The Good Life: Anything Goes (ch. 52) (Patreon)

Taylor had absolutely no idea what she was doing. She thought she did. All the way up to that first kiss, she had a plan. She would impress Law, work her way up to a position of power and influence, and from there she would dismantle Law's organization from the inside. Only things weren't as simple as they had seemed.

Law was trying to save millions of lives. Everything he did, all the evils he committed, all of it was for the greater good. He wasn't a hero, Taylor knew, but he wasn't evil. Not like she thought he was. Not like Cinder was. The plan had started to change when he confronted Nora -- taking him down was less important. Saving people became the end goal, as it should be. But it became a question of how.

The answer wasn't a good one, but Taylor wasn't seeing much of an alternative. She'd conquer the Wasteland, uniting it under Law's umbrella. It'd be messy. People would die. But, she took solace in the fact that when everything was said and done, the peace would be worth it. Millions of people that would have died wouldn't. And the surviving Wastelanders would know a better quality of life beyond drinking irradiated water and fighting each other for scraps to survive.

Then that kiss. The kiss that changed it all.

Her panties were uncomfortably damp as her insects crawled over the walls that belonged to Bunker Hill. Even as the sounds of gunshots and explosions echoed out, Taylor could still feel Law's lips on hers all these weeks later. She offered him her body, and he stole her first kiss. She wasn't a stranger to masturbation, she had done it a time or two, but it always felt… sad. Like Emma or Sophia would find out and make fun of her for thinking that someone ever wanted to have sex with her.

Law did. He kissed her and it had felt so… right. So good. So perfect that she had came, and it was so much more intense than she had ever managed with her own touch. She had been convinced that she couldn't have felt better than that, but then he… she had been scared of his reaction if he found out that she baited Cinder into a trap. It hadn't been much of one. Just winding Cinder up and pointing her in a direction. But, Taylor knew she got a lot of people killed -- rapists, slavers, murderers, but still people. Worse, she risked the invasion force.

Taylor was a murderer. A killer. She killed and let people die. It was necessary, but she still struggled with it. Law helped her with that. First with the kiss and now his touch… it was an hour later, and her pussy still wept with arousal. Her legs still felt weak. Her head felt like it was in the clouds. She hadn't known it was possible to feel that good. Even now, as she overwhelmed Bunker Hill with calm efficiency, she imagined her reward.

If she conquered the Wasteland, Taylor imagined what Law would do to her. The moans that she overheard from Yoruichi and Law's tent played out in her mind. Imagining that it was her in the tent with Law. There was an itch deep in her pussy that acted up at the idea and she knew that her fingers wouldn't be able to scratch it.

The plan had changed. She had changed. And Taylor wasn't entirely sure it was for the better.

“Enough! Enough! We surrender! You have us beat! Call off the bugs!” The leader of Bunker Hill called out and through her fantasy, Taylor heard her through her insects. They had abandoned the walls, pulling back to their last line of defense, which was the lobby of the monument their settlement was centered around. They had felt safe in there until her ants started chewing through the concrete.

Using her swarm of insects, she spoke. “Your surrender is accepted. One by one, you will leave the bunker and disarm. Any attempts to conceal a weapon or attack will be treated as a renewal of hostilities,” Taylor spoke through her swarm. The smaller insects she had concealed inside of the bunker revealed the trouble makers. Those that wanted to keep fighting even after they had lost.

Her power was proving to be more malleable than she expected. Her range was steadily decreasing the more insects fell under her control. She was hoping to circumvent that by creating special ‘relay’ insects with the Nuka-Gen-Replicator, but that would take some time. Seeing and hearing through her insects was more difficult the more there were, so she had to deliberately close off some of her insects.

Her swarm had swelled into the tens of thousands. She had focused on breeding them in the month they had slowly been approaching Diamond City. She kept the hives out of sight in the sewers and metro stations, getting ready for… this.

A blitz. Cinder had used up her army, and even with reinforcements coming, they hadn't arrived yet. It gave Taylor a window to take action -- to take Bunker Hill and Goodneighbor without having to worry what Cinder might do. And so far, it was working perfectly.

Almost distractedly, Taylor handled the surprise attack by a handful of people still determined to fight. Their guns failed as insect gunk caused a misfire, and a split second later her ants fell upon them. An example was made of them to ensure compliance from the rest of the POWs. Taylor didn't bother saying anything to them as she continued securing their surrender, simply pretending like the attempt hadn't happened.

Within minutes, Bunker Hill had been secured and her insects were already moving on to Goodneighbor. A small shiver raced down her spine, imagining Law behind her. His hands on her side, his lips near her ear, whispering praise for a job well done. For beating Cinder. For winning.

Taking out her phone, she got the events in motions to make that fantasy a reality. Dialing a number, she only had to wait a single ring before there was an answer. Robin. “Miss Herbert?”

“Bunker Hill has been secured. I'm moving on to Goodneighbor,” Taylor informed. Robin was gorgeous, Taylor reflected as she picked at a strand of her deep brown hair. Emma had been pretty. Sophia too. Her mom has been beautiful. Robin, however, was gorgeous in the kind of way that it was like she walked off the cover of a magazine. Yoruichi was too. And so was Cinder, unfortunately. All women that Law had slept with.

Part of her was jealous. Another part was… stunned, for lack of a better word. That someone that could be with super models would want to be with an upturned frog like her.

“Well done, but it seems that Cinder has neglected to pass on a message to you,” Robin noted, sounding unsurprised. It was then that Taylor heard the sounds of explosions coming through the phone. She went still, processing that statement while Robin continued unbothered. “The Minutemen have elected to attack Nuka-World with their elite forces to destroy the Dias. We have the situation in hand, but it is an opportunity to attack the Castle.”

Which Cinder got a head start on. Taylor felt a rush of irritation but swallowed it down. “I'll head there immediately.”

“A word of advice, Taylor. People remember the last thing that you did for them. They will always remember one final defeat over a thousand previous victories.” Robin said before a particularly large explosion rang out. “The same applies in reverse. It doesn't matter how many times you lose, so long as you win in the end, you'll be considered a winner.”

Her message was clear. “You don't want Cinder to win,” Taylor said, thinking on the remark that Law made. His lips whispering in her ear, his hands on her body -- she hadn't really been paying attention to what he said until she realized it was about Cinder. “Why?”

“Cinder is being punished for her hubris, but the punishment will only work if she doesn't realize it's a punishment,” Robin answered easily, though Taylor could swear she heard a cruel amusement in her voice. “Thus, she must believe that she lost the position completely by her own merits. Or, rather, yours.”

Taylor narrowed her eyes, taking her swarm and shifting it in another direction. To the south, where the Castle laid. They knew where it was, but it was heavily fortified. It seemed smarter to take down their forward bases before moving on to it because then the Castle wouldn't have the supplies needed to sustain itself. “What position?”

There was a dark chuckle across the line, “Rulership of Nuka-World. Once the refugee crisis has been dealt with, Law intends to use the Dias to visit other worlds. Preferably ones that aren't nuclear wastelands. As such, he will need someone to rule Nuka-World in his name and look out for his interests. You and Cinder are the only two serious candidates that we are looking at.” That…

That changed everything. A weight seemed to settle on Taylor's shoulders as the stakes were revealed to her. An image flashed across her mind -- of the Wasteland ruled by Cinder. A slavers paradise. A raider haven. A world of chaos and death and callous cruelty. That couldn't happen. No matter what, Taylor knew she couldn't let Cinder win… and that was why Robin was telling her this.

“I'll take care of it,” Taylor replied stiffly and she was answered with a chuckle.

“I know you will. Enjoy it, Taylor. I know I will,” Robin said before the call ended. Taylor stood silently, the phone still pressed against her ear, her mind racing. This was what she had wanted, Taylor reflected as she shifted her attention away from Bunker Hill and Goodneighbor. A chance to circumvent the cruelty. The necessary evils.

All she had to do was win. Exactly as Law said.

To that end, Taylor committed everything to the assault. Closing the phone, she jumped on one of her soldier ants to start making their way to the Castle. It was across Boston, making it a trek and Taylor was going to have to force her way through a lot of resistance. But thats what she had to do. Cinder was lacking an army, waiting for reinforcements at Diamond City, but she wouldn’t remain idle after getting a message from Robin.

There was something fishy about the situation, Taylor thought. If Robin wanted Cinder to lose, then it stood to reason that she’d call Taylor first. Give her the head start rather than trusting that Cinder would play fair. So, why didn’t she? A test? Or was Robin confident that Taylor could beat Cinder to the punch even with the head start? Was this salt in the wound? She didn’t know. Taylor barely knew Robin, and what she did know of her painted her as a practical and organized person.

It didn’t matter, she decided as her army went on the move. The distance between the locations wasn’t that far. Less than five miles across Boston, but that was a considerable amount of distance all things considered. Though, with Boston still on fire, it meant there were some weak points that she could exploit for a breakthrough.

The action didn’t go unnoticed by the Minutemen, Taylor soon discovered when she heard a shriek echo across the sky a split second before she heard an explosion through her insects. Gripping onto her ant, she had it climb up the side of a ruined skyscraper, one of the few still standing, to give her a vantage point with the help of some binoculars.

The Castle was the ruin of Fort Independence. She had read about it in her history books, back in her old world. It was a large fort first built in the sixteen hundreds that had since undergone significant renovation. Holes in the walls were repaired, a second story was added above where the courtyard should be, while the walls were scaled up to act as embrasures. That one building held around a quarter of the Commonwealth’s population.

It also had several mortars that were operating continuously, bombarding her advancing army. It was blind firing. Across the ground below her, Taylor saw her insects crawling over the ruins like it was an anthill that had been disturbed. Her months of breeding them paid off, because tens of thousands of ants erupted from the sewers, crawling over buildings, and marching down streets. The mortars couldn't miss, it was next to impossible. However, her insects simply kept marching on despite the losses.

Not long after, Taylor hit her first line of resistance.

“Antagonizer,” The Mechanist greeted her as his machines revealed themselves. There were hundreds of them. A thousand, even. There were all kinds of types and models, all of them equipped with weapons and with the greeting, their two opposing forces clashed. “At long last you've revealed what you are truly capable of.”

Taylor fought off a frown even if she was miles away from the conflict. She heard the words repeated hundreds of times through her specifically chosen insects whose senses she borrowed. The message was relayed up and down the emerging battlefield. Her insects were gunned down in hails of lasers, plasma, bullets, and explosions. Through the smoke and over the corpses of their fellows, her insects pressed on to the machines in their entrenched position.

“General Nora doubted me when I claimed that it was you who was the greatest danger to the citizens of the Commonwealth, and I despair to see that I have been vindicated,” The Mechanist declared as the battle was waged. Taylor had a full view of it, from above and through the eyes of her insects. Diamond City wasn't reacting much. Or, rather, what was left of Cinder's army wasn't. “However, I shall not let you take one more step towards the innocent citizens of the Commonwealth!”

The Mechanist spoke how Taylpr imagined herself speaking during her idle fantasies back home. Back at school. Back when she and Emma used to act out what kind of hero they would be if they got powers. It made Taylor suspect that the Mechanist wasn't as old as he sounded.

The clash had begun in earnest now. His sacrificial bots surged forward, meeting her insects as a wall of metal, buzz saws cutting into chitin while flamethrower belched fire. At the same time, her insects tore the limbs off the machines, their pincers tearing through metal and overwhelming them with sheer weight of numbers. Above the battlefield were the eyebots that fired lasers down below before Taylor flooded them with small insects, tearing them apart from the inside.

“I cannot know what began your descent into villainy. A power such as this… you could have been the Commonwealth’s savior!” The Mechanist exclaimed and Taylor twitched, the words finding their mark. A nerve that was raw and bleeding.

“What do you know?” Taylor protested before she realized she was doing the same thing as the Mechanist. The same childish talk, of pretending to be someone you weren't. “I didn't ask for this! I'm… I'm doing what's best for everyone!”

It had only been a couple of months, but it felt like an entire lifetime. So much had changed. There were so many things that she had done. Decisions that she made in a vacuum because going by what Dad would do wouldn't cut it. She wasn't the wide eyed girl that tried to sacrifice herself for another. She’d learned her lessons.

“How can slavery ever be what is good for the Commonwealth?” The Mechanist thundered back, and there was genuine anger in his voice. Though, that could be because her insects were overcoming his first line of defense, even at the cost of hundreds of insects. “Don't use empty excuses like the greater good to justify your actions, Antagonizer! However dire things may be on the other side of that portal, that does not justify your abhorrent actions!”

Taylor clenched her teeth. He didn't know anything. He was spouting naive bullshit because he didn't know any better. He couldn't know. She made sure no one could anticipate her plans, but all the same, the words bothered her. Everything she did was for the greater good. All of it. Every action that kept her up at night, every choice that she struggled with -- she did all of it to make things better.

She couldn't be a hero. Not in this world. Not when her competition was Cinder Fall, who was the monster that they thought she was.

Her lips twisted into a frown, a coil of anger bubbling up from her gut, “You want me to be a villain?” She asked as she ushered her insects forward like the tide, carving a path towards the Castle in the distance.

“Fine. I'll give you exactly what you want!”

…

“I don’t think I like flying, General,” Preston noted as he looked over the edge of the USS Constitution down at the ground below. There was a dull roaring in the air as the thrusters that were attached to the ancient, even by pre-war standards, wooden ship sustained a coil of fire to give them thrust. The mast was down, but Preston was pretty sure it didn’t serve any purpose beyond the fact that the captain -- a sentry bot with a fake accent -- thought that they should be unfurled when setting sail.

“You'll like the landing even less,” General Nora replied, her voice filtering through the helmet of her T-60 power armor. Her and a dozen other Minutemen were standing on the deck of the USS Constitution. All of them trained by General Nora in a crash course lesson plan over the course of a month. Compared to her, they moved the power armor with the grace of brahmin, but they needed the armor if they wanted a chance to complete the mission.

“General, we are approaching target position,” the ‘captain’ of the ship informed from its position behind the steering wheel. The sentry bot adjusted its tri-corner hat with it's gatling gun of a hand. “All hands on deck. We are in for a bumpy ride.”

In response, General Nora nodded before glancing at her wrist. Her Pip Boy had been integrated into the suit, and with a twist of a nob, Preston saw a red light flash green on his HUD. The first part of the operation was underway, and he looked down to see its beginnings.

Preston didn't know if it was a deliberate decision or a mistake on behalf of their spy in Nuka-World, but he knew that the assault had no chance of success without what they gave them. He watched as bolts of lightning slammed into the ground within Nuka-World, their army materializing in flashes of light and launching a surprise attack on the unsuspecting guards of the settlement.

Instantly, combat began while Nuka-World was left reeling. It was too far to hear the sounds of combat, but in the distance he saw plumes of smoke start to rise up.

The Institute teleporter was their ace. Their spy informed them of the teleporter as a warning to prepare for it because, with it, they could teleport into the Castle. Putting up jammers was the first step, but General Nora wanted to do more than that. She wanted to tap into their teleporter and use it against Heartless and his raiders. It was something that could only work once, Preston knew, but they only needed it to work once.

As the Minutemen launched their surprise attack, the USS Constitution sailed overhead while their attention was on the ground. It was then that Preston got his first good look at Nuka-World -- a theme park that had been more than restored, it was expanding. There were more people than Preston had ever seen before all scrambling about, looking to hide or fight at the sudden attack. They spread themselves thin in some places, but in others they concentrated their forces -- around important buildings.

Around the Anchor.

A red light on his HUD turned yellow and Preston moved, getting into position as he swallowed his nerves. He and the others lined up at the railing and it was then that he heard General Nora speak through a cackling radio. “You know the importance of this mission. If we don't stop them here, they'll sweep over the Commonwealth and odds are, they won't stop there. It's a choice between them and us, and I'm choosing us.”

They weren't evil. It'd be easier if they were, Preston could admit. In the end, they were just desperate refugees that were flooding the Wasteland and there simply wasn’t enough resources for them all. Nor would the survivors of the Commonwealth simply roll over and accept their homes, lands, and even their families being taken. Circumstances forced everyone's hands and neither of them were willing to back down.

“This mission has to succeed. This is our one shot and if we miss, then we're done. So, if there is a price to pay to destroy the Dias? Pay it,” General Nora instructed, her voice cold. A suicide mission. They all knew what they agreed to when they accepted this mission. Even in their best case scenario, where they destroyed the Dias… they would still be deep in enemy territory. They wouldn't survive either way.

This was a one way trip, no matter what.

Preston took a breath before the yellow light went green, the operation starting. Before he could hesitate, he took a step off the edge of the ship and found himself plummeting like a stone. The lurch in his stomach reminded him of the jetpack on his back, and with bursts of thrust, he slowed his descent and guided himself down towards the heart of Nuka-World. They flew in formation with General Nora at the tip of the spear.

It was a long few seconds before they hit the ground, landing on top of the Anchor to find that the portal was open. Preston caught a glimpse of a lab of some kind. And people, all of them hiding in fear at the sounds of combat. His stomach twisted at the sight before someone else stole his attention.

Heartless walked up the ramp, a lazy smile on his face while a sword rested against his shoulder. Preston heated his minigun, taking aim at him as he crossed the threshold of the portal, acting as the final barrier between them and the Dias.

“Not bad,” he praised, his smile growing a fraction. “Let's see if it's good enough.”