Kind-of posting this for motivation to keep writing (my nano!Penis will be bigger than yours, Maximilia! Ahhahahahahahah! Hah!) But, mostly, I hope for at least some critique. This is going better than the Mass Effect fic I started with, but I constantly wonder about pacing, about if I'm over or underdoing the protagonist's hick accent, if the writing is too purple in the name of wordcount (and even if it's not, if there's the right amount of detail) and, hell, if the protagonist's name even works. Either I'm on the right track or it's so bad someone will copy-paste to New Releases, but either way, at least something entertaining would come of it.
If you're unfamiliar with Fallout, my goal for this is for it to be a relatively easy read if all you know is "Retro-Future America is an eternal summer desert on account of the bombs dropping in 2077 and the main character has recently caused some major changes in his local area." I would very much like to know things like if the geography is easy to follow and if dialog is easy to understand despite containing references to canon events, etc, though I'm not rightly sure this is possible to pull off with this particular series, considering all the little things it has for flavor.
And we're off.
----
1
Sun rose over the New Vegas strip like it normally did. Neon signs and the lights of hotel rooms turned off like they normally did. The night life drew to a close, partying tourists and upper-class residents alike wandering outside in a collective stupor to go home, most of them minus quite a few caps, like they normally did.
Like he'd usually been doing for the past couple of weeks, maybe a month, however long it'd been since the second battle of Hoover Dam, a small, unassuming courier woke up to a not-so-small and not-at-all unassuming hangover in the presidential suite of the Lucky 38.
If that courier was grateful for one thing, it was the lack of windows. He didn't want to deal with sunlight right now. The groan he let out as he began to experience the full weight of his agony attracted the suite's only other occupant.
At the little floating robot's incessant beeping, the courier rolled over on the bed and managed to open one eye, at great pain. "Eddie, please shuddup."
Having gotten his attention, the robot opened its storage compartment, a bottle of water dropping out and sloshing around once it hit the floor. Weighing his options, the courier managed to roll enough so he could stretch an arm down, and just barely reached the bottle.
He downed the whole thing at once and tossed the bottle back to the floor. Now far more awake than he rightly wished he was, the courier spent a good, long while laying on his back, staring up at the ceiling and imaging the dark circles under his eyes. "Might be time to stop partying, Justin," he sighed. The Ultra-Luxe had already kicked him out for counting cards, and the novelty of having copious amounts of booze had worn off enough where the headache really wasn't worth it anymore. Glancing down at himself, seeing his pants and his boots exactly where he'd left them last night, on himself, he added to this, "Where's my shirt?"
ED-E beeped again.
Eventually assing himself to at least get his feet on the floor, Justin managed to get his boots off and work up to having a shower. Once he was done with that, he still couldn't find his shirt, but there was plenty of clothes in the suite's cabinets, stuff it had come with and stuff gathered in travels that he'd dropped off. He found a shirt slightly less dirty than the missing one and threw a trader's vest on top of it just for the many pockets and pouches. The familiar presence of his hat on his head, old, graying and beat up as it was, went a long way to making him feel better.
Not being a trader, Justin didn't consider the things he filled his vest with to be for sale, but it wasn't all that different from what a caravaneer would probably pack. Extra ammo, a grenade or three, his toolkit, various chems, another bottle of water...popular things that would be worth being able to get to faster than it would take to untangle it from the pack brahmin. The difference was he fully intended to use it all for himself, if the situation called for it.
Even his shotgun was the make caravan mercs usually carried; it was practically a disguise. But Justin was a courier by trade. Packages, parts for repair, lost momentos thought swallowed by the desert, hell, even justice from a gun. Bring one thing from Point A to Point B. He may have been a walk-the-wasteland-fuck like General Oliver had said, but he did it with purpose, and made some caps off it besides.
Not that he'd need caps for awhile, but it was about time to check up on some things instead of checking up on a whiskey bottle. Looking at himself in the mirror, Justin slung his shotgun over his back, looked for anything out of place, and decided he was good to go. "Kick-ass."
Thinking of caravans during the elevator ride down to the Lucky 38's empty casino brought his mind to the only real friend he'd made in the Mojave since he'd wandered over from California, ED-E notwithstanding. Craig Boone wasn't the only person he was friendly with, not even the only person who's name he knew, but he was sure as hell the only one Justin trusted to watch his back.
Thinking about Boone brought the courier's mind to other things they'd done, and, figuring he was turning red as he walked out onto the strip with the sun not yet reaching over the walls, he glanced up and down the street before looking at ED-E off to his side. "What do you think Boone's doin' right now, ED-E?"
If ED-E's sounds were spoken English, the words might've been something like, "Beep boop-boop bwazeep bzzt."
"Yeah," Justin sighed, "Probably blowing the heads off of anyone stupid enough to attack his caravan." Smiling at the thought, he added, "Or meltin' 'em with that plasma rifle. That's way better."
Justin made his way down the strip to Freeside. "Guess Mister House didn't want to waste any time," he said to himself, a Securitron rolling by. He wondered what everyone in Freeside thought about their newfound watchers; at least the random looters and muggers would be a thing of the past. He thought of stopping in to see the Kings, but there was a Securitron outside their building, talking with one of the guards, so he decided to just let them be and kept going. He had the whole day to occupy himself with.
It didn't take long for something to find him. No sooner had he sat down in the Atomic Wrangler and ordered a Nuka-Cola than he was approached by someone. "Excuse me, are you the resident of the Lucky 38?"
Surprised at being addressed as such and thinking he really shouldn't be anymore considering he made no effort to hide himself when coming and going from the hotel, Justin forced himself out of his stunned silence. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, that's me."
"I have a delivery for you." The woman handed him a simple, crisp, white envelope, warped slightly from being carried in her pocket.
"Ah," Justin slowly raised his hand, his headache keeping him from focusing easily. "What do I owe you, ma'am?"
"Let me see," she checked her ledger, pulling a pen from another pocket as she did so. "It seems the sender paid in full. Could you just sign here?"
Doing so, Justin handed her the pen and ledger back, muttering a 'thanks' before tearing at the envelope's flap. The white paper inside was harsh on his eyes, bright under the sun to the point where he felt like he was looking at a mirror.
"Hey, it's from Boone." He was mostly talking to himself and smiling the entire time, but ED-E was close enough to at least look like he was reading over Justin's shoulder. "Wow, he so writes like he talks. 'Route uneventful so far. Three raiders rushed us from out in the open two days back, no problems.' Yeah, getting attacked by morons who don't know cover or concealment wouldn't be a problem for Boone." Glancing over at ED-E and imagining that the little robot was nodding, Justin kept reading. "Looks like Boone'll be headed for Primm on his caravan's route."
At ED-E's inquisitive beep, Justin said, "Y'know...the deathclaws are almost all gone from the I-15 and it's only what, fifty miles? We could head down through Goodsprings, beat Boone there n'say 'hi.'"
Much to Justin's chagrin, ED-E lost some altitude and tilted his front downwards.
"Oh, don't give me that." Scoffing, Justin turned back to the table and took a long drink from his soda. He knew he'd have to pound some water later to make up for dehydrating himself even more, but for the moment, he could practically feel the caffeine hitting his brain. "I'm not obsessed, I just don't have anything to do around here other than get drunk and rip off the casinos."
Moving more to the side, ED-E played one of his Western-movie audio cues, a more relaxing one than his usual fight music.
"Okay, so I'm a little obsessed, so I've got it bad for the guy, so sue me." Sighing, Justin pulled at the brim of his hat, turning it a little more downwards. "But besides that, maybe I can make myself useful somewhere. Maybe run packages pro-bono. Gotta be less dangerous carryin' someone's sentimental junk than carryin' House's world-changing stuff, right?"
Justin left around noon. All told, he didn't need much in the way of preparation, he was already carrying most of the essentials, he just needed to make sure he had a decent supply of food, water and ammo in his pack before strapping it on.
Walking out of Freeside and into the waste proper, he gave the combat knife hooked to his belt one more tug to make sure it was secure in the sheath, and repeated the process with the one on the other side of his waist. Satisfied that those were secure, he checked his pistol as well, content that he had enough back-up weapons. The last item on his mental checklist was the stealth-boy neatly tucked away in his jacket in case he needed to get by a Deathclaw on the prowl. Glancing at ED-E, he took the first step down the road, shotgun in hand. "C'mon, Eddie, let's mosey."
- - -
2
It couldn't have been more than a mile outside of Primm where Justin heard the gunshots. Wondering what was going on and assuming "raiders," he broke into a run off the road, moving up a hill as fast as he could.
"Aw, motherfuckers," he said once he'd made it over the hill. His guess had been right, someone leading around a pack brahmin was taking shots with a pistol at three guys who were undoubtedly raiders if their clothes and armor were any indication. The brahmin had fallen on its side, the owner soon ran out of ammo and Justin could hear the raiders laughing from where he was as they slowly moved out of cover and advanced, one pulling the slide back on his pistol, another smacking his free hand with the end of his baseball bat.
Running again, Justin spared a short look to make sure ED-E was still following and hadn't gotten confused on the hill like he sometimes could. He didn't know if the poor schmuck the raiders were about to rip apart saw him coming or not, what with the raiders between them, but it didn't really matter.
Raiders generally weren't smart folks. They didn't tend to pay attention to their surroundings, let alone their backs. So when Justin stopped and went down to one knee, shotgun leveled, he had to actually get their attention. "Hey, assholes!"
He didn't wait for any of them to turn around all the way, he took his first shot at the one with the gun, taking a chunk out of his back and sending him down. ED-E's shot came next, and the raider with the baseball bat suddenly had no head, only chunks and pink mist going every which way, some of those bits on fire.
By the time that was over with, Justin had his second shot lined up, and he took it, downing the last raider. Not resting on his laurels, he quickly stood and ran over, eyes moving everywhere to make sure there weren't any more around. He knew ED-E would've warned him, but he didn't like to let his guard down.
By the time he was to the raiders, he realized the first one he'd shot was still alive. The guy had on some shitty metal armor that didn't cover all of his midsection, but it'd stopped some of the buckshot, and now he was reaching for the gun he'd dropped, gurgling in agony the entire time.
He was destined for disappointment, Justin kicking the gun away as soon as he was close enough. Opening his shotgun, he replaced one of the empty shells with a fresh one and held it to the raider's head, all sorts of thoughts going through his mind, that it was a mercy kill with that kind of injury out in the wastes, that he couldn't chance safety on the notion some random raider might just get back up and come after him despite what had to be mortal wounds. A man in a checkered suit had once paid for making a similar assumption.
The one thing that didn't go through his mind was pity. He had absolutely no pity for people who did the kinds of things raiders did, things that didn't stop at theft and didn't always stop at murder. That this man was looking up at him from the ground, his eyes wide with a silent, desperate plea for his life, didn't change that. "Sorry, man," Justin put the end of his shotgun right up against the guy's head, and he could see his eyes change ever so slightly, but he pulled the trigger regardless. "Cry me a fuckin' river."
The splatter wasn't as bad as he was expecting, but, regardless, Justin didn't care to look at it for any length of time, so he turned to the pack brahmin letting out a disgruntled 'moo' from its frustration at being unable to stand, the owner still riding so much adrenaline that he hadn't thought to lower his empty pistol despite how much he was shaking.
There was a little girl, too, Justin noticed. She was hiding behind the brahmin as best she could. "You folks alright?" Justin tried to put on a good smile while he opened his shotgun again, this time shoving a fresh shell into each chamber instead of just one. He was still coming down from the rush himself, and he really wished his first shot on that raider had actually killed him. Snapping the barrel closed, he rested the gun against his shoulder.
"I...I think so," the caravaneer struggled with words for a second, but before long, he finally thought to holster his pistol and turn to the little girl; he didn't even say anything to her, he just flew to his knees and hugged her tight.
Seeing him check her for wounds, Justin poked his Pip-Boy out of sleep mode and checked ED-E's sensor data. His scan wasn't returning any blips, and that was more than good enough for Justin. "Well, there ain't any more around, let's get that brahmin on her feet, huh?"
The process was a little tedious, the best luck they were having in getting the pack animal back up at all had Justin pulling at one of the packs, the owner on his back underneath and trying to shove it up. "Dumb things never want to stand back up," he wheezed out, the effort quickly knocking the wind out of him. "That's why brahmin tipping kills so many. They're too lazy to get moving again."
Just barely feeling the brahmin's weight shift towards him, Justin tried to dig the heels of his boots into the ground, but the ground here wasn't sandy at all and it didn't give. "Yeah, they're regular hernia machines," he admitted, finally stopping and wiping his forehead dry with his sleeve. Shrugging his jacket off, Justin said, "You got any rope?"
Confused, at first, the caravaneer soon fished a length of thick rope out from one of the brahmin's packs, "Just loop it around the other side," Justin told him, taking the other end to ED-E. Getting a questioning sound effect, he said, "Don't complain, I know you can handle more weight than you look like."
Whether or not ED-E made a big difference, Justin wasn't sure, but the brahmin seemed to shift to the side easier than it had on the first try, enough for them to tip the animal right onto its feet. Still annoyed despite this 'rescue,' the brahmin's left head 'moo'd' irritably.
"There." Dusting his hands off, Justin took another glance at ED-E's sensor scan, relieved to find the area still empty of other living things.
The brahmin's owner asked, "How'd you know there aren't any more?"
Scouring the Pip-Boy's map one last time before lowering his arm, Justin pointed a thumb in ED-E's direction. "This little guy sees about twice as far as we can. It's real handy for avoiding trouble."
"That's some robot," the caravaneer was already untying the rope from his brahmin, the little girl having come out far enough to look quizzically at the little floating ball.
She surprised Justin when she finally said something. "Does he have a name, Mister?"
Being in the process of getting the knot undone in ED-E's side of the rope, Justin patted him on the back twice, the leather of his Pip-Boy's glove making a muffled sound on the armor. "This here's Eddie. Found him in Primm, actually. Had to fix him, someone shot him up on the way here."
She spoke like she hadn't just been in a life or worse-than-death situation, almost as if she had no clue what the raiders would've done to her if they'd killed her father. "I guess some people will shoot anything, huh?"
Looking her over, seeing clothes worn from traveling and hair frayed just as badly as her father's, Justin wondered if she'd somehow managed to maintain some measure of innocence despite the world around her, or if it was all long gone. "Yeah," Justin said, "Yeah, they will. Probably more so off the roads." Remembering they were, indeed, off of those roads, Justin decided to ask the obvious question, so he turned back to her father. "What're you folks doing off the beaten path, anyway? Nothing around here but empty space between Primm and Goodsprings."
He was leaving out the now-empty NCR jail and the handful of camps set up by unsavory types...most of that wasn't a concern anymore, and would be even less of a concern once the Securitrons started rolling out father away from the strip.
He still got an answer. "Friend of mine in town told us he'd found some place to scav a little ways up the hill in the canyon, wasn't expecting to find much but I thought it'd be worth a look before we head east. Nipton's pretty much picked clean."
The idea of exploration had Justin's eyebrows raising up, especially around this corner of the Mojave. "Yeah? Mind pointin' the way to it?"
"Should be somewhere over there," the caravaneer pointed down towards the tall, rocky hills lining the west, past the old drive-in theatre and its graveyard of cars. "Just follow the hill until it gets steeper, you can't miss it. Didn't see much there but we left when we realized there were raiders out. It's a little spooky more than anything." Setting to the task of making sure his brahmin's packs were still secure, the caravaneer said, "Hey, I really owe you, we'd be dead if you hadn't appeared, don't know what the hell I was thinking just coming out here without any guards. You ex-NCR or something?"
Justin was, honestly, surprised he didn't hear that more often. "Nah, I'm a courier by trade, actually." Shifting the weight of his shotgun, Justin couldn't help feeling a little pride. It was nothing special, but he had changed this little part of the world in the process of his package running. In the back of his mind, he knew if House turned out a lot worse than he'd promised, he'd be swallowing that pride pretty quick, but for now, it was nice. "Right place in the right time." Thinking that over, he added, "Er, maybe wrong place in the right time, or something."
The caravaneer didn't hear the rest of it, though. "Courier? Courier Six, by any chance?"
Now Justin was weirded out. He didn't particularly think of himself as Courier Six, but he knew exactly what that meant. "Where," he started, drifting back to the only other one he'd seen, that poor bastard dead right in front of the Mojave Express office, the one who'd had the fuzzy dice. House's decoys had certainly been a good idea, if ultimately compromised. "Where'd you get that idea?"
"It's what the crazy stuff up in the canyon says, Mister." Oblivious to Justin's discomfort, the little girl pointed in the same direction her father had. "C-o-u-r-i-e-r, then a number six."
With a hand going to her head, her father smiled, "That's right, honey, you'll be reading better than I do by next year."
Justin was just as oblivious to her, now. Crazy stuff in the canyon about Courier Six? It had him scratching the back of his head, nails running back and forth along the bottom edge of his hat and through his hair. Curiosity was starting to get the best of him. "Well, I do appreciate the info. You be careful now. C'mon, Eddie," he motioned for the robot to follow, waving at the little girl as he started walking and giving her one last smile.
"Hey," the caravaneer called to Justin after they'd put some distance between each other, "If you're heading for Primm later, tell 'em you know Rick at the Vicky n' Vance!"
Not feeling keen on shouting, Justin turned as he walked, raising his free hand to wave an acknowledgment. He had some crazy to find.
- - -
Ultimately, Justin had expected more.
The expectation made it worse, in its own weird little way. He'd expected something blatant, something that made sense, even if it was unnerving. What he got was a mild kind of discomfort and a whole lot of confusion.
The canyon was just a small scrap heap, a few long-wrecked cars and a couple of busses. He actually noticed the graves before anything else, but he didn't pay them much attention as he walked by. People died all the time, it was that kind of world. He didn't feel a need to disturb two people someone had taken the time to dig graves for.
"Well, that's me, ain't it, Eddie?" He was thinking aloud more than anything as his eyes looked back and forth over one of the buses, the yellow spray paint spelling out "Courier Six," the letters sloppy from where the paint had dripped. A number '6' had been sprayed off to the side of it.
It was strange; Justin felt like this had to be talking about him. He knew he wasn't the only courier around, but how many of them could be the sixth of anything? How many delivered important stuff for Mister House? There was a weird disconnect to the entire thing.
He moved on, looking at all the graffiti that'd been sprayed around the scrap. "The Divide," he said to himself, "Lonesome Road...you can go home aga-"
He stopped, the rocky ground grabbing his boots like mud. Justin kept looking at it, over and over. 'You can go home, Courier.'
"Fuck that," Justin shook his head. "Home's in Vegas." Turning on his heels with disipline that would've made Boone proud, he tugged the straps of his pack tighter and started for Primm. "C'mon, Eddie."
Home 
