Chapter 430 - Bark Back Hitting Bark

Drake draws his silenced pistol and is about to shoot it into the guard's kneecap when Stasus suddenly bursts into movement. His arm zips forwards and traps the guards arm as the man attempts to grab the pistol in his waistband.

If the unfortunate guardsman didn't look scared before, he did now...​​

"Tsk Tsk, that wasn't very nice." Drake smirks and fires his gun into the man's knee as Stasus holds their victim's mouth closed.

*Pew!*

"MMMMMMRRRGGHHH!!!!" The guard gives a muffled scream as his kneecap is shattered, this is a life-changing injury, the sort of injury that would make a man in the wasteland kill himself... The type that'd give such a man no other choice.

Stasus holds the man's mouth closed as he cries and continues moaning, once his sobs go silent he lets go and Drake kneels next to him again.

"Now that you understand your situation... Where is Afton Parker?"

...

"P-Parker? I-I don't know! He disappears at random and almost never shows his face in town!" the man quickly says, clutching his ruined leg.

Drake shakes his head and points his gun at the man's other knee, "Now, now. That's not what I want to hear..." he states, tapping the barrel on his knee cap.

"I-I... H-he lives in the apartments, I-I don't know what room... J-just please don't shoot me again... Please!"

Drake turns his eyes to Stasus and continues asking questions, where the apartments are, whether or not there are guards, who else lives there, etc. Once done Stasus grabs the man by his neck and brutally twists his head, instantly killing them.

"Heh, serves the fucker right for spitting on me." Drake mutters before turning in the direction of the apartments. "Now... How the hell are we going to find Parker's room?"

Stasus shrugs and gestures at the dead man.

Drake nods, "You're right, let's just go room to room interrogating folks... We have to get one right eventually..." he says, the duo quickly heading off.

Unfortunately for the duo though, their choice of heading behind the building to scout it out first was their undoing... Dirt-Hog just so happened to be parked nearby, and unbeknownst to them, the K9000 was always active.

*Woof!*

A robotic simulacrum of a dog's bark enters the duo's ears, and both turn towards its location. Drake raises a brow at the large armoured truck with the relatively small gun on the roof of it... The gun that was currently pointing towards them.

*Bangbangbangbang!*

Drake's confused as Stasus throws both of them out of the way, sparks jumping off of the large man's metal armour as the bullets do their best to burrow through the reinforced plates. They barely manage to get away from the strange truck before the lights in the town all begin turning on.

"Fuck! They're on to us!" Drake growls, but turns his head north as Hunter puts his own plan in to place.

Hunter had just heard gunfire and seen the lights inside Novac turning on, this probably meant Drake had fucked up and needed assistance... Fortunately, they'd planned for this occurrence. He pulls the string that was connecting the pins to the decoy grenades and causes uproarious gunfire to sound out from behind the cover.

To add effect, Hunter himself began firing his pistol at the wall, drawing the attention of the patols within Novac, most of which charge to the north side of the wall to defend against what sounded like a substantial force.

Guards atop the wall shine down their relatively weak flashlights at where the gunfire was heard, and immediately spot flickers of light behind cover... Thinking this to be an enemy, they fire at it, not realise they were seeing light reflected from glass shards.

Of course, if it weren't for Hunter shooting his own weapon they might've realised it was a distraction. For now though, they were completely unaware.

It wasn't just the guardsman who were awakened however, Karl, Boone, Anja, Josie, Veronica, and Tamia were all up, Dogmeat getting up and ED-E turning on.

"Fuck was that?" Karl asks after he puts on his equipment and meets the rest of the group on the motel veranda.

"No idea. Isn't hard to guess we're being attacked though." Boone states as he hefts his Hunting Rifle, he'd left his Anti-Material rifle as it was too heavy to run around with and properly use.

"Shit, Afton took the best time to be fuckin' around somewhere else, didn't he?" Veronica says as she comes out of her room. already putting on her Deathclaw leather duster.

Tamia smirks at Veronica's incredibly messy bedhead, "Nice hair."

Veronica scowls, "I just got outta bed, what do you expect?"

"Doesn't it always look like that though-" she's cut off by Karl who slams his fist into the metal bannister.

"Both of you bitches shut up, we're under attack! Boone, Anja, Josie go north to the wall. Me Veronica and Tamia will scout the town to see if anyone got through." Karl orders as he gestures for ED-E and Dogmeat to follow him.

Elsewhere :

Drake and Stasus were having an incredibly hard time staying hidden, guards seem to sprout from every single building in Novac, each wielding proper weaponry and running north to help repell the 'attack' Hunter had set up.

Though, by the sound of distant gunfire, Madeleine had started shooting too, drawing the attention of some of the guards within the town... All in all, it was a shitshow, there was no proper order to the soldiers movements, them seemingly choosing where to go on their own without address a commander themselves.

The two start to move in a lull, but they are interrupted as they hear a bark behind them...

"Not agai-" Drake says but is launched clear off of his feet, spinning in the air and hitting the wall of a nearby building hard. Stasus isn't doing much better, having to pull his head out of a shack wall after landing...

Drake looks over at what'd flung them and spots a Cyberdog sprinting towards them with a vicious look.