After a long day avoiding the invitation of The Creeps and hauling her gear up to Ms Powell's tree house in The Bluffs, Gwendy shares a few fingers of whiskey with her host and holds her own pretty well before the effects of the alcohol take hold and she crashes out. In the darkness of the perforated shipping container home, the young Vault Dweller dreams of the road ahead upon which both women agreed to travel, searching for the origin of the mysterious transmission.

Across the room, Louise stirs from a heap of blankets and crouches by the hatch, her eyes twinkling in the dark...

RENDEZVOUS

@ Does Gwendy notice Louise leaving the container?
d: (PER)SURVIVAL v (TN=8) Dif=1 2D20=16,15 -> MISS
=> She does not wake to see Louise leave, continuing to sleep

=> Suggested events play out, but there is no observing of them by Gwendy

Louise looks towards her guest and waits a moment to make sure she is truly asleep before slipping silently down through the hatch, Deathclaw mask in tow.

?: Is the moon out tonight?
d: 50/50 2D20v=11,10 -> No
=> Thick clouds roll above the Bluffs, blotting out the small sliver of moon

The trees around the glade are charcoal waves against the meager gloom, a deeply familiar sketch and one she can easily navigate by. The meeting place isn't far from her home but Louise deliberately takes the hardest route there to maintain higher ground. Straining her senses she looks down into the wooded bower to see if her counterpart has arrived.

?: Is her counterpart in the meeting place already?
d: 50/50 (1-10 No) 2D20v=19,12 -> Yes
=> She spots the telltale scrap of yellow fabric tied to the usual branch.

NPC - PAUL NAKANO

Generate NPC (p.178)
d: Name -> Paul Nakano
d: Age 1d20=1 -> Adult
d: Demeanor 1d20=6(evens) 1d20=17 -> Desperate 
d: Distinctive Features 2d20=9,12 -> Pre-War Affectation, Deathclaw Skull
d: Profession 1d20=3 -> Farmer
d: Secret 1d20=4 -> Deep regrets about life
d: Truth 1d20=4 -> Superstitious
=> Paul and Louise go back a long time, as determined by the shared Deathclaw Skull imagery. They have been meeting secretly for a long time as well, but the question is why? And if Louise is continuing on with Gwendy what about their meeting will be different?

d: Goal Type 1d20=5 -> Information
=> Louise is an ex-mercenary/hunter, particularly well suited to gathering information in the area with her Scoped Rifle. She has been watching the roadways that cross through the Bluffs and relaying information about what she sees to Paul when they meet. 

=> Paul and his clan/family/group are farmers near The Nest that avoid harassment by agreement: As long as Paul and company tip off The Creeps about people they can proselytize to they are left alone. L's info assists them in this.

=> Paul is something almost like family: An ex-merc/gang member from her days living in the Shaft.

Scene Projection (Tarot)
d: 3 Card Draw -> Nine of Wands, Nine of Cups, The Devil
=> Nine of Wands: Louise and Paul have been through a lot, they have struggled with terrible loss and survived by their own persistent desire for survival. Some recollection of this as a fact at the start of their meeting.

=> Nine of Cups: Louise grateful that she has some closure of a long standing debt to the Corner family and eager to fulfill it, despite her obligation to Paul who is paying her for her intel. 

=> The Devil: When Louise says she is leaving the Bluffs and doesn't know when she'll return Paul becomes anxious and lets slip that he's been selling the intel to The Creeps who have become more demanding of their small settlement. Without up-to-date intel they are under threat and will likely be their next victims

BYGONES

There, on that low branch, a scrap of golden yellow fabric: Paul Nakano is already waiting for her. She picks her way down a short slope behind a few clumps of dense brush and quietly approaches the bower, whispering out the click-whistle-click-click code secret they've shared for more than a decade. It returns to her with Paul's answering whistle-click-click-click code and Louise relaxes a little. She slips into the leafy hollow with barely a sound and crouches near to Paul who is wearing a similar Deathclaw skull mask, albeit one with a slightly deformed horn on the left side.

Paul Nakano: "Hey, what took you so long, I've been out here for almost two hours. I told Betsy I had to check the south field for mole rats, she'll be pissed and worried if it takes me all night."

Louise: "Couldn't get away before dark. I've got a guest."

Paul: (head quirking to the side slightly) "You have a guest? You? Paranoid Powell? I thought I was your only friend. I'd be offended if I wasn't so confused."

Kneeling together in the brush, Louise tells Paul a truncated version of her encounter with Gwendy's folks in the woods years ago, how she left a holotape behind promising to reward her saviours if she ever got the chance.

Paul: "Yeah, I remember seeing the scars when we met up at Sil's Grill before that hurricane or whatever blew through. Knew about the 'Guai but you never told me about the other hunters." He says with a hint of reproach in his voice.

Louise: (annoyed, acerbic) "You want to read my diary? Oh if only you were there to see it all! We wouldn't have to waste time recollecting about all the fire and shite we've tracked through." She wields the harshly whispered sarcasm like a machete, chopping at Paul. "Why don't we scrounge some Potato Crisps and jaw all fucking night about crap we wish we could forget, like that time you blasted the whorehouse bouncer and we had to shoot our way out of Gulping Bride? Or maybe when I dropped that rotten dynamite and blew up Jezebel and her dog? Sound like fun?"

Paul: "Holy fuck, been drinking much? You think I want to dig that stuff up? I have a good life now, I LIKE farming. I don't want to dredge up that merc shit any more than you do so calm your ass down, jeezus."

A quiet beat stretches into a dark silence between them, each wrestling with the nightmares of their past. Paul shifts on his haunches and lowers himself to the grass, crossing his arms on his knees. He's still wearing the RobCo. Engineer jumpsuit she saw him in last week and the week before. Old-World fashion, not her favourite. People wear what they can but she knows he makes good leathers. Why keep this patchy junk?

Paul: "I am happy, you know. Betsy loves me and we're good together. I'd do anything to keep her safe, use what I know from before, to try and stop the bad stuff as much as possible."

Sounds like he's trying to convince himself, Louise thinks.

Paul: "But it's hard to do it alone, and it gets harder every time The Nest is full, El, and they're fit to burst down there."

She's surmised as much, keeping her scope on the little fluttery clusters of weirdos when they drip out of their soggy village. Pastor Clement's sheep know not to get close to her thicket now, but it took some convincing and a fucking fist full of bullets to drive it home that she really wants to be left alone. She constantly watches the great old highway that follows the shore from the Bluffs to the Bay, near Paul's farmstead and past the Nest, where the magnification of her instruments starts to peter out. Paul, at least as paranoid as she is, has traded caps and other things for the intel regularly over the years. It's been a good arrangement for both of them with a regular income benefit: Paul gets to know about what is tramping around in the surrounding area and prepare accordingly, while she gets to play the misanthrope in her tree with a couple of bucks to toss at caravans for supplies.

The farmstead is close enough to The Nest that barter is pretty much expected, despite how annoying the parishioners can be. That has to be a source of income and protection on top of what they trade between them.

Louise: "Why harder? I don't like those moony-eyed Creeps any more than you do, but I'd rather have a village at my back if I was scrubbing dirt. More of Clement's mouths to feed should make your crops more valuable." She offers, brow knitting together behind her own Deathclaw mask.

Paul's arms tighten around his knees until he's practically hugging himself. Clamped down, she won't get another word out of him until he relaxes, like after the Gulping Bride shootout thing. We were often paid to kill, she recalls, but when blood flew without a contract it was different. The Company was shaking up in Gulping Bride and Paul let his drink get the better of him, cost the company time, money and manpower on unprofitable violence. He was disconsolate after, in a shell, doing drills and walking perimeters with the rest of them but packed away on automatic. Took a coaxing Louise didn't think she had the heart for to bring him out of it. She has less strength for it now and decides to roll on seeing as he's in such a hurry.

Louise: "Look, that guest I said I have... She's got a road to follow and I promised I'd watch her. Don't know when I'll be back but it might be a long while. Not years, hopefully, but I won't be able to get you more intel until I'm back."

Paul: (startled) "You're leaving the Bluffs? ... Fuck, you're serious too. Ahhhh I'm totally boned."

His hands fly to his mask, pressing against the eye holes and hastily ripping it from his head, letting it fall to the grass. In the dim light Louise sees wetness around his almond shaped eyes and immediately tenses, back on survival footing. Paul is one of the tough ones, a guy who you can rely on to hold it together when the shots start to fly but what she's seeing now is full-on panic at a couple of words and she doesn't like it.

Louise: (after a pause) "Who got to you, Nakano?" Last names now, like back in the day.

Nakano: "Clement's Creeps of course," he spits, pulling up clumps of dry grass. "They grabbed Betsy's brother Marc and his boy Jake-O, one of the newcomers from the start of the season... two months ago."

Powell: (wincing deeply behind her mask) "What the fuck, why didn't you say something TWO FUCKING MONTHS AGO?" She could have helped get them back, taught those greedy bastards to leave the farm alone for good, like she did with the tree house. Too late now that she has a commitment.

Nakano: (defensively, with a defeated, hangdog expression) "I-I fixed it, went to Nestledown and negotiated. Got Marc and the kid back, but Clement wanted... something in return."

With a growing horror, Louise listens to Paul as he stammers out his explanation: The Creeps demanded warm bodies for their congregation and the farm was ripe for the picking, having attracted a bunch of like-minded folk to toil respectably for mutfruit and tato.

The farmers rebuffed them politely, offering food for barter on the verbal contract that they be left to their own devices, which worked for a time. Then one evening a new farm hand didn't come back to the main house, or the night after. Not unusual in the co-op as no one was beholden to stay if they wanted to leave, but this one had been very keen to stay. A week later Marc and Jake-O went out scavenging the old highway vehicle pile-up for rubber and also didn't come back, which made Betsy frantic.

Before they could mount a search party, a gang of goggle-eyed Creeps appeared at the north gate of the farm, some of whom came with bible-books, others with rope and hitting sticks. Faced with a violent confrontation they likely wouldn't survive, Paul made the only deal he could think of: trade the information Louise fed him for safety to the Creeps in exchange for Marc and his son. If he had their honour-bound word that the farm was off-limits going forward they could keep the farmhand.

Nakano: "They agreed. I told them everything you observed, where the Super Mutants were holed up, what caravans came through and how many guards, what direction any travellers were going and their numbers... I told them everything, Louise, and they grabbed anyone they could. Their church is fucking full to burst and it's all my fault!"

Tears now, ugly, broken man-tears that look like alien pearls rolling down Nakano's face. A man she watched put a loaded shotgun barrel
into the mouth of a bounty mark that wouldn't shut up. She wonders at the almost magical ability finding love can have on people's priorities and tactfully pushes away her own tears from earlier that day, when Gwendy's generosity nearly broke her.

Powell: (quietly, with a bit of embarrassment) "Jeez Nakano, it's just god-bothering bullshit. They drift away from the Nest eventually, you know that."

They both did: The Nest went through cycles of population that made it somewhat predictable to hunt in the area. When it was full the meat was scarce and she had to range the woods to the south, sometimes as far as Pinegrail. Eventually she'd see fewer fires in the village as parishioners presumably got bored and peeled away, allowing the usual prey to wander back.

Nakano: (looking whipped) "You don't understand. Their flock goes down, but they never leave the village." He says slowly, punching the nearly bare spot of grass he had been pulling at.

Powell: "You don't know that, I couldn't know that and I watch their shitting village any time I can," She asserts, trying to sound confident but Nakano's words have the sour taste of truth.

Nakano: (shaking his head) "We're practically next door, trust me I know. Once they go to The Mass in that wet-ass church, they don't leave. I couldn't let Marc or Jake-O end up like that! They're my family now!"

Powell: (standing up from her crouch, eyes not leaving Nakano) "You tell them about me? Tell them I'm the one feeding you the intel?"

?: Has Paul told the Creeps he gets information from Louise?
d: 50/50 (1-10 No) 2D20v=9,20 -> No
=> He hasn't told them about Louise being his source

Nakano: "No, no. Fuck no, I wouldn't sell you out like that El, I swear."

Something about the he says it convinces her that some part of this amalgamated man is still the hard-ass merc she trusted with her cursed life so many years ago. Maybe he wouldn't sell her out, but if the Creeps were grabbing the people she's spotted over the years there were dozens, maybe a hundred folk or more that The Nest took in and brainwashed, enslaved, or somehow consumed. She couldn't just sweep that away and let bygones be.

Powell: "I'm leaving, keep the caps you brought and buy some ammo from the next caravan coming through. Warn them away, take up your guns and make the Creeps piss off when they come back--if you still remember how."

Paul nods and wipes his nose on the sleeve of his soiled jumpsuit, looking both relieved and defeated. Despite having almost a foot and a half on her height he looks small as she stands in front of him, knees up in the bower hollow. This might be the last time they speak to each other, she realizes, mustering the strength to leave off on a high note.

Powell: "Stay away from my house, Nakano. I'm taking everything of value and you'll just kill yourself trying to get in."

She gathers herself up and bleeds back through the branches of the hollow the way she came, doubling back and taking a different route to her tree. Halfway home she slows down and curses under her breath. Another friendship ended, another thread of her life tied off and this one hurts. Maybe the farmstead will get by without her intel, and maybe the Creeps will leave them alone... More likely Paul's family will muster a limp display of defiance before they too become permanent residents of The Nest.

HOME AGAIN

Avoiding the traps around the rear of her tree, Louise uses the secret climb to re-enter, trying to open the hatch in a way that won't set it off squealing. It feels very strange to sneak back into her own home.

?: Does Louise make a noise when entering the crate?
d: Unlikely (1-15 No) 2D20^=16 -> Yes
=> Despite her best efforts, the hatch squeals as it opens

@ Does Gwendy wake to the sound of the hatch opening?
d: (PER)SURVIVAL v (TN=8) Dif=1 2D20=16,11 -> Miss
=> She snorts loudly and turns onto her back

Louise looks at the severed Yao Guai head on the table for a moment before crawling into her impromptu nest. As she waits for sleep to take her, she swims in her own mind, feeling as though the whole tree and everything in it teeters on a precipice. She's lived long enough to know that the only constant is change, and these last few years have been quiet, subdued. Time to change again, but into what...

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