I’d just smacked one in the face hard enough to turn her skull into powder. And she got right back up! It was a bit like fighting ferals ghouls in a heavily irradiated area. Actually, no, ferals just rush you. These ponies, they had strategy, they had skill. More like the Marked Men, really.
I make it a point not to fight anything that can heal with radiation with my fists. After all, punching something to death takes a while unless you break the right bones. Only I didn’t have a choice against those guards.
The pegasi had initially used a strategy akin to the ones used when engaging Diamond Dogs or Minotaurs. By keeping their distance and striking as one, they were more likely to inflict enough damage to beat their opponent into submission. Using their size against them was also part of that. Unfortunately, the Courier was proving a much harder-to-hit target than anything his size should have been.
The Courier had chosen to meld two separate strategies together. While airborne, he would treat them like he would a Cazador. While on the ground, he would treat them like a coyote or Nightstalker. This had proven effective to a point. That point being that mutated animals and insects didn’t have much in the way of strategy, where his current opponents did.
As a result of the unexpected or unwanted parts of their opponents’ fighting styles, both sides ended up completely disregarded all strategy and fought on instinct. Here, the human had a clear advantage. Being of a species that had war and battle in its blood, he knew how to move to avoid getting hit and where to strike to do maximum damage. The ponies, being descended from a prey species, were fighting everything that told them to flee and seek safety in numbers. Because of this they were constantly distracted and ended up taking blows that, if not for their enchanted amulets, would have seriously injured them.
The armoured ponies gasped for breath, sweat cascading off their bodies. The fight had gone on much longer than anyone had anticipated, nearly half an hour. Every broken bone, every laceration, even Thunder Strike’s shattered vertebrae, their magical amulets had healed those injuries in moments. Their armour bore the signs of a near-relentless beating, many of the plates bent out of shape, a few missing.
Now, they were running on fumes. They barely had enough energy left to take wing, and any injuries they took now would be permanent, the magic in the amulets expended.
Much to their frustration and the crowd’s amazement, none of their attacks seemed to have done much to slow the Courier. What they didn’t know was that he was nursing a fractured rib, a concussion and enough bruising to make it seem as though he had just gone one-on-one with a Deathclaw. Only experience and a freakishly high pain tolerance kept him from keeling over and giving up. “You all fight like you’re pregnant,” he taunted.
“That’s it,” Storm Surge said through gritted teeth. “You’re going down!” The stallion was sick of the constant taunting, the insults and the snide comments. All he wanted now was to smack the smug smile off his face and grind his skull into the ground.
As he leapt and soared at him, wings stretched as far as they could to provide extra speed, the Courier activated the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. The whole world stopped as the processors built into the wrist-mounted computer calculated his chances, how much damage he would do, and lined everything up. Ten seconds in VATS translated to one one-thousandths of real time.
The human unleashed a punishing barrage of blows that left the guard, even under his armour, a battered, bloody mess. It had all happened so fast that even Luna, with her incredible eye-sight, had trouble making out what had happened. At first, they all thought that Storm Surge had been killed.
After a few seconds of tense silence, an audible moan was heard and the crowd erupted into cheers when he managed, shakily, to get onto his hooves. There he was, with a broken wing, more than half his armour bent into some strange piece of contemporary art and blood pouring from one of his eyes, and still he fought. This was incredibly short-lived as the Courier, without even moving from where he was, brought the tip of his steel-toed boot into his jaw.
“One down,” he said as the stallion collapsed and didn’t get back up. A pair of unicorns stood at the side of the arena, readying their magic to take the incapacitated guard away at the first opportunity they could. “Two to go,” he growled as his eyes focused on the guards, wide-eyed at how their colleague had been treated.
“He’s gonna kill us,” Thunder Strike muttered. “He killed Storm, and we’re next.”
“Pull yourself together,” Cloud Nine hissed as the Courier calmly stepped towards them. “We still outnumber him. Storm was stupid, rushing in like that, it’s what he wanted.”
“You wouldn’t believe how easy it is to take out someone who isn’t thinking straight.” The pegasi looked up to see the Courier looking down on them, wearing a twisted smile. “Or someone who isn’t paying attention.”
The ponies dove out of the way as his left fist travelled through the space that Cloud Nine’s head has just occupied. As the turned to face him, they were shocked to see him clutching his hand and swearing in pain. “Motherfucker! Fuck fuck fuck my fingers fuck!”
Punching someone while using knuckle dusters is usually absolutely fine. They tend to absorb the blow and you only get a little bruised. Punching the ground, on the other hand... You’ll be lucky not to break every finger and half the bones in your hand. I did that, as well as twisting my wrist.
And of course those bastards took advantage of my moment of distraction.
The Courier was distracted from the pain in his hand when a pair of armoured horseshoes collided directly with his spinal column. He fell face-first and got a mouthful of dirt. “And stay down!” he heard Cloud Nine yell triumphantly, quickly followed by the crowd.
“Not fucking likely,” he said as he pushed himself up with his good hand. The crowd, as one, gasped.
“What!?” Thunder exclaimed as the Courier turned around slowly. “B-but your spine!”
“My spine is made of a super-durable tungsten-carbide/titanium-carbide alloy and embedded with shock-absorbing technologies to withstand everything you can throw at me,” he calmly explained. “I am unbreakable.”
“Your hand says otherwise,” Cloud Nine retorted, keeping a straight face.
A large portion of the crowd tried to hold back their laughter, while the rest just gave in. It wasn’t particularly funny, but given the circumstances there was little else to laugh at.
“Cracking jokes? Really?” he asked, completely unamused. He blinked when he noticed something was off. “Wait. Where’d the other one go?”
He got his answer when he was suddenly assaulted with an electrical current. He let out a pained scream as his entire body screamed in agony. As he fell, he was dimly aware of a male voice yelling out “You just got thunderstruck!”
There was a mass of cheering, the ponies convinced they had just seen two of their number take down this savage soldier from another world. The combatants, on the other hoof, were cautious. They weren’t sure that electrocution was going to be enough to keep him down. They were right.
“That’s it,” the Courier growled. “No more playing. You think you’re the only ones with a few tricks up their sleeves?” As he stood, his right hand uncovered and hovered over his Pip-Boy, the fingers dancing around on the screen. “Guess again.” His finger tapped something only he could see. That was the last thing that Thunder Strike knew before his entire world became pain.
Even with one arm, the Courier did a fine job of turning the stallion’s face into a rather crude aerial picture of the ruins of DC. Thunder Strike had lost consciousness halfway through the assault, but still the man kept on attacking, the speed he moved at too much even for Luna to see what he was doing.
Cloud Nine was now shaking in her horseshoes. She had seen this being brutally take down two of her colleagues, two of the best fighters the Night Guard had to offer. And all he had to show for it was a self-inflicted injury.
She now knew that he hadn’t wanted to fight all three of them at once as some sort of boast. He had wanted to give them a fair chance. And even with their healing amulets he had managed to wipe the floor with them. From the very start, the outcome had been obvious. “Two down,” she heard the Courier say confidently. “You gonna surrender?”
“The Night Guard never surrenders,” she answered, sounding much braver than she was feeling.
“Then it looks like I’ll have to break every bone in your body,” he replied, grabbing his head with his good hand and eliciting a frightening cracking. Cloud Nine saw an opening. It was only a moment later that she realised that she had fallen right into his trap.
In the moment she started galloping towards him, the Courier planted his injured hand on the ground and, using it as a support, swept his legs in a circle, the saturnite shin guards connecting with three of her legs. She went down with a pained yelp. She was sure that, at the very least, one of her legs was broken.
As she groaned, the Courier knelt down and whispered to the mare. “At this point, I’d take out my revolver and paint the ground with your brain. You’ve lost this.” He grimaced, trying to ignore the pain throughout his whole body. “Last chance to surrender,” he offered.
“Over my dead body,” Cloud Nine spat defiantly.
“I’ve killed and eaten things that put up more of a fight,” he said, shaking his left hand in an attempt to get rid of the numbness. “Seriously, just give up. For both our sakes.”
There was a tense silence, and the crowd waited with bated breath. “Fine,” the mare said warily. “I surrender.”
“I declare the victor of this fight the Courier!” Luna declared, the Courier standing up and raising his fist high in the air, a triumphant smile on his face.
Author’s Notes:
VATS, Implant GRX and the Ranger Takedown. And that’s not even half of what he’s packing.
We never get told what your spine gets replaced with in the game. There’s my guess.