Mutually Assured Destruction || Yandere!Soulmates X F!Reader

'Napped

Years retired from life as a raider made you soft, made you naive, in some respects. Of course the Final Ghouls wouldn't be satisfied just taking back the areas that the Rangers liberated. Doing so would be a waste of time and resources, seeing as they no longer had the tactical advantage or element of surprise.

No, no... Local militias like theirs were like weeds. Cut them down and they'd just grow back. To get rid of a weed, you need to pull it up from the root.

You didn't think the gang would have the guts to attack Fort Valiant. You were wrong.

You were in the Stern Plantation region when you got the call.

"The Fort's under attack!"

The marauders had used explosives to weaken the front gate, then plowed through the remaining defenses with their armored vehicles. Once they had invited themselves in, they started gunning down anyone brave or stupid enough to aim a weapon at them.

You dropped everything you were doing and made a bee-line for Fort Valiant. Even at the downright punishing pace you were keeping up, the journey --running through farmland, hoofing it through woods, slogging through rivers, and dashing across roads-- took over two days.

The mayday call, on the other hand, went silent after a mere two hours.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit--!

On the dawn of the third day, another broadcast came across the radio... From Uma, of all people. "Calling all toy soldiers! We have your leader... If you can even call her that. Want 'er back? Then we'll be waiting in an outpost called the Woodcreek Sawmill."

That's when Kali cut in. "Better hurry though... We're likely to get bored and start cutting pieces off of her."

You knew that not to be an idle threat either. Kali was nothing if not a sadist. In the past, when she was done interrogating someone, she would cut out their tongue.

There was no point to the exercise. They were going to kill the prisoner anyway. She just liked to hurt people, lived for the fear in their eyes and the pain in their expressions.

So they had Garcia, huh? That wasn't good. In addition to being the backbone of the community, she was their master strategist and tactician. The county couldn't win this war or any one that followed it without her.

Then, another terrifying thought crossed your mind. If they were able to grab Garcia, did they also free Melanie from her jail cell? The girl had some incriminating information on you, secrets that she already said she wouldn't keep. But would Uma and Kali even believe her?

It had been years since you disappeared, leaving nothing but broken hearts and severed pinky fingers behind. Surely they would dismiss her claims as blatant lies, the bleating of a sheep before it was sent to the slaughterhouse.

But there was no way of telling until you confronted them yourself, which just so happened to be the last thing you wanted to do.

Rather than continuing on your way to Fort Valiant to assess the damage, you made a hard turn north and started in the direction of Little Oak, where the Woodcreek Sawmill was located.

Your advantage was that you knew the area, just like you knew most in this county. This was your home, after all. The Final Ghouls weren't even visitors... They were invaders.

The Woodcreek Sawmill was where logs were processed into lumber, usually wood planks of whatever dimensions needed for the job. There were plenty of places to sneak around and set up sniper nests...

If the gang hadn't done so already. It seemed, whenever the gang's leaders came out of the homebase, security tightened up to the nth degree.

You weren't well-versed in stealth operations. Hard and loud was your style. No enemy left alive. But that was impossible in this case. The moment they sensed your presence, Garcia was as good as dead.