Fallout: New Vegas fanfic
Jun. 24th, 2012 04:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
duane_kcOkay, I can't seem to get this out of my head any other way, so...
*****
The whole durn thing started 'cause I was doing one last favor for a friend.
'Course, walkin' into the Mojave was one king Hell of a favor, but he'd been a good friend to the clan, so good that Ma and Pa named me after him; he even taught me to shoot straight, when I was about six. Great guy, even considerin' he was an old (as in pre-War) ghoul, kinda crochety, even by my clan's standards. So when I turned up at his funeral, his "daughter" caught me afterwards, said he'd been contracted by Mojave Express for a run to New Vegas, and I was the only person she could think of to make the run for him; the family could really use the money, she said. Now, I'm no sucker, but a girl cryin' at me will get me to do a lot of things, so I agreed. The Granny and Grandmama always said I had itchy feet, and they was pretty well right. I reckon I've seen a lot more of the West than most these days, all of it on my own two feet. 'Course, at six-seven and kinda lanky, those feet eat up a mite more road than most people's when I get 'em movin', too.
So there I was, headin' up old I-15 goin' past Goodsprings, when all of a sudden, somebody pops out from behind a rock and shines a flash in my eyes, and before I could say "boo", somebody else whacks me on the back of the head, with a shovel, I think, and I drop like a poleaxed steer. I wake up tied up, with my head poundin', to see this feller in a black-and-white checked daisy suit opening the package I'm supposed to be deliverin'; pulls out a big, shiny silvery poker chip, grins real big, flips it in the air, catches it, and slips it in his breast pocket. One of his partners notices I'm awake, and nudges the boss; he turns around, and starts a-rantin' at me about how this was my "last delivery", and how the "game was rigged from the start", then he up and *shoots me in the head*. Which made me *mad*, I can tell you.
And as I slid back into unconsciousness, all I could think was "Now we'll find out if Grandmama was right, and my brain *isn't* a vital organ..."
*****
Turns out she was right.
Woke up on a bed, starin' at an old, cracked plaster ceiling, head poundin' to beat the band, but still alive. Somebody says "Good. You're awake." And that's how I met old Doc Mitchell, the Goodsprings town doc. He'd fixed me up and nursed me back to health, after the daisy and his two goons had left me for dead. Turns out I'd been out for most of a week, had a big ol' scar across my forehead where a nine-mil slug had slid across my skull under the scalp, and most everything I'd been carryin' or wearin' was gone.
Doc kept me a day or so, running tests to see if I still had all my faculties, and when he was satisfied all my marbles were still in the bag, he give me some old clothes, and this old 9mm grease gun he'd had around which just needed a good cleaning and a trigger spring I made out of an old bobby pin to put back in serviceable condition. He also give me somethin' I'd always wanted, but never could get my hands on; a Pip-Boy 3000 Personal Information Processor! Doc said he didn't have no use for it any more,and I might. Spent a while with him showin' me all the features, including the neat little biofeedback trick for removin' it; seems you have to be awake enough to *want* it to come off, or else it just won't. Anybody tries to crack the case to get it off you, well, RobCo marked them "No user-serviceable parts inside" for a reason; they tend to blow up real good unless opened right, and there weren't no one around two hundred years after the War (outside the occasional Vault technician or doctor, who might *need* to remove one), who knew the trick. Atomic batteries ain't something to fool around with, kids.
Well, Doc allowed how I was OK to go wander around the desert, but as for headin' back to Cali, I'd need to rustle up some caps for grub and ammo. Plus, there was the little matter of the feller in the daisy suit. I had a mite to discuss with him, you know, polite-like. Before I declared a blood-feud on his clan.
Nobody gets away with shootin' a Clampett-Addams, after all. "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc": We gladly feast on those who would subdue us. Not just purty words.
****
Doc pointed me at somebody by the unlikely name of Sunny Smiles; said I could probably find some work with her. He was right, she wanted some help clearin' out geckoes from the town well, and them's good eatin', so I allowed as how I'd help. Got a bunch of 'em by the end of the day, after I showed her I knew which end of a rifle was which; saved one of the townfolk, too, who'd been at the wrong place at the wrong time and got herself chewed on a mite. Later, at the saloon, while I was asking around about Daisy Suit, found out there were some tough customers tryin' to rough up the town for some reason, and that just rubbed me the wrong way, so's I helped the townfolk out a bit. Vermin is vermin, after all, even if they walk on two legs, and I owed the townfolk some for helping me out of a tough spot. Rifle Sunny'd give me works just as well on men as geckos.
Nobody seemed to know who Daisy Suit was, but the local bartender said she thought she'd heard one of the guys he was with (called "Great Khans", whatever that meant) say something about heading to Boulder City, because of some kind of trouble north on I-15 that had blocked the road. Great. Lovely. About twenty miles of backtracking, then, and them with a week's head start. No time like the present. I hitched up my ill-fitting drawers and headed back down the Long 15.
*****
The whole durn thing started 'cause I was doing one last favor for a friend.
'Course, walkin' into the Mojave was one king Hell of a favor, but he'd been a good friend to the clan, so good that Ma and Pa named me after him; he even taught me to shoot straight, when I was about six. Great guy, even considerin' he was an old (as in pre-War) ghoul, kinda crochety, even by my clan's standards. So when I turned up at his funeral, his "daughter" caught me afterwards, said he'd been contracted by Mojave Express for a run to New Vegas, and I was the only person she could think of to make the run for him; the family could really use the money, she said. Now, I'm no sucker, but a girl cryin' at me will get me to do a lot of things, so I agreed. The Granny and Grandmama always said I had itchy feet, and they was pretty well right. I reckon I've seen a lot more of the West than most these days, all of it on my own two feet. 'Course, at six-seven and kinda lanky, those feet eat up a mite more road than most people's when I get 'em movin', too.
So there I was, headin' up old I-15 goin' past Goodsprings, when all of a sudden, somebody pops out from behind a rock and shines a flash in my eyes, and before I could say "boo", somebody else whacks me on the back of the head, with a shovel, I think, and I drop like a poleaxed steer. I wake up tied up, with my head poundin', to see this feller in a black-and-white checked daisy suit opening the package I'm supposed to be deliverin'; pulls out a big, shiny silvery poker chip, grins real big, flips it in the air, catches it, and slips it in his breast pocket. One of his partners notices I'm awake, and nudges the boss; he turns around, and starts a-rantin' at me about how this was my "last delivery", and how the "game was rigged from the start", then he up and *shoots me in the head*. Which made me *mad*, I can tell you.
And as I slid back into unconsciousness, all I could think was "Now we'll find out if Grandmama was right, and my brain *isn't* a vital organ..."
*****
Turns out she was right.
Woke up on a bed, starin' at an old, cracked plaster ceiling, head poundin' to beat the band, but still alive. Somebody says "Good. You're awake." And that's how I met old Doc Mitchell, the Goodsprings town doc. He'd fixed me up and nursed me back to health, after the daisy and his two goons had left me for dead. Turns out I'd been out for most of a week, had a big ol' scar across my forehead where a nine-mil slug had slid across my skull under the scalp, and most everything I'd been carryin' or wearin' was gone.
Doc kept me a day or so, running tests to see if I still had all my faculties, and when he was satisfied all my marbles were still in the bag, he give me some old clothes, and this old 9mm grease gun he'd had around which just needed a good cleaning and a trigger spring I made out of an old bobby pin to put back in serviceable condition. He also give me somethin' I'd always wanted, but never could get my hands on; a Pip-Boy 3000 Personal Information Processor! Doc said he didn't have no use for it any more,and I might. Spent a while with him showin' me all the features, including the neat little biofeedback trick for removin' it; seems you have to be awake enough to *want* it to come off, or else it just won't. Anybody tries to crack the case to get it off you, well, RobCo marked them "No user-serviceable parts inside" for a reason; they tend to blow up real good unless opened right, and there weren't no one around two hundred years after the War (outside the occasional Vault technician or doctor, who might *need* to remove one), who knew the trick. Atomic batteries ain't something to fool around with, kids.
Well, Doc allowed how I was OK to go wander around the desert, but as for headin' back to Cali, I'd need to rustle up some caps for grub and ammo. Plus, there was the little matter of the feller in the daisy suit. I had a mite to discuss with him, you know, polite-like. Before I declared a blood-feud on his clan.
Nobody gets away with shootin' a Clampett-Addams, after all. "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc": We gladly feast on those who would subdue us. Not just purty words.
****
Doc pointed me at somebody by the unlikely name of Sunny Smiles; said I could probably find some work with her. He was right, she wanted some help clearin' out geckoes from the town well, and them's good eatin', so I allowed as how I'd help. Got a bunch of 'em by the end of the day, after I showed her I knew which end of a rifle was which; saved one of the townfolk, too, who'd been at the wrong place at the wrong time and got herself chewed on a mite. Later, at the saloon, while I was asking around about Daisy Suit, found out there were some tough customers tryin' to rough up the town for some reason, and that just rubbed me the wrong way, so's I helped the townfolk out a bit. Vermin is vermin, after all, even if they walk on two legs, and I owed the townfolk some for helping me out of a tough spot. Rifle Sunny'd give me works just as well on men as geckos.
Nobody seemed to know who Daisy Suit was, but the local bartender said she thought she'd heard one of the guys he was with (called "Great Khans", whatever that meant) say something about heading to Boulder City, because of some kind of trouble north on I-15 that had blocked the road. Great. Lovely. About twenty miles of backtracking, then, and them with a week's head start. No time like the present. I hitched up my ill-fitting drawers and headed back down the Long 15.
