. Order isn't about clearing out old ruins or filing reports. It’s about looking at someone who can't fight back, standing in front of them, and telling the world: not today.”
It was shameless of me. It was a complete and utter manipulation of a brainwashed kid’s deepest psychological core, and I felt a brief, passing pang of guilt over it. This isn’t how I was raised.
Mom would probably give me that disappointed look she saved for when Mia and I fought over the last of the cram, and Dad would tell me a man’s word had to mean something. But Mom and Dad were safe inside Vault 33, entirely unaware that their son was currently playing a high-stakes, multi-lifeline RPG with a heavily armed cultist just so he could steal a Vertibird.
Their lessons didn’t hold up much out here.
If I wanted to get Lucy and myself out of this place without getting turned into swiss cheese by a Gatling laser, I needed a meat-shield who could pilot power armor.
Maximus was staring at me now, his eyes genuinely welling with thick, pathetic tears. His mouth hung slightly open, his chest heaving as if I had just handed him a holy scripture written specifically for him. He looked like a puppy that had been kicked its entire life suddenly receiving a whole block of fancy cheese.
“You…” Maximus swallowed hard, his voice cracking slightly. “You see it too. Nobody else here talks like that. They just talk about duty. About the sword.”
“Because they don't get it,” I said, capitalizing on the massive critical hit I’d just landed on his psyche. I casually reached over to my tray, picked up my plate, and slid exactly half of my perfectly square, gray, highly synthetic Salisbury steak onto his tray. “Here. You're working through dinner. A shield hero needs their strength.”
Maximus looked from the processed meat up to my face, utterly bewildered by the display of basic human empathy.
Right on cue, a familiar, glowing green box manifested in the upper right corner of my vision, floating lazily against the dingy rafters of the mess hall.
[Maximus Loved That]
[Maximus Is Now Following You]
I suppressed a heavy, internal groan, keeping my face locked in a mask of stoic, brotherly solidarity. It was terrifyingly easy to manipulate people out here if you just treated the world like a poorly coded dialogue tree. One piece of mystery meat and a few lines of plagiarized superhero dialogue, and I had officially unlocked the first companion for my heist crew.
Now I just had to figure out how to handle Dane, and they weren't going to be nearly as susceptible to a speech about feelings.
…
Six loops later…
…
…
…
The scratch of the graphite pencil against the rough ledger paper was the only satisfying sound in the entire base. Dane leaned over the cramped metal desk in the secondary supply office, meticulously logging the afternoon's equipment discrepancies.
The clipboard was power.
The clipboard meant being the one who asked the questions, rather than the one getting struck with a training baton on the hot tarmac. The rest of Squad Four was out there sweating, but Dane had carved out a beautiful, bureaucratic sanctuary amid the scent of old grease and stale parchment.
A shadow fell across the ledger.
Dane didn't look up immediately, deliberately letting the silence stretch to re-establish the proper hierarchy of the room. It was that weird Vault kid, Kenny, strolling in with his hands casually stuffed into his pockets and those ridiculous pre-war aviator sunglasses resting on the bridge of his nose.
“Initiate Conroy,” Dane said, clicking the mechanical top of the pencil with a sharp, predatory finality. “You are currently outside your assigned sector during active inventory hours. That’s an immediate ten-point deduction from your weekly merit baseline. Get out before I look up the penalty code for—”
“Four hundred rounds of 5.56mm ammunition,” Kenny said, cutting across the threat with a completely flat, conversational tone. He didn't look intimidated. He looked incredibly bored. “Twelve standard-issue combat knives, three packs of military-grade RadAway, and a single, pristine fusion core. That’s what’s missing from your physical ledger counts compared to the central armory manifest, isn't it?”
The pencil froze in Dane’s grip.
The air in the tiny room suddenly felt remarkably thin. Dane stared at him, the predatory confidence evaporating instantly into a cold, prickly wave of raw panic. That information wasn't public. It wasn't even written down yet; it was hidden behind three layers of altered intake receipts tucked beneath the false bottom of Dane's personal footlocker.
If the Paladins found out about the missing ammo, the punishment wouldn't be a merit deduction. It would be a broken jaw and a permanent reassignment to a frontline vanguard unit.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” Dane muttered, instinctively pulling the clipboard closer to their chest like a piece of armor plating. “Those numbers are completely fabricated. If you're trying to spread malicious rumors—”
“Senior Knight Varley is going to walk through that door in exactly twenty seconds,” Kenny interrupted, casually leaning his shoulder against the rusted frame of the supply cage. He tapped the face of his Pip-Boy without looking at it. “He’s doing a surprise audit on the 5.56mm crates. When he sees the shortage, he’s going to use your head to dent the lockers. Unless, of course, you use the logistics loophole found in section nine, paragraph four of the Brotherhood field manual.”
“The field manual doesn't have a loophole for theft,” Dane hissed, their heart hammering against their ribs.
“It does if you re-classify the missing rounds as training expenditure under the extended deployment clause,” Kenny replied, sliding a small, heavily dog-eared piece of paper across the desk. It was covered in neat, analytical handwriting. “Sign off on the training allocation right there. It backdates the ammunition usage to last Tuesday’s firing range drills. The books balance perfectly.”
Dane didn't think. The sheer, suffocating terror of a senior officer’s wrath took total control of their hands. Dane grabbed the paper, matched the technical codes against the official ledger, and scribbled their signature at the bottom of the form just as the heavy iron handle of the office door began to turn.
The door flew open with a violent, metallic bang.
Senior Knight Varley strode into the room, his massive T-60 Power Armor scraping against the low ceiling, breathing heavily through his helmet’s grated respirator. “Aspirant! Hand over the 5.56mm inventory logs. I’m conducting a structural compliance audit.”
Dane swallowed a lump of pure bile, rising to their feet and presenting the clipboard along with Kenny’s backdated paper with a trembling, perfectly rehearsed salute. Varley snatched the papers, the mechanical fingers of his gauntlet clicking against the wood.
He stared at the columns of numbers for ten agonizing seconds. The respirator hissed. He flipped to Kenny's note, grunted in rough satisfaction, and slapped the clipboard back down onto the desk.
“Carry on, aspirant,” Varley barked, spinning on his heel and marching back out into the corridor, the heavy thud of his armored boots fading down the hallway.
The silence that returned to the office was absolute.
Dane sank back into the chair, their knuckles white as they gripped the edges of the desk, staring up at Kenny as if he were an actual demon conjured from the depths of the irradiated wastes. There was no mathematical way he could have known Varley was coming. There was no way he could have memorized the exact, obscure paragraph of the logistics manual without spending weeks in the Scriptorium.
Kenny leaned over the desk, pushing his aviators slightly down his nose to look Dane dead in the eye, flashing a small, triumphant smirk. “It took me a while to figure you out, Dane. But you know what? I think I have.”
Dane scoffs, forcing a weak, defensive sneer onto their face despite the sweat dripping down the back of their neck. “You don't know anything about me, Conroy. You’re just a lucky Vault boy who got a hold of a piece of scrap paper.”
“You're adverse to exercise, which you hide behind your little ‘filing’ system, that, let’s be honest, you half-ass,” Kenny dismissed flatly, his voice dropping into a quiet, untouchable confidence that left no room for argument. “You have very mixed feelings on the BoS’s mission statement of destroying technology, and exterminating everyone that’s not human.”
Well… maybe just a few notes…
“And you’re a bit of a coward.” Kenny shrugged, with an understanding smile. “No judgment. Combat is terrifying.”
The words struck with the precision of a combat knife.
Dane sat entirely paralyzed, feeling completely exposed, every single layer of their carefully constructed survival facade stripped away by a guy who usually spent his afternoons falling face-first into the dirt during sprint drills.
“I am an aspirant of the Brotherhood,” Dane hissed, though the statement felt entirely hollow, a mechanical defense mechanism that had completely lost its power.
“You’re one good day away from leaving,” Kenny said, his tone softening into something genuinely supportive, almost brotherly. “Dane. Today is that day. What if I told you that I had a plan to steal a Vertibird?”
Dane looked from the perfectly balanced ledger sheet up to Kenny’s calm, knowing expression. The Brotherhood was a death sentence wrapped in heavy steel and righteous propaganda, and they both knew it. Dane slowly picked up the graphite pencil, their fingers steadying as the sheer, beautiful logic of the opportunity settled into their mind.
They were listening.
…
Four loops later…
…
…
…
Thaddeus was going to be executed. He was absolutely sure of it. The pain radiating from his swollen, pulsing big toe was nothing compared to the cold terror squeezing his chest as he hobbled through the pitch-black shadows of the storage perimeter.
His fingers clutched a stolen, heavily dented can of pre-war Cram against his initiate shirt like a shield. He had just wanted something to eat that didn't taste like boiled grass and despair, but if a Senior Knight caught him out of bounds after hours with misappropriated rations, they wouldn't just dock his merits. They would put a bullet in his brain and throw his corpse into the waste chute.
Every step was agony, his boots scraping loudly against the loose gravel. He needed a place to hide, a place to consume his meat-prize in shameful peace. The large, rusted metal dumpster near the perimeter fence looked like his best bet, even if it smelled heavily of old cabbage.
Suddenly, a figure stepped directly out of the ink-black shadow of a supply crate, blocking his path entirely.
Thaddeus nearly leaped out of his skin, a pathetic, high-pitched squeak dying in his throat as his heart tried to hammer its way through his ribs. He braced himself to see the gleaming, judgmental visor of a Paladin, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he recognized the lean silhouette of the weird Vault boy, Kenny.
The guy was standing completely motionless, casually leaning against a stack of sandbags, wearing his dark pre-war aviator sunglasses in the dead of night. It was an incredibly bizarre look, but Kenny seemed entirely unbothered by the absolute lack of visibility.
Before Thaddeus could even scramble to hide the stolen can behind his back, Kenny reached into his pocket and extended a hand, offering a pristine, tightly wrapped roll of medical bandages, a small tin of antiseptic ointment, and a heavy, mechanical pre-war can opener.
“Take these for your toe, Thaddeus,” Kenny said, his voice a calm, smooth whisper that cut through the nightly hum of the base’s generators. “Also, do not hide in the dumpster tonight. The lid is rusted loose, it smells like irradiated cabbage, and a giant rad-roach is going to bite your left cheek at exactly twelve-zero-five.”
Thaddeus stared at the medical supplies, then at the shiny metal can opener, and finally up at the dark lenses of Kenny’s glasses. His brain completely ground to a halt. There was no conceivable way Kenny could have known about his rotten toe, or the stolen Cram, or his exact plan to climb into the garbage.
It defied every parameter of logic. A profound, overwhelming sense of superstitious awe washed over Thaddeus, his knees suddenly feeling weak as he took the bandages with trembling fingers.
“Are you… a wizard?” Thaddeus whispered, his wide, terrified eyes locked onto the Vault boy as if he were staring at a creature from pre-war myth.
“Yes. I’m a wizard, Thaddeus. And a psychic,” Kenny replied, offering a brief, enigmatic smirk that flashed in the moonlight. “I’m a psychic wizard. And with my magic abilities to see the future, I shall warn you, when you leave, walk around Hangar Three. The guard is currently having a bathroom emergency. So, you should be safe. See you back at the barracks.”
Thaddeus swallowed hard, nodding aggressively as he tucked the holy relics of ointment and bandages into his pockets. He didn't care about the Brotherhood’s Codex anymore. He didn't care about Knight Titus or the elders.
The universe had just manifested a literal Wasteland deity in front of him, a mystical entity who possessed absolute meta-knowledge of breakfast meats and insect attack vectors. If a psychic wizard told him to walk around a hangar because a guard was having a digestive crisis, Thaddeus was going to follow that directive to the letter. He would jump off the watchtower if Kenny told him the wind would catch him.
“Okay,” Thaddeus breathed, his voice filled with a sudden, unshakeable devotion as he cradled his can opener. “Whatever you say, Kenny. Just tell me what to do.”
“I will.”
…
Three loops later…
…
…
…
Slipping out of the barracks at midnight was an exercise in extreme caution, but Lucy was absolutely determined. A community was only as strong as its foundation, and right now, her foundation—specifically Kenny—was acting incredibly strange.
To be fair, she might be overthinking it.
But, ever since she had that dream of him being executed by a Knight right in front of her eyes—a memory that still made her stomach do terrible, confused flips, even though he was perfectly fine—she had vowed to keep a strict eye on him.
He was her best friend, and she simply couldn't allow him to suffer in silence.
The surface world was incredibly dark, but as she crept along the perimeter of Hangar Bay Three, she noticed the most peculiar things happening. It was as if the universe itself were laying down a very specific, invisible path for her to follow. A loose pebble suddenly rolled across the smooth concrete right by her left boot, catching her attention and causing her to duck into a recessed alcove just as a heavy searchlight swept across the tarmac.
A moment later, a heavy iron access door slightly ahead of her creaked open just a fraction of an inch, revealing a perfectly unlit passageway that bypassed the main, heavily guarded corridor. She slipped through it seamlessly, marveling at how delightfully cooperative the structural layout of the base was being tonight.
Her organic, perfectly guided journey finally came to an end in a deeply secluded corner behind a massive, towering stack of olive-drab ammunition crates. She pressed her back against the cool metal, taking a quiet breath to steady her nerves, fully expecting to find Kenny hiding out here.
Instead, the shadows across from her shifted violently.
Lucy nearly gasped, her hand instinctively flying to her mouth as a tall, imposing figure stumbled blindly into the alcove. It was Maximus, his long arms flailing as he tried to maintain his balance after tripping over a discarded fuel line. Before he could even stabilize his posture, the access door creaked again, and Dane practically fell into the space, their omnipresent clipboard clutched defensively against their chest as they collided directly with Maximus’s shoulder.
“Watch where you are deploying your feet, recruit,” Dane hissed in a furious, muffled whisper, attempting to re-adjust their grip on their ledger.
“You ran into me!” Maximus whispered back defensively, his wide eyes darting around the cramped, dark space in absolute confusion. “I was just following the maintenance corridor like the squire instructed.”
“Both of you shut up!” a third voice whined from the darkness below them. Thaddeus scrambled into the corner on his hands and knees, heavily favoring his un-bandaged foot as he squeezed himself between the ammunition crates. He was clutching a half-eaten, heavily dented can of pre-war Cram, his mouth full of processed meat as he looked up at them in total panic. “The psychic wizard said we all had to be in this exact spot by twelve-fifteen or the rad-roaches would get us!”
Lucy stared at the highly dysfunctional trio, her mind spinning as she tried to calculate the statistical probability of the entire squad happening to stumble into the exact same secluded corner at midnight. It defied every single baseline parameter of military organization. They were a complete mess, whispering and bumping into one another in the dark like a pack of untrained mole-rats.
Then, a long, elegant shadow stretched across the concrete floor.
Lucy watched in absolute awe as Kenny stepped smoothly out of the pitch-black darkness, entering the single, silver beam of moonlight that pierced through the hangar’s high window. He looked entirely magnificent, completely devoid of the clumsy, awkward posture that caused him to fall face-first into the dirt during daytime drill.
He paused, raising a hand to precisely adjust the bridge of his pre-war aviator sunglasses, the dark lenses reflecting the pale lunar glow with an impossible, cinematic perfection.
The squad went entirely, beautifully silent. It was mesmerizing.
Dane stood perfectly still, holding a flawlessly cross-referenced escape route map that looked as though it had been drafted by a master cartographer. Maximus instantly snapped to a rigid, trembling position of attention, staring at Kenny as if he were a High Elder descending from the heavens. Thaddeus simply watched with wide, adoring eyes, happily munching on his Cram while keeping his gaze locked on the perimeter like a highly trained guard dog.
Kenny had somehow taken these cynical, broken wastelanders and unified them into a cohesive, supportive family.
Kenny cracked his knuckles, the sharp sound echoing quietly in the hollow space. He looked over his newly assembled, high-tier party, a small, knowing smirk playing on his lips as he broke the silence. “Alright team. I know we’re all here for our own reasons, but the goal is the same. We’re going to steal a Vertibird.”
“What?!” Lucy burst out, her voice cracking as she completely forgot stealth worked. She stormed forward, pushing past a startled Maximus to confront her best friend. “Kenny! What on earth are you talking about? Stealing? From the Brotherhood?”
Kenny flinched slightly, his cool persona cracking for just a fraction of a second before he smoothly recovered. “Luce, keep it down. We’re doing a tactical acquisition.”
“This is crazy!” Lucy insisted, her chest heaving with a mixture of profound disappointment and aggressive confusion. They had joined this organization together to bring civilization, order, and the Golden Rule back to the surface world.
They were supposed to be heroes, not thieves! Where was all of this sudden negativity coming from? It had literally only been twenty-four hours since they arrived!
“We are supposed to be helping them, Kenny!” She hissed. “We’re building a stronger foundation for the future! Why would we want to run away?”
“The Brotherhood is like really sexist,” Kenny said, his tone perfectly flat, as if he were stating a basic mathematical equation.
Lucy paused, her righteous indignation temporarily stalling out as she processed the word. “… really?”
“Yeah, I heard that too,” Maximus interjected, nodding his head with an expression of pure, uncritical agreement. “Actually, isn’t Lucy the only woman in our entire division?”
Lucy blinked, her mind rapidly scanning through her memories of the past day.
She thought back to the morning formations, the grueling afternoon runs, the crowded mess hall, and the stern faces of the ranking officers. Maximus was completely right. She hadn't seen a single other woman since they arrived. None of the knights, none of the squires, and certainly none of the heavily armed paladins who ran the training drills were female.
Could this really be a core structural flaw of the organization?
“She is,” Dane confirmed, tapping their pencil against the edge of the clipboard with a cold, analytical finality. “That’s just our division, too. I heard that some Chapters don’t let any women in at all. They just keep them out of the Order entirely.”
“That’s crazy!” Lucy cried, her aggressive sense of fairness immediately triggering at maximum capacity. The very idea went against everything she had been taught in the Vault. A functioning society required equal contribution from all sectors!
“Yeah, that’s like racist or something,” Thaddeus chimed in, wiping a smear of Cram grease from his chin as he looked up from his spot on the floor.
“Well, the Brotherhood is that too, but this is sexism,” Kenny corrected, gesturing toward Thaddeus with a casual wave of his hand.
“What’s the difference?” Thaddeus asked, his brow furrowing in genuine, unvarnished confusion.
“Um… what people are discriminated against, I guess,” Kenny muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as his brilliance apparently failed to find a simpler textbook definition for the wasteland recruit.
“Which is bologna!” Lucy shouted, her voice trembling with absolute, righteous fury as she crossed her arms tightly over her chest. The sheer, backward unfairness of it all made her blood boil. “Women are just as capable as men! We can handle the exact same physical and mental work! My mother was a brilliant senior technician, and she kept the entire infrastructure of Vault Thirty-Three running perfectly!”
“Yeah!” Kenny cheered, immediately capitalizing on the sudden surge of energy, his eyes gleaming behind his sunglasses. “A woman can do anything a man can!”
“Yeah!” Lucy agreed, nodding her head vigorously as she caught the infectious wave of enthusiasm.
“Like stealing a Vertibird!” Kenny yelled, raising a triumphant fist into the air.
“Yeah!” Lucy shouted, pumping her own fist in perfect solidarity. She paused, her brain finally catching up to the verbal trajectory of the conversation as the words echoed in her ears. “Wait, no—”
“It’s settled, gang!” Kenny announced, clapping his hands together with a loud, resounding snap that signaled the absolute end of the discussion. “Lucy’s in!”
Instantly, a chorus of quiet, muffled cheers erupted from the squad. Maximus began clapping with a slow, rhythmic devotion, while Thaddeus raised his half-empty can of Cram in a solemn, respectful toast to her bravery. Dane simply nodded, their pencil flying across the manifest as they officially updated the flight crew logs to include her name.
“I didn’t say—” Lucy tried to interject, her face flushing as she looked around at the unified, smiling faces of her companions.
The cheers continued, entirely drowning out her weak, logical protestations.
“Down with the patriarchy!” Kenny shouted, offering her a brilliant, dazzling smile that made her heart do that familiar, stupid little skip.
“I don’t know what that is!” Thaddeus yelled back happily, completely swept up in the revolutionary spirit of the moment.
Lucy let out a long, defeated sigh, her shoulders slumping as she rubbed her temples. It was completely hopeless. Kenny had completely weaponized her own moral code against her, and the worst part was, she couldn't even find a valid counter-argument.
“Okey dokey.”
Guess she was stealing a Vertibird today.