FFF - Stand up to Cherry

You punch Cherry in the face with all your strength. She squawks and crumples to the ground.

As all the others pull weapons, you don’t reach for yours. You put your hands up. An awkward moment passes. Cherry is out cold.

Fury is the second in command, and you meet her gaze.

“She had that coming,” you say.

The sense of discomfort is thick in the air, but you picked up on it from the beginning: none of these women like the way that Cherry treats Queen Tess.

“I wouldn’t have risked telling you the truth if I didn’t like you guys,” you go on. “But you can be my friends or you can be slavers. You can’t be both.”

You have been purposefully ignoring Perl, who is right behind you with a sword at the ready. She lowers it and Fury sighs.

Fury looks at Queen Tess, who is shaking with terror.

“You really want to go with her?” Fury asks.

It’s telling: Labrat and a couple of the others look relieved. Even pleased.

“Yes,” Queen Tess replies after a long hesitation. This is her real voice: that of a normal woman. It’s not the angry yelling of her figurehead persona or the whimpers of Cherry’s whipping girl.

“And what are you going to do with her?” Perl asks suspiciously.

“I’ll take her back to New Gurlberg. I have a friend with a house there. She can stay until she figures out what she wants to do,” you say with a shrug. “I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“Will QT be safe?” Labrat looks worried.

“I think so,” you say. “Once I tell Boss Murphy the truth about how Cherry was using her. Let’s be real. She made you do that because a part of her was afraid Boss Murphy would put a bullet in the leader of the Free Gurls.”

Queen Tess looks at the ground, and the others don’t like hearing that truth out loud.

“She’s not a bad leader,” Perl says, but her heart isn’t in it.

“I didn’t say she was,” you say.

“What will you tell them?” Fury asks you bluntly.

“I don’t know yet. But clear out fast. I’m guessing Boss Murphy will send people to pick this place clean right away. You won’t want to be here when they show up.”

“They’ll think it’s a trap,” Perl says.

“Make sure we prove them wrong,” you tell her firmly. You beckon to Queen Tess. “Let’s go.” She walks over to you, and you don’t get sentimental about it.

Fury raises a hand, and you wave back, then get moving. You don’t ask about the gear or the chems that you were promised. The Free Gurls are alive. Queen Tess is free. That’s good.

You’ve also failed your mission to Boss Murphy, and you will have to deal with the consequences. How bad those consequences are will depend on how good a talker you are. Luckily, you aren’t bad at that. You also happen to be Queen Tess’s type—at least from the shy way that she follows you into the swamp. It makes sense, but you aren’t doing this to get laid, you’re doing it because it’s right. You want her DNA for the D.I.C.K. device, but that’s not an issue for right now.

It's the middle of the night; the swamp is dangerous, but you need to get back. When you stop to rest and address your new companion as Queen Tess, you learn that among the Free Gurls, she’s just QT. She doesn’t like being called Queen. QT it is.

Your luck holds and you get her back to New Gurlberg safely, but you run into trouble at the gate.

“I know you,” the guard says suspiciously, shining his light on QT. You get in front of her.

“She’s with me. I need to see Boss Murphy,” you call up to him. More guards appear on the wall.

“Is that who I think it is?” another one says.

“Yes! It is!” you shout back. “But it’s not what you think. Open the damn gate.”

They hesitate and talk among themselves. Two of them sweep lights around as though this might be a trick, which is not unreasonable… you just slogged through the swamp in the dark and are so ready for the safety of the settlement.

Finally, they open the gates. One of them is jogging away to find Boss Murphy and wake her up. Guards cover you once you’re inside, and you resign yourself to having to wait for Boss Murphy. You’re getting anxious.

You can hear the noise and laughter from Reggie’s Bar.

Then the music stops and the laughter dies down. QT huddles close to you nervously, but you’re more interested in what’s going on at the bar. You look past the guards to see someone being carried on a stretcher. It’s Chastity.

Gripped by panic, you act without thinking.

“Wait here,” you say to QT, shoving roughly past the guards and running through the camp. You reach the people carrying the stretcher: it’s Reggie and some other guy.

“What happened?”

Chastity is bright red and in obvious distress, but not making a sound. Reggie is very pale and looks worried. She keeps moving with the stretcher, forcing you to follow.

“Bad chems,” she says.

Before you can reply, a guard grabs you from behind. You don’t fight him as he drags you back toward where the others have QT covered.

Boss Murphy is approaching, pulling on a shirt. People have started to watch. It’s night, but Gurlberg is almost bright with firelight and a few electric lamps. You, QT, and the Guards are just inside the gate. It’s basically the town square.

Boss Murphy arrives, towering over you both. She looks down at QT calmly, but doesn’t shoot her, rip her arms off, or give anything away with her facial expression beyond the fact that she’s not happy.

“What is this, Vault Girl? This is not who I asked for,” she says.

Time to lie to Boss Murphy’s face.

Tell Boss Murphy that the Free Gurls were already gone, but you found QT hiding.

Or,

Tell Boss Murphy that the job went bad and you had to grab QT as a hostage to get out alive.