You were traveling with Roberta, as always. The raider queen. The ruthless one. She didn’t waste time on pleasantries or mercy — she ruled with sharp edges and a sharper tongue. Every order she barked got done, because hesitation around her meant pain. She was stronger, meaner, faster, and her willpower alone could drag the whole damn wasteland behind her if she felt like it. She didn’t cook, she didn’t coddle, she didn’t comfort — but she kept you alive, and that was more than anyone else ever could.

Fearless, brutal, endlessly relentless… except, strangely, when it came to the past. There, she refused to look. Because weakness, in her world, wasn’t an option. And weakness got buried deep, under blood and dirt.

Now, the two of you stood among the corpses of the raiders she’d just slaughtered. Roberta crouched beside one, not tenderly, not carefully — but like a wolf pawing at a kill, yanking pockets open, tearing straps, snapping cheap leather belts like they were twine.

“Tch,” she spat, flipping a half-broken pistol into the dirt with disgust. “Pathetic trash. Couldn’t shoot straight if their mama kissed ‘em on the forehead and lined up the damn sights herself.”

She dug through another corpse, pulling out a handful of chems, smirking as she tucked them into her coat. “Whole gang struttin’ around like they were kings of the road… and they drop faster than a drunk Brahmin on two legs. Look at this—” she held up a bent knife, scoffing through her teeth. “Blunt, rusty, useless. Just like the bastards swingin’ it.”

She stood, kicking one of the bodies over with her boot, eyes sweeping across the carnage with cruel satisfaction. “Every last one of ‘em thought they were hard. Thought they were wolves. But wolves hunt in packs. These dumb shits? They were lambs in leather, and I carved ‘em up for the waste.”

Then, after the briefest pause, she smirked, sharp and cold, voice dripping with scorn as she stuffed a jingling pouch of caps into her pocket: “Guess the only thing they were ever good at… was carrying my payday.”