A/N: I'm sorry, everybody, I messed up with this. I'd really appreciate feedback to help me learn from my mistakes. I originally posted this out of order—for action I began with IV, then went to sex in VII (I'm thinking about deleting that chapter), then the rest in order.
I wrote this for the Fallout Kink Meme. Prompt: "If I did it my way any/any: Basically is there anything that just screams for you to hit (D. None of the above) in a quest or maybe something that makes no logical sense to you. Make it as crack like or angst ridden or smut filled as you want go wild."
"Goodsprings Scorpion Scramble; or, Fun with Weapons"
December 2281
I
Arrivée — Rifles — Followers — Lingerie — Open Carry — Moving House — Fuel — UH-60M — Handloader — Intimacy — Companion — Destinations — Ammo Types — Wasteland — MultiCam — Butt Dimples — Ploy — Bother — Varmint Rifles — Gear — Door Gun
The Lucky 38 was the tallest hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, visible from miles away. Cara landed on its roof. He stepped out of the elevator into the Lucky 38's presidential suite. Like the rest of the hotel-casino it was dark and dusty, and felt kind of haunted.
The suite had been his alone but was mostly Olivia's now and she'd moved her followers into it, in addition to buying more storage containers and wardrobes, and weapons trunks which looked disconcertingly familiar to Cara, and another refrigerator and a liquor cabinet and other things. Before he gave the suite to Olivia, Cara had added a little himself, too, like consumer product science stations by Med-Tek called My First Laboratory and My First Infirmary, and in the main hall a glowing jukebox loaded with a bunch of vinyl records, 45 RPM singles from before the war. Nothing was playing.
At a low volume, he had it start "Heartache by Numbers" by Bryan Ferry, and queued several other songs.
The thin door to the master bedroom was closed.
ED-E was hovering in sleep mode outside the room. ED-E was from the east coast of the United States, a multipurpose robot made by the Enclave; which had been the remains of the lawful evil pre-war US government, when they were still around; its name an initialism for Eyeframe Durabot subject E; also, conveniently, of the many marks and scores and keepsakes it'd collected on its long journey southwest, one was a metal Illinois license plate whose clearest characters were "ED-E." The full plate number might've been 2ED-E59. ED-E had a lot of noodly metal appendages sticking out of it. It was a Sputnik 1-looking floating basketball radio antenna robot thing.
Arcade Gannon had fallen asleep reading a magazine in the suite's main hall area.
Cara heard voices coming from the guest room.
He deduced which pegs were his rifle's on one of the big metal pegboards, which he'd set up by hand with Olivia by the elevator doors for the weapons they used most. Maybe they should've labeled them. Each pegboard had storage bins under for ammunition, magazines they emptied so their springs wouldn't wear out, and gun oil and cleaning kits and stuff. Sometimes carrying around guns was fun but sometimes it was just tedious.
Cara's rifle had an incredibly long accurate range, more than a mile. He'd made kills at ranges longer than a mile, on targets human and monstrous. Past a few hundred yards it required technical skills even to make a hit. His rifle was also small, as sniper rifles went, about the size of a Colt M4 carbine with its buttstock extended; it was in bullpup configuration, with magazine and action behind pistol grip and trigger group, reducing overall length without sacrificing barrel length; it had a 26" barrel. It'd been his primary weapon lately, colored in black and flat dark earth: a gnarly-looking bolt action Desert Tech Stealth Recon Scout Advancement 2 (SRS-A2), in the powerful .338-inch Lapua Magnum, a dual purpose anti-personnel and anti-matérial cartridge for long-range military sniper rifles proven in war in the Middle East long before the Resource Wars.
Olivia was very jealous of Cara's SRS. He had several and would've just given her one, but she wanted to find her own to earn it. Cara was fairly certain she'd never find one anywhere. To find his, he'd had to go to Salt Lake City, Utah, with a very specific destination, then he'd had to rehabilitate most of the manufacturing area's machines, and make the rifles on his own from pre-war schematics and design documents and various materials, some of them proprietary, like the California-based Gun Runners did. It took him testing and a few tries to get it right. The SRS weighed 10 pounds unloaded and was almost as effective against deathclaws, people in heavy or powered armor and super mutants as Olivia's huge French PGM Précision Ultima Ratio Hécate 2, a .50 Browning Machine Gun (BMG) bolt action anti-matérial rifle that weighed 34 pounds unloaded—a steel and aircraft-grade alloy metal skeleton monster. Its name was written with a number, but text on the right side of the weapon said "HECATE II." Cara had a bunch of Hécate 2s, and other so-called light fifties, and used to use them, but thought of the Hécate 2 as her rifle now. Olivia could kill a deathclaw with her rifle in one shot at long range. So could Cara with his, but it and its ammo weighed much less and were cheaper and thus more efficient, and his round had a flatter trajectory. Technically Olivia's rifle had a longer range than his, but she'd never shot at anything from further away than about 200 yards (there were 1,760 yards in a mile), a close range to him. In an end results sense the main difference between Olivia's rifle and Cara's was that Olivia's made her victims' gore explosions bigger, which she loved but which he was past caring about. Olivia had been lifting weights for the last few weeks, but she'd still usually get sick of the Hécate 2's weight, especially if they were going up a hill, and Cara would end up carrying it for her.
Cara set his rifle in its spot.
He loved that he had the kind of closeness with anyone that he had with Olivia; that they'd share ammo, and stored a lot of their weapons and gear together, and talked a lot and were actual friends. He didn't even mind carrying her heavy god damn rifle. They'd never kissed romantically or made out or had any form of sex, but they were close enough that sometimes they slept together in the presidential suite's huge bed, or out in the wasteland in sleeping bags, not only for warmth. They kissed each other on the cheeks a lot. Olivia was very pretty, as was Cara very handsome, and they were both in good shape. Resisting sex was difficult sometimes and neither of them were sure why they did it, except that they were close and it was going well and they didn't want to screw it up.
As usual, Cara had come over-prepared; after the extremely high-quality sniper rifle, he had another rifle, two pistols (one on his leg that he forgot about, one on his armored vest), knives, grenades and gear.
His tricked out ultramodern rifle, a Heckler and Koch HK417A2 with a 13" barrel, had a shotgun attached to it under the barrel via one of the rifle's four Picatinny accessory rails, named for Picatinny Arsenal of New Jersey which tested and evaluated the rail, and from whose testing came its US military designation, Military Standard 1913 (Assault Rifle)—"MIL-STD-1913 (AR)." The HK417 was a battle rifle, chambered in the full-power 7.62x51mm NATO/.308 Winchester cartridge, which was also designed to work in semi-automatic or 600 RPM fully-automatic fire modes, unlike Cara's other frequent recent companion, a Springfield Armory M14 Enhanced Battle Rifle (EBR), a modernized kit for its older brother the plain M14, which wasn't designed for fully-automatic fire. Whereas the HK417, Cara had found through exhaustive experimentation and noodling and experience, was, and handled it well. The HK417 was a scaled-up version of its little brother the HK416, an assault rifle in 5.56x45mm NATO/.223 Remington, based on the AR-15 platform and designed as a replacement for and improvement to the Colt M4/M4A1 for the US military. The attached shotgun was a C-More Systems Model 26 Modular Accessory Shotgun System, a US military adoption, the M26 MASS. It was meant for breaching doors and increasing short-range lethality, like versus people on the other sides of doors, and it worked well against Powder Gangers' faces. Yes, very over-prepared.
Cara removed the HK417's magazine then pulled its charging handle a couple times and looked in the empty chamber to make sure he didn't have a round chambered (he didn't), then slid its magazine back in, made sure the red and white pictograph fire selector was set to safe (it was), closed the ejection port's dust cover, cleared the M26 attached to it as well, and finally racked his fancy, optimized battle rifle.
He took off his armored utility vest, an Eagle Industries Multi-Mission Armor Carrier (MMAC) patterned in MultiCam, and set it by the same pegboard his rifles were on. It had been issued to some US military units in war in the early 21st century between the government's developing other things, long before powered exoskeletons were in common use and then power armor and microfusion happened. If Cara hugged everybody like he usually did with the vest on it would feel weird, if he could feel it at all through the Kevlar and canvas and nylon, and the ceramic trauma plate in the vest's front plate pocket. He also took off the top blouse of the Army Combat Uniform (ACU) he was wearing, revealing the soft black tank top he'd forgot he wore underneath, and his torso chilled for a second. The Lucky 38 tended to be chilly. Like there were ghosts around.
He was so used to carrying multiple weapons that he entirely forgot about his sidearm, and its separate pistol belt, strapped to his thigh in a drop-down tactical holster, sometimes called a drop-leg holster, a coyote tan Cordura nylon Blackhawk Omega VI Ultra—a little excessive, maybe—the pistol a Glock 22C, and a few knives, which he also would've removed if he'd thought to; it was just good manners.
Cara found the tipsy Rose of Sharon Cassidy, Raúl the ghoul Tejada, Lillian Bowen the hulking blue nightkin super mutant, and Rex the Mark III Cyberhound, Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) Support Model in the presidential suite's guest room, all the humanoids sitting at the table, clearly playing strip poker. Lily was winning.
Cara went around the table and greeted everyone with familiarity. He made Rex wait patiently until last and calm down because, early on, the robo-German Shepherd got excited and started jumping on him; finally knocking Rex over playfully and giving him a nice belly rub; The dog loved it and the attention.
"You're always wearing something different," Cass said, just before hugging him and kissing him on the cheek. He wasn't sure quite what she meant by what she said. She was unreservedly staring at him. She liked his arms. And his chest. And the rest of his body. She'd adjusted her bra when she saw him come in; her top half was down to a beat-up white bra, but she still had her pants on. He could see the edge of her panties under them. She had two pairs of panties; on her were the high-cut briefs, pale pink with the color washed out, unflattering even to someone with good skin.
Nobody seemed aroused, which was probably a good thing, however disappointing; no one ever seemed to be passionate about anything.
"That's kinda been my style lately," Cara said to Cass before thug-hugging Raúl, whose Petró-Chico jumpsuit was puddled on the floor. As ever Raúl's body was hot. His radiation-scorched skin looked flaky and awful and ruined if not uniform. Under the jumpsuit he wore a ratty plain white T-shirt and equally ratty green briefs. Olivia had said Cara was the one person Raúl liked enough not to be painfully snarky, sardonic and sarcastic about, though Raúl called Olivia boss.
Raúl's large N-frame Smith & Wesson Model 29 revolver—famous for being the primary weapon of Dirty Harold, the main character of the same-named film series—was out on the table for some reason. It had a 6" barrel; empty it weighed 3 pounds. Cara picked up Raúl's revolver and opened and checked its cylinder, which had a .44 Remington Magnum round loaded in every chamber. That was unsafe, especially around alcohol and Cass. "Dammit, Raúl," Cara said as he unloaded it. Raúl looked away at the floor.
"Hello, dearie," Lily said when Cara got to her, hugging him a little too hard and picking him up off the floor by a few inches.
After the greetings Cass said to Cara, "Want a drank?"
Cara, not looking at her tits, said, "Sure."
Cass said, "Stop lookin' at my tits."
"Sorry," Cara said.
One liquored-up snort of good-humored but sour laughter later, Cass pulled the chair beside her out from under the table and said, "Get yourself a drink, honey, I'll deal you in."
Cara nodded and started to sit as Raúl said, "The boss is in there reloading," gesturing back toward the suite's master bedroom. English wasn't Raúl's first language, though he'd become fluent in it somehow. He had a Mexican Spanish accent. English hadn't been Cara's first language either, which you could hear in his voice sometimes though where it'd come from was hard to place—not México, not the USA, not Canada; most people's knowledge of pre-war political boundaries ended there. Maybe Europe.
Olivia wasn't Cara's boss, and what Raúl said meant a couple of other things too; the door was closed, so she was not to be disturbed by anyone but himself, and in all likelihood she'd be in there only wearing underwear . . . possibly exciting underwear.
"I better go let her know I'm here," Cara said. "I brought some stuff over." He stood. He leaned down to hug Cass again, one-armed, and she hugged him back with a wink, then without thinking he took a swig of her Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey. It burned down his throat.
Lily asked for a hug too, so Cara hugged her again before leaving the room.
Despite what he said he ran around in the main hall and played fetch with Rex for a few minutes—the dog didn't get enough exercise—before getting him a bowl of water in the kitchen, and then he awoke ED-E and checked in with it (Cara didn't like to impose gender) for long enough to run a couple diagnostics, ones Olivia didn't go through with it often enough.
Arcade didn't wake up the whole time.
Cara went into Olivia's room—her and his room, really—and cracked the door open, not looking in though he wasn't sure why; she wouldn't have cared if he had, maybe wanted him to look at her; and knocked on the door so she'd hear him and said, "Hey Olivia."
"Cara!" she said, instantly recognizing him by his voice and springing to her feet and almost falling. She was at her custom-made stainless steel reloading and gunsmithing bench, one he'd helped her install along the room's right wall, needing to push aside some wardrobes, and she'd been sitting on a very comfortable upholstered wood chair they brought in from the suite's hall. She had a book lying open on the bench, one from the little metal frame bookshelf they set up next to the bench for books on reloading, guns and ammo.
Olivia was in her twenties. So was Cara. She wasn't sure when she was born exactly, out in the country further north and east. He knew when he was born but didn't like telling people. Sometimes they thought she was older. Sometimes they thought he was.
She ran to him smiling. Her long black hair bounced wildly around her head and face and looked kind of ratty. Maybe she hadn't showered.
Also smiling, Cara ran to her. They didn't run at full speed, but they ran.
This part had once been a challenge for him, especially if he was feeling sensual or at all aroused. She was wearing only a black lace bra with big cups and matching boyshorts, a pair of underwear in very good condition. She'd known he was coming. Olivia had one of Cara's few weaknesses: large breasts. Not huge or absurd ones or gag boobs, just large ones. Wearing a high quality but nonetheless skimpy bra, Olivia rendered their bouncing, as she ran, terribly visual. This scenario had played out so many times it was easy for Cara not to stare; he hardly noticed them anymore, and didn't this time despite their exuberance. It wasn't Olivia's body he was most interested in; he tried not to notice it because it was distracting. She walked around the wasteland almost as much as he did, though he ran a lot more, and she exercised like him, and she had a fit, shapely body unusual in wastelanders, and a figure so curvy and lovely it almost made him angry. Her shoulders were built up a little now.
As far as Cara knew she'd grown up a wastelander, maybe a tribal, though in the last few months she'd become sort of a city girl. Oftentimes they'd eat in, drawing from food stores they had in the suite, or go out for dinner at some restaurant, rather than hunting, killing and cooking all their own meals. She wasn't completely converted but she'd ceased to be a hunter-gatherer.
He suspected that her often wearing naught but underwear like this was between a third and a half for him, but maybe because of his self-esteem wouldn't quite allow himself to acknowledge that. They'd never talked about it and, as far as he knew, she actually did like loading bullets wearing only underwear. Cara didn't judge. If he had a frequent opportunity to show off his well-toned body to her, he would've taken it too. But he was usually always doing something different in some different place, and he normally came over to her place and she hardly ever came to his, whereas Olivia reloaded in this same place a lot, more than she practiced shooting. Cara shot more than she did, which seemed odd to him because she was a gun nut, and he only used weapons out of practical necessity; most of his life, it seemed, had been spent in the sad wasteland that remained of the United States of America, plus a few years elsewhere, and guns were much more common there than explosives or laser and plasma weapons. Olivia loved guns; Cara knew a lot about them. It was one of the things they'd initially bonded over. He also exercised more than her, and regularly, and was more social.
Cara was very tall, probably unhealthily lean but ripped, and, whenever she felt him—as often as possible—he was unsettlingly hard-bodied, even his abs. Unsettlingly in a good way. Sometimes he looked like a wastelander to her, and more often military, but not normal military; like special operations. He exercised. His physique was incredible.
She didn't have a thing for military or even uniforms, but she'd wanted to fuck him since she first saw him, even before they actually met. Sometimes when he entered a room she'd just watch him. (Most people did.) He always smelled nice, too, even when sweaty from exercise or a firefight. Smell was important to Olivia. He didn't sound quite like anyone else, either, in a way she couldn't put a finger on, and she'd been all around the western half of the USA. He was probably the most attractive man she'd ever seen, crowd-gathering attractive, and somehow interested in her. He was perceptive; he also had a keen awareness of her feelings, which she hadn't really encountered before. He gave her all the space she needed, and usually much more than she wanted.
This morning, she assumed, he'd finished running some absurd long distance and then showered self-consciously. She didn't shower every day.
Cara and Olivia met softly despite running and hugged then backed off and kissed each other on the cheek and hugged again, warmly and for longer than they needed to.
That was their greeting ritual. Olivia's breath smelled bad. Once the niceties had been observed, then Olivia could indulge in her own greeting ritual:
"What're you carrying?" she asked him, meaning guns, eyes sliding down his body, to the sidearm he'd just now remembered on his thigh . . . and maybe enjoying his body a little, too. Accidentally mimicking her movement brought Cara's eyes to her wealth of cleavage. Fortunately Olivia was on-topic, and before he had a chance to stare, or even answer her previous question, she'd already appended, "—Glock 17? 18?"
"22C," he said, C for Compensated. Not her cup size, which was bigger. "You were close." He popped the holster's thumbstrap and unholstered it to show her, keeping the muzzle pointed well away from both of them and slipping the magazine out of the pistol grip. There wasn't a round in the chamber. He handed the pistol to her but not the loaded mag. It was a fourth generation Glock, with finger grooves on the grip's rough-textured frame, some parts made of metal and the rest a nylon-based polymer. People used to derisively call Glocks plastic guns, before their marketing became so successful and they so popular that people started liking it. It made guns much lighter.
"That's . . . .45 ACP?" she asked, enjoying it, feeling its weight in one hand then the other—it weighed 1.6 pounds empty—pulling the slide and apparently not reading the ".40" printed on the left side of it. Also on it were the stylized-G Glock logo and "22Gen4" and "AUSTRIA."
"Forty S&W," he said: .40 Smith & Wesson, a pistol cartridge born of the 10mm Auto.
Cara was, even before he'd landed atop the Lucky 38, sick of talking with Olivia about guns, and too polite to say so. Whatever else she was, she wasn't single-mindedly obsessive, so answering what she asked didn't only encourage her to ask more; he'd tried that before; he knew her better than that. She'd fixate on a select set of questions and just ask them, basically as a salutation, like the way dogs sniffed each other, and though he didn't like it, then she'd be done, and nothing Cara did would keep her from asking.
So he tried to address her questions: He began with, "I brought a bunch'a stuff, like normal. Do you wanna go look at them on the rack?" She self-consciously giggled at "rack." He smiled. Then he spontaneously added, forgetting what else he meant to say, "That way I can stand next to you while you admire them and slyly put my arm around your ass and male-gaze at you."
She laughed. She had a really nice laugh.
She knew Cara wouldn't really do or particularly want to do anything he'd just said. She wished he'd been serious, that he would touch her, and check out her body and make her feel sexy. She didn't say that directly. Instead she unironically said "Okay," her eyes encouraging something dirty, fully granting him permission, and put her arm around his shoulders—broad, iron-firm, strong tall ones, all but naked in the tank top, and warm—and started turning him toward the suite's main hall.
They were daring one another and bluffing; something about the way people usually acted, complacent and subdued, insouciant. Olivia didn't really want to and wasn't about to walk around wearing only underwear where her followers might see her. That was why she closed the door. Normally confident, Olivia got more and more uncomfortable as she got closer to nakedness. Olivia knew Cara wouldn't be affected if he were in her position, only wearing underclothes; he was relatively comfortable with his body, which was also much nicer than hers. She considered daring him to strip too but didn't, mostly fearing rejection. If he offered to she'd jump on it though.
This whole thing of Olivia in her knickers and bra was something special, just for him. He loved it, yet didn't allow himself to enjoy it. He wasn't sure why. He liked that he was close enough with someone to have something special, even if it was ludicrous and oddly tame. He was afraid he didn't have a good enough equivalent, something just for her. When they slept together he usually stripped down to his boxers and no shirt. He knew Olivia liked that, and his tan, all over his body, from being out in the desert so much and taking about a half hour to sunbathe naked on most days.
His most significant thing just for her was that while he wouldn't normally even have considered sharing his arsenal, with anybody, he'd shared it with her. He'd never really lived with anyone before, either, and now he lived with Olivia. He slept with her (not sex) in this—their—room in the Lucky 38 now more than he slept anywhere with anyone else. He'd even showed her his main storage warehouse once or twice—where he'd never brought anyone before; much less had he trusted anyone in the area, except for nonhumans: some of his big stray dog pack, those two cats who stayed with him, and ED-E, whom he'd rescued from obscurity and deactivation in a dark building in Primm, Nevada, some months ago, before discovering the underground military complex from before the Great War that was his base of operations now. He'd moved his whole arsenal there since. He wasn't sure if Olivia had ever been to the new arsenal; they'd have to remedy that. Soon.
Cara put his shapely arm around Olivia's shapely waist, but not her shapely rear end, and even let himself feel her mostly naked body's warmth and smooth skin for a half-second before saying, "Actually, keep reloading for a bit. I meant to say I brought some stuff over with me like we talked about before, but I wanted to make sure that's still okay with you. Before I brought it all down here," and then removing his arm from her.
"I want you to move your stuff in," Olivia said, putting a hand out flat high on his chest.
"Are you sure you want me to . . . be around that much?" he said, successfully not flinching at her touch. He had no trouble with any form of sex, but intimacy was often different. "I don't want you to get sick of me," he said. "I don't want you to feel any less free."
Her heart surged, eyes widened, and, her lips and eyes smiling hugely, Olivia hugged him hard, wrapping her arms around his neck. She put her head on his neck and shoulder and just held him. Then she looked up and said, "I won't get sick of you. Don't be silly."
She smiled. He'd been right; she'd been serious about it all. Moving some of his stuff into what he thought of as her place felt like a very big step to him, a new level of intimacy, which considering his promiscuous sexual history was strange, but that's still how he felt.
"What'd you bring?" she asked.
"Some clothes, ammo and magazines, a couple weapons and cleaning kits and tools, a suit, and . . . some gear and armor. It's still upstairs," Cara said.
"Did you say a suit? Like a dress suit?" Olivia said.
"Yeah. It's tailored to me, though, so it doesn't look all shitty and rumpled like the Chairmen's suits do," Cara said and Olivia grinned. The Chairmen were a besuited gang of ex-raiders, who used to call themselves the Boot Riders, from the Las Vegas area who ran the 1950s Rat Pack-style Tops casino on the Strip, as domesticated, dressed and styled by the Strip's president, CEO, proprietor and autocrat Robert Edwin House, often called Mr. House. The Chairmen's official head was Benny, who was dead.
Olivia smiled more with anticipation as she asked, "And you came here in your Helicopter?" Sometimes she said "helicopter" like it was a proper noun.
One of my helicopters, plural, Cara didn't say; he had a lot of aircraft.
And now, storage space, too. He was very close with the Boomers; they said there was a prophecy about him, and kept calling him "Captain Walka." They'd given him most of the area of Nellis Air Force Base, about 13 miles from the Strip, northeast in Las Vegas Township between the City of North Las Vegas and the census-designated place Sunrise Manor—most of which the Boomers didn't use; they didn't use a considerable amount of the military installation's 11,300 acres (17.6 miles). Their entire faction and Cara both had plenty of space; he didn't live there, but he kept aircraft and equipment and parts there. There were three main areas, as they were referred to in internal paperwork, of the base; the Boomers used Area III and Area I, and Cara was free to use Area II and most of Area I, namely the airfield and its two 10,000-foot runways, which despite the Boomers' recent acquisition of a Boeing B-29 Superfortress care of Cara they still hardly used at all. He had a lot of hangars of his own. Cara had helicopters, propeller planes and jet planes, unmanned drones and various land vehicles. He didn't have any tanks yet.
Planes, especially not-quite modern ones without vertical take-off and landing like the common VB02 vertibirds had, were safer and more common than helicopters, but had their own limitations, most importantly of space. Bizarrely, there was very little flat space in the Mojave, and planes needed long runways.
He didn't have fuel for all the vehicles.
The United States of America had had the same problem up to the Great War; the entire planet's supply of oil had all but run out. The fight over it was called the Resource Wars, and Cara hadn't read about them much lately. The USA had invaded México in the 2050s, before the wars, to keep oil coming, he remembered. The European Commonwealth declared war on the Middle East. The United Nations collapsed. The Middle East ran out of oil. Nobody won.
Cara couldn't keep it straight anymore, but he knew oil, the New Plague, PVP and FEV were all involved somehow; also in the 2050s the New Plague had hit the USA, and killed tens of thousands of people. He wasn't sure how it began. The American government hired one of their biggest defense contractors, West Tek, to cure the New Plague. West Tek established a large research facility in southern California. They failed. The facility got nuked during the Great War; it was "The Glow" now. Cara had been there.
Out of fear, the US government eventually took over the research done at the Glow and moved it to a new military base just outside of Mariposa (Spanish for "butterfly"), California, near Yosemite National Park, and the seat of Mariposa County, which some of Yosemite was in. Mariposa was about 290 miles northwest of Los Angeles, and around 400 miles in a straight line west and just a little south of Las Vegas. PVP became FEV there. Both super mutants and the Brotherhood of Steel were born in the Mariposa base.
The USA established a front line in Alaska to protect oil there in the late 2050s. Tensions with Canada rose. China invaded Alaska in the mid-2060s; war began on American soil. In 2072 on some pretext the USA officially annexed the whole of Canada, Cara remembered. After that, China began using biological weapons; the failed West Tek research into curing the New Plague morphed into, to counter biological weapons, the Pan-Immunity Virion Project (PVP)—which also failed, but was the conception of the Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV), which was eventually successful, but not in a good way.
Ionizing radiation emitted during the Great War mutated everything, but the radiation—X-rays, gamma rays—mostly just killed; it was FEV that made things into monsters. Radiation could change a scorpion or a cockroach a little, like make a species' random variation or average size a little bigger, or render them unable to reproduce or properly digest food, but it was FEV that made Emperor scorpions—Pandinus imperator—common pets before the war, a gigantic threat to humans, and American cockroaches—Periplaneta americana—grow to the size of dogs and able to eat all but a person's bones.
Fuel notwithstanding, maintenance for some of Cara's vehicles was costly, and many required oil for regular maintenance and lubrication. He tended to use the cheap-to-maintain, nuclear-powered helicopters.
His favorite mode of transportation lately had been a UH-60M Black Hawk, a US military adaptation of a Sikorsky S-70, a four-bladed, twin-engine, medium-lift utility helicopter he'd restored with some friends further east. It worked with synthetic oil, fortunately, and was nuclear-powered. It had seen combat before the Great War, and so far served Cara quite well. He'd flown to the Lucky 38 with it this morning. He usually flew with a copilot to be safe, but hadn't this time because he didn't know how long he'd be and hated boring people.
"I did," Cara said.
Olivia always enjoyed it when he came to her by flying vehicle—and liked the idea of him coming to her in general—especially if it had large weapons on it, as the UH-60M did.
Olivia kept hoping to blast some raiders or cazadores or something with one of the 7.62x51mm Dillon Aero M134D-H miniguns, very fast-firing six-barreled heavy machineguns, door guns, mounted in Cara's helicopter, but so far hadn't been so lucky. Really, it was the raiders who were lucky. A weapon like that did more than just kill a person. Cara had been trying to avoid giving Olivia an opportunity to shoot anything with it. Some of that was maneuvering, but Cara believed what really kept Olivia from blazing through a few thousand rounds in a few seconds had been his proviso: that she would have to provide the ammunition, or at least repay him promptly in full for what she used. He kept close track of how much ammo he loaded each of the two miniguns with, even wrote it down and shit. To her chagrin, Olivia knew him well enough to know he wasn't bluffing or exaggerating; she wouldn't get her way with this unconditionally.
She couldn't complain. He didn't charge her for fuel at all, despite being willing to fly her pretty much anywhere she wanted. She could hardly imagine what he had to do to fuel such a beast. Maybe it'd been converted to nuclear power. It could carry thousands of pounds of cargo, was fast, had a range of 1,300 miles, was 64 feet long, was about 8 feet wide, and was almost 17 feet tall. Considering that, Olivia doubted that even the NCR could afford to fuel such a thing, and they were rich. Mad rich.
"Cool," Olivia said. "So, you want me to stay here? While you bring your stuff in?"
"I thought you might want to finish what you're doing," Cara said, gesturing at her reloading bench. "It'll take me a couple minutes. I don't know how much more you wanted to get done."
"Not too much. Couple'a minutes," Olivia said, briefly looking between his eyes and his lips, which Cara noticed but said nothing about.
"That sounds fine," Cara said. "If you're still loading after I move my stuff I'll just go to the gym." Olivia hadn't known about the Lucky 38's second-floor gym and exercise equipment until Cara had told her. Mr. House hadn't mentioned it.
"Okay," Olivia said.
"What were you loading?" Cara asked. He didn't really want to know.
"Reloading, actually," Olivia said. "I haven't recycled empties in like a week. Or more. I was doing some fifty match." She was referring to .50 BMG. She'd been really into using high quality, consistent match-grade ammunition lately, the one she was loading a copy of the 650-grain FMJ pre-war US military cartridge officially called Cartridge, Caliber .50, M1022 Long Range Sniper. She said it reduced her spread.
"Nice," Cara said. He hugged her. He wasn't into loading bullets like her but he knew she loved it. "I'll let you know when I'm done moving my stuff, okay?"
Olivia hugged him back. "Okay," she said, then got a look in her eye and kissed him on the cheek once sweetly, languorously. He really liked her lips. She really liked his too.
He smiled and said "D'aww" quietly then kissed her back on her cheek, putting one of his hands on her smooth warm face. She was beaming at him as he left. Both of them heard loud Spanish curses as Raúl presumably lost a hand. Olivia put some clothes on and talked with Cass about what'd just happened, then went back to loading bullets.
Cara hadn't brought any of his dog pack with him this time but felt like a little companionship; he asked ED-E if it wanted to come with him to the roof, and ED-E happily bleeped that it did. It didn't mind idling, but really liked to be moving, and more than that enjoyed being outside, especially up high where it could see for miles. The phallic bell-ended roulette spinner icon of New Vegas's excess, the Lucky 38, was the highest thing around, short of mountaintops like the peak of Mount Charleston or Black Mountain on the McCullough range, or going up in a helicopter or an airplane. ED-E was happy to go. It hovered happily alongside Cara.
Moving in all the stuff Cara'd brought took a few trips. ED-E offered to packmule for him, but he wanted to do it himself.
Normally Olivia hated being interrupted while loading bullets, but this time she was waiting for him. She was still only wearing underwear, and still barefoot. Cara wasn't sure if such an outfit was good for hand-loading bullets. It inspired certain thoughts.
"You brought your 417," she said after a hug he thought might've been excessive but which he liked. "That's a nice weapon." While he was moving his stuff in she'd thrown on a ragged leather duster from one of her sets of NCR veteran ranger armor closed it and gone out into the hall to check Cara's guns out. "I could tell cuz it's like mine but big," she added, giving him by accident an excellent opportunity to say something very dirty indeed. "Like hers but big" referred mostly to penises but also to her two HK416A5s, stored on their metal pegboard setup, which she hardly ever used because they were just too nice.
"I did, and yes it is." Cara said. "Hello to you too."
She smiled. "Sorry. Hi." She noticed he hadn't made a dick joke and absentmindedly wondered why.
He smiled too.
"Did I forget to tell you what I brought?" Cara said.
"Yeah," Olivia said. It was part of her ritual. He knew that.
"Well I'm sorry too. I'm remiss," Cara said. "I'd have to go through it all to remember everything, but mainly it was the HK417 and the SRS. I put an M26 on the 417 and the LD50." That's too many numbers, Cara thought, his head spinning. He wasn't sure how he'd just said it. The last one was a joke.
"Oh, I didn't notice the SRS," Olivia said. "I guess I'm just used to seeing it there." She smiled.
He smiled back.
"I meant to ask you about guns," Olivia said.
"I think you already did," Cara said.
Smiling some more, Olivia said, "No, I meant about for what we're gonna be doing."
"What are we gonna be doing?" Cara said. "Please say oral sex!"
Olivia laughed, getting the reference and raising an eyebrow, really pleased first by his willingness and flexibility, and second by eroticism in general. She tingled. She said, "I dunno what we'd need guns for that for, but . . . let's not take it off the table." Cara laughed. So did she. There was a brief moment of consideration. Maybe it was risky to joke about that; she liked guns a lot, which everyone knew, and was fine with joking about it but she didn't like to mix guns at all with sex, and she was pretty sure Cara knew that. "Um . . . Can we go to Goodsprings, please?" she asked, meaning fly there. She'd been impatient about travel since he started using helicopters more.
"Okay," Cara said.
"See? You're awesome. Just like that, we're goin' to Goodsprings. Thanks, honey," Olivia said, smiling and messing up his hair, which she loved doing but only rarely did. He didn't mind. Unlike hers his hair was short and neat, which she liked. He often wore a beard but didn't have one now, just stubble. Sometimes Olivia really liked a beard, but this way she could feel his lips against her much better, and less scratchiness, though she didn't mind that. She thought about kissing him a lot, and at the moment liked him stubbly or clean-shaven.
"You're welcome, pretty lady. Thanks for the compliment," he said.
"Pssht," Olivia said, smiling, "It's nothing, it's true. I wanted to hang out with Sunny." Sunny Smiles was one of her best friends. "I thought I'd go see Doctor Mitchell, too. He doesn't get out enough."
"Yeah," Cara said. "Sure, we can go there. If you don't want me to get in the way of you and Sunny I can talk to Trudy or something."
"No, Sunny likes you," Olivia said. "She just doesn't know you. Or you don't know her. But whatever, we can all hang out. I think Sunny will wanna go clear out some critters. We usually do that when I go there. So I was gonna bring one of my varmint rifles."
Olivia had a collection of those. Lately she'd favored a Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle, a CZ 452 Ultra Lux (more target rifle than varmint, but whatever), a Savage Arms Model 110 or a SAKO Quad Varmint, mostly in 5.56x45mm/.223, or .22 Long Rifle if it wasn't windy.
"Right," Cara said, encouraging her, grateful so far that she hadn't got into what particular brand of hollowpoint bullets or specific gunpowder she'd be using, and if Speer or Federal was better, and if .44 Magnum was too much to use on gophers or whatever.
"But then I wanted to go clear out the area the Fiends have—by that vault, Vault 19 I think," Olivia said. "So we'll be taking on lightly-armored humans."
I think it's Vault 3, Cara thought. He was a little more involved in the region's affairs. "That hide stuff most of 'em wear isn't armor," he said. "Not if you use more than .380 ACP anyway." Olivia laughed. He was relaxing. You didn't get to make jokes like that around just anybody. "But some of them wear scrap metal plates and stuff. Occasionally," he went on. "So you can count on them mostly to be unarmed—unarmored—but some might come up with stuff like that. Or maybe flak jackets and breastplates from NCR soldiers they murdered, or from Gun Runners they caught off guard, or merchants or something."
"I forgot about that," Olivia said. "Raiders are such dicks!"
"I know, right!" Cara said.
"Oh, I wanted to go over ammo with you a little," Olivia said. "Is that okay?"
Cara felt odd to be asked that. Unlike her normal gun questions, she was asking his permission for this.
"Yeah, that's fine," he said.
"So . . . what kinda ammo are you bringing for the gas gun?" Olivia said, meaning his HK417, which was gas-operated.
"Match, ball and armor-piercing," Cara said, "ball" being another word for FMJ.
"We might come up against radscorpions," Olivia said. "What should I bring for my fifty?"
"FMJ normal stuff is plenty to pierce giant radscorpions' armor with fifty BMG," Cara said. "You might wanna bring a magazine or so of AP rounds or something. I'm sure you'll bring some match, too."
"What would you use against them?" Olivia said.
"In what caliber, fifty?" Cara said.
"I meant seven-six-two," she said.
"For most of 'em I'd just use FMJ," he said. "Against the really big ones if I could I'd switch to armor-piercing."
Olivia had done much less wasteland wandering and fighting than Cara. He'd done so much wandering he was even good at geographic terrain stuff like walking on rocks up hills and rock climbing, which she didn't see the fun in. As far as fighting wasteland creatures, she'd only come up against the worst of them, deathclaws—gigantic khaki-colored lizard things with long claws and twisty horns that jumped at you and seemed to exist only to eat, kill and destroy—three times so far, and they still scared the hell out of her. They scared her even more than ambush-hunting flying death groups of cazadores—these giant black and orange wasps with red eyes, long stingers and very painful venom. (Apparently before the war cazadores had been these wasps only two inches long, not four or five feet.) The first time she'd come across a deathclaw she hadn't had an anti-matérial rifle; she'd been lucky to survive.
They shifted around in the room, getting on with it.
Cara said, "Hey Olivia? What shoe size are you?"
"Nine," Olivia said.
Cara made a mental note.
Later Cara said, "I'd like to bring ED-E with us, if that's okay," sitting on their bed as Olivia began to put some damn clothes on.
He was wearing MultiCam Arid pre-war US military uniform pants—the top was out in the hall—part of an Army Combat Uniform (ACU); Olivia wanted to match, but only had the normal temperate forest-type MultiCam, and wore an ACU top and pants in that type of camouflage, along with another ACU component, the Army Combat Boot (Hot Weather). Cara wore new Corcoran Marauders in desert tan, which had been working well for him. They normally wore normal people clothes, but today it was military fatigues.
"Yeah, that's cool," Olivia said plainly but with a devious look at him over her shoulder, wiggling her hips and pulling pants, not tight enough to require so much wiggling and bouncing, up over her curvy ass with her back to him, Cara couldn't help but notice. Oh my God you have butt dimples, he noticed again; he forgot about that—them—sometimes. She "happened" to turn a little to the side and he simultaneously saw ass and large pale side-boob. He felt like jumping on her. He looked away. He thought about types of grass and helicopter engines and oil and lubricants whoops and motorcycles and throttle and force of thrust whoops and trees. He couldn't tell that he was meant to watch, and welcome to do more.
"Do you wanna bring Rex?" Cara asked a few seconds later, his voice turning her on further despite his totally missing a very clear, revealing, searing look—kind of a confrontation—from Olivia, who'd just done a fine job of bending over sexily, in her opinion, not knowing that he'd looked away. The plan had been to "catch" him looking and pounce. On his dick. He'd strip off of her what little clothing she had on and they'd just do it right there, right then, and get lost in each other. The door was already closed. It disappointed her that he wasn't looking, and that he'd kind of turned her down. Maybe he wasn't ready. Maybe such passive tactics didn't work on him; but that was what she was used to. Guys liked that, right? Or maybe he didn't want her. She thought her signals were pretty clear, and the way she got wet just from being near him. He must have been able to smell it. He'd had lots of opportunities to, especially when they slept together. Not coincidentally they talked about sex a lot, and they knew some of what one another liked, but they'd never actually talked about having sex with each other, except vaguely. It might help if she told him she wanted him. She'd never said "I want you to do (this thing) to me" or anything.
He had a strange over-sexed sexual history, though, one beginning with abuse. The first time he'd had sex when he wanted to he'd been 11 and it'd been with a much older woman. He said he still wasn't completely healthy about sex. Sometimes talking to him about sex got a little dark. With things like that all the normal rules didn't apply.
She was just worried that he'd have more of a sex drive than her, or more of an appetite, whatever you were supposed to call it. She wouldn't dwell on it, anyway, and whatever was going on with him she wouldn't worry about it, or let it make her feel any less sexy or less pretty. Maybe it didn't even mean anything, and he just wasn't in the mood right now. That happened to her too sometimes. Rarely.
Eventually she'd find a better time and make everyone but the two of them get out of their home suite and just put it in his lap and make him deal with it/give it to her/put it in her/give her the old in-and-out/please her etc. That would be good, a delicious surrender after a long build-up over months of getting to know him, wanting him the first time she saw him and wanting him more and more after that. He wouldn't disappoint her, especially not if she trapped him, ideally with her legs around him. She didn't see a problem with that.
Now, Olivia could tell his mind was elsewhere. The ploy gambit hadn't worked. Not knowing Cara continued blithely about Rex, "He could probably use a walkies, and he'd be happy to hunt varmints with you."
She shook it off. Her mind gone clear, she grinned at the use of "walkies" as he spoke and, looking back at him over her shoulder again, not deliberately sexily this time, she said, "Sure! Did I hear you playing with him earlier?"
"Yeah, that was me."
"I thought it was Arcade," Olivia said. "Why didn't you tell me right when you got here?" She said it with obviously fake irritation, but was clearly disappointed. He couldn't tell that she was mostly disappointed about something else. Something he and his mouth and tongue had been made to do. Just there, between her legs.
Pleasantly surprised at her emotional response, Cara said, "I didn't think you'd want me to bother you."
Olivia turned to face him. She had pants and boots on but her tits still out, wearing no shirt but a bra. He found it somehow more arousing than if she had only underwear on. It felt unfair that he was fully clothed. He forced his eyes away from her neck and tits and belly, and low belly just above the pelvis, up to her eyes, or her hair when he couldn't keep his eyes still.
"You wouldn't bother me. That's just other people," Olivia said.
"Oh," Cara said.
Olivia hardly used her varmint rifles anymore but thought of them as classics, at least among weapons she owned. She collected weapons. So did Cara. She'd had Mick and Ralph of Freeside make a rack for her main few varmint rifles. Heh, rack. She had it mounted on one of the side walls of her—their—bedroom.
As Olivia and Cara geared up, from that horizontal wood rack she picked a Browning X-Bolt Composite Stalker, a bolt-action rifle with a free-floated barrel and a flat black finish in .223 Remington/5.56x45mm NATO, a military cartridge developed in America in the 1960s. The .223/5.56mm also became a popular varmint hunting round, the two alternative measures, Imperial or metric, being the same size but different: a rifle chambered for 5.56mm could fire .223 just fine but the other way round would likely cause damage to the weapon that fired it as the two cartridges operated at different pressures, 5.56mm at higher ones, something dangerous to mess with; the kind of thing that could make a gun warp, or explode and injure users. Olivia's American varmint rifle was chambered for .223, the one common in the country before the Great War, so she wouldn't be using her normal 5.56mm rounds but rather 55-grain .223 hollowpoints she'd loaded herself. She'd be shooting varmints; they didn't wear armor. Because she liked to over-prepare she'd also bring a loaded magazine or three of normal full metal jacket (FMJ) "hardball" rounds, officially called "ball" by the US military before the Great War; ones she'd loaded, with plain soft lead cores surrounded by hard jackets of steel.
"Do you wanna ask if anyone else wants to join us?" Cara said.
"Lemme gear up first," Olivia said thinking about it.
They both wore armored vests designed for military and private security, Olivia a five-pound female version—curvy, rather than the default straight square male version—of an old Army Improved Outer Tactical Vest (IOTV), a component of their Interceptor body armor system, plus two four-pound ballistic trauma plates (they called them "strike plates") inserted in the front and back, to hopefully stop bullets, and Cara the MMAC he'd brought with one strike plate in the front. The strike plates were National Institute of Justice (NIJ), a pre-war thing, armor standard level IV, designed to stop even armor-piercing rifle bullets. Both of their armor vests had soft layers on the outside for grids of Pouch Attachment Ladder System (PALS) webbing also developed by the US Army on the front, back and sides for various equipment, mostly ammo; Cara tended to carry more gear and gadgets than Olivia.
They'd also bring helmets they probably wouldn't need, another common wasteland-encountered old Army project, the Enhanced Combat Helmet (ECH), made of thermoplastics instead of ballistic fibers as used to be standard practice. Its generic name was a US armed forces staple; for example, it was derived from the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH). They'd also have some knee and elbow pads in the helicopter if they needed them.
As usual Cara brought equipment for night vision he also probably wouldn't need, and they both brought backpacks with various gear and consumables, food and liquid, mostly purified water but also some Nuka-Cola and Sunset Sarsaparilla. Cara brought two cherry and grapefruit Sunset Sarsaparillas, a flavor nobody else seemed to like much. Olivia always used a simple leather backpack made after the Great War with no brands or labels or embossed names or tags, and Cara a Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment (MOLLE) II, another US armed forces gear project, rucksack.
It usually took Cara and Olivia a few minutes to prepare, including loading bullets into multiple magazines for their weapons, which could take a while and make their fingers sore—Olivia's straight stick 30-round UMP40 magazines took the longest—so they got pretty much everything on and ready before asking if any of their followers wanted to come with them.
Olivia took longer, but Cara was mostly prepared already whereas she'd been almost naked for his benefit. Cara went to the guest room and let everyone know what he and Olivia were doing and invited them to come along if they wanted to. Lily and Arcade decided to stay there. Cara asked if Arcade wanted him to bring some Dostoevsky to read. Arcade said, "Too Russian." Cass and Raúl elected to come along. For about two seconds Cara considered asking Cass for a handjob, which knowing her would escalate into full-blown penetrative vaginal sex, then thought better of it.
Like Cara, Olivia over-prepared with weapons as well as gear and ammo. She'd bring the X-Bolt varmint rifle; her Hécate 2, of course; a sub-machinegun in the same caliber as Cara's pistol, an HK Universale Maschinenpistole 40 ("Universal Machine Pistol," UMP40); which she'd have a lot of fun carrying onto the helicopter; and for her sidearm her favorite lately, a Beretta M9A3, in a Safariland M6305 holster on her right thigh.
She'd learned about such holsters, sometimes called tactical holsters though neither of them was clear on why, from Cara. You had to be careful running in them because they'd move around. He thought she looked kind of badass with the holster on. She thought the same of him in his. She felt like she'd never look as cool and calm and competent with weapons and military stuff as him, but maybe that was just insecurity.
Olivia would also bring a backup revolver, a Smith & Wesson L-frame M686 Plus .357 S&W Magnum 7-shot with a 2.5" barrel, in a low-profile Kydex holster on her vest. She'd be bringing plenty of ammo for everything, probably more than she'd need, as would Cara.
They'd both have a few grenades of different types.
Cara also brought several knives, like a classic combat knife—a black Gerber Mark II—and a martial-arts-leaning karambit; Olivia brought one knife, hers even more classic than Cara's Mark II, a phosphated black Ka-Bar fighting/utility knife with a synthetic rubbery Kraton handle.
Once they were packed and ready, Olivia and Cara got Cass, Raúl, ED-E and Rex and took the Lucky 38's central elevator up to the roof, where Cara's UH-60M Black Hawk was waiting for them.
As Olivia fumbled with all her long guns and gathered her hair and ponytailed it in a drab rubber band Cara said, "You can play with the miniguns, but don't shoot at anybody."
"Why not?" Olivia said.
"You'd probably kill innocents and civilians, in addition to whatever you meant to hit, and animals," Cara said.
"Who cares about animals?" Olivia said.
Rex barked.
"I do," Cara said.
"Oh. Sorry," Olivia said.
"It's okay," Cara said. Rex barked again in a supplementary tone. "Goodsprings needs their animals, too, like the bighorners, and brahmin and chickens there. I mean, wasteland penguins." Like every other post-Great War and post-FEV animal's name, "wasteland penguin" was colloquial and nonsensical. They'd been chickens before the war and FEV; after, they became scaly and ugly. Thus "penguins," somehow. Cara said, "For most of them it's their livelihood."
"I forgot they kept animals," Olivia said. "I remember the smell, though."
"It's a farming town," Cara said. After a pause he added, "I'm not gonna turn them on, anyway."
Olivia said, "What, the animals?"
"No, the miniguns," Cara said. "They need a power supply to load ammo and turn the barrels. I'm not gonna switch it on. Them on."
"Well why not?" Olivia said.
"Because with the luck you tend to have you'd probably accidentally—or not—blow up one of those stupid nuclear-powered cars and kill a bunch of NCR soldiers who were around it smoking pot or something, and then they'd blame me. So no minigun shooting, Olivia," Cara said, fake-sternly poking her.
"I like it when you touch me, Cara," she said, slightly dirtily. They giggled.
Original characters (by me): Viana (ex-NCR vertibird pilot), Arturo (Goodsprings settler)
A/N: As I said I wrote this for the kink meme. I mention the prompt I'm posting it to (on part VI, page 18), but I didn't write Goodsprings Scorpion Scramble for any one specific prompt; that's a simplification. I wrote this on speculation, kind of just with stuff I thought of. I was almost done writing before I even started checking for prompts. It corresponds with several. I picked "do it your way" because I sort of liked that one best, and it was unfilled. I considered a few more, like one, with I think four fills, asking for basically a day in the life.
I have a really long A/N on the kink meme version. Longer than this. I'm sorry for that too.
I said this on the meme too: I deal with and comment on videogame logic, artificial stupidity, space compression, glitches and general gameplay limitations/shortcomings in this, so a few things might not quite make sense—that's deliberate. I'm not dissing the Fallout games or anything, I just had to address it somehow as I wrote this.
Because this is Fallout there's gun stuff. Pop culture references too, which I have to allow myself because the Fallout series does, especially in Fallout 2. I'd name or list them but then I feel like they couldn't be funny.
Re: gun stuff: Have any of you read "The Four Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse?" It used to be up here. I recommend it if you like gun stuff. If you can't find it let me know, I have it, and if the author consents I'll get it to you somehow. If you like good stories or good writing in general I strongly recommend the author, James Malone's, follow-up, which is still up here, "The Four Horsemen Ride Again." Sadly, Goodsprings Scorpion Scramble is longer than "T4HRA."
I'm trying for the very first time these synopsis~section title~heading things. I'd love to know what you think of them.
I might've made up a few words.
If you have any questions feel free to ask me and I'll try to answer. I don't expect any questions, I'm just saying go ahead. I'm always curious why people chose certain things, or how they thought of stuff but they almost always seem completely unapproachable.