//------------------------------// // 01 // Story: Wayward Courier // by Speven Dillberg //------------------------------// “I am going to fucking kill the Think Tank.” Those were the first words out of my mouth when I realised I was not where I was meant to be. I was meant to end up in the Mojave Drive-in, not in some dank forest that looked as though it hadn’t been touched by the bombs. My first thought was that I was somewhere in Zion. It certainly seemed green enough, but there weren’t even any signs of the national park that used to be there. Definitely wasn’t the Sierra Madre (thank god) or the Divide (thank god again). As if to make matters worse, my Pip-Boy 3000 couldn’t tell me where I was. Seeing that it uses old Pre-War satellites, not surprising. At least I knew that death was not going to happen. A set of Elite Riot Gear, a silenced 12.7mm submachine gun, a marksman carbine, a Ranger Sequoia and a Displacer Glove. Some people might call that kind of weaponry and armour overkill. I call it being better safe than sorry, a lesson I learned the hard way. That thinking had been what kept me alive when I was helping the NCR win the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. Suppose I’d better introduce myself, huh? I run the Lucky 38 casino in the New Vegas Strip. I wiped out the Fiends. I put down the Powder Gangers. I walked into Caesar’s tent and put two holes in his head as his entire elite guard watched. I beat the Monster of the East to death with his own helmet. A lot of people just call me The Courier, though, even after all this time. Legends die hard because, in the Mojave, that’s what I am to a lot of people. A living legend. No map, no radio, no idea where the fuck I was. Great start to what seemed like what would be a good day. Should have known that was just first sign. And, as if to add insult to injury, I fell on top of the Transportalponder when I landed. So not only did I have no idea where I was, I had no way back. I wasn’t the sort to just sit around and wait for something to happen, though. The compass on my Pip-Boy still worked, so I headed north-west. Don’t know why, just felt like it. Things went by uneventfully enough, which was both good and bad. Good because I wasn’t using ammo, and bad because my paranoia was at the highest level since shortly after I’d managed to escape the Sierra Madre. I had to keep a gun under my pillow for weeks after that just to get some sleep. Didn’t help when one night it went off and nearly put a hole in my head. Eventually, I heard a roar. My first thought was that it was a Yao Guai. I hate those things. I also heard what seemed to be screaming. Whatever the thing was, it was attacking someone. As I had learnt before, the best way to make a good impression on a community was to save a member of it. So I headed in that direction. At first I thought I’d ingested a cocktail of Psycho, Jet, Turbo and Hydra, then washed it down with some moonshine. After all, what I was seeing was easily the strangest thing I have ever seen. This coming from the man who has talked to a brain in a jar with a disturbing fascination with the human body. It looked like a bright blue one-headed brahmin with wings and a rainbow on its head was trying to fight off what seemed to be the lovechild of a radscorpion, a cazador and a coyote? As if to make the whole situation even weirder, something that probably shouldn’t have been possible, the brahmin-thing seemed to be screaming, actually screaming, for help. If we could speak the same language, I’d be willing to bet my Pip-Boy it was actually saying ‘help’. I’ll admit, I don’t always think things through before acting. That’s the main reason that crazy fuck Elijah managed to get me to the Sierra Madre in the first place. So I pulled my submachine gun off my back and lined up the shot. Not once did I think that this might not be the best idea I’ve had. Definitely up there with that time I woke up in the middle of Freeside in a dress. No I will not tell you what happened. What it did teach me was that Jet and absinthe do not mix well. It’s a miracle the King didn’t have me shot. ANYWAY. I lined up the shot on the weird radscorpion-cazador-coyote thing, which I later found out was called something along the lines of ‘manticore’, and squeezed the trigger. What a lot of people don’t know is that the 12.7 has a rather large kickback, powerful enough to send a weaker man onto his ass. By now, I knew how to compensate for it, but it still pushed you back a bit no matter what. I didn’t have an even footing, so I did fall over. Right into a patch of the strangest blue flowers I’ve ever seen. Turns out they were poisonous in some way, but being completely covered and wearing a filter as part of the helmet meant that nothing bad happened. The manticore went down. Turns out I’d missed the head and only hit it in the torso. I still killed it, so no biggy. At the time, I regretted not using VATS, but at least I didn’t hit the brahmin thing. And then something in my brain started screaming at me, telling me that I did know the right word. As I was picking myself up, it poked at the creature I had just killed with what was a hoof. It was weird seeing human expressions on what looked so much like an animal. I thought talking to the Think Tank (still need to kill them) was strange enough, but they were once human, so it wasn’t as bad. Then, just as I stood up and decided to get a better look at it, it screamed. Turns out killing something was not the best way to go when it came to making a good impression. Never mind the fact that I had just saved it from becoming lunch to that thing. It looked around as it tried to figure out what (or who) had been responsible. Must’ve thought there was a ghost or invisible monster responsible. (I hate Nightkin. Especially the way they appear three feet in front of you with a freaking sledgehammer!) That was about when I remembered what the proper word was. Horses! I remember seeing that word in the title of a book I gave to Papa Khan to motivate him to build a nation instead of just being another tribe. Then I noticed the thing looking straight at me with vivid red eyes. I had said that aloud. And it had heard me. Fuck. Rainbow stared at the strange thing, the pain in her wing forgotten. The way its eyes glowed a menacing red were, in a way, hypnotic. It looked like nothing she had ever seen before. It had the same basic body shape and posture of a Diamond Dog, but stood much straighter, making it seem taller. It appeared to be wearing a lot of clothing, most of it made of material she didn’t recognize. What was most frightening, though, was the thing it held. The strange box had spat out a number of... she didn’t know what, but it had torn through the chest of the manticore like it was paper. If it turned the thing to her... All I could really do was stare. After all, the small winged horse seemed to be hyperventilating. Again, not really thinking, I slung my gun back onto my back and stepped closer. It stepped back. I didn’t want to hurt it. After all, I had just gone to the effort of saving its life. Maybe it thought I only saved it so I could kill it instead? “I am not going to hurt you,” I said as loudly as the helmet would let me. Thinking back, wearing something that muffles your speech isn’t exactly the best idea. For good measure, I raised my hands, showing they were empty. Rainbow blinked. The creature had just emitted a series of growls and groans that might have been speech. With its hands raised, it seemed as though it was... surrendering? But why? She had seen, first-hoof, just what it could do. Maybe... maybe it didn’t want to hurt her? Before she could ponder any further, there was a loud roar to her left. And that’s when another of those manticore things decided to show up. This one seemed thoroughly pissed off. Had I killed its baby? I don’t know and I don’t care, even now. As it turned out, it was no bigger than the first one, though the tail did seem longer. I could tell it was going to attack. Wandering through the Mojave gives you a knack for that kind of thing. So, before it could even get near I managed to draw my Sequoia and fire off three shots. Two missed. I felt like a complete idiot. After all, the ammunition for those things isn’t exactly ten rounds a cap. More like ten caps a round, if you’re lucky. The third shot, though, tore a nice big hole in its wing. Didn’t know it at the time, but I was using hollow-point rounds. What did this mean? It meant a hole the size of my head, a lot of blood and a very pissed off animal. I thought Deathclaws were fast. Those things have nothing on these guys. With a Deathclaw, I’d be able to get a least another shot off before it would strike. I’d barely even raised the pistol when it smacked me with a paw. I must’ve flown a good ten feet before I hit the ground. Thank god for the kevlar on this thing, it would’ve ripped me open. Now, you see, one does not simply hit the Courier. No, if you hit me, you can expect to get hit twice as hard. And that’s exactly what I did. It had pounced at me, thinking I was down. I had managed to ready my Displacer Glove. I planted the knuckle plate right in the middle of its face. Rainbow watched in shock as the manticore went flying, an loud boom coming from the thing strapped to the creature’s arm. She watched as it picked itself up and charged, actually charged, at the manticore. She would have been terrified, but this was among the coolest things she had ever seen. What came next made her jaw drop. Now, you get the idea that I pummeled the crap out of that thing, right? Good, because that’s exactly what I did. No, I won’t go into the specifics. I punched it. A lot. What kind of detail do you need about that? In my rush to kill the thing, I managed to completely forget that it had a scorpion’s tail. I’d expected my armor to stop it getting through, but I guess the fucking thing got lucky. Radscorpion poison isn’t the most pleasant thing, true, but whatever the manticore was packing made it feel like Med-X. Oh god did it burn! Being hit with a Flamer has nothing on that, I swear. It felt even worse than a Cazadore’s sting, and that is saying something. I went down screaming. Don’t look at me like that, what else was I meant to do? Still, I managed to get one last hit on it before I collapsed from the sheer agony I was going through. Turns out that was enough to kill it. Thank god too, I did not fight at Hoover Dam to end up in the stomach of some animal! Courier SPECIAL Strength: 8 Perception: 7 Endurance: 9 Charisma: 7 Intelligence: 8 Agility: 10 Luck: 6 Author's Notes: This courier is based off my Level 50 Uber-Courier. Yes, you can get those SPECIAL stats. It ain't easy, and it requires a mod. Don't expect this to update much. This was written on a whim, so updates will come on a whim.