(Note: This story is relatively early in gameplay and affinity. It takes place after the first part of "The Long Road Ahead" is complete, but well before reaching max affinity with MacCready. I use "Nora" as the default Sole Survivor name.)
"Why does Piper call you 'Blue'?"MacCready asked Nora as they ambled down the broken remnants of the main road. They'd been traveling for most of the day in a effort to get closer to downtown Boston from the Red Rocket station she'd set up as an impromptu residence. Said "residence" was now also the home of several of her companions and in desperate need of more supplies and materials to keep things livable. As much as she loved Sanctuary, there were times when she couldn't bear seeing the devastation of her former life, even several months later.
"It's just a nickname she came up with when we met." Nora glanced sideways at MacCready and gave him a cheeky grin, freeing one hand from her combat shotgun to gesture to her outfit. "You know, for the blue Vault suit. The pinnacle of high fashion back in the day."
"Hm." He considered this for a few moments, striding along with an ease that Nora could only hope to develop some day. "I'll have to come up with my own nickname for you, then. It's only fair."
"You call me 'Boss', isn't that enough?" She still couldn't get used to that. Yes, she hired him, but "Boss"?
"No way. I call anyone who hires me 'Boss'. But we've been traveling together longer than any of my other contracts, and we are definitely on better terms." A sly half-smile crept across his face for a fleeting moment, "especially since you helped get Winlock and Barnes off my back."
"My pleasure." She sighed. "The fewer complications on the road" and fewer Gunners to kill innocent people, she thought," the better." She hoisted her empty pack to a more comfortable position on her shoulder.
"Definitely," was his only reply.
-0-
"Heads up!" MacCready called, gesturing with his sniper rife. Ahead of them to the east, illuminated by afternoon light, clusters of half-destroyed buildings surrounded what looked like an small unnatural pond. "Could be a good place to find loot. Just watch out for raiders."
Nora hoisted her shotgun into a more alert position and changed course to approach the structures. She was getting better at these scavenging trips, but miles of walking still tired her. At least they had some time before the sun went down to scope out if the place was worth looting. A quick scan of the area revealed no raiders or super mutants that she could see. Glancing at MacCready, she got a quick head shake. He hasn't seen anything either. Good. They slowed their pace, taking care to step quietly and keep their presence as hidden as possible. The area was a mixed bag of single-family homes and shopfront/apartment buildings.
Look for safes and lockboxes, they're treasure troves of supplies. Keep your eyes out for scrap metal. Watch for mines and traps, she reminded herself. MacCready was a pretty good teacher at post-war self-preservation, and she breathed a quiet thanks to whatever powers that be got her to the Third Rail in time to hire him. He might be younger than she was, but he had been self sufficient for a lot longer. She had been curious about his life after he mentioned he had been the leader of a settlement of children in the Capital Wasteland called Little Lamplight. Reluctant at first, MacCready eventually opened up a bit about his upbringing, such as it was, and she was torn between admiration for his intelligence and grit, and sadness for his lack of what she considered a "normal" life. She mused over the differences in what was considered normal from her time, and now.
"You still in there?" Nora hadn't realized she'd stopped, deep in thought. She was staring at the back of MacCready's scarred and torn duster as his gaze swept the area. He turned his head to peer over his shoulder at her with one amused blue eye. "Earth to Boss, we don't want to be standing out in the open, hey? I prefer to be the sniper, not the target."
"Right. Uh, no." To cover the embarrassment of her lapse of survival training, she pointed towards the buildings framing the central pond crater. "Let's try over there first. We might be able to get into the buildings through a destroyed wall or broken door." Most of the smaller buildings on their way in were barricaded to a fare-thee-well and probably not worth the effort of trying to search.
"Good thinking. Let's go. It's going to be dark soon, so we may as well try to find a place to shelter for the night, too." Suiting action to words, MacCready took the lead, carefully picking his way across the rubble-strewn common and towards the endmost building surrounding the dirt-rimed pond. Nora followed, trying to place her feet in his footsteps and mostly succeeding. They crossed the road, ducked around several collapsed structures, climbed the steps from the ruined sidewalk and rounded the corner of the row of brick buildings. Shops with apartments on the upper floors, unless I miss my guess, Nora mused, stepping with more speed and confidence as she reached the dirt packed mound cresting the crater. She moved faster now. Could be filled with all kinds of--
"Oof!"
MacCready had not only stopped, but had actually backed into her. His right arm snaked out to catch her before she tripped. "Shhhhhhh!" Moving with admirable stealth, he pulled them both down just behind the top of the dirt mound. "Shi- Damn it!" he muttered intensely, "just what the Commonwealth needs, another source of Feral Ghouls." MacCready was staring intently at the sight before them, lips pressed together into a thin, angry line. "Must've been where one of the bombs dropped. No wonder there weren't any raiders about." His voice was a barely audible murmur, but the intensity still came through. His hand gripped his sniper rifle tightly, knuckles whitening. Nora inched up to look over the edge.
That's when she noticed the clicking. Her Pip-Boy's Geiger counter was ticking away quietly, letting her know in no uncertain terms just why the pond looked unnatural. Well, and it was glowing. And full of ghouls wandering aimlessly around the entire crater. It was only a matter of moments before they were discovered. Decision time. They need to go.
Nora slowly set her shotgun against the dirt slope and reached into her side pouch for a couple of grenades. MacCready heard the rustle of fabric and looked over at her. His eyebrows shot straight up and he mouthed "Are you crazy?" at her. She shook her head, pointing to the slope leading down into the irradiated water. There was really only one way in or out of the pond, and if the ferals came after them, they'd have to come out at that ramp. A couple of frag grenades tossed into a clustered group of ferals would do a great deal of damage. They just had to time it so the ghouls would group together in their effort to leave the crater.
MacCready rolled his eyes and held up one finger. Wait. He took the binoculars from his belt to sweep the crater's edge, lips moving silently as he counted. Two, three... seven... nine... fourteen... seventeen.... Nora waited, grenades held ready. They had to do this. Getting supplies was important, but they needed to rid the Commonwealth of feral ghouls whenever and wherever they were found. Ferals, raiders, Gunners, Super Mutants, the varied scourges of the average settler just trying to scrape a living from the land. Her thoughts were punctuated by the clicking of her Pip-Boy.
"Twenty-two" was the murmured announcement from MacCready. He returned the binoculars to his belt, shifting onto his side in order to face Nora. "You sure you want to go through with-- dammit!" His rifle was instantly in his hands, swinging around to aim directly behind her.
Simultaneously, a sharp, burning pain lanced through Nora's calf as the feral ghoul that had raced out of the nearest building attacked. Rotted, irradiated hands clawed at her leg, grasping and pulling her towards the gaping mouth and gnashing teeth in a frenzied, mindless hunger. The crack of MacCready's sniper rifle blasted its head clean off to bounce down the embankment into the glowing water with a noisy splash. Nora kicked with her free foot, shoving the limp body off of her. "That's done it," he said, quickly getting to his feet, offering a hand to help Nora up. "We have to get to cover now. You gonna make it?"
Nora hissed as her injured leg took her weight. "I'll make it. Where are we gonna go?" She had to ignore the trickle of warm blood soaking her suit's pant leg as she quickly scanned for a better position. Move, damn it! The sight of the looming walls gave her an idea. "Gotta go up! C'mon!" She tugged on MacCready's coat and he followed her lead.
The chorus of voices from the pond howled and moaned like an echoing nightmare as the ghouls rushed towards their position. MacCready and Nora backed down the mound and towards the line of blasted multi-story buildings. Nora pulled the pin on one grenade and heaved it towards the ramp as she limped down, hoping to at least slow the onslaught of nearly two dozen frenzied ghouls. She readied the second grenade and shouldered her shotgun. The first grenade exploded with a deafening blast, scattering shrapnel and rags of rotted flesh in a halo of destruction.
"Playtime's over!" MacCready was demonstrating why he was the best merc in the Commonwealth as he coolly dispatched feral ghoul after feral ghoul. He let Nora guide his steps towards the concrete wall, keeping his sniper rifle in position to pick off targets as they presented themselves, stopping only to reload. He was almost smiling at the ease of shooting ghouls in a crater. One well-placed round took out a ghoul halfway up the ramp, causing it to roll into the ones behind it. Nora tossed her second grenade into the temporarily slowed group, then turned to peer into the blasted bottom floor of the building she had been aiming for.
Movement teased the edge of her sight in the dim room and she frantically swung her combat shotgun into position as the grenade detonated, causing MacCready to let out a whoop of glee. A second feral ghoul had been attracted by the noise and was lumbering across the rubble-strewn floor towards her. It hadn't yet seen her. She aimed carefully, squeezing the trigger.
Blam! A spray of blood and gore exploded from the ghoul's side, too off-center to be fatal. Now the ghoul saw her. It growled a wordless roar and charged, moving insanely fast. Shaking with reaction, Nora fired again and again, blasting an arm, the torso again, finally a leg, which stopped its headlong rush. The ghoul toppled over, remaining arm flailing as it desperately tried to strike. With her target unable to move, she was finally able to complete a head shot, blasting its skull to bloody pieces across the room. She took a breath and reloaded, grateful to have found the combat shotgun as her weapon of choice. Her aim was getting better, but still abysmal, and this shotgun had a magazine capacity that accommodated her need for multiple shots. Meanwhile, MacCready had decimated the ferals in the crater. He reloaded one more time, backing up against the brick wall. "We good to go?" he called to Nora as he peered around in the dying afternoon light.
"I think so," she answered, shouldering her weapon and turning on the light of her Pip-Boy in order to see better. No more movement caught her attention and she painfully picked her way a few feet over to a ramshackle staircase leading to the second floor. No longer attached to the back wall, it nevertheless seemed sturdy enough. "There was another feral in here, but I think that was it." She climbed up a few steps to test them, going up on all fours to give her wounded leg a break and giving each tread a shove or a shake. "I think I found a way up," she added.
MacCready backed into the room, rifle against his shoulder again. "Good," he said, tightly. "Get up there.... now." The crack of his sniper rifle sounded much louder in the confines of the room, even with the back wall gone. Startled, Nora hopped up the remaining few steps to the turn of the landing and watched in horror as something vaguely human shaped, but horribly deformed and glowing a sickly green stumped determinedly towards them. A glowing feral? Shit shit shit!
Crack!
Crack!
Nora watched in paralyzed fear as every shot MacCready fired found its way to the glowing ghoul, but only slowing it a little. He stole a look behind him, finding the first step.
Crack!
MacCready backed up another few steps as the brightly lit green ghoul hobbled closer to the blasted entrance. It was still moving, slowed but not stopping its inexorable advance.
Crack!
The steady firing stopped as MacCready wobbled on the next backwards step. He let go of his rifle with one hand, grabbing the handrail to steady himself. The rotten, unanchored railing instantly fell away, taking him with it. He landed hard, on his side, on top of a scattered pile of concrete rubble and fragments of wooden beams. His rifle clattered away towards the crater, stopping a few feet away. A low, tortured groan floated up to Nora. The glowing ghoul was only a few feet from the building.
Oh no you don't, snarled Nora.
Paralyzing fear burned away in a frenzied rage she didn't even know she possessed, Nora clenched her shotgun in a white-knuckled death grip. Fresh warmth blossomed down into her boot as she heedlessly charged down the steps. Shifting the grasp on her shotgun, she braced her weight and momentum into the vicious uppercut buttstroke aimed at the freakish feral ghoul's head. Her Pip-Boy's Geiger counter crackled a frantic warning as she connected. The irradiated ghoul rocked back from the blow, staggering to one side before slowly straightening. All Nora heard was static, whether from the Pip-Boy or her berserk combat reaction she couldn't tell. Before the glowing horror before her could recover completely, she reversed the shotgun and shoved the barrel into the ghoul's open mouth, forcing it as far down its throat as she could.
Blam!
The Glowing One exploded, showering Nora with toxic, irradiated gore. Her rage drained from her and she went lightheaded in relief, nearly dropping her shotgun.
"Well, that's one way to do it," MacCready's amused voice commented from behind her. Nora whirled at the sound. He stood in the blasted wall opening, cradling his arm; bruised, bloody, but alive. Her retort was cut off as she was suddenly overcome with nausea. She staggered to the edge of the wall away from the carnage, and vomited, heaving over and over even after her stomach was empty, eventually sagging into a drained, bloodied, gore covered heap.
-0-
They had had to search nearly halfway down the line of close-packed buildings to find a suitable space to set up shelter before night set in completely. No more ghouls appeared to harass them, and they were able to locate a room on the third floor that looked like an old home office. Nora let MacCready take the lead as her head was swimming from both the pain of her wounded leg and an odd debilitating nausea. He wasn't moving easily either, but was apparently more used to shrugging off pain until he could deal with it. Nora was just grateful to rest at the edge of the broken floor and slowly try to clean off with an old cloth and some purified water. She had gotten herself mostly cleaned up when MacCready, who had disappeared for a short time to scrounge, reappeared with his arms full.
"Here we go, this should help." He dumped his findings onto an old desk, sorting them out. He grabbed a Stimpak from the pile, sighing in relief as he administered it to his arm. "That's better." He carefully flexed his arm fully, swinging it slowly back and forth. Picking out another Stimpak, he called to Nora, patting the top of the desk. "Your turn. Get over here."
She managed to stand up and make her unsteady way over to the desk, leaning heavily on the scarred wood top. Before she had time to react, MacCready had stabbed the Stimpak into her thigh and she felt the wash of coolness and healing spreading down to melt away the pain in her wounded calf. She hissed in relief and sank down on the floor, back against the desk and prodded experimentally at her leg. "Much better, thank you. But why do I still feel sick?" Her stomach was still roiling with nausea, and she felt achy and drained. She rested her head on her arms.
"Wow." MacCready held up an IV-type bag with the words "Rad Away" scrawled across it in thick black letters. "You really are a Mungo, aren't you?" He crouched down, took Nora's arm and proceeded to roll up her sleeve to tap for a vein. "Radiation poisoning," he explained as he carefully inserted the Rad Away's needle into her arm. Nora winced in response; she hated needles. "That crater pond was bad enough, the feral ghouls were worse, and you never want to get near a feral that's glowing like that one was. They're called Glowing Ones." He set Nora's arm down on her upraised knee and stood up to pick through the pile on the desktop. "You got a whole crapload of radiation in a very short period of time." He chuckled, "I'm surprised you haven't grown another head by now."
The Rad Away was starting to take effect. Nora raised her head to give MacCready a stern look, which was spoiled by the fact he was facing away from her. "Fine. Now I know." She sighed heavily and added, bitterly. "If I could hit the broadside of a barn, maybe I wouldn't have to get so close." She closed her eyes and put her head back down again.
"You definitely got close. You're like the opposite of a sniper." The smile was audible in his tone. "I think we'll have to find a new term for your firing technique. 'Point blank' isn't descriptive enough."
"I don't think I'll ever be even half as good a shot as you are," she muttered into the space between her knees.
Another chuckle answered that statement. "No, probably not, but that's why you hired me. 'MacCready's mercenary service: gun for hire since 2281.' I am the best, after all." He sounded so happily pleased with himself that she had to smile.
"Good point." And I am so glad I hired you. Nora just let the Rad Away do its job.
The rustling of MacCready's sorting slowly stilled. She peeked up at him. His smile had faded, and he turned to face her, crouching down to meet her gaze with a serious expression. Crystal blue eyes met dark green.
"Thank you," he said simply.
"For?" She was confused.
He flushed slightly. "I... I'm not used to being able to rely on anyone." One hand reached up to tug at the brim of his cap, a nervous gesture. "You... well, you were less like a boss and more like a partner out there." He shifted to sit down next to her, back against the desk, staring out into the night. "You guided my steps when we were moving towards cover, letting me get more shots in. You took care of finding a defensible location." He sighed, looking back at her out of the corner of his eye. "And when I fell..."
"I did what I had to." She picked at a loose thread on her knee. "I couldn't let that thing get to you."
"Still." A long pause, not quite uncomfortable.
"MacCready, what's a Mungo?"
"Hmm?" he asked. His gaze was still distant, thoughts obviously elsewhere.
"You called me a Mungo earlier. What is a Mungo?" She picked at the IV tube in her arm. The Rad Away had definitely worked. Her nausea had disappeared, and she was just end-of-day tired instead of numbingly fatigued. And her curiosity was piqued.
"Ha. I guess I did, didn't I? I haven't used that word in years." MacCready turned back to face her, noticed her fiddling with the IV, and removed it, pressing a thumb on the injection site. "In Little Lamplight," he explained, "we called adults 'Mungos'. It started out meaning anyone over the age of sixteen, but after a while it became more of an insult... a 'Mungo' was not just an adult, but a clueless, albeit sometimes well-meaning adult. I guess you reminded me of that."
"Gee, thanks."
"Hey, you're the one who charged a Glowing One head on, not knowing about how irradiated those fu-- err, those things are." He took his thumb away from her elbow. "And not knowing about Rad Away?" He rolled his eyes. "How do you even stay alive out here?"
She laughed. "I hired you, of course."
His answering grin was sly, "Point." He shook his head ruefully, "You may be a Mungo, but you're not all bad...." he trailed off for a moment, then barked a self-satisfied laugh. "That's it!"
"What's that?" she had to ask.
"Your nickname, of course." He chuckled again, rubbing his hands together. "Mungo." A smile spread slowly across his features, lighting his eyes with delight at his cleverness.
"Oh, noooo,"she groaned. "You are not calling me that."
"It's perfect," he gloated. "And even better because nobody but you and I know what it means." He relegated Piper's nickname to inferiority, "'Blue' is so obvious." His snort was derisory.
Nora gave up. "Fine. But only between us." Then she added, "and I get to call you 'Mac'. 'MacCready' is a mouthful when you need to be quick."
"Hrrrrrnnn...."came the grumbling reply.
"It's only fair," she reasoned.
"Oh suure, throw my words back at me," he complained good-naturedly. "Fine," he mimicked, "....Mungo." He grinned at her with a delighted little kid's grin that she had never seen on his face before, but transformed the sarcastic, bitter mercenary briefly into a charming young man she definitely wanted to get to know better.
"Mac," she taunted back, smiling.
"Boss."
"MacCready." What have I gotten myself into?