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About this mod
Another genuine piece of real life history, the legendary Seven-Branched Sword from Korea.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
- Korean
- Donations
칠지도
Chiljido - The Seven-Branched Sword
Chiljido - The Seven-Branched Sword
To my Korean friends: If I have screwed up anything horribly, PLEASE let me know (nicely) in the comments!
I would like to introduce Sae Baekje-Pusang (새 백제-부상), my new Lore of the Unknown worldspace. Set in the city of Seoul following the events of Fallout 4, it centers on two characters, Francine (Frank) Rylie and Major Seong Eu-jin. Frank Rylie is a former Gunner who is traveling with Major Seong after recovering The Seven-Branched Sword from the Commonwealth.
The Weapons, however, are here on the Nexus. I won't ever paywall my mods. You can possess the legendary Sword itself, or Seong's personal weapon, The Seven-Branched Vibro-Sword, as well as the new, advanced StealthMan, which uses a Quantum Photon Tunneling stealth generator that has the added bonus of slowing time.
Both weapons can be found at Egret Tours Marina, and the StealthMan can be crafted from a StealthBoy and a few components at the Chem Station (with Science! 4).
Both swords are inspired by the original (replica). They are both Yonghwandudaedo ( 용환두대도 ) or Dragon Ring-Pommel Swords, and guardless, in the style of Korea's Three Kingdoms (삼국시대) period (2000BCE-100CE), from which Chiljido originates.
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A new era began for Korea after the Great War. While most of the world struggled to rebuild, Seoul became the capital of a thriving nation known as Sae Baekje-Pusang. There was resistance, of course, there always is with such ancient animosities. Eventually, some of the refugees - and some like-minded natives - formed their own territory, calling itself Nihon, after the Korean word for Japan. Osa Matu, who saw himself as the reincarnation of an Oda Samurai, declared himself Emperor of Nihon - which Berkje-Pusang didn't mind - and All of Korea, which they had a problem with.
Matu had waged unrelenting war on Sae Baekje-Pusang for years, so his death on the battlefield, at the hands of Major Seong, was the catalyst for peace the Peninsula had sought for so long. Now it was up to her to see the accords to the end. Which brought her to Boston, in the former United States of America. For a weapon, to ensure peace.
---
The Seven-Branched Sword (칠지도), an ancient relic housed in the Isonokami Shrine in Nara, Japan, was a symbol of friendship between the ancient Japanese and Korean people. The original, as far as anyone knew, was still in the Shrine, while a very important reproduction had found its way to Boston in the year of the Bombs. Seong Eun-ji remembered the row caused by sending the Sword on a World Tour. Some believed it was so vital to the national identity it should not leave the nation's borders. There had been actual protests! It was the first time anyone had picketed the National Assembly Proceeding Hall and Cheongwadae in over a decade. Sure, there was a massive war that was killing people by the thousands every day, but that had been raging for years, and no one protested it anymore. But people love their symbols and didn't want the Sword to be gawked at by tourists the world over as part of a traveling museum called "War Never Changes (sponsored by Vault-Tec)".
This was Seong's mission: recover the Sword. With Osa Matu gone, the Nihonese could return to the fold, and Korea would be even more secure in its future. Eun-ji had sailed an ocean and walked a continent to get here. The Sword was finally in her sights. It was in the possession of the Commonwealth Minutemen, another group of people trying to use their history to define their future. Seong didn't understand. That era was gone, it's mark left indelible on the surface of the world. Why, after we had nearly destroyed ourselves, were we not maybe trying to reconsider some key aspects of our civilization.
She looked out over the Wasteland from the roof of the Gunner's compound, and longed for the bright neon nights of Seoul. The rest of the world's skyscrapers were giant ghosts, rotting against a hostile sky, but Korea's buildings were clean and new, housing thousands of families, its streets bustling and noisy, day and night. Seoul was loud, bright, and cheerful, and Eun-ji missed it dearly. She had been traveling for almost three years. She had fought mutants, ferals, raiders, robots, deathclaws, Roman Centurions, and everything in between. Now the mission was almost over.
After spending only a few days in Boston, she had not only located the Sword, but negotiated its return, and her own. There was a Chinese nuclear sub in the goddamn harbor, and he was getting ready to return to the East.
Everyone made out on the deal. The Gunners would get the Sub's small arms arsenal. The Minutemen would get the spare fuel rods they need to build a reactor FVD* was working on. And Seong Eun-ji would get the Sword and return home far sooner than expected, hitching a ride on the Yangtze. That was, of course, if everything went according to plan.
Which, of course, it didn't...
"What's that Red Commie saying now?," Colonel Martin Grange growled at Corporal Rylie
"He says if we try anything, he'll tactical nuke the compound with his remaining warheads."
"He's bluffing," Major Seong said.
"I can't take that chance," the Colonel brushed off the Korean Ghoul, "We'll do it his way."
Seong Eun-ji did not like her options. She did not like Boston, America. She most certainly didn't like "Colonel" Grange and his psychotic mercenaries. All of this was a means to an end, a way to put to rest two centuries of unrest in her homeland. She was so close, and was getting stonewalled by Bullets for Brains here and that asshole out in the harbor.
---
"There are no Commies anymore," She muttered. Grange rolled his eyes. Francine Rylie remained silent, she was the only non-ghoul in attendance, and everyone was ten times her age. She admired Major Seong, who apparently had been in the Korean Army, such as it was, since the war. "There's barely a China anymore," the Major continued.
The hot summer air hung over the Gunner Compound like a funeral pall. Rylie envied the leather-skinned ghouls who, due to their condition and unlike her, were not soaking their clothes in sweat. She caught the signal lamp flashing on the sub again. "Sir, he's signaling again. Asking for confirmation."
"Confirm," said the Colonel, "We'll meet him and his loony friends at the Marina." Once again, Frank Rylie kept her mouth shut and flashed the message. Being a Gunner wasn't the most honest work, but it kept her fed, and they had strict rules to protect their female members, an assurance she had not found with raiders or other merc groups. She hated the rank and the uniform, thought it smacked of pre-war imperialism, but the caps were good, and she got to see a bit of the countryside as Colonel Grange's aide.
The 'loony friends' were, of course, the Minutemen. Grange had laughed the first time they got intel on that Preston Garvey and the Frozen Vault Dweller, as some called them. Frank thought it was a joke, too. It was before her time, and her biggest reservation about the group, but she'd heard the Gunners had wiped out the Minutemen, some kind of massacre. Then all of the sudden they were back, up north of the city, setting up settlements again. Everyone thought it was a joke. Until they took out the Institute. And the Brotherhood. The Frozen Vault Dweller apparently had some connection to the Institute's leader, but they had a falling out. It was all above Frank Rylie's pay grade. She just wanted to go home at night without any bullets in her.
The FVD had taken out their share of Gunners, and Grange had a bounty on them. But you can't take on someone with friends like that, not easily anyway. The Minutemen with their artillery was one thing, the sub with its nukes was another, but there were more rumors. The Frozen Vault Dweller was a legend, had their fingers in everything. The rumors ranged from the believable, that they infiltrated the Institute with stolen tech and the help of the Railroad, to the absurd. One drunken raider in Quincy once told Frank FVD was immortal, having made some deal with, depending on who you ask, a demon, a ghost, or a vampire. This particular raider swore she had faced off against FVD and lived (meaning she ran) at the Parsons Asylum.
Now they were going to meet FVD, along with Garvey and Captain Nuke Sub, to pay for a ride. A three-way deal. They had been hashing out the details via morse code for days. The final agreement was so convoluted Frank had to write it down. Had it been up to FVD, the Gunners wouldn't exist anymore. The non-ghoul prewar that came out of the cryo-vault was no fan of Frank's employers. They had wiped out the Gunner forces left in Quincy and were ready to make a move on the Compound when the hostilities were brought to a halt by a new arrival in the Commonwealth.
---
Seong Eun-ji had some miles on her soul, and her body. She had been fighting wars now for over two and a half centuries, and saw no end in sight. She was old enough to remember people who had seen the First Korean War. When she was a child, she would listen to her grandmother talk about when Korea was divided, before the USA and China went to war for the last time. The North Koreans sounded like a cartoon, something from a different world. Korea had been unified for twenty years when Seong was born. That kind of oppression would never stand in today's world, she told herself.
Then the Reds came.
America and Japan did their best, but Pyongyang fell. Seoul would have fallen, too, but for the bombs. The Chinese wouldn't target that close to their shores, and the United States wouldn't target their own people, so most of South Korea was spared any direct hits. North Korea had been the sight of constant fighting for over 100 years by the time of the Bombs. There wasn't much left to nuke there. Japan, an ancient enemy of China, and a bit further away, did not fare so well. After the war, Korea saw a massive influx of refugees. They would come to be known as Pusang, after an old word for Japan.
A new era began for Korea after the Great War. While most of the world struggled to rebuild, Seoul became the capital of a thriving nation known as Sae Berkje-Pusang. There was resistance, of course, there always is when such ancient animosities. Eventually, some of the refugees - and some like-minded natives - formed their own territory, calling itself Nihon, after the Korean word for Japan. Osa Matu, who saw himself as the reincarnation of an Oda Samurai, declared himself Emperor of Nihon - which Berkje-Pusang didn't mind - and All of Korea, which they had a problem with.
Matu had waged unrelenting war on New Berkje-Pusang for years, so his death on the battlefield, at the hands of Major Seong, was the catalyst for peace the Peninsula had sought for so long. Now it was up to her to see the accords to the end. Which brought her to Boston, in the former United States of America. For a weapon, to ensure peace.
---
The Seven-Branched Sword (칠지도), an ancient relic housed in the Isonokami Shrine in Nara, Japan, was a symbol of freindship between the ancient Japanese and Korean people. The original, as far as anyone knew, was still in the Shrine, while a very important reproduction had found its way to Boston in the year of the Bombs. Seong Eun-ji remembered the row caused by sending the sword on a World Tour. Some believed relics so vital to the national identity should not leave the nation's borders. There had been actual protests! It was the first time anyone had picketed the National Assembly Proceeding Hall and Cheongwadae in over a decade. Sure, there was a massive war that was killing people by the thousands every day, but that had been raging for years, and no one protested it anymore. But people love their symbols and didn't want the Sword to be gawked at by tourists the world over as part of a travelling museum called "War Never Changes (sponsored by Vault-Tec)".
This was Seong's mission: recover the Sword. With Osa Matu gone, the Nihonese could return to the fold, and Korea would be even more secure in its future. Eun-ji had sailed an ocean and walked a continent to get here. The Sword was finally in her sights. It was in the possession of the Commonwealth Minutemen, another group of people trying to use their history to define their future. Seong didn't understand. That era was gone, it's mark left indelible on the surface of the world. Why, after we had nearly destroyed ourselves, were we not maybe trying to reconsider some key aspects of our civilization.
She looked out over the Wasteland from the roof of the Gunner's compound, and longed for the bright neon nights of Seoul. While the rest of the world's skyscrapers were giant ghosts, rotting against a hostile sky, Korea's buildings were clean and new, housing thousands of families, its streets bustling and noisy, day and night. Seoul was loud, bright, and cheerful, and Eun-ji missed it dearly. She had been traveling for almost three years. She had fought mutants, ferals, raiders, robots, deathclaws, Roman Centurions, and everything in between. Now the mission was almost over.
After spending only a few days in Boston, she had not only located the Sword, but negotiated its return, and her own. There was a Chinese Nuclear sub in the goddamn harbor, and he was getting ready to return to the East.
Everyone made out on the deal. The Gunners would get the Sub's small arms arsenal. The Minutemen would get the spare fuel rods they need to build a reactor FVD was working on. And Seong Eun-ji would get the Sword and return home far sooner than expected, hitching a ride on the Yangtze. That was, of course, if everything went according to plan.
Which, of course, it didn't.
---
She knew Grange couldn't be trusted. It didn't help he was constantly propositioning her. Like his equipment would work after being ghoulified and living 200 years. Every time he would act inappropriately, she would think about Corporal Rylie. They had only ever talked briefly, but it seemed Frank Rylie (wasn't Frank a man's name?) was a force to be reckoned with. She had become a mercenary for community and protection, but she had a knack for command. Grange relied heavily on her to keep his battalions battle-ready and fed. She had a great deal of autonomy, as well, which many Gunners didn't have.
It was actually Kylie who had located the Sword. Turns out she was a skilled investigator as well. The War Never Changes Traveling Museum (Sponsored by Vault-Tec) was a massive undertaking to display the entire history of human hostilities. As such, the curators had requested, and usually procured, a large number of culturally significant military relics, among them the replica of the Seven-Branched Sword.
"Replica" is an unfair term for this artifact, Eun-ji had mused once. A replica implies something modern. This replica was 1800 years old. Forged by a master smith and reportedly hardened 100 times, the Seven-Branched Sword was presented around 400 CE to a Japanese duke or king by the ruler of Baekje or his child. It was a replica of the quasi-mythical weapon purportedly given to Empress Jingu some time in the Second or Third Century. The Sword's six protrusions, staggered three per side of the blade and regarded by experts as ornamental and not functional, and the very point, constitute the Sword's "Branches." When presented, it was said to be able to defend against 100 men, and therefore worthy of its noble recipient.
Ultimately, the Frozen Vault Dweller had made the call to just give the Sword back to Seong. Eun-ji had taken the wrong approach, she learned, to get in the good graces of the Sword's current owner. Arriving in the Commonwealth, she bought protection in the form of Mercs. Unfortunately, the mercenaries she hired were well known for massacring the Minutemen, who now held the Sword. On the upside, the Frozen Vault Dweller seemed pretty reasonable, despite being a certifiable badass. They had agreed to surrender the sword in exchange for the fuel rods, with the Gunners monitoring the whole deal and taking their cut of small arms.
---
The next morning, while Seong was packing her belongings, Corporal Rylie burst into her room.
"Major, don't -," she was out of breath, "don't go out there..."
"Rylie! You'll eat a bullet for this!" Grange shouted from the hallway. Rylie was barricading the door.
Unfazed, Seong sat down on her cot. Grange had betrayed her, and Rylie had betrayed him for her. She had seen it coming.
"He's going to ambush the Minutemen," Rylie panted, "and kill you." Automatic weapon fire peppered the door and the two women dropped to the floor. The room had one door and no windows. Rylie had a combat shotgun, Seong pulled out her sidearm. For a moment, Rylie forgot about the murderers outside and admired the Major's pistol, a perfectly maintained, pre-war Daewoo K5. It occurred to Frank that she had never seen a nicer gun. That thought was cut short by more bullet holes in the door.
"How many are out there?" Seong asked calmly.
"Six, plus Grange. But the whole compound is awake prepping for the attack."
Seong slid the 10 round clip out of the weapon, checked it, tapped it, and snapped it back in. She coiled her body like a snake then moved faster than Frank had ever seen. With the movement of a feline, she was on top of a bookshelf, pushing a ceiling tile up. She disappeared into the ductwork and less than five seconds later the shooting started. Rylie clocked Seong's 9mm as the first to fire, three sets of two rapid shots. She must have taken out the guys in the west hallway all at once, as there was no immediate return fire.
"Three, plus Grange," Frank said to her gun. Rylie's tactical mind raced. Four foes distracted by an ambushing enemy. The fetid rattle of pipe automatics wafted in from the hallway and Frank knew it was showtime. She heard two more shots from the Daewoo and a body hit the floor. She could hear Grange starting the motor on his minigun and she knew she didn't have much time. Grange would knock the building down with everyone in it to kill Seong.
She waited for more automatic fire and roughly disengaged her crude barricade, flung open the door, and threw herself across the hallway into the opposite room. Apparently not everyone was entirely distracted. Private Mickles saw her and turned his pipe rifle just in time to nick Frank's left ass cheek. God, she hated that prick. More gunfire was laid down against the doorway. His buddies must have noticed she was out, too. She causally rolled a frag grenade down the hallway, and it came to rest against the front of their sandbags. They saw it and ducked, which saved them from the explosion. But when they got back up, Frank was already out of the room and headed toward them with her shotgun. Driscoll, to Mickles' left, panicked and raised his weapon; Frank almost cut him in two with three rapid shots. Mickles and the other private, whose name escaped Rylie at the time she was blasting him, turned to run.
She didn't give them a chance; she put them down like the rabid animals they were.
"Shoot me in the ass, will you," she spat.
---
Martin Grange was pissed off. He was grooming Frank Rylie to take over his position when he finally became leader of the Commonwealth Gunners, and that bitch stabbed him in the back. He was just prepping the guys for their little excursion, when she gets all high and mighty all of the sudden. It's not like this is the first time, or would be the last, that Martin Grange just took what he wanted, even after he made a deal. And she had been a party to a lot of those deals.
As a matter of fact, Frank Rylie was probably the coldest bitch Grange knew. Or so he thought until he met... her.
Seong Eun-ji was everything Grange liked in a woman: beautiful and deadly. It was why he kept Frank Rylie nearby. It wasn't about sex, Seong's assumptions in that department had been correct. For Martin Grange, it was about power. He was addicted to it, in any form. He loved ordering his men around, he loved that when he said a word, a deed was done. He loved his weapons, and their breath of destruction, allowing him to project his power outward. He saw himself as destined to be a Warrior-King of old, he saw himself as a dragon.
Now a little minx was troubling the dragon. Somewhere in the rafters was the only person that had every truly frightened him. Like himself, she was the products of two centuries of staying alive by being the most lethal. That lethality was aphrodisiacal, in its way. He heard a soft scrape and turned his minigun in the general direction. He poured two hundred rounds into the walls and ceiling in a rough arc where he heard the sound. She probably wasn't even over there. But he was angry, his prodigy had been stolen from him, and if he didn't manage to kill Seong and Frank, so would his position.
Ambushing the FVD and the Minutemen was risky, and he never would have got the old man to approve it. So, he just didn't tell him. General Wendell Rooney was the Boston CO, and solidly in Martin Grange's way. If he managed to kill FVD and Preston Garvey, he'd be an icon, and he could replace Rooney. That wasn't going to happen if Frank Rylie and Seong Eun-ji got to them first.
He swung the big gun's barrel toward another imaginary sound and emptied the drum, cackling like a madman. When the barrels spun dry, he threw the minigun on the ground and pulled out his 10MM. A shadow moved and he put four futile bullets in it.
Suddenly, pain. Lots of it. At first, the pain was so intense, his vision went white and he couldn't move. His body was simply not answering the commands of his brain. Finally, he was able to bend his head to see the source of the pain. Three small protrusions emerged from his skin, just below his rib cage, curiously made of metal. It occurred to him that he had been stabbed. Not a big deal, he had been stabbed before, but this one was different. Why were there three? Did three people with varying lengths of knife stab me?
These and other bizarre questions preoccupied Martin Grange's final moments.
---
Seong took the time to savor those moments. She let his corpse slide off the blade of her Seven-Branched Vibro-Sword. It was a deadly weapon, the only one of it's kind. Almost identical in dimensions to her objective, Seong was presented with it for her quest to recover the original. Since she left Seoul, Eu-jin had traded or used fifty kilos of gold boullion, a steam ship, thousands of rounds of 9mm ammo, and two large satchels of pre-war American cash. The Vibro-Sword was the only thing she had left.
She flicked off the vibroedge and walked back to the room where she had slept, where Rylie was back as well.
"Now what?" Frank mused.
"We finish the deal," said Seong, "And I go back to Sae Baekje."
"I could come with you."
"I'd be happy to have the extra gun, although I think I can trust this Frozen Vault Dweller."
"That's my take as well," replied Rylie, "But that's not what I meant."
"Oh?"
"I want to go to Korea with you."
"You don't even speak Korean."
"I speak Japanese."
Seong extended her hand, "You're hired!" They shook on it, starting what would become a long, beautiful friendship.
---
"You really traveled all the way here from Korea? Wow!" Preston Garvey's childlike wonder came off as innocent, almost cloying.
"An impressive feat, and the only reason we are here, talking," said Captain Zao.
"I was sorry to hear about your mercs," said FVD.
"No, you weren't," sneered Rylie.
"No, I wasn't," they replied, managing to be both apologetic and threatening.
Standing in the presence of a legend has a tendency to diminish that legend, and the Frozen Vault Dweller, as the Gunners called them, was no exception. They were tall, and commanding, to be sure, but just a person. Frank Rylie was even a little taller. Seong addressed Garvey.
"I hope you brought it. If you've wasted my time, after my journey..." She let the implications take care of themselves.
"Of course, of course -," he waved at two of his militiamen who brought over a weapon case, set it down and popped it open. Inside, sure enough, was the Seven-Branched Sword. The Sword, in the museum, was rusted and decayed. Since its disappearance, it had changed hands a number of times. It had been stripped of its gold lettering, sanded, and sharpened. Someone had acquired and attached a Vibro-Blade hilt with a Dragon Ring-Pommel similar to Seong's own. The original artifact was truly lost, but the Sword remained a vital symbol, and Seong was going to return it to her people. She gazed at the blade for several moments.
She was cut short in her distraction by the sudden appearance, on the chests of the two Militiamen, of laser dots. "GET DOWN!" she yelled at everyone. Garvey, FVD, Frank, and Seong were fast enough, and Zao almost, taking a bullet in the arm as the snipers opened up. The remaining Militiamen weren’t and fell to the high-velocity rounds. The five remaining huddled up behind the steel counter, with their backs to an old brick staircase.
"Corporal, report," Seong said, automatically.
Frank was already headed to the top floor of the marina with a sniper rifle. She popped her head up above a windowsill and scanned the surrounding area.
"Four shooter teams, two Northwest, two Southwest, quarter mile out." One corner of her mouth turned up in a wry half-smile.
She could see at least three of the teams, silhouetted against the fading light of the sky.
"Amateurs," she whispered. A real sniper doesn't show their profile. You get below the top of the hill, or wear a gillie suit to break up your lines. She easily took out the Southwest teams with her silenced .308.
"Southwest teams down, Northwest have retreated," she hollered down the stairs.
"ABRACADABRA!" a voice boomed.
The. Hell?
The voice had come from a PA, some kind of portable one. She stuck her head down through a hole in the floor, "That sounded like it came from the river."
"I'll check it out," said Seong, pulling out a StealthMan, the sleeker, more powerful Intelligence Agency version of the StealthBoy. Unlike its predecessor, the StealthMan didn't use refracted light, but rather quantum photon tunneling. Switching it on, she utterly vanished.
"HOCUS POCUS"
"Oh... oh no," said Garvey, pinching his nose.
"PRESTO CHANGE-O!" There was the distinctive roar of rocket propellant, then an explosion rocked the building. Automatic weapon fire erupted from all directions. Frank had jumped down from the upper floor when the rocket hit, and now joined the others behind the counter, it's heavy steel so far protecting them from the small arms. Another rocket roared, this time the explosion opened up the west wall. They could see the tug on the river, maybe a half dozen Gunners at the rails, and atop the wheelhouse, a guy with a missile launcher.
"At least it's not a Fat Man," Garvey growled. The pat of Frank's silenced .308 knocked the merc off the roof of the boat, his heavy weapon falling uselessly into the water. This only prompted the infantrymen at the gunwales to open fire again.
"PRESTO! TIME FOR ANOTHER MAGIC TRICK!"
"God, I hate that name," said Garvey.
"You know this prick?" shouted Rylie.
"I should, I grew up with him. That would be my Uncle Wendell." Preston set aside his laser musket. "Screw this," he said, as he hefted Grange's minigun, which Rylie had brought along 'just in case.' He stepped to the hole the rocket had torn earlier, ignoring the bullets whizzing around. The minigun's engine whined, like a beast on a chain ready to attack. Garvey timed the weapon's initial fire to just when he brought it to bear on the tug. Gunners dove for the water as the massive weapon's line of death disintegrated the small ship. Three of them didn't make it off in time.
Garvey didn't deliberately target the men swimming away, but only two actually made it to shore. After all 500 rounds were gone and the tug was lowering into the river's depths, Preston spit on the ground in front of him and roughly dropped the minigun. He quickly jumped back behind the counter and grabbed his laser musket when the other Gunners, the ones not on the boat, started shooting again.
"Feel better?" Frank chided.
"Much, thank you," Preston laughed.
"Missed me, Presto!" came the bullhorn again.
"Goddammit," Preston said. "You do one card trick when you're a kid, and you're stuck with a nickname for life."
---
Seong watched the exchange of jibes and 5mm from the forest; the StealthMan not only made you invisible, it actually altered the flow of reality around you, modifying your relative speed. Under it's influence, everyone else came to a standstill and she was able to maneuver into position behind the Gunners in the woods.
She moved quietly, staying low. The Minutemen ran a tight ship at the marina, had a full weapon workbench; she was able to find and attach a suppressor for her Daewoo.
She took out the first group before they even saw her and had a second pinned down behind an old pickup truck. She checked the truck over. Sure enough, it looked like the engine was intact, and she got one of those wicked smiles on her face. The kind only ghouls can get. She calmly tossed a frag grenade against the truck and waited. The grenade's explosion was followed by the familiar 'pop' of the sealant failing on the engine. She glanced up once more, and sure enough flames starting to come up in the passenger compartment. The four mercenaries either didn't notice or didn't care that their protection was on fire. They should have. They should have been running as fast as they could. Their mistake.
She put several rounds from her pistol into the truck's fender. It was a neat trick she had picked up in her months crossing North America. Some vehicles still had their reactor core intact, meaning it still had fuel and coolant. If you could put enough holes in the coolant tank, the fuel would melt down. Rapidly. Catastrophically.
Four shots were all it took before the truck erupted in a fireball akin to a Mini Nuke. The four Gunners died instantly.
---
From across the river, safely behind a stone bridge stanchion, Wendell Rooney surveyed the battlefield. Once again, he had lost his cool because of those self-righteous pricks, the Minutemen, and once again it had cost him dearly. The tug and men were enough of a cost, but now he was about to lose Seong Eu-jin and the submarine. With that boat, and a high-profile hostage, he could have sailed for Sae Baekje with a grocery list of demands.
Grange screwed that. Good riddance, thought Rooney, when he heard what happened to the Colonel. Rooney never liked Grange; never liked thugs in general. They had their place, sure, but not in command. Of course, Grange had been a Gunner for so long people he'd eventually made Colonel.
Flares shot up from the Marina. Presto was calling in backup. It was time to leave. They were a bunch of costume-wearing do-gooders, but the Minutemen had bite. And howitzers. Not to mention Presto himself. Jesus Christ, that kid could fight. He'd seen it early, Presto never took any crap from bullies, and wouldn't let other kids take any either. The boy was a capital-H Hero from birth, the kind they used to make movies about. Almost made Rooney want to become a better person. Almost.
He radioed his platoon leaders to pack it in.
He got no response.
That couldn't be right. After Presto pulled that little stunt with the minigun, whoever was left should have retreated or hunkered down. He shouted into the radio for five solid minutes, flipping channels first in order, then at random. He was starting to panic, and his aide-de-camp, a fresh kid named Juan something, could tell. Juan's eyes suddenly got wide as his attention snapped to something above Rooney's head. He took off running. Rooney didn't take any chances and swung his weapon toward the top of the stanchion.
He was too slow. Seong was already leaping down, kicking his gun aside mid-jump. She landed like a ballet dancer and spun on her heel, taking out Rooney's legs with a sweep-kick. His gun and radio flew random directions as he sprawled on the broken asphalt. By the time he regained any semblance of composure, the warm end of Seong's suppressor was under his chin. He completely froze: an excellent life choice.
"You would be dead but for your nephew. He's asked me to convey a message, should this situation arise. 'go back to DC and stay there.' Are we understood? Don't talk, just nod." He closed his eyes and nodded slowly. She let him up, taking his ammo and supplies. Without another word, she waved the Daewoo down the street. He started walking.
---
Frank always hated goodbyes. She found herself fidgeting.
"Patience, doje," said Major Seong. The honorific made Frank still for a moment. It meant 'student' or 'apprentice' in Korean, akin to deshi in Japanese, Frank thought.
"So, how do you know there isn't an ambush waiting onboard?" Preston asked Captain Zao.
"It's padlocked," Zao said whimsically.
Garvey looked at the ancient naval officer askance.
"Relax, pengyou," he said, "no one knows where I left it. Ready ladies?"
"Ready to spend two months listening to you old farts swap war stories?" Frank joked, "I'm sooo ready."
"Easy with the old fart cracks, there, soldier," said Zao, "We'll leave you in the middle of the Atlantic."
More jokes were shared, everyone laughed, and it felt good.
Zao had spent two centuries in a tin can; Frank and Preston grew up in the Wasteland; Seong had watched her friends, her family, her country, and her world die. These people knew pain and they knew fear. They knew them like nurturing but strict parents, ever-present in their lives. The Vault Dweller joined them, carrying the Sword.
They handed the case to Seong, "It means so much to your people, I hope it helps."
"Thank you, for everything."
"Don't mention it," they said, nodding at Preston, "It's what we do."
Seong unbuckled her scabbard. "Please, I insist, I can have another one made." FVD drew the Vibro-Sword and flicked the switch; the branches hummed with energy.
"I've never seen anything like it."
"I hope you pass it to your children, without ever having to use it."
*Frozen Vault Dweller, the Gunner's nickname for the Sole Survivor
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Note:
The Seax of Beagnoth was one of the weapons included in the War Never Changes Traveling Museum (sponsored by Vault-Tec). More to come.