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“Anythin’ will taste nice if you stuff it full of fruit and drown it in brandy; A mole rat iz no exception.” 


“That as may be,” Matthew Dupont reasoned, scrunching up his nose slightly “but you might as well inject yourself with a syringe full of liquid radiation, for all the good eating a mole rat will do you.” 


“Itz a clean mole rat.” Galhaena Calhoun insisted, shoveling another forkful of fried mole rat into her mouth. 


“Those snag-toothed freaks role in their own shit and munch on trash! There’s no such thing as a clean mole rat.” Dupont scoffed, a crooked grin sliding up the side of his cheek.


“Well, I for one intend to enjoy every inch of Vancouver whilst I’m back down ‘ere.” The large woman took a delicate sip of something bitter and purple, wrapping her hand around the smooth glass cup. 


“How’s it feel to be back home?” Dupont asked, smiling lightly after a brief pause. 


“Odd,” The Trade Queen said simply “Feelz like I haven’t been here since I was a little girl.” 


“Wouldn’t have been possible to make it cross-country without getting ripped up by zombies or Yao Guai when you were a little girl.” Dupont gave a throaty little chuckle “You’ve even started talking like one of those Quebecois.” 


“Just going with the flow, Dupont.” Galhaena shrugged her broad shoulders “getting to sleep on a warm feather bed instead ov rubble and piss ‘elps to ease the burning shame of my outrageous conformity.” 


“How about the burning pressure of running the Coalition?” Dupont asked, somewhat more seriously. 


“I can dedicate day after days to keeping everything in check, and all it takes is one tiny little error to fuck everything up,” Galhaena admitted “It's...stressful.” 


“Have you tried furiously masturbating?” Dupont smirked “that always helps me to relieve stress.” 


Galhaena grinned ever-so-slightly, fluttering her eyelids “I’d never get any work done.” 


“Never let work get in the way of a good workout.” Dupont declared loudly. 


“Even if it's just my vagina that’s getting the workout?” She laughed softly. 


“The vagina is a very important part of a woman’s body, madam.” 


The hall that the pair were dining in had been little more than a pile of dust and rubble a few years back, but now it was a cathedral of high-ceilings and smooth brick. All across the frozen vastness of the Canadian Wasteland, bombed out ruins had been swept away and replaced with shanty towns and scrap metal shacks. The crippled husks of concrete leviathans had been restored to their pre-war glory, as a wave of new industrialization swept across the crisp white post-apocalyptia. The Coalition may have made many enemies, and committed countless atrocities, but it had all been worth it in the end. 


[i]This isn’t a world you can afford to be nice in.[/i]Galhaena thought to herself.[i]There’s no profit to be made in holding other people’s opinions in high-regard.[/i] 


“So,” Dupont inclined his head with a gentle tilt “what do we do about these military types?” 


The Enclave may have thought their arrival had gone undetected, but the Coalition had practically every inch of the surrounding area mapped out.


“Mercy isn’t something zhat people such as ourselves can afford to extend,” The Trade Queen said in a voice that was as cold and firm as the empire she governed “its time we buried them in the snow.”